Iraqis Want US Out

The latest poll from Iraq shows that Iraqis STILL want the USA to leave:

More than two-thirds of those surveyed oppose the presence of troops from the United States and its coalition partners and less than half, 44 percent, say their country is better off now than it was before the war, according to an ABC News poll conducted with Time magazine and other media partners...

A fourth of those surveyed, 26 percent, say U.S. forces should leave now, and another 19 percent say troops should leave after those chosen in this week's election take office. The other half say U.S. troops should stay until security is restored, 31 percent, until Iraqi forces can operate independently, 16 percent, or longer, 5 percent.

50% of Iraqis also believe the US invasion was a mistake.

Bush in the Bubble

The cover says it all, read on for Bush's candid response to it!



The Newsweek cover story itself is a bit of a disappointment. It analyzes the problems with Bush's modus operandi, which "suggests a level of indifference, if not denial, that is dangerous for a president who seeks to transform the world."

Bush may be the most isolated president in modern history, at least since the late-stage Richard Nixon...

On the overriding issue facing the president—the war in Iraq—some reality has slowly crept in. Last spring Cheney was still whistling past the graveyard, describing the Iraqi insurgency as in its "last throes." Since then, Bush's ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has tried to educate the president and his top advisers on some "ground truth"—that the new Iraqi Army and police are a long way from being able to defend their own country and nascent government. According to senior Pentagon officials who did not want to be identified discussing private meetings, in October Bush received an unusually unvarnished briefing on the military situation from the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace.

What Bush actually hears and takes in, however, is not clear. And whether his advisers are quite as frank as they claim to be with the president is also questionable. Take Social Security, for example. One House Republican, who asked not to be identified for fear of offending the White House, recalls a summertime meeting with congressmen in the Roosevelt Room at which Bush enthusiastically talked up his Social Security reform plan. But the plan was already dead—as everyone except the president had acknowledged. Bush seemed to have no idea. "I got the sense that his staff was not telling him the bad news," says the lawmaker. "This was not a case of him thinking positive. He just didn't have any idea of the political realities there. It was like he wasn't briefed at all." ...

Bush generally prefers short conversations—long on conclusion, short on reasoning. He likes popular history and presidential biography (Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington), but by all accounts, he is not intellectually curious. Occasional outsiders brought into the Bush Bubble have observed that faith, not evidence, is the basis for decision making. Psychobabblers have long had a field day with the fact that Bush quit drinking cold turkey and turned around his life by accepting God. His close friends agree that Bush likes comfort and serenity; he does not like dissonance. He has long been mothered by strong women, including his mother and wife. A foreign diplomat who declined to be identified was startled when Secretary of State Rice warned him not to lay bad news on the president. "Don't upset him," she said.

After reading the 5-page story, the one thing that sticks in my mind is how many of the reporters' sources did not want to be identified. Says a lot, doesn't it, when people are afraid to openly speak their minds.

Meanwhile, White House Spin Doctors are already working to dispel the "Bubble Boy" image. In a more informative article (with odd parallels to the Newseek one above), TIME says Bush is searching for a new groove, "trying to stop a second-term slump before it becomes a long slide to oblivion".

White House strategists believe they have ended the slide in Bush's approval ratings, which lately have been topping 40% again. "It's time for the Bush comeback story!" one coached TIME for this article. "The perfect storm has receded. We have better news in Iraq, oil prices are down, and Katrina has kind of fallen off the radar screen in terms of public concern."

Yeah, right...! Michael Moore posts a few good links to dispel that myth.

After dismissing the Bush 2006 agenda as light on substance, with key players like Rove and Cheney on the sidelines, the article then swings back the other way:

Bush still subscribes to Rove's long-held dream that his will be the transformational presidency that lays the groundwork for a Republican majority that can endure, as Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition did, for a half-century or more. Once he gets past the midterm elections, Bush plans to introduce a concept that, if anything, is even more ambitious than his failed Social Security plan: a grand overhaul that would include not only that program but Medicare and Medicaid as well.

In other words, if the Bush cabalists can get off the public accountablity hook, stay out of jail, pull the Iraqi rabbit out of a blood-soaked hat and somehow crawl back up the opinion polls, it will be back to business as usual in the creation of the Great GOP Global Fascist Empire.

Meanwhile, the unreal nonsense keeps spewing out of Bubble Boy's mouth:

In an interview with NBC's "Nightly News" program, Bush acknowledged the U.S. mission in Iraq has not gone as well as originally planned, when senior Bush officials had predicted U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators.

