The Neocon Lust for Terror

FLASHBACK: It’s About A Lot More Than A "Goddamned Piece of Paper"Leo Strauss is the father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including many leaders of the current administration of the USA. Indeed, some of the main neocon players were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years. Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli.
Strauss believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external threat did not exist, one should be manufactured. Specifically, Strauss thought that:

"A political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured".

(quote is by one of Strauss' main biographers).

Indeed, Strauss used the analogy of Gulliver's Travels to show what a Neocon-run society would look like:

"When Lilliput [the town] was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect."

Moreover, Strauss said:

"Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic... Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns."

So Strauss seems to have advocated governments letting terrorizing catastrophes happen on one's own soil to one's own people -- of "pissing" on one's own people, to use his Gulliver's travel analogy. And he advocates that government's should pretend that they did not know about such acts of mayhem: to intentionally "not know" that Rome is burning. He advocates messing with one's own people in order to save them from some "catastrophe" (perhaps to justify military efforts to monopolize middle eastern oil to keep it away from an increasingly-powerful China?).

Fast Forward a Couple of Decades to the 1990's...
Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor seemed to hint at this approach when he wrote in 1997:

"as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."

Similarly, the Project For A New American Century, a think tank lobbying group with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and the other leading Neocons in its ranks, lamented that its rapacious military agenda would not be realized

"absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Don't believe that these quotes represent anything nefarious yet?

Fast forward to today...
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the American people lack "the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats." What's to be done? According to Rumsfeld, "The correction for that, I suppose, is [another] attack."

Newt Gingrich recently said:
"the better they've done at making sure there isn't an attack, the easier it is to say, 'Well, there never was going to be an attack anyway.' And it's almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us."
The head of the Arkansas Republican party said:
"At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001]" so people appreciate Bush.
Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky openly called for "another 9/11" that "would help America" restore a "community of outrage and national resolve".
Lt.-Col. Doug Delaney, chair of the war studies program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, told the Toronto Star that "The key to bolstering Western resolve is another terrorist attack like 9/11 or the London transit bombings of two years ago."
And an allegedly-leaked GOP memo touts a new terror attack as a way to reverse the party’s decline.
It's All Hot Air, Isn't It?
But isn't this all talk? They wouldn't really allow terror to happen . . . or aid and abet such attacks. Would they?
Well, President Carter recently impliedly acknowledged the risk of staged provocation in order to start a war against Iran.
A former National Security Adviser told the Senate that a terrorist act might be carried out in the U.S. and falsely blamed on Iran to justify war against that nation.
Former Senator Gary Hart warned Americans that the White House might create a "Gulf of Tonkin" or "remember the Maine" type incident to justify war against Iran (starting at 7:15 minutes)

Current U.S. Congressman Ron Paul stated, the government "is determined to have martial law", and that the government is hoping to get the people "fearful enough that they will accept the man on the white horse"
Daniel Ellsberg, the famous Pentagon Papers whistleblower, said "if there is another terror attack, "I believe the president will get what he wants", which will include a dictatorship.
A retired 27-year CIA analyst who prepared and presented Presidential Daily Briefs and served as a high-level analyst for several presidents, stated that if there was another major attack in the U.S., it would lead to martial law. He went on to say:
"We have to be careful, if somebody does this kind of provocation, big violent explosions of some kind, we have to not take the word of the masters there in Washington that this was some terrorist event because it could well be a provocation allowing them, or seemingly to allow them to get what they want."
The former CIA analyst would not put it past the government to "play fast and loose" with terror alerts and warnings and even events themselves in order to rally people behind the flag

