McCain-Palin: New Lies Will Do As Old Lies Did

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin sat down with ABC News' Charlie Gibson for an interview, part of which aired Sept. 11. In the exchange, the Alaska governor misstated a basic fact about her state's energy production:

Palin: Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States.

It's simply untrue that Alaska produces anything close to 20 percent of the U.S. "energy supply," a term that is generally defined as energy consumed.

According to EIA, the total supply was just over 5.5 billion barrels in 2007. And according to EIA analyst Paul Hess, that would calculate to only "2.4 percent of the 100,368.6 trillion BTUs the U.S. consumes."


McCain Gets It Wrong, Too
Sen. John McCain has also has used this inflated, incorrect figure. On Sept. 3, McCain told ABC News' Gibson:

McCain: Well, I think Americans are going to be very, very, very pleased. This is a very dynamic person. [Palin's] been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply.

McCain repeated the false figure more recently, in a September 11 interview with Portland, Maine, news station WCSH6.
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Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes

Photo: The Wasilla City Council, with Sarah Palin, the future governor and vice-presidential nominee, at the center, in a 1998 photograph. Throughout her career, Ms. Palin has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and blurred the line between government and personal grievance.

This New York Times’ article is by Jo Becker, Peter S. Goodman and Michael Powell.(bold prints added)
WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.
Appointment Franci Havemeister
So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.
Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.
Husband Todd vetoes projects
When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.
Blogger ordered to silence
And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.
“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”
Ethics reform
Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.
Sarah's quality
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
Loyal support
Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.
“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.”
Always: but...
“But,” he added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”
Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor’s spokespeople, who did not respond.
Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public’s interest. “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska,” he said.
Loyalty paid
In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.
Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
Environment and polar bears
Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.
When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.
“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said.
Trooper-gate
State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.
Lover-gate
Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin’s voice. The governor’s husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.
Photo: Governor Palin giving her first State of the State Address to the Alaska Legislature in 2007 as Lyda Green, Senate president, and John Harris, speaker of the House, both Republicans, listened.
“I understood from the call that Todd wasn’t happy with me hiring John and he’d like to see him not there,” Mr. Harris said.
“The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” he added. “And at our level, they want to strike back.”
Through a campaign spokesman, Mr. Palin said he “did not recall” referring to Mr. Bitney in the conversation.
Hometown Mayor to become President
Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.
“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”
Demographics
Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader’s outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century.
Change to conservative
In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard.
Winning
After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax.
And, her supporters say, she cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. “She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently,” said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time.
Museum of change
But careers were turned upside down. The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one.
Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. “It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn’t want that,” he said.
Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. “He said: ‘Gotcha, Cooper,’ ” Mr. Cooper said.
Mr. Stoll did not recall that conversation, although he said he supported Ms. Palin’s campaign and was pleased when she fired Mr. Cooper.
Supporters first
In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.
Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money.
“She told me she’d like to see him fired,” Mr. Showers recalled. “But she couldn’t do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney.” Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain.
Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. “She started the ball rolling,” said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus, then the State Republican Party’s general counsel.
“Professionals were either forced out or fired,” Mr. Deuser said.
Silence ordered
Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.
The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.
No censorship, but…
“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”
Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.
Warning shot
But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.
“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”
“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”
Reform Crucible
Restless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor.
Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling.
Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.
In focus
The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen’s club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.
“She was honest and forthright,” said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.
Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate.

