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He is monstrous enough to do it.
Aug 30, 2007
The War Criminal in the Living Room
by Paul Craig Roberts

The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran.

US Navy aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran.

US Air Force jets and missile systems are deployed in bases in countries bordering or near to Iran.

US B-2 stealth bombers have been refitted to carry 30,000 pound "bunker buster" bombs.

The US government is financing terrorist and separatist groups within Iran.

US Special Forces teams are conducting terrorist operations inside Iran.

US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries.

Bush's war threats against Iran have intensified during the course of this year. The American people are being fed a repeat of the lies used to justify naked aggression against Iraq.

Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening "the security of nations everywhere" and of the Iraqi resistance for "a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power." Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration. The Pew Foundation's world polls show that despite all the American and Israeli propaganda against Iran, the US and Israel are regarded as no less threats to world stability than demonized Iran.

Bush has discarded habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justified torture and secret trials, damned critics as anti-American, and is responsible, according to Information Clearing House, for over one million deaths of Iraqi civilians, which puts Bush high on the list of mass murderers of all time. The vast majority of "kills" by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians.

Now Bush wants to murder more. We have to kill Iranians "over there," Bush says, "before they come over here." There is no possibility that Iranians or any Muslims who have no air force, no navy, no modern military technology are going to "come over here," and no indication that they plan to do so. The Muslims are disunited and have been for centuries. That is what makes them vulnerable to colonial rule. If Muslims were united, the US would already have lost its army in Iraq. Indeed, it would not have been able to put an army in Iraq.

Meanwhile the US media focuses on whether Republican Senator Larry Craig is a homosexual or has offended gays by denying to be one of them. The run-up for the public's attention is why a South Carolina beauty queen cannot answer a simple question about why her generation is unable to find the United States on a map.

The war criminal is in the living room, and no official notice is taken of the fact.

Lacking US troops with which to invade Iran, the Bush administration has decided to bomb Iran "back into the stone age." Punishing air and missile attacks have been designed not merely to destroy Iran's nuclear energy projects, but also to destroy the public infrastructure, the economy, and the ability of the government to function.

Encouraged by the indifference of both the American media and Christian churches to the massive casualties inflicted on Iraqi civilians, the Bush administration will not be deterred by the prospect of its air attacks inflicting massive casualties on Iranian civilians. Last summer the Bush administration demonstrated to the entire world its total disdain for Muslim life when Bush supported Israel's month-long air attack on Lebanese civilian infrastructure and civilian residences. President Bush blocked the attempt by the rest of the world to halt the gratuitous murder of Lebanese civilians and infrastructure destruction. Clearly, turning the Muslim Middle East into a wasteland is the Bush policy. For Bush, civilian casualties are a non-issue. Hegemony uber alles.

The Bush administration has made its war plans for attacking Iran and positioned its forces without any prior approval from Congress. The "unitary executive" obviously doesn't believe that an attack on Iran requires the approval of Congress. By its absence and quietude, Congress seems to agree that it has no role in the decision.

In the improbable event that Congress were to make any fuss about Bush's decision to attack yet another country, the State Department has devised legalistic cover: simply declare Iran's military to be a "terrorist organization" and go to war under the cover of the existing resolution.

The "Iran issue" has been created by the Bush administration, not by Iran. Iran, like many other countries, has a nuclear energy program to which it is entitled as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

The Bush administration has brushed away this fact, which should be determining, just as the Bush administration brushed away the fact that weapons inspectors reported, prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The Bush administration managed to disrupt the work of the pesky IAEA weapons inspectors in Iran. Iran has been working successfully with the IAEA and has achieved what a senior IAEA official recently described as a milestone agreement. The Bush administration instantly went to work to discredit the agreement and unleashed its new lapdog, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to threaten "the bombing of Iran."

The Bush administration's position is legally untenable and is really nothing but a contrived excuse to start another war. Bush claims that Iran, alone among all the signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, must be denied its right under the pact to develop nuclear energy, because Iran, alone among all the other signatories, will be the only country able to deceive the IAEA inspectors and develop nuclear weapons. Therefore, Iran must be denied its rights under the agreement.

Bush's position on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is as legally untenable as his position on every other issue – the Geneva Conventions, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, habeas corpus, the constitutional separation of powers, and presidential signing statements that he cavalierly attaches to new laws in order to override the legislative power of Congress. Bush's position is that the meaning of laws and treaties varies with his needs of the moment.

