NYT: Barack Obama Rocks the House & Off Come the Gloves

Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party presidential nomination on Thursday, declaring that the “American promise has been threatened” by eight years under President Bush and that John McCain represented a continuation of policies that undermined the nation’s economy and imperiled its standing around the world.

The speech by Senator Obama, in front of an audience of nearly 80,000 people on a warm night in a football stadium refashioned into a vast political stage for television viewers, left little doubt how he intended to press his campaign against Mr. McCain this fall.

In cutting language, and to cheers that echoed across the stadium, he linked Mr. McCain to what he described as the “failed presidency of George W. Bush” and — reflecting what has been a central theme of his campaign since he entered the race —“the broken politics in Washington.”

And just one little note, here's a memorable quote from Barack's speech:

But the record’s clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.

The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives – on health care and education and the economy – Senator McCain has been anything but independent. He said that our economy has made “great progress” under this President. He said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. And when one of his chief advisors – the man who wrote his economic plan – was talking about the anxiety Americans are feeling, he said that we were just suffering from a “mental recession,” and that we’ve become, and I quote, “a nation of whiners.”

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Don't Like Gitmo, Torture, Child Soldiers as US Legacy? Here's Something You Can DO...

Mohammad Jawad was a child soldier in Afghanistan when he was detained by US forces there in the so-called War on Terror and taken to Guantanamo where he was subjected to various types of torture - recognized as torture, that is, except to the Bush Administration, who call it anything else.
You can sign this petition to help in his behalf here. Read more about him and the petition (at bottom) below:
He was featured last May in Salon:

The U.S. government claims that Mohammed Jawad is an unlawful enemy combatant who tried to murder two U.S. soldiers and their translator in Afghanistan by tossing a grenade into their vehicle in December 2002.

But Maj. David Frakt, his military-appointed attorney, argues that Jawad -- who was a teenager of 16 or 17 at the time of his alleged offense (Jawad doesn't know his birth date) -- is a victim. He says Jawad was a homeless teenager who was drugged and forced to fight with Afghan militia, then abused by the United States, which transported him halfway around the world and imprisoned him at Guantánamo for five years without charge and is now using him as a guinea pig to test a new system of military justice with no regard to his initial status as a juvenile.

When Frakt arrived at Guantánamo to meet Jawad, he said he found a profoundly disturbed young man who was reluctant to talk. "Jawad is in an extremely fragile mental state," Frakt said in an interview following the hearing. "He has been here for so long -- he has essentially grown up in Guantánamo. He has lost track of time, lost touch with reality, and suffers from severe depression. And he doesn't believe he can get justice from the military commissions."

The fact that he was a child soldier was deliberately ignored by the Bush Administration. The US bandies the words "freedom" and "justice" around as if they were purely propaganda tools. Care about freedom? So what about exposing a minor, whose transition to adulthood occurred in the worst of all possible conditions, to torture and human rights abuse? Is this the way the US fights for democracy and freedom?

The United States has acknowledged holding eight teenagers at Guantánamo, but although some of them were given special housing and educational opportunities and were eventually released, the U.S. has ignored Jawad's status as a juvenile.

But Donald Rumsfeld, talking the Cheney line, lied about this:

At a press conference in April 2003, when the “child prisoners” story first broke, Donald Rumsfeld pointedly described the juvenile detainees as “not children,” and General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that they “may be juveniles, but they’re not on the Little League team anywhere. They’re on a major league team, and it’s a terrorist team, and they’re in Guantánamo for a very good reason –- for our safety, for your safety.”

Safety? When we're becoming a human rights-abusing, rogue nation? It's worth taking a brief look at Jawad's life story, which has been largely ignored:

Jawad is an illiterate Afghan from a poor Pashtun family with no ties to the Afghan government. According to Frakt, Jawad's father died during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. His mother remarried, and the family fled to Pakistan. Jawad spent his childhood years in a refugee camp and was educated at a local madrassa where all the teaching is conducted orally. He never learned to read or write.