Wrong same is good change
In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.
“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”
Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.
Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.
Winning again
Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent.
Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.
Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman’s instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.
Fresh is not ripe
“She was fresh, and she was tomorrow,” said Michael Carey, a former editorial page editor for The Anchorage Daily News. “She just floated along like Mary Poppins.”
Government
Half a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformer’s sword.
As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.
All over again
Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin’s appointments. “The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people,” he said.
Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.
“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ”
Fresh ol’-boys’ club
The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.
Achievements
To her supporters — and with an 80 percent approval rating, she has plenty — Ms. Palin has lifted Alaska out of a mire of corruption. She gained the passage of a bill that tightens the rules covering lobbyists. And she rewrote the tax code to capture a greater share of oil and gas sale proceeds.
“Does anybody doubt that she’s a tough negotiator?” said State Representative Carl Gatto, Republican of Palmer.
State of siege
Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin’s reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.
While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”
Hide yourself
Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”
On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.”
Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!”
Mr. Bailey, a former midlevel manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin’s campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation.
The nanny
Another confidante of Ms. Palin’s is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin’s campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin’s children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as “the babysitter,” a title that Ms. Frye disavows.
Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.
“YOU ARE SO AWESOME!” Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.
Missing in action
Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.
During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.
Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives — and vetoes — from news releases.
Mayors’ complaint
Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show.
Safety: turn off!
Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.
Sovjet manner
At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.
Tensions pile-up
The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.
Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a “hater.”
The Palin doctrine
It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as “bad people who are anti-Alaska.”
Escape to the top
As Ms. Palin’s star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.
Secret for all
At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor’s office. Dianne Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.
Right to speak
“I was thinking, I don’t remember giving up my First Amendment rights,” Ms. Woodruff said. “Just because you’re not going gaga over Sarah doesn’t mean you can’t speak your mind.”
No thoughts now
Anchorage Daily News reports: Rep. Jay Ramras, R-Fairbanks, was an outspoken Palin critic. But in a recent interview he veered away from any criticism.
"Everything that's flitting through my mind right now is better left where it is," Ramras said, in answer to a question about Palin as vice-presidential candidate. He said it's time to rally around the governor, whom he called "the American Idol of politics."
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The Pain Game

“We are all Georgians!” cried McCain and now we have the soon-to-be-his-successor Sarah Palin, who thinks that Georgia got its name from the current President of the USA to honour him. Let’s be clear, Palin is the presidential hopeful of the Republicans, because McCain can’t even handle himself on the toilet anymore. What will she do?

What really happened?
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, that part of Georgia what is mostly populated by Russians, does not want to be part of Georgia, just like the “great state” Alaska of Sarah Palin doesn’t want to be part of the USA. But when Georgia’s president wants to manage the question with force, Russia comes to help South Ossetia and that works very well, because the best of Georgia’s troopers were bound in Iraq by that time. So it could be wise for Sarah Palin to ask the help from Russia to make Alaska independent or at least loosen the cruel ties with the United States and its “damned peace of paper”, called the Constitution.
But McCain has still not lost his consciousness so Sarah Palin has to slow down and while waiting she follows another scheme.

“NATO should extend membership to two former Soviet republics, and any Russian invasion of a NATO state could lead to a conflict with the U.S., Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin told ABC News.
However, the United States and Russia "cannot repeat the Cold War," the Alaska governor said in her first interview since becoming Sen. John McCain's running mate. […]
Palin said she supported NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia -- a move Russia strongly opposes. She also said the United States must be "vigilant" about larger powers invading small democracies.

Not so sharp! She doesn’t know and how should she know, that the USA are not the only member of NATO. A good reason to keep Georgia out of NATO is what Sarah Palin stated, the thread of problems with Russia, about South Ossetia. Europeans want to clear those problems first along diplomacy manors and also Russia is not very eager to start a war with its best neighbour, client and supplier, the European Union.
While it is unlikely to get arranged Georgia into NATO the neocons, more used to the matters of war than the rural christian conservative Palin, have readied their plans to make money with the case.