Bush has declared himself to be the "decider." The "decider" decides whether Americans have any rights under the Constitution and whether Iran has any rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As the "decider" has decided that Iran has no such rights, the "decider" decides whether to attack Iran. No one else has any say about it. The people's representatives are just so much chaff in the wind.

Whatever form of government Bush is operating under, it is far outside an accountable constitutional democratic government. Bush has transitioned America to caesarism, and even if Bush leaves office in January 2009, the powers he has accumulated in the executive will remain. Unless Bush and Cheney are impeached and convicted, there is no prospect of the US Congress and federal judiciary ever again being co-equal branches of government.
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Posted: Aug 30, 2007 10:32pm
Bring 'Em On
Jun 22, 2007

Dedicated from the heart to GWB, Dead-Eye Dick, Condi (who, oddly enough, fits the profile), Rummy (tough break, daddy-o) and the rest of the crew...

Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden, 1899

This famous poem, written by Britain's imperial poet, was a response to the American take over of the Phillipines after the Spanish-American War.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
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Posted: Jun 22, 2007 6:06pm
Do you think I'm cute? Do you think I'm funny???
Aug 3, 2006
Things Get Ugly When Bush 'Trusts His Gut'

By Paul Waldman, TomPaine.com. Posted August 3, 2006.


More proof that under George W. Bush, U.S. policies are governed mainly by impulse and fantasy.

When President Bush was caught on tape saying to Tony Blair, “See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over,” more than a few progressives said to themselves, “Well that’s a trenchant analysis of the situation, Sherlock.” And more than a few conservatives said, “Damn straight”—or as Michelle Malkin put it, “Sometimes, profanity is called for.”
 
Not that in mid-2006 anyone needed more proof that Bush is, depending on your perspective, either a simpleton or an admirably forthright straight talker who cuts to the chase. But as more and more evidence of the administration’s incompetence and hubris is revealed, we are presented with more proof that under George W. Bush, U.S. policies are governed by a strange amalgam of impulse and fantasy.



As Newsweek told us this week, Bush “still trusts his gut to tell him what's right, and he still expects others to follow his lead.” One might have thought Bush would have learned by now to view the proclamations of his gut with some suspicion—but then, that would be asking the president to rely on evidence and experience to make conclusions.
 
And it isn’t only friendly reporters like those at Newsweek who have noted the way policy is dictated by The Decider’s intestinal rumblings. One of the many disturbing pictures that emerges from Ron Suskind’s new book, The One Percent Doctrine, is the way Bush’s preference for making decisions not on the basis of facts and analysis but on his “gut” meshed so perfectly with Dick Cheney’s desire not to let facts and analysis get in the way of his visions of empire. The two were perfect partners, and when 9/11 happened, it was like the pins of a combination lock clicking securely into place in Bush’s mind. Everything made sense—there are evildoers out there, and his divinely appointed mission is to smite them. (If you’ve wondered why Bush has such affection for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, all you need to know is that at their first meeting, Koizumi said Bush reminded him of Gary Cooper.)
 
For his part, Cheney was finally unbound, free to bend the government to his will. The presidency—and of course, the vice presidency—need no longer be constrained by petty bureaucrats with their “analysis” and their “laws.” If we wanted to invade Iraq, we’d damn sure invade Iraq, and if we wanted to say it was because they were about to attack us with their fearsome arsenal of weapons, well that’s what we’d say.

A few days ago William Kristol, who is as responsible as anyone outside the Bush administration for the neocon dream of creating an empire in the Middle East—which has become the now-familiar nightmare—made clear his preference for military action against Iran, sooner rather than later. And not only that, once we start dropping bombs, the Iranian people will do their part and rise up to overthrow their government. “The right use of targeted military force,” Kristol told Fox News, “could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power.”
 
That Kristol could make such a prediction without getting laughed out of Washington, never to be invited on television again, tells us something about the miasma of inanity and insanity that envelopes our politics like a fog. Being wrong—or being an outright fool, or being possessed of not a shred of morality, for that matter—carries no cost. Only being “weak”—that is, insufficiently enthusiastic about spilling others’ blood—will earn you the contempt of the Washington establishment.
 
Why? Because that establishment, both governmental and journalistic, is ruled by weenies. They burn to show that they’re real men, that they’re tough and strong and mean, that they don’t cower from a fight, that they’re the ones who get going when the going gets tough. Washington is an arena of institutional and ideological competition, but it is also a throbbing mass of insecurities.

