Busholini and Darth Cheney lied so much to justify invading Iraq, it is naive to think they are ever going to want to leave. They want to control Iraq's oil and have more war with Syria and Iran.

They never intended to liberate Iraq, they are simply using iraq as a convenient battleground. When you can say, better to fight terrorists in Iraq than here at home, knowing that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, this adminstration makes it plain that they don't give a good goddamn about the Iraqi people.

On Afghanistan, it's the same deal. Osama Bin Laden and his 40 theives are not Afghanis. They are Saudis whom we paid to go to Afghanistan to fight with the Soviet Union, then the so called War on Drugs. The Afghanis are simply in the way of the great pipeline.

No, if we were going to punish the 9/11 terrorists, we'd be bombing Crawford, Texas and Riyad, Saudi Arabia.

Finally, what the hell is wrong with American thinking? This administration ignored all the credible, reliable intel prior to 9/11 and just let it happen, or worse. Then they ignored all the credible, reliable intel on Iraq and relied on junk they knew was false, or worse, and invaded another country causing death and destruction.

Each time, they claim bad intel. Well, hello . The bad intel is between the ears of Busholini and Darth Cheney. It's time for a regime change in the good old US of A. Voters should color this team impeached.

Why do people (who should or do know better) continue to claim that Rep. Murtha called for an "immediate withdrawal" from Iraq? He called for a rapid (as much as possible w/o danger to our troops) withdawal AND local re-positioning within SIX months.
Why do they claim that the House defeated "The Murtha Amendment" 400 something to 3 when it was only a Repug substite (calling for IMMEDIATE withdrawal and nothing else) that was allowed to be voted on?

I am amazed Steve called this article "sizzling with anger". The article never once mentions LYING. And it even implies in one paragraph that someone OTHER than Cheney and his pet monkey are responsible for this clusterfuck in Iraq.....

"Last Sunday's Times report on the Iraqi informant with the apt nickname "Curveball" was a devastating portrait of the deeply flawed prewar intelligence constantly promoted by the administration as it lined up the tanks, planes and troops in 2003. The report quoted German intelligence officials as saying they warned U.S. colleagues of the unreliability of Curveball, a defector who was critical to the administration's claims that Saddam Hussein possessed biological weapons. If those red flags did not get to top officials, who hid them? Who's accountable?"

This article is nothing more than a mewling fluff piece tha minces words and seeks to stop the FLIGHT of subscribers that are fleeing after the discontinuation of Scheer's column, to say nothing of the subscribers they lost by refusing to cover the Downing Street Memo story.

"Sizzling with anger", my ASS. The LA Times is little more than a NY Times CLONE, spewing the party line.

The Bush administration is guilty of "cooking up" this war. No doubt about it as they keep running around trying to cover their asses - perhaps some in high places in our military and intelligence agencies - they ARE war criminals!

We have a major media, so concerned about being "politically correct", that keeps on dancing around those words.

Nor is Congress as a whole innocent of its complicity in this massive destruction and loss of lives - American soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians. In fact, had this war gone the way Bush espoused it would, Congress itself wouldn't give a damn about the loss of American soldiers nor anyone else. Congress, too, would be playing the game and living the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the invasion was necessary.

The hype of WMD, "yellow cake", "mobile chemical labs", "aluminum tubes", the "Plame affair", "Saddam connected to AlQaeda" - all bullshit that has cost this country over 2000 lives plus the wounded and created a huge financial deficit.

Having just re read the LA article, I have to agree with POA. Note the article's Bush ass kissing condescending words, "Americans need to understand...." As tho we don't?!

In light of allegations that Blair had to personally discourage Bush from ordering Al-Jazeera bombed, even commentators in the 'traditional' mediasphere are beginning to open up a more sobering line of inquiry -- one that is sadly well-known from previous eras of American hybris and delusion: that of an administration staffed by pathological liars, consumed by paranoia and prone to act irrationally and recklessly while faced with an enemy whose language and culture they don't understand.

This whole debate may yet be turning from criminal investigations to aetiology.

It took Murtha to spell out something that should be said much more often and forcefully: Congress is way behind public opinion on the need for

a) admission of fundamental mistakes by the administration

and b) substantial changes in policy.

So yeah, I agree with the previous commenters: if anything, this editorial is behind, not ahead of the curve with respect to public opinion in the US.

I did not have sex with John Murtha and I can't for the life of me understand why Scott McClellan would say such an awful thing. I've never had sex with Joe Biden either. Sex, lies, and video tape of the torture at Abu Ghraib. That is what America should be focusing on.

One other thing -- the adminstration has asked the public to take sides with either them or 'Michael Moore'.

'Michael Moore' has become a catch-all phrase. The name of a documentary filmmaker has been cut away from the man and his personal views as well as from the documentary film he made (while arguably helping both the man and the movie, given the flaws of the documentary and the man's rather cheap populism).

