GWOT report card, summer school edition

Is there a grade worse than “F”?

A top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from the 2001 anthrax attacks has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the last 18 years worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Md., had been informed of his impending prosecution, said people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and the FBI investigation.

. . . .

The extraordinary turn of events followed the government's payment in June of a settlement valued at $5.82 million to a former government scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, who was long targeted as the FBI's chief suspect despite a lack of any evidence that he had ever possessed anthrax.

The payout to Hatfill, a highly unusual development that all but exonerated him in the mailings, was an essential step to clear the way for prosecuting Ivins, according to lawyers familiar with the matter.

Except there now won’t be any prosecution. No testimony in open court. No hearing that might shed a little light on how the government chased the presumably wrong lead for five years before a shakeup at the FBI shifted focus to Ivins. Now we are to believe that the case is closed because the alleged suicide is somehow tantamount to a confession.

In Bush-Cheney terms, a dead “culprit” without having to go through open US courts is a BIG win.

* * * *

And then there’s the global part of the Global War on Terror™:

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

. . . .

The information linking the ISI to the bombing of the Indian Embassy was described in interviews by several American officials with knowledge of the intelligence. Some of the officials expressed anger that elements of Pakistan’s government seemed to be directly aiding violence in Afghanistan that had included attacks on American troops.

Some American officials have begun to suggest that Pakistan is no longer a fully reliable American partner and to advocate some unilateral American action against militants based in the tribal areas.

Well, on its face, this would look like a complete failure for the Bush Administration: With the US no closer to capturing bin Laden or al Zawahiri, one of our chief allies in the hunt seems to be in league with the very folks that helped protect the al Qaeda leadership in the first place. But look at this again. The White House now has brand new excuse for why the US has failed to crush al Qaeda or the Taliban—we’re not just fighting a ragtag band of dead-enders or some such, we have to outwit a nuclear power, a country with a large and sophisticated intelligence apparatus and a well-stocked military (we should know, we stocked it). Why, that might require—wait, what is it? right—“unilateral American action.”

Really, when you’re looking at it through the Bush team’s binoculars, what more could you want?

* * * *

And speaking of unilateral action:

Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.
In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.

. . . .

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

The team in Veep’s office apparently rejected the plan because “you can’t have Americans killing Americans.” Really? Sorry to sound the cynic here, but I can’t imagine Vice President Cankles getting all that upset about sending American troops to their death in order to accomplish his broader goals—“I mean, come on! This is the War on Terror, people! You gotta break some eggs to make an omelet! You saw Wanted—the ancient order must be preserved!”

Sorry, I got a little too into that. . . .

But, seriously, the team might have rejected that particular casus belli, but I can assure you there are plenty more where that came from. And, with the combination of a presidential directive allowing defensive fire from covert teams of US operatives already inside Iran, and the Congressional authorization that basically declared a large portion of the Iranian military a terrorist organization, the whizzing sound of shots fired in anger is only a heart-clogging breakfast away.

But there are some logistical matters to work out—namely, the US is woefully under-equipped for a third military incursion, the Secretary of Defense is not so hot to start a hot war, and Cheney’s favorite proxy warrior, Ehud Olmert, just had to step down from his PM post because he is an incompetent commander-in-chief and corrupt as the day is long.

Really, it’s like the Patty Duke Show of international affairs. . . .

But as far as a grade on this front in the GWOT™, because no Iranians are yet dying by America’s hand, we’ll have to give them an incomplete.

I know you are as excited as I am for the fall semester.


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

hard logic

I finally understand the rationale for the latest FISA revisions.

When George Bush signed into law the Fourth Amendment Abrogation Act of 2008 (known to some as the FISA “compromise”) he praised the bill for granting him the powers necessary to fight the “ter’ists” who “hate us for our freedom.”

By enacting a piece of legislation that eliminates much of our freedom, the terrorists now have less reason to hate us.

QED. GWOT™ won. Mission accomplished.

. . . .

Earlier this week, John McCain made a joke after being asked about the high volume of cigarettes that the US exports to Iran. “Maybe that’s a way of killing them,” said Senator Chuckles.

McCain caught flack, and rightfully so, for throwing more impolitic fuel on the tinderbox that is US-Iranian relations—but we already know how bad a mercurial, hot-tempered, loose-lipped President McCain would be for a world that has already suffered too much at the hands of bellicose Republican foreign policy.

