All This for a Chauffeur?

I'm embarrassed for our country. Truly embarrassed.

The time has come to put the cards on the table, and display for all to see the fine work we have done in counter-terrorism. The reason we have set up secret prisons, lied to the Red Cross, copied torture techniques from the Chinese, emulated Stalin's web of secret prisons, become the sort of people that true Americans - real, red-blooded Americans - loved to hate during the Cold War, indeed, even changed our self-reference from "America" to the vaguely teutonic "Homeland" - all our post-9/11 transformations may be looked at and weighed against the big evil terrorist we have brought to justice.

And he's a chauffeur.

We're demonstrating that we can put a driver on trial. The most damning piece of evidence? He may have overheard where the fourth plane was headed.

When in the course of history has such a great nation transformed itself for such a small fish? When did America, land of the free and home of the brave, crawl through Stalinist slime to nail a chauffeur?

If this is the new America, I want to see Ken Lay's admin dragged into court and prosecuted because he or she typed his memos and placed his calls. I want to see Tom Delay's maid prosecuted, because she was in his "inner circle". I want every taxi driver who overheard a conversation between John Sununu and his phonegate conspirators to do time.

On second thought, I don't really want those things. I want my country to recapture its dignity and sense of itself. I don't want to ever again see it stoop to putting on show trials for bit players. I want a new administration and a new direction. I want change. I want America back.

Blogging My Way Into Jail?

Look who George W. Bush is holding hands with! (What, no video of them skipping and blowing dandelions at each other?) Yes, that's Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah interdigitating with our "macho" President. I wonder if Bush's hand-pal whispered into his ear about his plans to arrest a blogger and beat him until he answers their questions?

I've got no real problem with Bush holding hands and skipping with fellow rich pampered undeserving spawn of unearned wealth. Really. It's kind of cute. But I do have a problem with the President of the United States holding hands with a torturing monarchist with ties to bin Laden. That's not cute at all.

Blogger Background on Bhutto

Yesterday's sad insanity is completely out of context for the vast majority of Americans, and I am very much among the ignorant. I know very little about Pakistan's history, or current state. Hullabaloo provides a "Pakistan Crisis for Dummies" post and Juan Cole provides deeper analysis.

Has Privacy Become Outdated?

One of the most frightening trends of government in general and the Bush Administration in particular has been the erosion of privacy. Privacy, in a post 9/11 world, is viewed by some as a frivolous and risky luxury with little legitimate use.

Indeed, unless you're a terrorist or some lesser criminal, why is privacy in your communication or personal space even necessary? If your most provocative statement of the day is a phone call to your spouse discussing what to microwave for dinner, who really cares if the NSA is listening in? And if they claim have to listen in on your grocery list conversations to prevent crazy people from flying into buildings, then a patriot will agree to speak clearly into the microphone, right? If the government needs to rummage through my boxer shorts to make sure my neighbor isn't hiding a nuclear device in in his underwear drawer, that's just the way it has to be.

Why do you need privacy, anyhow, unless you're doing something wrong?

Indeed, the freshly-sworn-in man who is second in command of National Security, Donald Kerr argues that in today's technological world, notions of privacy are somewhat outmoded, and we should not impose our "one size fits all" ideas on people who are willing to waive their privacy. Here's a transcipt of his entire speech (.pdf), and here's the part that has me upset:

And we’ve started to bring down those walls as we require information sharing between intelligence, Homeland Security, and Defense agencies, and law enforcement. Some have grown uneasy. People are asking, just what is it they’re sharing?

And that leads you directly into the concern for privacy. Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it’s an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture. The Long (sic, unless he's talking about some dirty movie) Ranger wore a mask but Tonto didn’t seem to need one even though he did the dirty work for free. You’d think he would probably need one even more. But in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity – or the appearance of anonymity – is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Anonymity results from a lack of identifying features. Nowadays, when so much correlated data is collected and available – and I’m just talking about profiles on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube here – the set of identifiable features has grown beyond where most of us can comprehend. We need to move beyond the construct that equates anonymity with privacy and focus more on how we can protect essential privacy in this interconnected environment.

Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won. Anyone that’s typed in their name on Google understands that. Instead, privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured. And it is that framework that we need to grow and nourish and adjust as our cultures change.