The former assistant secretary of treasury in the Reagan administration, called the "Father of Reaganomics", who is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service, and, said:
"Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into two wars and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging "terrorist" attacks in order to remove opposition to its agenda?"
He goes on to say:
If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and to entrench the "unitary executive" at home, it will have to conduct some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people and make them accept Bush's declaration of "national emergency" and the return of the draft. Alternatively, the administration could simply allow any real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.
A series of staged or permitted attacks would be spun by the captive media as a vindication of the neoconsevatives' Islamophobic policy, the intention of which is to destroy all Middle Eastern governments that are not American puppet states. Success would give the US control over oil, but the main purpose is to eliminate any resistance to Israel's complete absorption of Palestine into Greater Israel.
Think about it. If another 9/11-type "security failure" were not in the works, why would Homeland Security czar Chertoff go to the trouble of convincing the Chicago Tribune that Americans have become complacent about terrorist threats and that he has "a gut feeling" that America will soon be hit hard?
A member of the British Parliament stated that "there is a very real danger" that the American government will stage a false flag terror attack in order to justify war against Iran and to gain complete control domestically
And the former UN Weapons Inspector, an American, who stated before the Iraq war started that there were no weapons of mass destruction is now saying that he would not rule out staged government terror by the U.S. government.
Does that sound like the Neocons' expressions of yearning for terror are just so much talk? Or does it sound like the disciples of Leo Strauss are willing to "manufacture threats" and "fiddle while Rome burns"?
And if the it is the latter, and the same people made the expressions of yearning before 9/11, the anthrax attacks and the London bombings, what does that imply about the cause of those events?