Look at it:
Having pulled back from Ossetia and Abkhazia, the Georgians can now regroup and re-equip. They are in desperate need of two things: weapons to kill tanks, and weapons to kill or deter aircraft and helicopters. We can supply both. The Stinger missile, the bane of Russian Frontal Aviation in Afghanistan, is still the most potent shoulder-fired weapon around. It will cause Russian close support aircraft to keep their distance, or to attack from higher altitude. Providing Georgia with medium-range surface-to-air missiles which can be deployed from Georgian territory proper will further push back their high-altitude aircraft (e.g., Tu-22M Backfires).
Freed from aerial observation and the threat of air attack, Georgian forces could move dismounted over the mountains more readily than Russian mechanized forces can move along the roads. Which means that the Georgians would be free to set up ambushes to block further Russian advances and to interdict their lines of communication. We can provide the wherewithal for them to do this. First, we need to give the Georgians anti-tank mines, and not just any kind, but our latest "smart" off-route mines like the XM93 Wide Area Mine (WAM). These don't have to be placed directly on the roads, but can be put off to the side, where built-in sensors can detect armoured vehicles and launch explosive formed penetrator (RFP) warheads at them.
Second, we need to give them our best anti-tank guided missile, the FGM-148 Javelin. This is a "fire and forget" weapon: once the operator lines up the target in his sights and locks on, he can fire the missile and get away, while the missile will fly autonomously to the target. With a range of about two kilometers, the Javelin also uses a "top attack" profile, diving down onto the roof of the tank where the armor is thinnest. In action in Operation Iraqi Freedom, javelins were devastating against Russian-designed tanks. Knocking out a few tanks or other armored vehicles on a narrow mountain road creates a barrier to movement behind which all traffic piles up, immobile and vulnerable to attack.
Most of that traffic will consist of trucks and other "soft" vehicles. It's a waste to go after them with expensive missiles, but cheap mortars work pretty well. Even better would be long-range, highly accurate heavy sniper rifles, such as the 12.7mm (.50-caliber) Barrett, much favored by U.S. special forces. Georgian special forces are reputed to be well trained and highly motivated. They would probably be even more motivated fighting Russians on their own soil than they were fighting al Qaeda back in Iraq.
Pretty soon, Russian forces will be taking serious casualties. They will have to inject more troops to protect their lines of communication. They will have to get out of their troop carriers and climb up into the mountains, where they will take more casualties from an agile and elusive enemy. They can't even resort to the time honoured tactic of butchering the local population of Ossetia and Abkhazia, since these are now "Russian citizens," having been granted passports by the Russian government (thereby doing Hitler one better: there actually were Germans in the Sudetenland, but Putin had to invent his downtrodden "Russian" minority in Georgia).
As Russian forces start to bleed, it will be impossible, even in the controlled media of Putin's Russia, to hide the casualties from the Russian people. They will probably respond to this as they did to the bloodletting in both Afghanistan and Chechnya. Worse, for the Russian government, a prolonged and bloody war will require a massive increase in the Russian military budget, which has been run on a shoestring for most of the Putin era. That would mean making painful choices between the military and other priorities, precisely at the same time that oil prices have begun to come down, cutting into Russian revenues. In addition, the Russian military will begin to worry about the derailing of its abortive transformation plan: as the U.S. military recently discovered, you can fight a war, or you can transform yourself, but it's almost impossible to do both at once. Warfighting will eat into the already thin training, procurement, and research & development budgets, and soon the Russian staff will be howling, too.
Source: “The Pain Game”

Yeah, good business and of course this will escalate and the EU will not come into fight.
And then Sarah will think: “that damned Europeans, let’s join Russia, fight Europe and free Alaska!”
Keep dreaming…

Unravelling Wartime Myths

Author Edward W. Wood Jr. gives a WWII veteran's take on the dangers of glorifying war.