I think people here, at least people close to my age, recognize that those two generations younger than we are have a very different idea of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs. And so, it’s not for us to inflict one size fits all. It’s a need to have it be adjustable to the needs of local societies as they evolve in our country. Eventually, we can only hope that people’s perceptions – in Hollywood and elsewhere – will catch up.

Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety. This is work that the Office of the DNI has started to do, and must continue and make a high priority. This careful balance we need to strike, however, is nothing new. With the advent of telephones, we entered a new frontier that required careful balancing between safety and privacy. We faced this challenge again at the end of the ’70s in the aftermath of the Church-Pike Hearings. And now, in the era of new technologies, we have to work to continue to keep that balance, to earn that trust, and re-earn it every day through our actions. But we also have to be willing to reopen the laws and regulations that were based on technologies that existed 1978 and adjust them to the realities of 2007 and 2008.

Privacy, in this guy's view, is merely "a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety." Privacy "is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured."

Those quotations are not my fevered reinterpretation of some right-wing whacko blogger - those are actual words from the Deputy Director of National Intelligence! In a nutshell, he's arguing that if you use a credit card to buy something from Amazon, you won't mind if the government examines your financial records. If you use the internet to google symptoms, you won't mind if the government checks out your medical records.

So, while we undervalue the right to privacy, and question its value to good people, the government is questioning whether it even exists any more. Please take a second, though, and remember three primary reasons we need the Fourth Amendment.

First, we know the government will ultimately abuse the power we grant it. Second, the police, FBI, NSA and other security agents are too stupid to get it right. Third, and most important, we don't want anybody messing with us. America has a deep-seated, defiant sense of independence from its government, and will not long suffer being treated like subjects of a superior power.

Conduct Unbecoming an Officer

This whole exchange creeps me out.

One of the cornerstones of our country is that the military stays on the sidelines of politics. Bush has as little respect for this cornerstone as he does for the Constitution, and has never hesitated to use the military for a wrong-headed photo-op (Mission Accomplished?) or even a fabricated neo-con war. But all Presidents have used the troops as a patriotic photographic background, and the military has a proud history of accomplishing missions without questioning their wisdom.

It took Bush, though, to apply litmus tests to his senior command. He has rid our military leadership of those whose loyalty to the President can be questioned, and, as a result, we have a military command structure that resembles a rightwing blogger convention. The line between being a gung-ho soldier and a rabid rightwing partisan has been erased, and one of the first challenges for President Dodd or Clinton or Obama or Edwards will be to restore the dignity and political independence of the military. Col. Steven A. Boylan may be looking for a job - perhaps he can get a job as Drudge's security chief.

Beltway Myopia

It's disquieting enough that Fox actually has a show called the "Beltway Boys", where "boys" of around 70 pontificate on what the insular DC crowd is thinking. "Beltway thinking", in this age of information and analysis, is almost synonymous for misguided, arrogant, conventional and flawed thinking. And Fox gives us 30 minutes of it every week.

I accept, however, that Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes do represent a portion of effete DC culture. That's why this quotation from Fred Barnes is so incredibly disturbing:

You know, I've thought for a long time that Obama's not in quite as strong a position on the war in Iraq as he really thinks he is. Remember, when he famously came out against the war, it was back in a time when the entire world believed that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that he would probably be willing to use them himself at some time or pass them along to terrorists who would use them. And yet, Barack Obama was against going to the war at that point. I don't think that shows that he is very strong on national security, which he needs to be. But that argument's not going to be used against him in the Democratic primaries. It would, however, by Republicans in a general election.

So, when everyone else was wrong, OBAMA WAS RIGHT!! And that makes him weak?! What kind of topsy-turvy world must you live in to criticize someone who dared to be correct when everyone else around him was wrong?

The irony gets even worse if you go back and look at what Obama had to say when the United States was being driven to war by a fear-mongering, war-bent President and a cowardly Congress:

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income -- to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear -- I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

Now, I'm not endorsing Obama for President right now. But I wish our Beltway Boys, and all the other "serious" voices who help form our public opinion, had paid attention to him then. Instead, because they were wrong and he was right, they are paying attention to him now, and deriding him for the crime of not suffering from the Beltway myopia that has damaged our country so horribly, and killed so many people.