Discussions, Discussions, Discussions

CORAL GABLES, Florida. — A day after Senator Barack Obama gathered a majority of pledged delegates in the Democratic presidential nominating contest, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton defiantly sent out new signals Wednesday that she might take her fight for the nomination all the way to the party’s convention in August.
Indeed, she will never stop.
Mrs. Clinton stumped across South Florida, scene of the 2000 election debacle, pressing her case for including delegates from Florida and Michigan in the final delegate tally. On the trail and in interviews, she raised a new battle cry of determination, likening her struggle for these delegates to the nation’s historic struggles to free the slaves and grant women the right to vote.
But behind the scenes, the campaigns were working with the Democratic National Committee to resolve the dispute over the delegates before May 31, when the party’s rules committee is to decide the matter. Mrs. Clinton has said she wants all delegates counted and apportioned based on the popular vote of the two candidates in both states, although Mr. Obama did not appear on the ballot in Michigan.
Mr. Obama has said he wants the delegates seated but has not said how or in what proportion. David Axelrod, his chief strategist, said in an interview Wednesday that the campaign was willing to go beyond halfway in the apportionment.
That’s changing the rules during the competition. If it has been known before, Barack Obama could have campaigned in the two states and his name – by then unknown – should have been on the ballot in Michigan. The well-known name of Mrs. Clinton was an advantage, but Mr. Obama has proven to campaign very effectively.
“If that means we have to make some sacrifices,” Mr. Axelrod said, “we are open to do so, within reason. Our sense is the folks in Florida and Michigan want to resolve this. They’re not looking to prolong this.”
Mrs. Clinton called this offensive… how, why?
The outcome on the Florida and Michigan delegates may be only symbolic anyway. Winning extra delegates, even under her rosiest scenario, would not help Mrs. Clinton catch Mr. Obama’s lead on that score.
The point is that she does not want the delegates to be counted, but only the popular votes and also not the caucuses. In that way she can win, only counting the states she wins and the winner takes all, because she is the best nominee the worlds has ever seen. It’s a good plan and in November she wants only the Democrats votes counted, because she is the best president the world has ever seen. Only her campaign was acting poor and the fundraising and the organisation and the strategic plan and the judgement and the Democratic members were not loyal enough, but look, she was already eight years in the White House and she is the best, right?
Both need superdelegates to get over the finish line. But winning additional delegates from Florida and Michigan might be Mrs. Clinton’s last glimmer of hope in bolstering her case to superdelegates that she would be the stronger candidate in November. In her victory speech Tuesday in Kentucky, she noted that the primary race was one of the closest in history.
Of course that’s true, one of the 50 closest.
Florida and Michigan have emerged as central to Mrs. Clinton’s effort to keep her candidacy alive. Both states jumped ahead in the primary calendar in January in violation of party rules. As punishment, the party stripped them of their delegates, leaving them excluded from a primary process that has galvanized the rest of the country.
Mrs. Clinton agreed by then with that punishment, else Mr. Obama should have run in those states and perhaps won them, because he is much better campaigning.
Mrs. Clinton told The Associated Press on Wednesday that she would support those states if they had to carry their fight to the convention.
Then she has a pseudo-legal motive to attack Obama still saying that Senator McCain should be a better president than Senator Obama… And then there comes the bullet what will make Senator Clinton the nominee.
“Yes, I will,” she said. “I will, because I feel very strongly about this.”
God has chosen her…right? You have to believe it and it will be. What kind of president will that make? Who’s giving her God’s messages?
And Geoff Garin, her pollster, told MSNBC that she could campaign beyond the primaries because “there are enough uncommitted delegates left for either candidate to earn a majority.”
And also those committed delegates are not committed. They all can change their votes, according to Clinton’s statement: “there are no rules for delegates!”
Mr. Obama crossed the threshold of amassing a majority of pledged delegates on Tuesday with his victory in Oregon.
Come on! Do we count votes for a black man because he is black? Are we racists? Do we count votes for a man because he is a man? Are we sexists? What is wrong with a poor hard working non-elitist beer drinking white woman, who carries a gun, spits on the ground, shooting dugs after church in the weekends?
Mr. Garin added that at some point, one of the candidates would have enough total delegates to win the nomination, “but we have not reached that point yet; we probably won’t reach that point on June 3.” Mrs. Clinton has signalled that she intends to stay in the race at least through the final primaries on June 3.
At least, but you have never enough delegates because, according to Senator Clinton, the delegates can change their votes anytime at random. Remember, there are no rules for delegates, right?
Mr. Obama ignored Mrs. Clinton’s arguments about the delegates in an effort, his aides said, not to legitimize her point of view.
Nah…
“I know there are some people worried about the Democratic Party being divided,” Mr. Obama said. “We will be united.”
But than has Senator Clinton te be the nominee. Otherwise: forget it! The Billary-crowd will vote for their appointed better president McCain.
That strategists are working behind the scenes on the matter raised the possibility that Mrs. Clinton’s newfound fervour was an effort to make sure her apportioning method prevails.
You see, out ruling the caucus-states counting Florida and Michigan, changing pledged delegates voices commanding superdelegates to vote for unity and Hillary Clinton for president.
It also raised the possibility that her campaign was split over how to handle the end game of what some have admitted privately is a lost cause. Some Clinton aides said that she was well aware of her uphill climb and that she was making a symbolic point. They said she was hesitant about declaring that she could overcome Mr. Obama’s lead, but at the same time did not want to be seen as surrendering.
Just like Senator McCain, you only leave the theatre with victory, never surrender. There is a war and the enemy has to be eliminated at 2.30 a.m. Phone me when it is done.
Her swing across South Florida on Wednesday seemed essentially to be a campaign-within-a-campaign, one that is about process and is directed chiefly at the party’s rules committee.
If there are no rules, why the heck there is a party rules committee?
“I’ve heard some say that counting Florida and Michigan would be changing the rules,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I say that not counting Florida and Michigan is changing a central governing rule of this country.”
But not counting caucus-states acting within the rules and did nothing wrong?
She also sought to whip up populist sentiment, telling voters in Boca Raton, where the 2000 election played out vividly, “You didn’t break a single rule, and you should not be punished for matters beyond your control.”
Lies, they broke the rules.
She argued with fervour that the nomination should be determined by popular vote. She has claimed to have the lead in the popular vote by including Florida and Michigan in her tally.
O, no single vote for Senator Obama from Florida and Michigan?
“The outcome of our elections should be determined by the will of the people, nothing more, nothing less,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And we believe the popular vote is the truest expression of your will.”
Yes, next chance for the people to vote is in November. Don't try to do it in July or August because that does not count.
“The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal clear,” she said. “If any votes aren’t counted, the will of the people isn’t realized and our democracy is diminished.”
She should have made that statement before the rules and the punishment were established and she admitted the case.
She generally avoided mentioning Mr. Obama all day, but concluded a rally in Coral Gables on Wednesday by declaring: “Look at the states I’ve won. Look at the states I’m leading in. Look at the electoral map. It is clear I’m the stronger candidate.”
And she can’t even manage her campaign?
As her voice was drowned out with cheers, she added: “Stay with me. Let’s make history together.”
No, thanks. Let all the delegates of Florida and Michigan sit at the convention with a half vote each and free to vote for who they want, furthermore stick by the rules, removing the Clintons from the party. Out! The Democratic Party is no anarchistic community.
Pointer:
She makes herself a pariah in the party.