Frakt says that when Jawad was 13, his family kicked him out and told him he needed to find a job. He spent much of those years hanging around a mosque looking for work. Sometime in 2002, Jawad was told he could have a job helping eradicate land mines in Afghanistan, so he returned to his native country. Once he arrived, however, Frakt says he was recruited by the local militia, drugged and forced into combat. Soon after, he was arrested by the Afghan police and handed over to the Americans.
Unlike most of the detainees at Guantánamo, Jawad was never provided a "habeas counsel," that is, a civilian lawyer to file a petition of habeas corpus on his behalf. Until he was charged this year, he was virtually unknown to the world.

Frakt said that his meetings with Jawad have been difficult, in part because Jawad doesn't understand the legal process, and in part because Jawad doesn't trust anyone in a U.S. military uniform, which Frakt is obligated to wear when he visits his client. "It is difficult to establish a trusting relationship with a detainee who has suffered so much and been detained by the U.S. military for five years," Frakt said. "He has a natural distrust of me, and he is not sure that I am here to help him."
...
From the government's point of view, Jawad's is a seemingly straightforward case. The prosecution has located eyewitnesses who claim to have seen the Afghan teenager throw the grenade. In addition, it says it has a signed confession from Jawad.

But Frakt says the case isn't nearly as straightforward as the government alleges. He says that the prosecution chose to prosecute Jawad because it viewed his as a "sexy" case -- Jawad is a defendant with "blood on his hands," in the government's view, which is something the American public understands better than something more abstract, like charges of material support for terrorism.

In other words, this is a show prosecution, politically motivated. Its purpose is not the administration of justice - not at all! - but a tool to be used to convince the American public that Bush's policies are justified, that we are bringing "terrorists" to "justice" and hence "securing America". While in fact, what we are doing is the diametrical opposite: undermining the very fabric of our justice system, democracy, and the rule of law, especially as it is applied internationally.

While Frakt acknowledges that the prosecution has witnesses who saw his client throw the grenade, he says the defense has also located witnesses who say the teenager appeared to be drugged at the time. As for the confession, Frakt says it is in Farsi -- a language Jawad does not speak. And the "signature" on it is in the form of a thumbprint, because Jawad does not read or write.

Frakt hopes to be able to make these arguments on Jawad's behalf if or when the case goes to trial. In the meantime, Frakt says has serious reservations about Jawad's ability to aid in his defense because of his fragile mental state -- something that was evident when Jawad himself addressed the court this month.

When the judge asked Jawad if he would like to make a statement, the young man spoke for about 20 minutes, saying that he didn't understand why he was at Guantánamo and why he was being punished. As he described his ordeal -- of being flown from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, locked in a steel cage, moved from cell to cell in the middle of the night, and sometimes being kept in a cell that had bright lights on 24 hours a day -- he said he had lost track of time and couldn't remember when or for how long he was held in each camp. Sometimes he stopped to rub his head and seemed to forget what he was saying in mid-sentence.

When Jawad finished his statement, Frakt requested that his client be taken out of the maximum security facility where he is currently housed -- where he is confined to a windowless cell at least 22 hours a day -- and moved to a "quiet, restful place where he can rehabilitate." He also requested that Jawad be examined by a mental health professional.

The judge told Frakt to put the request in writing and said that he would consider it. But it remains unclear whether the judge at the military commissions has the authority to order military officials at the detention facility at Guantánamo to do anything.

Now, finally, there is something we can do about it.

Valtin has put up this letter and petition to sign as well as this article explaining what the petition is about and what it can accomplish:

Last week I publicized the extraordinary appeal campaign for Guantanamo detainee Mohammad Jawad initiated by his military attorneys. Jawad, who was arrested as a teenager in Afghanistan in December 2002, is the first child soldier to be tried as a "war criminal" in modern times. In U.S. custody, he has suffered beatings, threats, physical isolation, sleep deprivation, been subjected to 24-hour bright lights, and more. His attorneys have called for letters to be written to the Convening Authority at Guanatanamo, asking them to withdraw and dismiss the charges against Jawad.

Now, his attorneys have initiated an online petition campaign in his behalf. You can follow this link to go straight to the petition. Please sign it and pass the info on to whomever you can.

Please click the link above and sign the petition. It's a small thing we can do to try and unbuild the system of atrocities Bush/Cheney have put in place. It's a way we can try to save the life of a forgotten victim of that system, a system that puts America to shame.