Blunt Unilaterally Imposes Racial Profiling Slippery Slope on Missouri

I try not to be shocked by the anti-American depravity of Matt Blunt, but I did not foresee this one: "Citing an “unnatural influx” of illegal immigrants, Gov. Matt Blunt on Monday ordered state troopers to start checking the immigration status of every person they arrest." Emboldened by the Governor's anti-immigrant stance, the Highway Patrol has decided to go even further and run computer checks on anyone they want - “If we think they’re illegal, then we would be checking them,” said Lt. John Hotz, a spokesman for the patrol.

What, exactly, do you think it will take to trigger a suspicion that "they're illegal"? Tan skin will suffice. A latino last name will suffice. A plastic statue of the Virgin Mary will suffice.

What has happened to the Republican party? Didn't they used to be the small-government party? Has their love of white supremacy overridden their love of liberty?

Today, they are coming after the Hispanic population - running their names through government databases at any opportunity. Do you honestly believe that they'll stop there? On a dark night at a traffic stop, a Jew might look swarthy and Arabic, so let's run them through the database, too. And why should we limit ourselves to immigration issues? Why don't we look for a broader group of crimes? Why don't we look for anyone on the no-fly list?

And why should we endure the risk of the nonwhite criminal class avoiding occasional traffic stops? Why don't we go ahead and set up a few checkpoints at key locations?

Is it really hysterical of me to ask if anybody remembers when saw the Soviet Union as an enemy instead of a model? We already have our secret prisons . . .

Vick and Bush

I agree with the disgust people are directing toward Michael Vick.

My only question is whether he his treatment of his dogs is any less humane than Bush's treatment of uncharged prisoners. At least Vick isn't using our tax money to fund his sickness.

Dover Beach and Iraq

I don't know what's going on in Iraq. Neither do you. Each of us must rely on information that is gathered by others, condensed by others, and presented by others. Even if you're visiting this blog from a laptop in the Green Zone, you don't really know what's going on 20 miles away.

For months, though, we've been promised that we will be getting a status report from General Petraeus. While I didn't really have high hopes for the impartiality of a report that amounts to a self-evaluation, I was at least looking forward to a report that would be a military assessment instead of a political argument. After 4 plus years of rightwing cheerleaders telling us how wonderful things are, and 4 plus years of lists of dead American soldiers every week, it would be nice to have someone in command stating his view of where things stand militarily.

We learned earlier this week that the Petraeus Report will not happen. There will be no Petraeus Report. The White House will write the report. And it's even worse than that. The White House will write the report "with inputs from officials throughout the government," which means that we will get a thoroughly vetted and processed version with every spun nuance to be found within the Bush Regime.

This morning, I am as disgusted by our federal government as I've ever been. From Powell's bogus photos of chemical trucks during the marketing campaign to the embedded reporters at the beginning of the war to the suppressed photos of coffins and casualties all the way up to the White House Report (f/k/a Petraeus Report, and any news outlet that refers to the "Petraeus Report" after this news will be playing along with an Administration lie), the American public has consistently been denied access to the unvarnished truth.

I am not an informed citizen. You are not an informed citizen. When you vote, you do so based upon deeply flawed and biased presentation of controlled information. If you're a rightwinger, you might believe that the mainstream media are the source of misinformation. If you're a progressive, you believe that the Bush Administration is lying to us.

We're both correct, and Matthew Arnold comes to mind:

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Welcome to Dover Beach.

What's Gotten Into Ike Skelton?

Isaac Newton "Ike" Skelton is as old-school as they get. He's been involved in public life since the President was known as Ike, and he's been in Congress for three decades. He's a Democrat, but opposes abortion and gun control. As a conservative Democrat, he is a throw-back to pre-Kos, "silent majority" days, when liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats overlapped in the spectrum of American political thought.

Lately, though, Ike Skelton has emerged from the sleepy world of quiet moderation and started to make a few waves. Recently, his press office contacted a gaggle of Missouri bloggers and started to send us press releases. He's been getting his voice heard more often, and is even showing his dry sense of humor. Note the book he is featuring in his National Library Day promotion - a poster that could otherwise be taken off the set of Pleasantville, except for the presence of Fiasco. a book which chronicles the blunders of the Bush Administration's mishandling of the Iraq war.

Last week, Ike Skelton found himself at the forefront of the debate over Iraq when his bill requiring U.S. forces to begin a troop withdrawal within 120 days and move to a "limited presence" by April 1 passed by a margin of 223-201 in the US House of Representatives.