Arianna Huffington: Scotty Come Lately

Pointer wrote: this book is not a must read, but this article of Arianne Huffington about it has its own quality.
Scotty Come Lately
By Arianna Huffington
Seven takes on Scott McClellan's new book:

Take One: What Took You So Long?
In What Happened, Scott McClellan offers withering portraits of George Bush, Karl Rove, Condi Rice, and Scooter Libby, confirms that we went to war in Iraq under false pretenses, and that we were serially lied to about the outing of Valerie Plame.
Interesting stuff, Scott. But about five years too late.
It's George Tenet déjà vu all over again. How many times are we going to have a key Bush administration official try to wash the blood off his hands -- and add a chunk of change to his bank account -- by writing a come-clean book years after the fact, pointing the finger at everyone else while painting himself as an innocent bystander to history who saw all the horrible things that were happening but, somehow, had no choice but to go along?
McClellan told the Washington Post that he wrote the book to "provide an open and honest look at how things went off course and what can be learned from it." And he told Cox News Service, "My job was to advocate and defend [Bush's] policies and speak on his behalf. This is an opportunity for me now to share my own views and perspective on things."
Great. We need all the openness and honesty we can get. But it would have been a lot more helpful if he had taken the "opportunity" when it really mattered -- say before the 2004 election, when it could have potentially saved thousands of lives.
What Happened is page-turning reading. What Didn't Happen -- namely McClellan telling the truth in service to his country rather than in service to his book sales -- is a stomach-turning disappointment.

Take Two: The Rationale for Iraq is Even Worse Than We Thought
McClellan really lets it rip on Iraq. He says that Bush led a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" to sell the war, was not "open and forthright on Iraq," managed the runup to war "in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option," "largely ignored or simply disregarded" contradictory intelligence on the war, and as the war went poorly responded by "never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising."
McClellan's scathing conclusion: "History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."
Perhaps the most damning revelation regarding Iraq is McClellan's assertion that the real reason Bush wanted to invade Iraq was the "opportunity to create a legacy of greatness" by transforming the Middle East into a land of peace and brotherhood. Over 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers sacrificed for a neo-con wet dream of democratic dominoes across the region. How chilling is that?
McClellan also tosses in a pinch of Oedipal subtext: "The president had promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office. And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating."
Such is the stuff foreign policy nightmares are made of.

Take Three: The Press Secretary Presses the Press
McClellan points an accusatory finger at the mainstream media -- he calls them "enablers" and says they were too easy on the administration during the selling of the war:
"The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. ... In this case, the 'liberal media' didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."
Great point, Scotty. We and many others made it back in 2003.
It's such a great point, it caused Karl Rove to act like something nefarious has happened to McClellan, transforming him from the lie-spouting sock puppet he has "known for a long time" into somebody who "sounds like a left-wing blogger." Have anyone specific in mind, Karl?

Take Four: Rove More Turd Blossom Than Boy Genius
Speaking of Rove, McClellan's tome continues the obliteration of the Rove mystique, reminding us what an out-and-out liar Rove was and is -- more than willing to assure McClellan that he wasn't involved in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity when, in fact, he was up to his Turd Blossom in the sordid affair, having discussed Plame with Matt Cooper and Bob Novak in an effort to discredit Joe Wilson.
McClellan also makes it clear that the indelible, says-all-you-need-to-know-about-this-administration photo of Bush looking out the window of Air Force One during his too-busy-to-stop flyover of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina was a Rove special: "Karl was convinced we needed to do it -- and the president agreed."

Take Five: Truthiness in Government
Stephen Colbert satirized the Bush approach when he coined the concept of "truthiness": the truth we want, in our gut, to exist, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.
McClellan reveals how much the joke matched the reality, saying that Bush's "leadership style is based more on instinct than deep intellectual debate." Citing Bush's assertion that he honestly couldn't remember if he'd ever done cocaine, McClellan says he felt he "was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true."
But who needs reality when you have faith? Who needs truth when you have truthiness? As George Costanza put it on Seinfeld: "Jerry, just remember, it's not a lie if you believe it."
A fantastic philosophy for a sit-com character. A disastrous philosophy for a sitting president.