Now, the far right wing of a party beholden to corporate America in exactly the same, sick ways as the party that has hatched the bunch of paranoid lunatics that currently run the place is being conflated with 'Michael Moore', the new catch-phrase for 'aiding and abetting, siding with, sympathising with, or otherwise supporting the enemy'.

Only problem is, more than 60% of the country are now 'siding with the enemy'. Even the LA Times, fresh from replacing Bob Scheer with Jonah Goldberg, is 'siding with the enemy' on its editorial pages. But we can still count on the WSJ to defend torture...

The LAT is running a story today on a West Point professor with a PhD in philosophy, "one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics", a devout Catholic, a husband and father, who committed suicide in Iraq, saying

"I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. Death before being dishonored any more."

'The nation's preeminent incubator for Army leadership' is seeing its leaders commit suicide after reaching the conclusion
conclusion

that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

Reading this article, you'd think the administration's spin meisters will have to cut away and disembody the name 'Naomi Klein' next.

I would like to enter as evidence John Murtha's blue dress...

"George W. Bush has traveled off to major summits in Latin America and Asia"

Bush is actually still stuck inside a press conference room somewhere in Asia. They've employed the out-of-work Saddam Body Doubles from Central Casting for his recent Crawford appearances.

CALL FOR HELP
To Save the Iraqi People

To all good people of the free world
The devastation and destruction Iraq has been going through is quite evident to the entire world. The Iraqis have only one last chance left to save them and make the political process a success, i.e., the forthcoming elections due to be held on December 15, 2005. Somebody must give a helping hand to this poor people who have suffered from an awful lot of wars and calamities. The world have seen nothing but the tip of the iceberg of these sufferings, only time will disclose the atrocities practiced against this people.
Everybody must know that history will not tolerate with the perpetrators of human and environmental disasters which have taken their toll on the Iraqi people and Iraqi soil.
Dear brothers in humanity all over the free world,
Let us all, from individuals to groups, NGOs to state-owned institutions, join forces with the Iraqi people, who are deeply wounded and are crying out loud hopefully their voices will reach out from within the rubble of their devastated country. All they are asking for is to save them from this intimidating life; they are actually witnessing the deadliest war of the lot in the history of Iraq. That is the civil war which have been brewing for ages and backed by many parties and groups with axis to grind, and its flames will burn them all. These groups are unaware of the consequences for their actions, which will affect all parts of the world, it will be an endless cosmic war, to which no one will be able to put an end or restrain.
Let all good people of the world work hard and pressure decision makers who are leading Iraq to the brink of a civil war, including president Bush, his administration and allies who backed the invasion of Iraq.
Your support to stop this deadly war and present the Iraq issue to the international arena to find a legal and humanitarian solution is the right thing to do.
As a sign of good will, all those who want to seize the last opportunity to make the forthcoming elections a success and stabilize the situation in Iraq, all decision makers and all those who are striving to achieve this noble objective must do the following:
1. Throughout the elections’ period, all military assaults, launched by US or Coalition forces or Iraqi forces (The Ministry of Defense and The Ministry of Interior), as well as paramilitary militias related to pro-government political parties, blocks and groups even the Iraqi Resistance who are against the occupation of Iraq, must be stopped. All military phenomena must be less visible in the Iraqi cities, villages and towns, to make the elections a success.
2. Thousands of innocent detainees, who have not been charged, and are held behind the democratic bars of US-run or state-owned prison camps, must be released, so that they could practice their legal rights of casting their votes. As for those who were found guilty, they must be sent to courts.
3. A supreme judicial body must be formed to act as a legal supervisor and work with the Higher Electoral Commission to monitor the December 15 elections.
4. International organizations, on top of which the UN, must be the immediate supervisor of the Iraqi elections and electoral districts in all Iraqi cities.
5. Local organizations of civil society must be granted a legal role to act as independent supervisors to monitor the voting process.
6. State-owned institutions, including mass media must back the voting process, and promote for all candidates of political blocks, personalities, parties and groups without being biased.
7. All local, regional and international humanitarian institutions and organizations must mobilize public opinion for the benefit of the elections, through pressuring decision makers to back up the voting process. December 5, must be a decisive moment, on which decision makers, including President Bush and his allies, must announce their willingness to support this initiative and must take all possible measures to provide a healthy environment for the elections, particularly in the event of National Reconciliation Conference promoted by the Arab League and good people of the world. Hopefully this could lead to a stable political situation in Iraq, which could consequently lead to the stability of security, economic and social situations and to the rebuilding of the devastated Iraq.
This is a legal objective, backed by all laws, international conventions and traditions and all countries and institutions of the free world. It is also the very same objective president Bush has been calling for in many occasions, that is to make Iraq a model for democracy and international political, economic, or social stability.