Heathlander: Israel Gets License to Kill With Impunity

In spite of much-touted free speech in the blogosphere, it is still rare to find an eloquent advocate for human rights in that most unstable of border/nation disputes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Heathlander is right at the top of those, in my view, and has brought up a critical issue: Israel's "free hand to kill" journalists, Palestinians, protesters, and other civilians who dislike its policies.

As you may recall, the brains heading up the British Israel Communications and Research Centre claimed in a recent(ish) letter to the Guardian that the death of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana (pictured) was “accidental” (see my response here). Shana was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza earlier this year when a tank crew fired two shells at him as he was filming from a mile away. Eight other civilians aged between 12 and 20, including six children under 16, were also killed in the attack.

An Israeli military inquiry this week reached the same conclusion, exonerating the soldiers responsible on the grounds that they had “reasonably” mistaken Shana’s camera for a mortar or anti-tank weapon. As excuses go this is nearly as risible as Israel’s claim that Mohammed Omer, a Palestinian journalist who suffered a complete nervous breakdown and several broken ribs after being beaten and tortured by Israeli agents, merely “lost his balance and fell“.

So we're talking about a pattern of behavior, and a pattern of covering up that behavior. There is definitely an almost unwritten code with the mainstream media that Israel is off-limits: nole mi tangere. This unwritten code, translated into something of a phobia, almost a knee-jerk refusal to question Israel's actions, has led to Israel's upping the ante, continuing a policy of Security Sanctions All.

Reuters condemned the decision as “effectively giving soldiers a free hand to kill”, thereby “severely curtail[ing] the freedom of the media to cover the conflict.”

Also noted,

The effect of the ruling, Amnesty concluded, will be to “reinforce the culture of impunity that has led to so many reckless and disproportionate killings of children and other unarmed civilians by Israeli forces in Gaza.”

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Bush, Cheney et al: John McCain was NOT Tortured

This superb post by Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish has got to be one of the best, bringing up a critical issue: was John McCain tortured? Not by Bush-Cheney's definition.

In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?

The cross-in-the-dirt story - although deeply fishy to any fair observer - is in the realm of the unprovable. But the actual techniques used on McCain, and the lies they were designed to legitimize, are a matter of historical record. And the government of the United States now practices the very same techniques that the Communist government of North Vietnam once proudly used against American soldiers. When they are used against future John McCains, the victims will know, in a way McCain didn't, that their own government has no moral standing to complain.

Now the kicker: in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.

These are the prices people pay for power.

The article is so great it speaks for itself!

New Spy Powers for Police: Democracy at Risk??

Today a new article in WaPo exposes Bush's latest tactic to bring the US closer to a true police state:

The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

We're talking about local and state police, not some federal agents. And yes, that was "intelligence collecting", spying, not just enforcing the law. And what stringent safeguards, what conditions are in place to protect our real or imagined freedoms?? All the police need is "reasonable suspicion". Ah, yes, that wonderful and accurate cornerstone to prevent abuse: it's up to each officer's own renowned instincts, his "suspicion".

Or, to put it literally now:

law enforcement agencies would be allowed to target groups as well as individuals, and to launch a criminal intelligence investigation based on the suspicion that a target is engaged in terrorism or providing material support to terrorists.

And of course, this suspicion can be transmitted to

a constellation of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and others in many cases.

Shall we consult our astrologers to know what agencies in the "constellation" will be affected? Does anybody realize how this can taint a person's reputation and life?? The taint of suspicion, especially suspicion of terrorism, can absolutely ruin someone's life. And what about Middle eastern or Muslim Americans? What right-minded police officer wouldn't be suspicious of them?? And what does this do to our democracy - or what's left of it?

Jim McMahon, deputy executive director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said the proposed changes "catch up with reality" in that those who investigate crimes such as money laundering, drug trafficking and document fraud are best positioned to detect terrorists. He said the rule maintains the key requirement that police demonstrate a "reasonable suspicion" that a target is involved in a crime before collecting intelligence.