Take Six: Truth in Government
According to McClellan, the Secret Service code name for the White House press secretary was "Matrix."
As any Keanu Reaves fan will tell you, the Matrix is a simulated reality used to pacify and subdue the human population in a dystopian future.
Who knew Secret Service agents have such an arch sense of humor?
Take Seven: Heckuva Job, Scotty!
On the day McClellan resigned as press secretary, Bush pictured a time down the road when he and his former aide would "be rocking on chairs in Texas, talking about the good old days and his time as the press secretary. And I can assure you, I will feel the same way then that I feel now, that I can say to Scott, 'Job well done.'"
Maybe not. Although, since, according to McClellan, Bush "has a way of falling back on the hazy memory to protect himself from potential political embarrassment," who knows?
I can already see the blurb on the back of the paperback edition of What Happened: "Heckuva job, Scotty!" - George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States

Who Said What And When?

In January during an appearance in Dover, New Hampshire, Clinton was introduced by a woman named Francine Torge who said the following, according to the New York Times' "Caucus" blog: "Some people compare one of the other candidates to John F. Kennedy. But he was assassinated. And Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who actually" passed landmark civil rights legislation. The Clinton campaign called those comments "totally inappropriate."
OK, totally inappropriate, but very useful for later when things go wrong in the Billarygang.
This was Francine Torge, a Clinton-backer from New Hampshire, right?
More recently, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) -- after his speech to the National Rifle Association was interrupted by a noise from off stage -- joked: "That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he -- he dove for the floor."
Also the Suckebee from Arkansas can not be called a Obamaniac.
The Republican version is somewhat thoughtless but the Hillary statement was not new and she used it in interviews with the writing press on March 6, totally incorrect because the primaries of 1968 just started in March and she used it on May 2 again, feeling good te repeat it the same day. You get used to it, but on television live it makes a difference:
"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?," Clinton said in explaining why she remained in the race to the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader editorial board. "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."
That's not out of the context, because the question was why she stays in the race as she can't win by the regular voting in the primaries. The votings can not bring her ahead of Obama, so, there must be somwhat else. What is it?
That long stay in the primaries is unprecedented. Also Bill Clinton started in February, a month later than this year, and he was in May as the frontrunner in the same position as Obama now. That's far different than Clinton is by now. There is no simularity on behalf of the length of time and her position not te be able to win.
In 1992 she thought end of May: only a bullet can prevent Bill to become President. Of course, she did not say that and nobody had said that.
But your days and nights are filled with fear and she had that experience, right?
There is no sign that the billarygang will step out the race before the general election. They want to prove that Barack Obama can't win over McCain. She said already so "McCain is should be a better president than Obama, but I'ám the best qualified for the job." She can say something to win votes, but change, no, that's not where she goes for and not what the Billary Democrats want. They want a past century back. That there's a war going on? O yeah, but that's far away, right? Let's vote for McCain, he is old, so he knows how it was in the past. Even Vietnam was not that bad as they say, right? We killed far more of them than they killed us. McCain knows how to win a war. Never surrender, that's the spirit of Hillary Clinton.

John McCain is Out Of Touch

Every time John McCain aims low in his increasingly belligerent campaign rhetoric, I think about an item Time’s Joe Klein wrote about a month ago. Klein, a McCain admirer, predicted that McCain would avoid the cheap and pathetic style of campaigning we’re seeing now. McCain, Klein said, “sees the tawdry ceremonies of politics — the spin and hucksterism — as unworthy.” If he doesn’t, “McCain will have to live with the knowledge that in the most important business of his life, he chose expediency over honor. That’s probably not the way he wants to be remembered.”
Klein’s optimism is looking shaky. Consider how John McCain chose to honor Memorial Day.

“Barack Obama really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time,” the Arizona senator added. “If there was any other issue before the American people, and you hadn’t had anything to do with it in a couple of years, I think the American people would judge that very harshly.” […]
The Iraq war, which polls have shown that most of the country opposes, is shaping up to be a defining issue in the November presidential election. McCain, who wrapped up the GOP nomination in March, supports continued military involvement in Iraq; Obama, who has all but clinched the Democratic nomination, has called for withdrawing U.S. troops.
“For him to talk about dates for withdrawal, which basically is surrender in Iraq after we’re succeeding so well is, I think, really inexcusable,” said McCain, who has been to Iraq eight times, most recently in March.