Some readers just don't want to hear it from me -- writing about the myths of World War II.
Maybe they'll feel better if it's coming from Edward W. Wood Jr., a guy who was awarded the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Purple Heart, and the Bronze Star. A retired city planner and author of "Worshipping the Myths of World War II," Wood is quick to point out: "I was wounded in France, 60 miles east of Verdun ... after only a day and a half in combat. I'm no expert on long-term combat experience." But it's way more combat experience than any of the leading architects of the war in Iraq.
"I got hit in the head, the small of my back, and pelvis with shrapnel from artillery fire," he told me last week. "The wound shattered my life. In those days, you couldn't talk about the emotional impact."
He's 82 now and has spent a lifetime trying to understand war and its impact on those involved. "Worshipping the Myths of World War II" is a product of his very personal, honest and courageous exploration.
Some people consider talk about the myths of World War II disparaging to veterans. Why do some equate demythologizing with anti-Americanism?
Edward W. Wood Jr.: There's two kinds of soldiers: those who have been in combat and the guys who haven't. I think those two groups have vastly different attitudes about war. Another reason people react that way is because people in the United States have absolutely no idea what war entails. I think a lot of very good people believe that these myths really describe what war is. Therefore, to demythologize means, for them, putting down people who have been involved.
But I don't think we want to look at what our tax dollars are doing. We just don't want to look at the reality that's there. None of this is a disparagement to those who've really seen combat. I am really anti-war now and yet, in terms of my own personal life, I have no regrets about having been in World War II. I believe in nonviolence. But, I'm in favor of a draft because I think we all would think a lot more carefully about war.
Why do you think these myths are so persistent?
These myths are really rooted in our past and go beyond World War II -- going back to the King Phillips War. There were Manifest Destiny wars with Mexico, Phillipines and the rest. Teddy Roosevelt believed you weren't really a man unless you served in war. I don't think we really want to look at that and it's not taught very much in school. It's a very subtle message. I think that's why it persists. The myths exist because we don't look carefully at our history and because it gives people a great glow to wrap themselves in it. But I think it would be healthy to just be open about.
What criteria do you use to judge artistic interpretations of World War II?
There are essentially two really important criteria, I use:
1) Does the author or filmmaker say something about himself that he didn't want to tell the world? Does it really delve into what combat does in the deepest kind of way? Does it wrestle with the moral dilemma of killing -- seeing and watching people get killed -- and how is the act of killing treated?
2) Does it reflect the extraordinary complexity of human reaction to death? And modern war is not just about soldiers in combat but also the impact on civilians. If you don't have that part of the equation, you're missing at least 50 percent of the story.
How do you see these myths impacting the way people view the war in Iraq?
If you look at how we got into the Iraq war, you see the president and his administration using (World War II) as an example for Iraq; comparing Saddam to Hitler and comparing themselves to Churchill and Roosevelt. I don't think that's quite appropriate.
We appeal to the idea of the 'Good War' and a war against evil where the enemy is dehumanized into this monstrous evil ... But, actually, World War I and World War II were really one war. If you look at it that way, what happens in the 1930s was a function of the Versailles Treaty and the terrible reparations imposed on Germany ... So we built up a situation that was going to inevitably lead to another war.
Iraq itself was made out of whole cloth in the early 1920s almost by fiat, putting the Kurds, the Shias and Sunnis in one country. So, even now, we are dealing with the consequences of World War I.
Do combat veterans who've served in the infantry have a different perception of what war means, compared to soldiers in the Navy or Air Force?
The guys who flew in World War II I respect beyond measure -- the 8th Air Force, for example. But I do think it's a different experience for soldiers in the Air Force and Navy, compared to soldiers involved in ground combat. It gives you a very different attitude about what war is.
In the final chapter of your book, you write: "the issue today is not just the simple one -- how can we leave Iraq? -- but, rather one far more difficult: How can we turn from war as the solution to our international problems?" What do you see as the answer to the important question you raise?
I don't have the answer. But we need to get away from the myths and try to understand what war is really like. In this war, the only ones who pay the price are the soldiers and Iraqi civilians. That's so terribly unfair. It infuriates me. If we are in a war, the whole country should pay a price for it.
I've turned against war but if we're at war, we can't have a war and all these people making money off it and living normal lives. It hurts me to see people who go about their lives while terrible death and suffering are occurring in Iraq.
America is not very good at recognizing who its real enemies are. We get it all confused with this problem of evil. We see it in others but never in us.
That's hard for people to even hear, never mind think about.
I'm running against the grain and it gets lonely sometimes.