OK, maybe I'm not laundering money or faking documents. But what if I gave to a charity that later on was found to be, unbeknownst to me, contributing to some terrorist group? Will I be held in one of those new prison complexes the GOP has been preparing for just such a need? What if some police officer thought I was acting suspiciously? I know of a guy who was "taken down" by a team from the JTT (joint terrorism task force) and 5 squad cars with his children in the car just because he allegedly said to a grocery checker "Take care on the 4th of July" at a time when July 4 was on a "red" level terror alert (a few years back) and she knew he was from an Arab country. He was detained and questioned for hours until his attorney got him released a few days later. They refused to tell him what he was accused of, btw.

And that was THEN. NOW what level of suspicion and surveillance can they enact? Knowing the genius of police depts. around the country, there's no telling how this thing could play out. But don't worry:

Supporters say the measures simply codify existing counterterrorism practices and policies that are endorsed by lawmakers and independent experts such as the 9/11 Commission. They say the measures preserve civil liberties and are subject to internal oversight.

Ahhh, why didn't I mention that earlier? "Internal oversight" will be our checks and balances. Now doesn't that make you feel better?

Is Georgia War a Neocon/McCain Election Ploy?

Sound outrageous? Maybe, but looking deeper, Robert Scheer of Truthdig asks:

Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?

Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government who ended his official lobbying connection only in March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser.

Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, an invasion that clearly was expected to produce a Russian counterreaction? It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain's presidential campaign.

In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia's membership in NATO. A year later, while still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where they met with Saakashvili and supported his bellicose views toward Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Scheunemann is at the center of the neoconservative cabal that has come to dominate the Republican candidate's foreign policy stance in a replay of the run-up to the war against Iraq. These folks are always looking for a foreign enemy on which to base a new Cold War, and with the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime it was Putin's Russia that came increasingly to fit the bill.

Yes, it sounds diabolical, but that may be the most accurate way to assess the designs of the McCain campaign in matters of war and peace. There is every indication that the candidate's demonization of Russian leader Putin is an even grander plan than the previous use of Saddam to fuel American militarism with the fearsome enemy that it desperately needs.

McCain gets to look tough with a new Cold War to fight while Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, scrambling to make sense of a more measured foreign policy posture, will seem weak in comparison. Meanwhile, the dire consequences of the Bush legacy that McCain has inherited, from the disaster of Iraq to the economic meltdown, conveniently will be ignored. But the military-industrial complex, which has helped bankroll the neoconservatives, will be provided with an excuse for ramping up a military budget that is already bigger than that of the rest of the world combined.

More...

Israel Invades Lebanon 2006: Was It Cheney's Practice Drill for Iran?

Remember 2006, when Israeli bombers decimated the Beirut airport, along with a significant number of innocent civilians - men, women, children, the elderly - while Condi Rice played Head Cheerleader? Remember the news coverage that wept at an Israeli woman's shattered nerves and dented car, but barely managed a quick pan of the human debacle, the decimated infrastructure, the wailing mothers, the dead children, that was on the ground in Lebanon? Remember how Hezbollah brought the Mighty Israeli Military Machine of Legends Past to its knees? Remember how the Middle East saw Nasrallah as a hero conquering the oppressors who kill thousands because of two?

No wonder the U.S. was whistling Dixie and looking in the other direction... it was their idea! With friends like that.... what was Israel thinking??? And guess who was the sinister mastermind behind the carnage? Who else? The ominous Dick Cheney...well, sort of, as an enabler.

Adding to the growing list of war crimes committed by Dick Cheney is a report by Sy Hersh that Cheney actually planned the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. He also considers it "a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack" on Iran. Ominous times, these...

In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive.

Glad to hear someone of Sy Hersh's stature noticed!

The Bush Administration ... was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks.President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

According to Hersh, a middle east expert stated:

“The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

Note the pattern: YOU WILL BE A DEMOCRACY. But not until we demolish you first! It's crush and convert, the new Holy War, a right-wing "love-fest", sort of like their own Woodstock, except instead of rapes and orgies with women, they assault whole nations, especially middle eastern nations, whom they learned they can call "terrorist" and get away with murder... literally! Instead of drugs, they have Rovespeak, always the perfect way to disconnect reality and "turn on, tune out, drop the opposition off", preferably at the morgue.