Now, I’ve come to expect cheap rhetoric from John McCain, but “surrender” talk is generally more the province of right-wing blogs, not respected presidential candidates. Most Americans believe withdrawal from Iraq best serves American interests. Is McCain prepared to smear a majority of the country?
But that’s hardly the most nonsensical aspect of McCain’s attack. First, McCain decided to lash out at Obama for taking a sensible approach to Iraq on Memorial Day. This is a holiday for a reason — it’s about paying respect to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Can McCain — you know, the one who vowed to make this an “honorable” campaign — not see how wildly inappropriate this is?

Second, in what universe does McCain feel justified arguing that Obama’s “knowledge” and “judgment” on Iraq are lacking? Obama’s the one who’s been right about the war from the start, while McCain was the one who a) said the war would be short and easy; b) said Sunnis and Shi’ia would get along fine; c) insisted that the war was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from giving WMD to al Qaeda; d) said we had to “stay the course” with the Rumsfeld strategy; e) is still confused about Sunni, Shi’ia, al Qaeda, and Iran; and f) continues to believe the “surge” policy has brought about the non-existent political progress it was intended to create.
McCain may be too foolish to recognize his mistake, and too blinded by crass partisanship to approach his humiliating record with humility, but to lash out at Obama for being right is demonstrably ridiculous.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, who, exactly, does McCain think we would “surrender” to in Iraq were we to leave? I realize McCain isn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, but he does realize the nature of the conflict in Iraq, doesn’t he?
My hunch, reading over McCain’s obtuse and inarticulate assessments of the war, is that he’s deluded himself into thinking that the war in Iraq is with al Qaeda. That the Republican presidential candidate is confused about the source of violence in Iraq with the war in its sixth year doesn’t speak well of his competence, but with some regularity, McCain has said that “al Qaeda will then have won” if we withdraw U.S. troops.
Regrettably, McCain doesn’t have the foggiest idea what he’s talking about.

Some students of the insurgency say Mr. McCain is making a dangerous generalization. “The U.S. has not been fighting Al Qaeda, it’s been fighting Iraqis,” said Juan Cole, a fierce critic of the war who is the author of “Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi’ite Islam” and a professor of history at the University of Michigan. A member of Al Qaeda “is technically defined as someone who pledges fealty to Osama bin Laden and is given a terror operation to carry out. It’s kind of like the Mafia,” Mr. Cole said. “You make your bones, and you’re loyal to a capo. And I don’t know if anyone in Iraq quite fits that technical definition.”
Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is just one group, though a very lethal one, in the stew of competing Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iranian-backed groups, criminal gangs and others that make up the insurgency in Iraq. That was vividly illustrated last month when the Iraqi Army’s unsuccessful effort to wrest control of Basra from the Shiite militia groups that hold sway there led to an explosion of violence.
The current situation in Iraq should properly be described as “a multifactional civil war” in which “the government is composed of rival Shia factions” and “they are embattled with an outside Shia group, the Mahdi Army,” Ira M. Lapidus, a co-author of “Islam, Politics and Social Movements” and a professor of history at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in an e-mail message. “The Sunni forces are equally hard to assess,” he added, and “it is an open question as to whether Al Qaeda is a unified operating organization at all.”

Before McCain starts irresponsibly throwing around painfully stupid rhetoric about “surrender,” maybe he could take a moment to learn something about the war he helped create more than five years ago. While he’s at it, if could also pause to consider why it’s crass and disrespectful to make these kinds of attacks on Memorial Day, I’m sure we’d all appreciate it.