Aerial Wildlife Hunting

The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund has put out an ad on Sarah Palin's promotion of (and personal fondness for) aerial wolf hunting, describing the practice "brutal." The ad features disturbing, graphic footage of a wolf's death. "Do we really want a vice president who champions such savagery?" it concludes. Watch:





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Leaked Draft Agreement Calls for Indefinite Occupation

Iraqi Blogger Raed Jarrar: The U.S./Iraq agreement legitimizes long term bases and calls for an indefinite number of U.S. troops to remain in Iraq.
Amy Goodman: President Bush announced Tuesday he would withdraw 8,000 troops from Iraq by February. He also called for a, quote, "quiet surge" in the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The President outlined his plan in a speech at the Naval War College.

President George W. Bush: [General Petraeus has] just completed a review of the situation in Iraq, and he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have recommended that we move forward with additional force reductions. And I agree. Over the next several months, we will bring home about 3,400 combat support forces, including aviation personnel, explosive ordinance teams, combat and construction engineers, military police and logistical support forces. By November, we'll bring home a Marine battalion that is now serving in Anbar province. And in February of 2009, another Army combat brigade will come home. This amounts to about 8,000 additional American troops returning home without replacement.

AG: Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, criticized President Bush for keeping troop levels in Iraq largely unchanged. Speaking in Ohio on Tuesday, Obama said, "In the absence of the timetable to remove our combat brigades we will continue to give Iraq's leaders a blank check instead of pressing them to reconcile their differences."
But neither Senator Obama nor President Bush made reference to a recently leaked draft of an Iraqi-U.S. agreement that outlines the long-term status of U.S. forces in Iraq. Iraqi blogger and political analyst Raed Jarrar has read and translated the leaked document. He says the agreement doesn't set a deadline for the withdrawal of non-combat U.S. troops in Iraq. He joins us also from Washington, D.C.
Welcome, Raed. Talk about what you have found, what this leaked document says that you've translated.
Raed Jarrar: Well, it's a long document. It has twenty-seven articles. And most of them are outrageous. They give the U.S. unprecedented authorities and rights and immunities. Maybe a major point that is related to this discussion is the fact that the agreement legitimizes or legalizes these long-term bases, that indefinite number of U.S. troops will stay there.
Now, this is a huge issue that is not being discussed in the U.S. enough. We usually get stuck in discussing troops level, how many troops are the U.S. going to keep in Iraq, or what's the mission of these troops. But from an Iraqi point of view, the majority of Iraqis and the majority of Iraqi parliamentarians and other representatives of the Iraqi community are demanding a complete withdrawal that leaves no permanent bases, no troops and no private contractors. And unfortunately, from this side, from the U.S. side, both of the ruling parties and both of the mainstream candidates are planning to leave permanent bases with troops indefinitely.
AG: And what about the Iraqi leadership right now? What are they saying?
RJ: Now, the Iraqi leadership in the executive branch, which is a non-elected branch of the Iraqi government, are allied with the Bush administration. They are using the same terminology of the Bush administration. They're asking for a withdrawal, a partial withdrawal or withdrawal of what they call "combat troops," without really defining that. And they are OK with leaving permanent bases and U.S. troops in the long run that have immunity inside and outside the bases.
Now, the Iraqi leadership in the other branch of the government, the only elected branch, the parliament, actually is asking for a complete withdrawal. And these calls do reflect -- the calls for a complete withdrawal do reflect what the majority of Iraqis want. More than three-fourths of the Iraqi population are asking the U.S. to leave completely, not leave, you know, half and keep some tens of thousands of troops behind to do some extra missions.
AG: And Barack Obama, does he represent something different, Raed?
RJ: Maybe from a U.S. point of view, there is a difference in rhetoric. But from an Iraqi point of view, I think both the candidates, Obama and McCain, are planning to leave troops in the long run. So from an Iraqi point of view, I don't think there is a major difference in the U.S. foreign policy in Iraq between the two candidates, because both of them are not for ending the intervention in Iraq. Both of them are for keeping troops in Iraq. They call it residual force; they call it whatever they want to call it. But they want to continue interfering in Iraq militarily and politically in the long run.
And this is something that is completely rejected by Iraqis. Iraqis see the complete U.S. withdrawal as the first step towards their national reconciliation and reconstruction, not the same way that some of the candidates now are trying to use withdrawal as a tool to punish Iraqis or, you know, make sure that Iraqis are not being lazy or sleeping. I mean, it's not that way. Iraqis are fighting politically and in other ways to end this illegal occupation of their country. And it's not a gift that -- or not something that we should be bargaining with them. It's their right to ask to get their country back. And unless they get their country back completely, I don't think Iraq will become a stable place.
AG: Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has said all U.S. troops should be out by the end of 2011. How does that fit into this picture? And what about the latest deal that has been made between, I think the report was, Shell, the oil company, and the Iraqi government?
RJ: Again, what Nouri al-Maliki is saying is that all U.S. combat troops will leave, but there will be exceptions that will stay in Iraq indefinitely. Now, this view that Mr. al-Maliki is representing in Iraq is completely rejected. Iraqis do not support the idea of half-withdrawal and leaving U.S. troops on the long run. In fact, the full agreement, that can be viewed on my organization's website now, on afsc.org, can show you in details how the U.S. will stay on the long run and who gets to decide the troops level and the troop tasks. It's neither the Iraqi nor the U.S. elected officials.
Now, a good thing that you bring up the issue of the oil deals, because we went through a very similar discussion to what we're discussing now last year about the oil law. The Bush administration and al-Maliki's administration tried to pass an oil law, and then the Iraqi legislative branch blocked it, the same way that now they are trying to pass this long-term agreement and the Iraqi parliament is blocking it. And they ended up losing that battle, because the majority of Iraqis and the majority of Iraqi parliamentarians rejected the law … Many people are expecting that the Iraqi parliament will reject this U.S. long-term agreement, and maybe they will end up finding other loopholes to pass it.