We sometimes see it as ironic that those calling for the most bellicose foreign policy are almost invariably those both in and out of government, like Bush and Cheney and Gingrich and DeLay and Limbaugh and O’Reilly, who never served in the military and never got within a thousand miles of combat. But it is not ironic at all; in fact, it is absolutely predictable. Combine a personal history devoid of evidence that one’s manliness has been tested (let alone proven) with an ideology inclined to divide the world into enemies and friends, and you have a recipe for frantic muscle-flexing.
 
Those with actual military experience, on the other hand, have been of late far more hesitant to beat the war drums. For one thing, they tend to have a better understanding of how easily things can go wrong when you start lobbing ordnance around. But they also seem to feel the need to prove their manhood far less urgently.
 
In 2004, Dick Cheney reacted to John Kerry’s suggestion that in the war on terror we had to be “sensitive” to our allies’ concerns by responding contemptuously, “He talks about leading a more sensitive war on terror, as though Al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side.” No one asked just why Cheney was so concerned with “impressing” al-Qaida.
 
But listen to Republican rhetoric and it begins to seem as though they are practically obsessed with how the terrorists think about us. Are they impressed? Do they think we’re weak, or do they think we’re strong? Have we sent them the right message? Indeed, there may be no justification for failed policy offered more frequently than the need to send the right message. And while we’re sending messages to al-Qaida, we’d better send some messages to the troops. Look at some of the things George Bush said during the first presidential debate in 2004:



What kind of message does it say to our troops in harm's way, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time? Not a message a commander in chief gives... I know we won't achieve if we send mixed signals… The way to make sure that we succeed is to send consistent, sound messages to the Iraqi people… But by speaking clearly and sending messages that we mean what we say, we've affected the world in a positive way.



Some might wonder why it is that all this posturing, message-sending, and attempts to look “tough” are so seldom seen for what they truly are. The answer is partly repetition: say that Bush is “strong” and “bold” and “resolute” enough times, and after a while it becomes part of how people think about him. That includes reporters, who fancy themselves cynical enough to see through the theater to the truth, but end up eating the image-making with a spoon.
 
As each new development occurs, they place it in the context of what they already believe. So when Bush changes his mind about something, he’s not a weak flip-flopper but a smart politician who tempers his unquestioned strength with realism. And his reliance on his “gut” is evidence of a man who knows what he believes.
 
As we move into the 2008 election, reporters will once again begin plumbing the candidates’ personal psychology to determine their “character.” This is critical work, which makes it all the more galling that they so often miss the mark. Think about the 2000 race, in which we were told that Bush was dumb and Gore was a liar. We saw who the liar turned out to be. But the real question with Bush was not whether he could pass a current-events quiz, but whether his Manichean worldview, his tendency to over-simplify, and his burning desire to show his father he’s a real man might have dire consequences for our country and the world.
 
As for the current Republican front-runner, John McCain, his solution to the quagmire in Iraq, as he told an audience at a fundraiser two months ago, is this: “One of the things I would do if I were president would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.’” You might say those are the words of someone possessed of a truly epic and dangerous naïveté. Or you might say it shows him to be a strong, straight-talking kinda guy. Want to guess what the reporters who will be covering the 2008 campaign think?


Paul Waldman is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America. His next book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success, will be released in the spring.
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Posted: Aug 3, 2006 7:34am
Happy birthday Mister President-- you asshole
Jul 7, 2006
Happy Birthday Mr. President Posted by Evan Derkacz at 11:26 AM on July 6, 2006. You are very, very unpopular. Very. Blog Tools EMAIL PRINT 19 COMMENTS Today is George W. Bush's 60th birthday. The vast majority of Americans might light a candle were they not busy worrying about their child/parent/sibling/friend in an increasingly dangerous and illegal war, wondering how they'll pay for their healthcare, whether they'll be able to live on the decreasing real value of the minimum wage, waiting for the effects of global warming to hit home, any number of debilitating problems on the Gulf Coast, or perhaps a combination of some of the above. Anyway, should you, like my parents, be disheartened by reports that Bush's popularity is on the wax, never fear. According to PEW, the most well-respected non-partisan polling org I can think of, not only has his favorable never been so low, but his unfavorable has never been so high. Cheers. --> Sign up for Peek in your inbox... every morning! (Go here and check Peek box). Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet. « The AlterNet Blogs « PEEK « Evan Derkacz
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Posted: Jul 7, 2006 9:23am
our BELOVED commander-in-chief
Jul 1, 2006
Very sweet of him, eh? And all the while he stifled his laughter at the poor SUCKERS who BELIEVED his lies and distortions and are now DYING because of his CRIMINAL STUPIDITY.