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah.” He added, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.”

And who else but Israel could do it? Not that Israel minded being the "workhorse" for Bushco's military designs, of course. Now, to be fair to ol' Cheney, the idea to bomb Lebanon was Israel's brainchild, and they actively pursued U.S. involvement. And they were also pretty cool with the idea of bombing Iran, an idea both parties cling to (along with their guns, presumably) to this very day. In spite of all evidence that both ideas are really bad news:

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term—and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah “may be the A team of terrorists”...If the most dominant military force in the region—the Israel Defense Forces—can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,” Armitage said. “The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.”

Yes, it succeeded to unite the population - Shi'a, of course, but also Sunni, Christian, Druze, and others - against Israel, and in a sense, also the United States, whose pretend non-chalant "Infrastructure? What infrastructure? Civilians? What civilians? Invasion? what invasion?" didn't exactly win friends. Except among the Saudi royals and their ilk, and apparently among Sunni anti-Shia extremists in - who else? - Al-Qaeda. Both of them were remarkably friendly and sympathetic with the U.S.-Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as were their websites and spokespersons. Guess it's times like these that let you know who your real friends are.

Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”

Yes, Cheney may not have come up with the idea of invading Lebanon, but he was one of its most passionate cheerleaders. Same is true of the always almost-impending invasion - and an air war against Iran IS an invasion - of Iran. Let's hope he's far, far away from the Oval Office before that debacle and its horrendous consequences could ever get off the ground.

Isn't it time to bury Cheney's crazy, security-bashing ideas and elect someone who won't "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"???

Another Blast to Oil-Drilling Myth: Taxpayer-subsidized Big Oil's Gulf Oil Won't Go to US

Meanwhile, back at the oil-drilling issue, did anybody realize this?

The oil that comes from offshore drilling will belong to the multinational firm, like Exxon-Mobil and will go to world markets, not us.

One thing has been driving me crazy about this drilling debate -- everyone seems to assume that if we drill for oil in the US, that we will get the oil. And hence, we won't be dependent on foreign oil anymore. But we won't get anything, Exxon-Mobil will.

The oil that comes from that drilling will not be United States property (Republicans aren't suggesting we nationalize the oil companies, are they?). It will be the property of whichever oil company got the rights to that contract. They can then sell it to whoever they like -- and they will. They will sell it on the world market, so the Chinese will have just as much access to the oil that comes out of the coast of Florida as we will.

The Democrats have done a decent job of beating back the argument that this will effect prices in the short run, or even in the long run. But no one has addressed the point above. The Republicans make it seem like we won't be dependent on foreign oil -- and that prices will go down in the US -- if we have our own oil. But it won't be ours. And it will be sold on the world market, so its effect on global oil prices will be even smaller.

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Another Sy Hersh Blockbuster: Cheney Planned Israel's Disastrous War on Lebanon

Remember 2006, when Israeli bombers decimated the Beirut airport, along with a significant number of innocent civilians - men, women, children, the elderly - while Condi Rice played Head Cheerleader? Remember the news coverage that wept at an Israeli woman's shattered nerves and dented car, but barely managed a quick pan of the human debacle, the decimated infrastructure, the wailing mothers, the dead children, that was on the ground in Lebanon? Remember how Hezbollah brought the Mighty Israeli Military Machine of Legends Past to its knees? Remember how the Middle East saw Nasrallah as a hero conquering the oppressors who kill thousands because of two?

No wonder the U.S. was whistling Dixie and looking in the other direction... it was their idea! With friends like that.... what was Israel thinking??? And guess who was the sinister mastermind behind the carnage? Who else? The ominous Dick Cheney...

Adding to the growing list of war crimes committed by Dick Cheney is a report by Sy Hersh that Cheney actually planned the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. He also considers it "a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack" on Iran. Ominous times, these...

President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

According to Hersh, a middle east expert stated:

“The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

Note the pattern: YOU WILL BE A DEMOCRACY. But not until we demolish you first! It's crush and convert, the new Holy War, a right-wing "love-fest", sort of like their own Woodstock, except instead of rapes and orgies with women, they assault whole nations, especially middle eastern nations, whom they learned they can call "terrorist" and get away with murder... literally! Instead of drugs, they have Rovespeak, always the perfect way to disconnect reality and "turn on, tune out, drop the opposition off", preferably at the morgue.