Sarah Palin: Saddam Hussein Was Involved in 9/11-attacks

When everyone's attention was focusing on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's less-than-reassuring interview about foreign policy with ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson, the Republican nominee for vice president was off delivering a speech in which she suggested a dramatically greater ignorance of recent history and international affairs than was on display in the interview.

Speaking at Alaska's Fort Wainwright on Thursday, where she hailed the combat deployment of her son's Army unit to Iraq as a "righteous cause," Palin explicitly and repeatedly renewed the discredited claim that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was initiated as a necessary and credible response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"You'll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans," Palin told the departing soldiers.

Palin's assessment directly contradicts that of President Bush and key members of his national security team.

After his administration got called out for trying to suggest an Iraq-terrorism connection -- following an over-the-top appearance by conspiracy-theorist-in-chief Dick Cheney on NBC's "Meet the Press," in which the vice president made the false claim that Iraq had been the "geographic base" for the 9/11 attacks -- Bush acknowledged on September 17, 2003, that, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks."

Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld agreed. At a Pentagon briefing on the same day Bush spoke, Rumsfeld was asked if Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein or those around him were personally involved in the September 11 attacks. Rumsfeld replied, "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was serving then as White House National Security Adviser, went even further. In an ABC "Nightline" interview, she insisted that, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11."

Of course, that was a stretch, especially considering some of Cheney's comments.

But there is no question that, a full five years ago, the Bush administration had explicitly rejected any suggestion that it was appropriate to link the Iraq mission to September 11.

Yet, on the seventh anniversary of attacks on New York and Washington that were never legitimately linked to Saddam Hussein or Iraq, Sarah Palin was telling soldiers headed for Iraq that they are part of "the broad conflict that began seven years ago today."

Palin also told the troops: "America can never go back to that false sense of security that came before September 11, 2001."

Fair enough.

But isn't Palin creating a "false sense of security" by suggesting that the Iraq fight is an appropriate or meaningful response to 9/11? And isn't it unsettling that, as the United States prepares to see off a vice president who got in trouble for peddling fantasies regarding Saddam and terrorism, the Republican nominee to replace Dick Cheney sounds an awfully lot like, er, Dick Cheney?
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