The thing that caught my attention about the McJoke—the thing that made my ears prick up—was that McCain just conceded that cigarettes kill people.

McCain later went on to brag that he hadn’t had a cigarette in—"How long has it been, Cindy?"—twenty-four years. On the flip side, we know that Barack Obama still likes to enjoy the occasional cigarette.

So, who out there is suddenly feeling better about Obama’s chances in Virginia and North Carolina?

. . . .

Speaking of jokes: President Bush. . . .

[rimshot]

But seriously—speaking of jokes, President Bush had some heeeeeeelarious parting words for other world leaders at the G8 meeting.

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Shameful, right? I mean, if the guy is going to joke about our status, he could at least get his facts straight. Not that the US doesn’t do its part, but, as with so many things during the Bush years, America has lost its leadership role, this time to a booming China, which now coughs up even more greenhouse gasses than the good ol’ U.S. of A.

They’re, like, drinking our milkshake and burping it up, too.

(I’m sure GW would have found that joke funnier if I had made reference to the other option for gaseous emissions, but this is a classy blog, so I won’t go there.)


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

craven Bush co-opts Lebanese suffering to advance current favorite lie

There really is no limit to how low this pompous little shit will go to satisfy his fragile ego and retarded worldview. Speaking to the BBC in advance of a trip to Middle East, George W. Bush used the recent civil strife in Lebanon to again push his latest crusade (and I do not use that word lightly):

[Bush] said the US was helping the Lebanese army become effective enough to act against Hezbollah's armed wing.

"I don't see how you can have a society with Hezbollah armed up the way they are.

"In this case though, they moved against the Lebanese people, they're not moving against any foreign country, they're moving against the Lebanese people and it should send a signal to everybody that they're a destabilising force."

"The first step of course is to make sure that the Siniora government has got the capacity to respond with a military that's effective," he said.

Hezbollah would be nothing without Iranian backing, he said, adding that Iran was the source of much instability in the Middle East.

First, if the US is helping the Lebanese army the way we’re helping the Iraqi army, or the Pakistani army (or, frankly, our own army), then good luck to them—they’ll need it.

Second, how dare he—Bush—piggyback his bloodlust on the suffering of the Lebanese—suffering he helped bring about.

Don’t forget, it was Bush who was among the loudest advocates for the exit of Syrian forces from Lebanon three years ago. Though, of course, the administration had no plans for how to fill the power vacuum left by the departure of Syria.

And don’t forget that is was Israel’s failed invasion of Lebanon/war on Hezbollah—a fiasco backed by the Bush administration as practice for a broader push against Iran—that substantially strengthened the hand of Hezbollah.

(And don’t get me started on the fact that if it weren’t for Bush’s refusal to deal with the previous Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, Iran wouldn’t have elected Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the first place.)

I’m not saying that the Lebanese people themselves didn’t play a large role in the departure of Syrian troops—as did the international community—and I’m not saying that Syrian occupation didn’t need to end. And, I will not deny that Hezbollah receives support from Iran. But by using the Lebanese situation—the loss of life, the threat of greater instability and violence—to advance his naked political agenda, Bush treats the Lebanese people with the same callous disregard he has shown most of the world’s peoples—they are but pawns in the service of his greater aggrandizement.

I feel pretty certain that the Bush bunch has no real plan for improving stability in Lebanon, and I feel pretty certain that GW himself doesn’t much care. If the dead of Beirut can get the US president closer to raining a few-thousand pounds of explosives on the latest in a list of perceived threats to his already rock-bottom self-esteem—and to his friends’ already sky-high profits—well, god bless ‘em.

And we’re not supposed to talk about why “they” might hate us. . . .


(cross-posted on capitoilette)

*spoiler alert*

Meanwhile, as we all focus like a laser on Jeremiah Wright, a second US carrier group has moved into the Persian Gulf, the recession that Bush refuses to acknowledge continues to deepen, the Iraqi occupation slogs along at over $341 million per day, suicide bombers kill in Kabul, Pakistanis struggle to restore an independent judiciary, a real genocide is happening in Sudan, our government continues to justify torture—the list goes on. Take a moment to compare how much time and space your favorite media outlet is giving to these stories. . . now compare that to today’s coverage of Obama’s remarks about Wright. . . .