McCain campaign apologizes to ousted reporter: End of Story? Hardly...

In an attempt to quell the controversy over McCain's ousting of Stephen Pricethe sole black reporter at a rally in Tallahassee, especially after Keith Olberman's coverage, the McCain campaign apologized to Stephen Price in a phone call. Here's one version:

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers called Price on Tuesday evening and apologized on behalf of the campaign.

Rogers said "We feel terrible about it," according to Price.

"I accept the apology," Price said. "I definitely wish I was never singled out. I came up there to do a story. That's all I wanted to do is write a story."

Rogers told Price that McCain would call him in the next few days.

OK, so this is supposed to be the end of the story, right? Especially since John McCain HIMSELF would "call him in the next few days." And what could Mr. Price do except graciously accept this direct apology?

And McCain, of course, is giving himself time before making that call. Presumably, to see how it blows up. As expressed here,

I would think he could have squeezed in a phone call by now — five days and counting later — but I guess it takes a story being spotlighted on the national cable news shows before it begins to sink in on Gramps.

And anyway, McCain’s been so busy. We’ve seen him cavorting with the bikers at their rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, and egging his wife on to compete in the topless biker babe contest. Who has three minutes for a phone call?

But the story won't go away. The questions have not been answered, or even addressed. It's just "sorry", "forgive & forget", without the explanation, without acknowledging even sorry for what exactly...

Is it "sorry" for being racist? Is it "sorry" for giving the appearance of being racist? Is it "sorry" for adding another "incident" to the list of suspicious-looking racial-bias indicators in the McCain camp? Is it "sorry" for this incident becoming a possible drag on the McCain campaign? Is it "sorry" - "now please go away"? Is it "sorry from the bottom of my heart" - ("damn incompetent staff")?? Is it simply "sorry we kicked you out for no good reason" ... "inadvertently"? "by mistake"?

Was there a policy of separating "local" from "national" reporters? NO. Was there some kind of security threat? NO. Did Mr. Price present proper credentials? YES. So what's up with that? If it's not racial profiling, JUST TELL US what it IS.
Then did they issue a similar apology to the mysterious unnamed "other reporter" who was also kicked out when she defended Mr. Price? And then what, pray tell, are they sorry for in that case? Sorry our inept operatives kicked off any possible whistle-blowers/troublemakers? Sorry the public has to be an eyewitness to our inept operatives?

The point and bottom line is: there IS no explanation. There WAS no reason given. It was an abbreviation. A full stop. A one-word, one-thought period, they hope, at the end of an awkward, but revealing, sentence. A sentence that suggests "we represent the party of the Great White Hope, the party of Old Values where patriotism is embodied in a flag decal/pin, and where familiar WASP faces will always be sitting on the seats of power." Did they apologize for that suggestion? To whom?

McCain needs to explain himself to the American public. The story, the bigger story behind this incident, just won't go away.

Facts Blast Gulf Oil Myth: Hey Guys, It Just Ain't There

We should have seen it coming: the economy overrun with speculators and middlemen, consumers bingeing on carbon-spewing SUV's and coal-fired electricity, unregulated corporations and oil companies staking out territory based the primacy of fossil fuels, and then the price of oil goes up, consumers slow down that feverish pace of more-more-more-burn-burn, and suddenly, BAM! You've got politicians on their knees, promising to make everything like it was again, promising to bring back our beloved cheap oil, we'll drill the gulf and never import again starting NOW! And we all know it's a cheap, snivelling, skanky lie, but we don't know JUST HOW BIG A LIE it is...

We know it'll take time. But there's a sense of desperation. We know it might not work and will cost a lot of money. But isn't it better than nothing?

Why do people still trust the GOP? Politicians know nothing about oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet they feed us this new mythology: WE MUST DRILL NOW OR DIE a slow, carbon-starved, dollar-shriveling death because LIBERALS DON'T CARE and want us to be RUN BY OIL SHEIKHS and DEPENDENT ON ARAB ISLAMIC AND HUGO CHAVEZ IMPORTED OIL. It's not that anyone trusts the GOP. It's that they're easily made AFRAID of the environmentalist-codepink-hippie-gay-unamerican-womenslib-quotapushing-softoncrime-peacenik-unpatriotic - some wavy, horror-move music, please - Democrats.