A Dismal Record

Amnesty International Report 2008:
As the world’s most powerful state, the USA sets the standard for government behaviour globally. With breathtaking legal obfuscation, the US administration has continued its efforts to weaken the absolute prohibition against torture and other ill-treatment. Senior officials refused to denounce the notorious practice of “water-boarding”. The US President authorized the CIA to continue secret detention and interrogation, although they amount to the international crime of enforced disappearance. Hundreds of prisoners in Guantánamo and Bagram, and thousands in Iraq, continued to be detained without charge or trial, many for more than six years. The US government has failed to ensure full accountability for abuses by its forces in Iraq. An Order issued by the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) in June 2004 granting immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts to foreign private military and security firms operating in Iraq, presents further obstacles to accountability. There was wide concern about the killings of at least 17 Iraqi civilians by guards employed by the private security company, Blackwater, in September 2007. These actions have done nothing to further the fight against terrorism and a great deal to damage the USA’s prestige and influence abroad.
[…]
The world needs a USA genuinely engaged and committed to the cause of human rights, at home and abroad. In November 2008, the US people will elect a new President. For the USA to have moral authority as a human rights champion, the next administration must close Guantánamo and either try the detainees in ordinary federal courts or release them. It must repeal the Military Commissions Act and ensure respect for international humanitarian law and human rights in all military and security operations. It must ban evidence obtained through coercion and denounce all forms of torture and other ill-treatment no matter to what end. The new administration must establish a viable strategy for international peace and security.
It must ditch support for authoritarian leaders and invest instead in the institutions of democracy, rule of law and human rights that will provide long-term stability. And it must be ready to end US isolation in the international human rights system and engage constructively with the UN Human Rights Council.

If the US administration has distinguished itself in recent years through its defiance of international law, European governments have shown a proclivity for double standards. The European Union (EU) professes to be “a union of values, united by respect for the rule of law, shaped by common standards and consensus, committed to tolerance, democracy, and human rights”. Yet, in 2007 fresh evidence came to light that a number of EU member states had looked the other way or colluded with the CIA to abduct, secretly detain and illegally transfer prisoners to countries where
they were tortured and otherwise ill-treated. Despite repeated calls by the Council of Europe, no government has fully investigated the wrongdoings, come clean and/or put in place adequate measures to prevent future use of European territory for rendition and secret detention.
On the contrary, some European governments sought to water down the 1996 ruling from the European Court of Human Rights prohibiting the return of suspects to countries where they could face torture. The Court pronounced itself in one of two cases pending before it in 2007, reaffirming the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment.
While many grumble about the regulatory excesses of the EU, there is little outrage at the lack of EU regulation of human rights at home. The truth of the matter is that the EU is unable to hold its member states accountable on human rights matters which fall outside EU law. The Fundamental Rights Agency, created in 2007, has been given such a limited mandate that it cannot demand any real accountability. While the EU sets a high bar on human rights for candidate countries seeking accession (and rightly so), once they are allowed in, they are able to breach the standards with little or no accountability to the EU.
Can the EU or its member states call for respect for human rights by China or by Russia when they themselves are complicit in torture? Can the EU ask other – much poorer – countries to keep their borders open, when its own member states are restricting the rights of refugees and asylum-seekers? Can it preach tolerance abroad when it has failed to tackle discrimination against Roma, Muslim and other minorities living within its borders?
As for the USA, so too for the EU, the year ahead will bring important political transitions. The Lisbon treaty signed by EU governments in December 2007 demands new institutional commitments to be forged among the member states. In some key member states elections and other developments have brought about or will lead to new political leadership. They provide opportunities for action on human rights within the EU and globally.

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If the link does not work: paste: http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/download-report

McClellan whacks Bush, White House

McClellan describes Bush as able to convince himself of his own spin and relates a phone call he overheard Bush having during the 2000 campaign, in which he said he could not remember whether he had used cocaine. "I remember thinking to myself, 'How can that be?' " he writes.

The former aide describes Bush as a willing participant in treating his presidency as a permanent political campaign, run in large part by his top political adviser, Rove.

"The president had promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office," he writes. "And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned."

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on "propaganda" to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be "badly misguided."

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them -- and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.

Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.
But he writes that he later was told that “Karl was convinced we needed to do it — and the president agreed.”

“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”

McClellan, who turned 40 in February, was press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. An Austin native from a political family, he began working as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Gov. Bush in early 1999, was traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and was chief deputy to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at the beginning of Bush’s first term.

“I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”

Is his book a must read?
No, all his confessions and yesterday's talk is a diversionary tactic of a reborn liar. The real issue is 9/11, a false flag to start the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now you have to believe: some Republicans are good guys. We know better, alas.