When I first noted Ike Skelton's increased visibility and assertiveness, I thought for a second he might be setting himself up for some larger role in government. Perhaps he could be going after the seat Kit Bond is unlikely to retain in 2010? Perhaps he's positioning himself for a vice presidential nomination? Either Clinton or Obama could benefit from having a swing-state, moderately conservative, unabashedly pro-military, anti-war voice on the ticket.

A look at his bio, though, shows that such speculation is unlikely. Ike Skelton is 75 years old, and is unlikely to be seeking such long-term commitments.

Instead, I see two reasons for Ike's recent higher profile. First, I note that in 2005, he lost his wife of 44 years, and, later in that same year, was injured during an official visit to Iraq. What I know of aging and what I've seen of it suggests that Ike has seen the eternal footman hold his coat, and doesn't want to hear him snicker.

Less dramatically, but just as likely, Ike Skelton hasn't changed, but the world has changed around him. He has always supported the military, but this is a time when supporting them does not mean supporting their misguided and unwinnable mission. Supporting them means bringing them home and making college affordable for them.

In times like these, even traditional voices of moderation and conservatism are finding it necessary to oppose this administration's policies. Whatever his reasons, I am glad to see Ike Skelton letting himself be heard.

Hot Gas & America's Conservative Media

Okay, we get it. Drawing upon their memories of grade school science, a few Kansas City Star reporters did a mildly interesting story about gas stations selling gasoline that is warmer in the summer, and therefore less dense, and therefore you get less actual fuel than when it's cold. And they stretched this point out into a series of front-page articles. Now, they're making a big deal out of a few minor legislative nods to the issue, again devoting the lion's share of yesterday's front page to the issue, and a huge chunk of the editorial page today.

Now, I'm as interested in consumer reporting as anyone, but get over it, Star. Thermal expansion is not a front page issue - not once, not twice, and not for a series. Especially not when they can just turn around and raise the price of the thermally contracted gas so they make the same profit, and nobody would even be able to get a letter to the editor published about it.

And that, my friends, is why we do not now, never had, and never will have a "liberal media".

While corporate-employed reporters are trying to shine their corporate reputations by reporting on a tiny, irrelevant aspect of how the average joe is getting bilked by corporations, there is not a single article showing up on the front page about the fact that oil companies are making billions and billions and billions of dollars in "legitimate" profit. The Star and its corporate allies around the United States devote front page attention to frivolous side issues, but would never, ever, address the broader economic realities and inequities in our society. You can get an award for writing about thermal expansion, but a series questioning the underpinnings of our corporate-dominated society, the subsidies thrust upon those corporations by eager politicians, the wars we've entered to protect corporate interests, and the shadowy, incestuous world of corporate directorships is simply uncomfortable to the corporations running the papers.

Has there been a front-page Kansas City Stat article about the Vice President's astonishing claim to be a secret new branch of government? Has there been an article about some of the governmental needs that are going unfunded because of this optional war?

Perhaps all that is too "big" for a reporter to wrap his or her mind around it. How about a front-page article tracking the cost in dollars and cents that we are spending on each individual soldier we recruit, feed, clothe, house, train, equip, transport to Iraq, and expose to the hostile hot lead of angry people who grew up there? How much does all that cost? How much does it cost, in man-hours, to pick his body up and transport it back to base? Did they wipe up his blood with sponges, or paper towels, or simply let it dry on a Baghdad street under the hot Baghdad sun? How much do the body bags cost, and who makes them? The coffins? How much for the ground that we make available for his eternal rest? How much is that flag that they fold up and give to the widow? What's the quality of the cloth and thread? Are we getting a good deal on them - did we buy in bulk?

Gas is a little over three bucks a gallon, hot or cold. America's corporate media wants us to think about the temperature of the gas. In fact, they insist upon it.

I'd rather see a complete tally of the cost of the factors that led to that widow's limo ride to the cemetary than a quibble over the gas in the tank. That might be worth a front page article and an editorial or two.

Local Kids Designing the Baghdad Embassy

The same people who designed Visitation Church on Main Street and the Sprint Headquarters have taken on a different kind of project. They are the ones designing the controversial, wildly expensive and anger-inspiring Baghdad Embassy - a 100+ acre, billion dollar monstrosity that is the same size as the Vatican City.