But what people don't know is that THE OIL JUST ISN'T THERE. The Gulf of Mexico has oil, yes, but not the save-us-from-the-foreigners kind of oil. Ask a geologist.

Yes, why not ask the experts, the petroleum geologists, the people in the field who actually do the exploration and know the potential that exists in the Gulf of Mexico before hyperventilating over it? One expert, for example, is Klaus H. Gohrbandt, who holds a doctorate degree in geology and is an independent, certified petroleum geologist and who says that

while there is oil and natural gas still to be found in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, it is not sufficient to solve our energy problems.

The Gulf is his area of expertise in the field, and he has no agenda for or against oil exploration there. His input is simply practical, scientific, and factual. Something we could use more of in the hoopla-driven era where every dilettante politician - and aren't all politicians in some way necessarily dilettantes? - wants to gain votes for his side this election season by assuaging the electorate's fear and anger about oil prices?

Drilling in the Gulf appears to be an easy fix. But the truth is: it's not. Not at all.

First, it would be too expensive and take too long. According to Time magazine,

...even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer continental shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027.

So much for the immediate savings. But it wouldn't even do that.

"Right now the price of oil is set on the global market," says Kevin Lindemer, executive managing director of the energy markets group for the research firm Global Insight. President Bush's move "would not have an impact."

And that's presuming there's any appreciable amount of oil. But is there? Mr. Gohrbandt weighs in on this:

The bottom line is that discovery of huge amounts of oil or natural gas in currently unexplored areas of the central and northern Gulf is very unlikely, because the geology doesn't support it.

There might be significant amounts of oil off South Florida, but it is heavy oil that is very difficult to clean up if a spill occurs.

He discusses each area dispassionately, some having potential, others having been explored with only minimal success (such as the "Destin Dome" where only 4 attempts out of 15 drills discovered any oil at all), and yet others off limits for political or environmental reasons, such as the areas off South Florida where such drilling would basically decimate the fragile coastal areas such as that of the Florida Keys. He concludes:

Unfortunately, our political elite exhibits ignorance of the petroleum setting in the region, and makes related unqualified statements and decisions.

Yet his assessment is not simply that doing so would "destroy the planet", as many argue - an argument that never seems to matter to Republicans - but that it won't be enough to make any difference. Time's article would agree, asserting that such drilling would do no good:

The reason is simple: the U.S. has an estimated 3% of global petroleum reserves but consumes 24% of the world's oil. Offshore territories and public lands like ANWR that don't allow drilling may contain up to 75 billion barrels of oil, according to the EIA. That may sound like a lot, but it's not enough to make a significant difference in a world where global oil demand is expected to rise 30% by 2030, to nearly 120 million barrels a day. At best, greatly expanding domestic drilling might eventually lower the proportion of oil the U.S. imports — currently about 60% of its total supply — but petroleum is a global commodity, and the world market would soak up any additional American production. "This is a drop in the bucket," says Gernot Wagner, an economist with the Environmental Defense Fund.

Way back in 2006,before the price of oil went way up, even in an overhyped optimistic NYT piece, the assessment held a cautionary tale:

Even after hitting pay dirt, it will take another decade and billions of dollars to transform oil from these ultra-deep reserves into gasoline. Some of the technology to pump the sludge from these depths, at these pressures and temperatures, has not yet been developed; only about a dozen ships can drill wells that deep, and no one knows for sure how much oil is down there.

While most people regard affordable and abundant supplies as an essential element of the nation’s prosperity, few realize how complex and costly the quest has become, even in the nation’s own backyard. At the same time, some experts argue that the industry is nearing the limits of what it can do to maintain a growing supply of fossil fuels.