Thought so.

God damn America.

walking and talking

(photo: ABC News)

As I walked down Broadway in the pouring rain on Saturday, marching with somewhere between 10,000 and 45,000 others to protest the ongoing US military action in Iraq, I talked with one of my fellow peace-loving patriots about the next Bush Administration debacle. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wasn’t in my little group, but he might as well have been.

Bush moves ahead with plans for Clinton’s war

In what must be a great disappointment to Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), the Bush Administration stopped short of actually dropping bombs on Iran on Thursday. However, moves by the administration yesterday did take a key step toward bridging the gap between the Clinton-supported Lieberman-Kyl amendment and an all-out hot war on the sovereign state of Iran. . . .

the patient lived, so the operation must have been a failure

If anyone had any doubts about what bloodthirsty whack-job former US UN Ambassador John Bolton is, then take a gander at his speech to some British Tory delegates at their annual party congress.

Much, rightly, will be made of Bolton’s assertion that he sees no other option than to bomb Iran, and then “remove” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but I want to highlight another point that basically sums up what passes for logic in the utterly fetid mind of the former “diplomat” and current American Enterprise Institute fellow.

In the words of the Guardian, Bolton “mocked” the British approach to the April capture of 15 of their naval personnel by Iran. Iran accused the sailors of entering Iranian waters.

After less than two weeks of quiet diplomacy (with Syria mediating between Iran and the UK), all 15 were returned—alive—to Great Britain.

. . . .

More on our next war over at capitoilette. . . .

senator Hillary Clinton explains her vote for Lieberman-Kyl

The so-called Lieberman-Kyl amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill passed the Senate today by the disturbingly large margin of 76-22. Among the Yeas was Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.

Though modified slightly from its original, more bellicose version, this amendment still bears an eerie resemblance to the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, and the 2002 AUMF—the two votes that gave the Bush Administration all the cover they would need to invade Iraq in 2003. In fact, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) called Lieberman-Kyl “Cheney’s fondest pipe dream” (somehow, I think he wanted to say something other than “pipe”).

So, how does purportedly Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton justify her vote to reward and codify the Veep’s nocturnal emissions?

Basically, I’m a two-faced coward, genetically incapable of real leadership as I triangulate my way to the presidency. I have no real policy in mind right now, but I want to appear tough to the 30 percent of Americans that would never vote for me anyway. I also want to reserve the option to do something similarly un-Democratic when I am president. I hope everyone allows me to be as secretive and unitary as the current chief executive.

No—not really. This is what she actually said:

Mrs. Clinton defended her vote on Iran, saying a tough stand was necessary because it “gives us the options to be able to impose sanctions on the primary leaders to try to begin to put some teeth into all this talk about dealing with Iran.”

“Now we’ve got to make up for lost time on the ground,” she said.

In other words: same difference.

(photo: Matt Rourke AP)

outrageous

“Outrageous” seems to be the word of choice for Republican grandstanders (AKA presidential candidates) when evaluating Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s request to tour the World Trade Center site—I’m sorry, Ground Zero—while here for the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly next week.

"This is a man who has made threats against America and Israel, is harboring bin Laden's son and other Al-Qaeda leaders, is shipping arms to Iraqi insurgents and is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons," Giuliani said. "Assisting Ahmadinejad in touring Ground Zero -- hallowed ground for all Americans -- is outrageous," he said.

Another Republican hopeful, Senator Sam Brownback, blasted Ahmadinejad's request as "outrageous and unacceptable," describing the Iranian regime in a statement as "the biggest state sponsor of terror in the world."

At this point, it would be proper to take these two morons to task for their fact-free warmongering, but really, who has the time? (Here’s the shorthand: Rudy—Iran=Shiite, Al-Qaeda=Sunni; Sam—Saudi Arabians funded and executed the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan shelters bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and various Taliban bigwigs. . . OK?) Rather, I think our very own ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, says it best:

We do not support. . . a site where so many people lost their lives be[ing] used as a photo op.

Absolutely, ZK! Why, that would be. . . outrageous!

(Photo: AP via the BBC)

(cross-posted to Daily Kos)