Berger Devinhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gife Yaeger is a local group, headquartered in the Uptown Theatre Building. What must it be like to design a compound that you must realize is not only going to get hit with bombs, but will inspire bombs elsewhere? How does it feel to design a compound that will serve as an emblem of American imperialism in the Muslim world?

To be clear, I'm not knocking the firm for taking the work. It's high-profile, probably well-paying, and somebody's got to do it. But it's weird to think of people a few blocks away from my office engaged in work like that.

On the other hand, we've had dozens of young people from this area go all the way over there and spill their blood on the streets of Baghdad. That's even harder to think about.

Update: Local blogger Spyder obviously knows how to stay on top of the latest news and research - she points out that the State Department is upset about the drawings of the compound that Berger Devine Yaeger had on its site. If you clicked through on my link here, someone from the NSA will soon be showing up on your doorstep with one of those memory-erasing-flasher-pens from Men in Black. Sorry for the inconvenience. Your right to look at pictures you are paying for of a compound you are paying for is limited by the State Department's need to be super-secretive about Iraq.

Keith Olbermann Shares my Disgust

Take 8 minutes and go watch the video here. Keith Olbermann voices the sense of betrayal and disgust that I feel toward those who have buckled to Bush's irresponsible waste of blood and money in Iraq. We voted for a change, but we wasted our votes.

Missouri Democrats must accept the fact that one of our own betrayed us and our country on THE most important issue facing us. Claire McCaskill should be forced to attend every single funeral of every single soldier killed because of her gutlessness. She should be forced to change the dressings on the missing limbs her cowardice has caused.

She and Jim Talent can laugh about it over tea.

Claire McCaskill Gives Bush a Blank Check

Claire McCaskill brought shame upon Missouri Democrats by joining the Republicans and giving Bush a blank check to continue his wreckless and feckless quagmire in Iraq. Rather than insisting upon some accountability with our tax dollars. I'm still glad she beat Talent, but, today, she was his moral twin, voting in lockstep with Kit Bond. She should be ashamed of herself. I'm ashamed of her.

Yesterday was MA Day

When I grew up, we celebrated May Day with May poles and an outdoor celebration. It waas kind of like a day-long recess . . .

Four years ago, Bush seized that bucolic day and made it into MA Day - Mission Accomplished Day - the day he stuffed a sock in a flight suit and acted like he could land a plane on an aircraft carrier without a few toots of coke to steady his nerve (while many people think he landed the plane, it's a lie - a real pilot landed the plane). The "liberal" press responded with fawning worship.

One can only wonder how the 25,000 American troops who have been wounded since May Day became MA Day viewed their future back when Bush told us we had been victorious. One can only wonder how the more than 3200 troops who have died since Bush declared our mission accomplished spent that day, or how they could have spent yesterday, if they were still alive.

MA Day was four years ago. May Day was in another era.

Malkin and the Unhinged Right: Calling Our Troops "Losers"

I was disgusted to see Rhymes with Right, one of the right-wing blogs I visit and generally enjoy, call our troops "losers". I was even more disgusted to see that he got his marching orders from the Queen of Concentration Camps, Michelle Malkin.

I know, I know, that they think they are humorously twisting Harry Reid's position, but it's simply sick and despicable for the Keyboard Kommandoes to sit stateside and call our troops names. Have they no decency whatsoever? Is there nothing so slimy and putrid that it would repulse even them in their attempts to score some pointless political point? To what, if any, debased rhetorical means would they not resort to support this optional war?

Do you think they will ever look back on their work and hang their heads in shame?

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

The monarchical rulers of our bestest buddies, BFF Saudi Arabia, are closely connected to the Bush family and run the sort of repressive government that serves as inspiration for people like Alberto "Abu" Gonzalez.

So, what love note does our BFF send us this week?

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia: "In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing between brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war."

If Arab leaders recover trust in each other and regain their credibility, “the winds of hope will blow on the nation, and then, we will not allow forces from outside the region to determine the future of the region, and only the flag of Arabism will be raised on Arab soil,” Abdullah said.

Sweet. Looks like the Bush administration is doing the same thing in the Middle East that it did in New Orleans.

I Like Them Apples

Giving voice to the pro-war sentiment that you're either with us or you're against us, high-profile conservative Mark Smith today declared that veterans who oppose the war are "bad apples".

