New York Times, 9/25/06: Col. Tom James, who commands the division’s Second Brigade, acknowledged that his unit’s equipment levels had fallen so low that it now had no tanks or other armored vehicles to use in training and that his soldiers were rated as largely untrained in attack and defense. The enormous strains on equipment and personnel, because of longer-than-expected … Read More
Bush Busted In A Huge Lie
Glenn Greenwald says "this report alone ought to dictate the outcome of the election." If you haven’t heard the news, a leaked internal government report — a government report from the Bush Administration — says "No". A classified intelligence report concludes that the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat to the United States, U.S. officials told CNN Sunday. Some … Read More
Generals Against The War
Can’t let this pass unnoticed: Retired military officers on Monday bluntly accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of bungling the war in Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public. "I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the … Read More
Marty Lederman: “U.S. to be First Nation to Authorize Violations of Geneva”
Professor Lederman looks at the new detainee bill and speaks his mind: [I]t only takes 30 seconds or so to see that the Senators have capitualted entirely, that the U.S. will hereafter violate the Geneva Conventions by engaging in Cold Cell, Long Time Standing, etc., and that there will be very little pretense about it. In addition to the elimination … Read More
Maybe Not The Best Example
Bush to the UN at roughly 11:30 EST: We have seen the forces of freedom and moderation transform entire continents. …Asia has seen freedom progress and hundreds of millions of people lifted out of desperate poverty. Halfway around the word, at roughly the same time: BREAKING NEWS: Thailand In Chaos After Coup; Tanks Roll Into Bangkok; Thailand’s Constitution suspended; Thai … Read More
Quote Of The Day
Eugene Robinson: "It is not possible for our elected representatives to hold any sort of honorable "debate" over torture. Bush says he is waging a "struggle for civilization," but civilized nations do not debate slavery or genocide, and they don’t debate torture, either. This spectacle insults and dishonors every American."
In Bush’s America
…it’s okay to kidnap a Canadian citizen (a software engineer), lie to Canada about his whereabouts (Canada is an ally, right?), and ship the poor guy off to Syria (our enemy, right?) for a year or so. In Syria, he’s tortured and beaten with a metal cable until he confesses that he received training in Afghanistan. As is often the … Read More
IRS Hassling Pastor For Giving Anti-War Sermon
The War on Christianisty indeed: This is just unbelievable. The IRS is suddenly ramping up its investigation of whether All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena violated its tax-exempt status with an anti-war sermon just before the 2004 elections. On Friday an IRS investigator served a summons on the current rector, Rev. Ed Bacon, ordering the church to turn over all … Read More
Bush Loyalty Trumps Experience
WaPo reports on how Jim O’Beirne’s office in the Pentagon valued blind loyalty to Bush over ability and experience in managing post-invasion Iraq: O’Beirne’s staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought … Read More
On John Yoo
Never in my life have I witnessed such incredible incompetence in a constitutional scholar. I am referring to John Yoo, Bush’s legal advisor on torture and detainee policy, and his gloriously boneheaded op-ed in the New York Times. Yoo makes this wildly absurd claim: [T]he founders intended that wrongheaded or obsolete legislation and judicial decisions would be checked by presidential … Read More
How Bad Is It In Iraq?
It’s so bad that Baghdad’s sewer system is clogged . . . with corpses.
Arm-Twisting To Get Torture Approval Letter
Wow. The Bush Administration got a bunch of JAG lawyers to "not object" to the Bush proposal to allow torture. But as it turns out, the JAG lawyers were not all that eager to endorse Bush’s proposal, and only relented after extreme pressure from higher-ups. From WaPo: White House officials released a letter from senior Pentagon uniformed lawyers, who said … Read More
Colin Powell Gets It
“The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.” That’s what Bush’s former Secretary of State Colin Powell says, as he joins the ranks of Senators McCain and Warner to stop the Bush attempt to legalize … Read More
Are We Winning The War On Terror?
Well, I suppose that depends on how you measuse it. Let’s look at three possible ways. (1) Al Qaeda These were the guys that attacked us on 9/11. If we’re winning the war on terror, one would hope that there are fewer of them now than there were five years ago. A simple graph, based on recent research by the … Read More
Iran: The New Fake Boogeyman
Here we go again. Last month, the GOP-run House Intelligence Committee released a report on Iran. The report was not voted on by the full committee. Its message? "Ooooooh, they’re about to bomb us with a nuke!" It got a LOT of play in the press. Surprise! It’s a fraud! U.N. inspectors investigating Iran’s nuclear program angrily complained to the … Read More