WHEN is this asshole going to be brought up oin CHARGES OF TREASON? For him to deliver a load of meaningless sanctimonius CRAP like this to the men and women he has MURDERED is beyond evil. DOWN WITH BUSH.

Bush address pays tribute to armed forces
42 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush paid tribute to America's armed forces Saturday, calling Independence Day a time to thank the men and women who defend freedom.

ADVERTISEMENT
"For more than two centuries, from the camps of Valley Forge to the mountains of Afghanistan, Americans have served and sacrificed for the principles of our founding," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "Today, a new generation of American patriots is defending our freedom against determined and ruthless enemies."

Bush plans to celebrate July Fourth at Fort Bragg, N.C., where he will have lunch with military personnel. The president will return to the White House Tuesday night to watch fireworks in the nation's capital.

On the holiday, Americans should recall the ideals that the nation's founders outlined in the Declaration of Independence, Bush said. He also encouraged every American to find a way to thank those who defend freedom.

He urged people to help America Supports You, a nationwide program set up by the Defense Department to communicate citizen support to military men and women at home and abroad.

"At this hour, the men and women of our armed forces are facing danger in distant places, carrying out their missions with all the skill and honor we expect of them," Bush said. "And their families are enduring long separations from their loved ones with great courage and dignity."

___

On the Net:
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Posted: Jul 1, 2006 8:24am
Never-Ending Crap
Jun 14, 2006
Another failed photo-op June 14, 2006 07:47 AM / The Rant . By DOUG THOMPSON President George W. Bush jetted off in the dark of night for a clandestine visit to Iraq - a grandstanding photo-op by a coward who refused to fight in war when his country called. I've always found Bush's swaggering "war-time president" persona the height of political hypocrisy. This is, after all, the same George W. Bush who hid out in the Texas Air National Guard to avoid going to Vietnam and who later became the "Commander in Chief" who sends members of the National Guard and Reserve to their deaths in his lies-based invasion of Iraq. MSNBC correctly labeled Bush's trip to Iraq the "mission not-quite accomplished photo op," a clever play on his disastrous "mission accomplished" debacle on board an aircraft carrier three years ago when he prematurely claimed the Iraq war a victory. Back then a gullible electorate and complaint press played into Bush's hands and his poll numbers took a jump. Not now: Too many lies, too many setbacks, too much evidence that Iraq is a quagmire from which there may be no escape. Bush can't jump start his polls with a publicity stunt. He's been to that well too often. But the President is desperate and the Republican Party is so afraid of losing control of the House in November that political strategists are willing to try anything to, even if it means putting the President of the United States into just the kind of war he tried so hard to evade as a young man. Video from the photo-op showed Bush's press flak Tony Snow clad in a flak-jacket, looking very much like he was ready to toss his cookies as the Presidential party rode a lurching helicopter from the Baghdad airport to the "green zone" of the city. Was it worth it? Probably not. Press reports have been less than glowing and public reaction on the radio talk shows show a lot of skepticism to the Prez's latest publicity stunt. Notes The New York Times in an editorial today: To increase the drama of Mr. Bush's visit to Iraq, (Iraq Prime Minister) Maliki announced a large military and police operation around Baghdad, involving tens of thousands of troops, to secure roads, stage raids, seize weapons and enforce a curfew. That may look good on paper, but so did the "Mission Accomplished" banner. There are already 75,000 American and Iraqi troops deployed around Baghdad, and very few of those Iraqis can actually carry out such a mission reliably and effectively. Beyond that, we have been repeatedly told that the already overstretched American forces will be pulled back from the cities and maybe from Iraq itself later this year. How are Americans supposed to square Mr. Maliki's grandiose announcement with Mr. Bush's message that the United States is preparing to reduce its military role? Meanwhile, millions of Iraqis go without electricity at least part of the day, thousands of families have had to flee their homes, and Iraqi women have seen their rights to an independent life and livelihood significantly diminished. After too many photo-ops aimed at giving Mr. Bush and his fellow Republicans a short-term lift in the domestic opinion polls at election time, Americans hunger more than ever for a realistic game plan for Iraq and some real progress. Even the normally cheerleading USA Today wasn't impressed: Yet the circumstances of the trip itself illustrated that reality is not so simple. Amid extraordinary security, Bush dropped in on Maliki like an uninvited dinner guest and didn't even tell most White House aides ahead of time. Security remains so dicey that Bush was in and out of Baghdad in hours. An insurgency and sectarian violence rage. Deadly bombings produce daily tragedies. The government, supposedly one of national unity, is weak. The intriguing question is what purpose Bush hoped to achieve. The cynical view would be that the trip was a stunt designed to create an illusion of victory as a prelude for troop withdrawals timed to the congressional elections. The president is under pressure from some in his party to do just that, and it would be a pitiful end to a misguided war. Professional military planners at the Pentagon tell me the war is lost and they cannot see a way it can be won. In the end, they say, America will have to withdraw in disgrace - just like we did in Vietnam. © Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue Doug Thompson also publishes a personal blog at Blue Ridge Muse. Who the hell is this Thompson guy anyway?
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Posted: Jun 14, 2006 11:22am
We've all heard Bush's BS du jour... but now, as Carl Kolchak would say, "here are the real facts..."
Jun 13, 2006
Baghdad Burning

... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Zarqawi...
So 'Zarqawi' is finally dead. It was an interesting piece of news that greeted us yesterday morning (or was it the day before? I've lost track of time&hellip. I didn't bother with the pictures and film they showed of him because I, personally, have been saturated with images of broken, bleeding bodies.

The reactions have been different. There's a general consensus amongst family and friends that he won't be missed, whoever he is. There is also doubt- who was he really? Did he even exist? Was he truly the huge terror the Americans made him out to be? When did he actually die? People swear he was dead back in 2003… The timing is extremely suspicious: just when people were getting really fed up with the useless Iraqi government, Zarqawi is killed and Maliki is hailed the victorious leader of the occupied world! (And no- Iraqis aren't celebrating in the streets- worries over electricity, water, death squads, tests, corpses and extremists in high places prevail right now.)

I've been listening to reactions- mostly from pro-war politicians and the naïveté they reveal is astounding. Maliki (the current Iraqi PM) was almost giddy as he made the news public (he had even gone the extra mile and shaved!). Do they really believe it will end the resistance against occupation? As long as foreign troops are in Iraq, resistance or 'insurgency' will continue- why is that SO difficult to understand? How is that concept a foreign one?

"A new day for Iraqis" is the current theme of the Iraqi puppet government and the Americans. Like it was "A New Day for Iraqis" on April 9, 2003 . And it was "A New Day for Iraqis" when they killed Oday and Qusay. Another "New Day for Iraqis" when they caught Saddam. More "New Day" when they drafted the constitution… I'm beginning to think it's like one of those questions they give you on IQ tests: If 'New' is equal to 'More' and 'Day' is equal to 'Suffering', what does "New Day for Iraqis" mean?

How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along with them- they don't need him anymore, apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."

So now that Zarqawi is dead, and because according to Bush and our Iraqi puppets he was behind so much of Iraq's misery- things should get better, right? The car bombs should lessen, the ethnic cleansing will come to a halt, military strikes and sieges will die down… That's what we were promised, wasn't it? That sounds good to me. Now- who do they have to kill to stop the Ministry of Interior death squads, and trigger-happy foreign troops?


- posted by river @ 12:47 AM
Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Bad Day...
It’s been a horrible day. We woke up to unbearable heat. Our area averages about 4 hours electricity daily and the rest is generator electricity, which means we can use our ceiling fans, but there’s no way we can use air conditioners.

We woke up to an ominous silence- an indicator that the generator isn’t working. E. went next door to check and got a confirmation. It might not work all day. The neighbor responsible for it was going to bring by the ‘generator doctor’ as soon as he was free.

The electricity came at 6 pm for only twenty minutes- as if to taunt us. The moment the lights flickered on, we were gathered in the kitchen and we could hear the neighborhood children began to hoot and holler with joy.

Before that, we heard the news about the dozens abducted from the Salhiya area in Baghdad. Salhiya is a busy area where many travel agencies have offices. It has been particularly busy since the war because people who want to leave to Jordan and Syria all make their reservations from one office or another in that area.

According to people working and living in the area, around 15 police cars pulled up to the area and uniformed men began pulling civilians off the streets and from cars, throwing bags over their heads and herding them into the cars. Anyone who tried to object was either beaten or pulled into a car. The total number of people taken away is estimated to be around 50.