It's pretty obvious that for many of the war supporters, the only dependable soldier is a dead one.

Republican Hardball - Will of the People?

My Senator, Jolie Justus, has distinguished herself with energy and hard work during her first term in the Senatorial Chamber. I could not be more pleased that she is representing this district, and I'm proud that I supported her.

It seems that even Jolie's enthusiasm, determination and good ideas can run into the occasional brick wall of Republican hypocrisy, though. When she introduced a resolution disapproving of the President's escalation strategy in Iraq, she ruffled a few feathers, even though polls show that the vast majority of Americans reject the Bush administration's ill-thought-out plan.

Senator Vogel of Jefferson City, however, has seen fit not only to disagree with the electorate of Missouri, he is abusing his chairmanship of the Senate Ways and Means Committee to punish both Jolie Justus AND the poor people of Missouri. He has admitted that he is bottling up legislation which would help Missouri's working poor and homeless, as political revenge for Justus' introduction of the resolution against the Iraq war escalation.

It says something profound about Republican values that they would punish the poor and defend war. WWJD, indeed.

9 More Young Men Dead

On Monday, a day I spent in meetings and on the telephone, 9 American soldiers died north of Baghdad. The description of the day is even more disturbing for how qualified it is - "the deadliest single day for U.S. troops in Iraq in nearly a month."

Not the war, not the year, not even the month. "Nearly a month".

I don't want to argue a broader point here. Go hence with your struggle about whether the war is right or wrong, or if we should surge or pull out, or whatever.

9 more young American men died while the rest of us went on about our business. That's enough to think about. Or too much to think about.

Supporting the Troops the Right Wing Way (Until They Get Hurt)

A lot of right-wingers make a big deal out of pretending to support our troops, and they react with vein-popping indignation when someone suggests that those troops who engaged in torture have something in common with other brothers in torture, or suggest that some of them entered the military because it was their best career option, rather than sheerly from exuberant patriotism.

Funny, then, to see how silent they have been in the face of the mistreatment of the troops here at Walter Reed. Go ahead, check Media Lies, one of the right-wing bloggers I include on my blog roll (you'll have to scroll past his failed petition "defending" the troops from those that would reduce the costs of this war). Go ahead, check Rhymes with Right, another rightwinger on my blogroll. You won't find anything - they don't care about our troops after they've been wounded and can no longer support the Bush regime on the battlefield.

Apparently, these defenders of the troops are unaware of the "sticks and stones" theory. If you say something that could possibly be construed as not-totally-supportive of our troops' sainthood, you are evil personified. But, if you leave one of our wounded warriors soaking in his own urine, you're okay in their book, because you work for the President.

I really shouldn't single out the rightwingers on my own blogroll. They are very much representative of the rest of the rightwing bloggers, as demonstrated by the usually-funny, but sometimes unable to see the humor, Jesus' General.

What Are They Doing to America?

One of the main points we all need to understand about security is that the level of threat is proportional to the level of interest. If you drive a piece of crap car that leaks oil and has rust, don't bother to lock it, but if you're driving a Ferrari, don't park it in the open. Similarly, if you are a Rockefeller, hire a bodyguard, but you don't need one if you're working the day shift at Burger King. If you're storing gold bars, you might want to invest in a better alarm system than the average house.

Unless you're somebody way more important than most people I know, go ahead and assume that a box in your backyard is just a box, and not a terrorist threat.

Come on, America. Don't let the Republicans scare you so badly. Get a grip.

Jason Kander, a Patriotic Progressive in Uniform, Signs Off on a High Note

I can't add anything - go read the whole thing. Here's one of my favorite paragraphs:

I'm a Progressive Democrat, so when I get into debates about the war with ill-informed, indoctrinated regressives who don't know me well, they generally throw Rush's talking points at me, insinuating that I love my country and support the troops just a bit less than them. Whether you've served or not, love of country isn't about blind faith. It is not about a piece of cloth that I wear on the shoulder of my uniform, but about an idea, about Americans themselves. I have little patience for those who claim to love America but clearly can't stand the majority of Americans. As a progressive, my beef with President Bush isn't that he's fighting a war, it's that he's doing it wrong. I want to win every bit as badly as he does, if not more, but I believe that means the symbol of America can't just be a soldier with an M-16.