And yet here we are in 2008, with Republicans making their Last Carbon Stand to Save America - as if America means carbon dependency. After all, the issue is no longer foreign dependency. Our world is already irreversably globally interdependent. (Think China allies separately with the United Sales of WalMart.) The issue now is carbon dependency. Obama, stick to your original guns. Pelosi, don't be a pushover. Both of you have better minds than that. People, tell your congress to think beyond the election and stop belittling the minds of Americans by assuming they only love outright pandering. We the People need more leadership out of the carbon hole we're drilling for ourselves. Stop lying to get lucrative contracts to your corporate/industry donors. Tell the truth. There ain't no cure-all, no economic snake-oil, in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sole Black Reporter Booted from McCain Event

Tallahassee Democrat senior writer Stephen Price was singled out and asked to leave the area reserved for media at a rally for John McCain in Panama City, Florida, on Friday. He had showed his media credentials and employee i.d. in order to enter the area when a member of McCain's security detail asked him to leave.

"I explained I was with the state press, but the Secret Service man said that didn't matter and that I would have to go," Price said.

When another reporter asked why Price was being removed, she too was led out of the area. Other state reporters remained.

Price was the only black reporter among those surrounding McCain's bus ... was he being "profiled"?

Tallahassee Democrat Executive Editor Bob Gabordi said the incident was unwarranted.

"We're deeply concerned and disturbed that our reporter — of all of those in that area — was asked to move," Gabordi said. "My understanding is that Stephen was the only reporter approached and asked to leave the area, and the only reporter in that area who is black. Another reporter who stood up for Stephen was then asked to leave."

Jonathan Block of the McCain campaign, who was not there at the time of the incident, expressed regret, but stated,

"I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that race had nothing to do with it."

Block said the area where Price was standing was restricted to members of the traveling national press corps that accompanies McCain on the campaign trail.

Wow. Really. There's this story line going around that McCain loves to be "unscripted" and was always wandering into unprepared situations, giving the impression of "getting down to the people." Why was the black man singled out? And then why was the other reporter ousted for defending him? Why couldn't they simply tell them right then and there that this area is restricted to press that travels with McCain, if that was, in fact, true???

I'm sure McCain really needs this sort of stuff to keep those "swing voters" wondering. First, he backs a bill in Arizona that would wipe out affirmative action as "quotas", a "reverse racism"-style proposition, to coddle the right-wing racist White First bloc. Then he accuses Obama of racism for mentioning in passing something that could be construed to mean Obama is black. And if McCain infers that he is older, we're supposed to accuse him of "age-ism", right? Now, his security detail is weeding out "suspects"??

And this isn't the first weird incident with McCain's security. Here you can check out how they kicked a librarian out of a public rally for holding a McCain=Bush sign, and charged her with trespassing.

The event, at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, was billed as 'open to the public.' Yet Carole Kreck, a 61-year-old librarian carrying a 'McCain=Bush' sign, was taken away by police [on orders from McCain's security detail] for trespassing. A police officer told Kreck:
'You have two choices. You can keep your sign here and receive a ticket for trespassing, or you can remove the sign and stay in line and attend this town hall meeting.'
Kreck received a ticket for trespassing and her court date is July 23.

Security trumps free speech. Security trumps reporters' access to a candidate. Dissent and being a person of color seem to always land in the world of "security risk". One of the Republicans' biggest ticket issues is "increase Security." It plays to fear. It plays to the military. But, as this incident is a small but notable example, it doesn't play to our higher goals of fairness, openness, and actual freedom (not rhetorical "freedom" as in "freedom fries"). For McCain, it's a pattern he can't break free from. For the rest of us, it's an election we must weigh in on, in historic numbers, for the other, security-by-freedom, not security-vs-freedom, side.

"Carbon Crater": Lamborghini Flown From Qatar to London for Oil Change

Here's a new version of the "carbon footprint" - the "carbon crater".

A RICH Arab sent his Lamborghini on a 6,500-mile round trip to Britain for a service. The £190,000 supercar was put on a scheduled flight from Qatar to Heathrow – then flown BACK after the oil check.
Money was no object as the flight would have cost the owner – thought to be a Sheikh – around £20,000.

The move sparked fury from green campaigners. An airport worker said: “This car doesn’t have a carbon footprint – more of a crater.” The overall cost of sending the Lamborghini to London for the oil change would have cost more than £23,000.

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