This has been happening all over Iraq- mysterious men from the Ministry of Interior rounding up civilians and taking them away. It just hasn’t happened with this many people at once. The disturbing thing is that the Iraqi Ministry of Interior has denied that it had anything to do with this latest mass detention (which is the new trend with them- why get tangled up with human rights organizations about mass detentions, torture and assassinations- just deny it happened!). That isn’t a good sign- it means these people will probably be discovered dead in a matter of days. We pray they’ll be returned alive…

Another piece of particularly bad news came later during the day. Several students riding a bus to school were assassinated in Dora area. No one knows why- it isn’t clear. Were they Sunni? Were they Shia? Most likely they were a mix… Heading off for their end-of-year examination- having stayed up the night before to study in the heat. When they left their houses, they were probably only worried about whether they’d pass or fail- their parents sending them off with words of encouragement and prayer. Now they’ll never come home.

There’s an ethnic cleansing in progress and it’s impossible to deny. People are being killed according to their ID card. Extremists on both sides are making life impossible. Some of them work for ‘Zarqawi’, and the others work for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. We hear about Shia being killed in the ‘Sunni triangle’ and corpses of Sunnis named ‘Omar’ (a Sunni name) arriving by the dozen at the Baghdad morgue. I never thought I’d actually miss the car bombs. At least a car bomb is indiscriminate. It doesn’t seek you out because you’re Sunni or Shia.

We still don’t have ministers in the key ministries- defense and interior. Iraq is falling apart and Maliki and his team are still bickering over who should get more power- who is more qualified to oppress Iraqis with the help of foreign occupiers? On top of all of this, rumor has it that the Iraqi parliament have a ‘vacation’ coming up during July and August. They’re so exhausted with the arguing, and struggling for power, they need to take a couple of months off to rest. They’ll leave their well-guarded homes behind for a couple of months, and spend some time abroad with their families (who can’t live in Iraq anymore- they’re too precious for that).

Where does one go to avoid the death and destruction? Are the Americans happy with this progress? Does Bush still insist we’re progressing?

Emily Dickinson wrote, “hope is a thing with feathers”. If what she wrote is true, then hope has flown far- very far- from Iraq…


- posted by river @ 2:53 AM
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Posted: Jun 13, 2006 10:05am
TELL HIM!!!!
May 6, 2006
http://thankyoustephencolbert.org/wordpress/archives/3

Thank You.

“…This is a battle that can’t really be won — you either got it Saturday night (or Sunday morning, or whenever your life was made a little brighter by viewing Colbert’s performance) or you didn’t. Personally, I’m enjoying watching apologists for the status quo wear themselves out explaining why Colbert wasn’t funny. It’s extending the reach of his performance by days without either side breaking character — the mighty Colbert or the clueless, self-important media elite he was satirizing. For those who think the media shamed itself by rolling over for this administration, especially in the run-up to the Iraq war, Colbert’s skit is the gift that keeps on giving. Thank you, Stephen Colbert!”



Colbert Speaks Truth to Power at the White House Correspondents Dinner

The Video
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Posted: May 6, 2006 10:06am
Baghdad Burning; thank God or Allah that someone has the guts to produce some GENUINE journalism
Apr 8, 2006
 
Last Updated: Monday, 27 March 2006, 00:12 GMT 01:12 UK
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Blogger up for non-fiction award
Iraqi soldier manning Baghdad checkpoint
'Riverbend' has been posting from Iraq since August 2003
An anonymous blog by a young woman in war-torn Iraq has been longlisted for BBC Four's Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.
Baghdad Burning, a first-hand account written under the pseudonym Riverbend, is one of 19 books in contention.

Others include Alan Bennett's Untold Stories, a biography of 19th-Century cook and author Mrs Beeton and a study of post-war US-Soviet relations.

The winner of the £30,000 prize will be announced on 14 June.

Professor Robert Winston, chair of the judging panel, said this year's longlist contained "an exceptionally wide variety of genres".

"It looks as if finalising a shortlist is going to be excessively difficult," he said.

Previous winners of the prize include Like a Fiery Elephant, Jonathan Coe's biography of the author BS Johnson, and Stasiland, Anna Funder's chronicle of the hardships endured by people from the former East Germany.

This year's panel includes theatre director Sir Richard Eyre, columnist Cristina Odone and Michael Prodger, literary editor of the Sunday Telegraph.



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Posted: Apr 8, 2006 1:52pm

 
 
 
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