A Voice from the Wounded Iraq

Abdul wahab Al Obeidi

Americans are angry: they see dead bodies and pools of blood on their TV screens every night and they don't believe their government is in control of the occupation.

Who knows, perhaps they 'believe' John McCain when he says Americans shouldn't torture; perhaps they believe Cheney when he says they should. But the real problem for the administration is elsewhere: It's the doctrine.

The doctrine has failed.

The strategy to discipline and brow-beat the American public into going along with the GWOT, let alone the PNAC, has failed and Gaffney, Kristol and Perle know it. That's what they are worried about.

For half a century, the centripetal forces in American politics were united behind a common enemy: an ideology that had 25,000 nukes and its own block of nation states. For decades, policy planners were able to discipline the public behind 'mutally assured destruction', by demonizing the 'red menace' and comparing 'our democracy' against 'their totalitarianism'.

But since 1989, America has been adrift: with the ideological hate figure, the booman, the 'red scare' gone, Americas 'purpose' was thrown into permanent crisis.

For the neo-cons, the only way out of the supposedly aimless drifting of the nineties was to erect the next common enemy doctrine in front of the American people.

The architects of the PNAC (the version of the doctrine designed for 'elite consumption') and its bastard child for public consumption, the GWOT, worked from the assumption that Americans are unable to unite around anything other than a hate figure -- a common enemy that can be demonized and dangled before the plebs through a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign.

There was only one problem: there was no ideology, only a tactic to hate.

[More recently, some of the propaganda warriors have tried to 'remedy' that particular flaw in the doctrine by coining, post hoc, the entirely new school of "islamo-fascism". -- For the purposes of the Cold War, America's spin meisters merely sought to conflate the horrors of Stalin's dictatorship with a preexisting and well-defined ideology: communism, and hilariously, Marxism 'because they are obvisouly one and the same' etc. Interestingly though, they never felt they had to literally invent the ideology for their enemies. Today's ideological instructors clearly feel the need to do so. Outside the corridors of the American Enterprise Institute, nobody really knows what "islamo-fascism" is supposed to mean. I hope an enterprising reporter will tour the Middle East and sample public reaction to this brand new ideology that nobody has ever heard of.]

There wasn't even a single state, let alone a bloc of nations, to point your bombs at. Queue Rumsfeld's "Iraq has better targets" ..

But the public isn't listening anymore.

America is back to square one: the end of the Cold War and the end of the viability of doctrines of hate. America is an atomized society, made up of tribes and groupies. If it wants to avoid breaking apart completely, it will have to find a common purpose to rally around. But this time, it will have to deal with its own problems instead of erecting aliens to hate and kill.

America is not only faced with the twin trainwrecks of its deficits; it is faced with an even more explosive triple trainwreck -- socially, economically, and politically.

Former labor secretary Robert Reich believes that 'America's social fabric is about to snap': It will either 'snap back', that is, undergo a sudden correction, through a concerted push for progressive reforms in the years ahead, or else it will 'snap as in break up' whereby the rapidly growing wealth and income inequalities lead to an increasingly divided society and social unrest.

The fiscal trainwreck is perhaps even more worrying - because much of it depends on foreign institutional investors. And again, the question seems to be: will it snap (back) or will it break? In other words, will Bernanke be able to crash-land the double deficits by printing America's way out of debt, thereby effectively 'defaulting' on it and destroying the dollar in the process, or will the system break when Asia's central banks decide to pull the plug, interest rates shoot up and Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac go under? And how helpful does it look to you -- or any foreign investor -- when the NYT reports that Washington's economic team has literally disappeared?

The chairmanship of the Council of Economic Advisers will soon be vacant, and two spots on the Federal Reserve Board that were recently filled by academic economists already are. There is no assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax policy, and the director's chair at the Congressional Budget Office, currently occupied by Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, will soon be empty, too. [as Steve wrote a few days ago]

The political trainwreck we already have -- a society that's deeply divided along partisan and ideological lines, a society swamped in disinformation and kept divided by non-stop political campaigns and a totally dysfunctional political system crushed under the weight of unbelievable corruption.

Lots of people wonder whether China will be able to transfer from one-party disinformation state to pluralistic, open society without major incidents. Many fear (or hope, unfortunately) that political change could lead to another Tiananmen Square, which in turn could stifle China's economic ascent.

But few seem to worry about the United States in the same way. Both countries are confronting monumental domestic challenges that have the capacity to rip their societies apart and unleash major social unrest.

Over the next ten to thirty years, geopolitical stability will largely rest upon the capacity of both China and the US to address domestic problems and meet internal challenges.

How to get out of Iraq. After the Dec. 15 election Give the Iraq govt. $$---,---,---(insert figure here in billions).Secretly give the leaders$$---,---,---.and ask them to ask us to get out.CASE CLOSED.

JHickey