"I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome," he said, while adding that a lot of Iraqis are glad the United States is there.

In another acknowledgment of a mistaken prediction, Bush admitted that Iraqi oil revenues were "not as great as we thought they'd be. Yet they're substantial."

That's from a Reuters story which, BTW, was edited as I blogged this to remove a description of several hundred demonstrators giving Bush the finger and shouting "Shame! Shame!" at Bush's fleeing motorcade. Here is a fragment of the original text:

A couple of hundred protesters waved antiwar signs and yelled across the street from the Philadelphia hotel where Bush spoke.

Given that Bush refuses to even go near the public these days, let alone protesters, you would think the media might at least give these protesters the attention they deserve. It's called Democracy, remember?

UPDATE: Wow. NBC news anchor Brian Williams actually showed Bush the Newsweek cover, and the TIME story:

Williams: "How do you wake up on a Monday morning -- I brought some visual aids, I have Newsweek and Time -- the cover of Newsweek, look what they've done to you. ' Bush's World; The Isolated President: Can He Change? '"

Bush chuckles.

Williams: "And inside Time, it says: ' Bush's Search for His New Groove .' Time Magazine says you're out there talking to people, and Newsweek says you're in here not talking to people. So what is the truth, Mr. President?"

Bush: "Well, I'm talking to you. You're a person."

Williams: "This says you're in a bubble, you have a very small circle of advisers now."

Bush: "Yeah."

Williams: "Is that true?"

Bush: "Uh."

Williams. "Do you feel in a bubble?"

Bush: "No, I don't feel in a bubble. I mean, you feel in a bubble in the sense that I can't go walking out the front gate and go shopping, like I'd love to do for my wife -- although I'm a man, I'm not going to tell you what I'm gonna buy her."

Williams: "I understand that."

Bush: "Look, I, I, uh, I feel like I'm getting really good advice from very capable people, and that people from all walks of life inform me and inform those who advise me. And I feel very comfortable that, that I'm very aware of what's going on.

"I just talked to the president-elect of Honduras. A lot of my job is foreign policy. And I spend an enormous amount of time with leaders from other countries, and they come right here in the Oval Office and tell me what's on their mind. And I tell them what's on my mind.

"And so -- you know, it's the first time I've seen those magazines, by the way."

Williams: "Do you read this kind of stuff?"

Bush: "No."

Williams: "You don't read the newsweeklies at all?"

Bush: "I really don't. I mean, I'm interested in the news, I'm not all that interested in the opinions."

Well... you SHOULD BE YOU DUMB FUCKING IDIOT!!!

Ahem...

That conversation comes to you courtesy of Dan Froomkin at WaPo, who is apparently too liberal (small L, I assume!) for his WaPo colleagues, who complain about being slandered by bloggers! Here's an eloquently semi-incoherant raging blogger response to that guff:

Number one, Dan Froomkin's column is often the only thing worth reading in the Washington Post, the one thing they're managed to do right as they crawl their way out of the 18th century amidst a series of spectacularly bad decisions that have blown their credibility and set them in lockstep with the wooly mammoth. So the reporters don't like the guff they're taking from bloggers? I fucking bet they don't. But that's what you get when you set the bar so low the only people who stick around are the ones who can limbo under it...

There are only a few outlets that receive leaks from official government sources, and the public must look to them for what meager information we are dribbled. That we become enraged at the obtuseness and opacity of the reporting is completely predictable, and I'm sorry we're not here to quietly applaud bimbo journalism that cares more about its own perpetuation than it does any responsibility it has as a fourth estate. If you long ago stopped caring about serving the public interest, fine, don't be surprised when the public grows contentious and turns on you.

What the WaPo writers are viewing through their Technorati tags is only a tiny crumb of a rage that threatens to sweep them into irrelevance. If they care about the preservation of superstar journalists and the politics of access above all else they blind themselves to the sea change that is taking place in how information is exchanged.

Dan Froomkin is the future. They say they want to balance him out by adding a conservative voice? That's great, just what the Mighty Wurlitzer needs, another outlet. As I've said before, this isn't about right vs. left, it's about people on both sides who are sick of the machine. One step forward, six steps back. Outside the fucking box, that lot.

It won't be long before the WaPo honchos wish they'd sent Bob Woodward and his embarrassing apologies packing before he dragged them down into 8-track tape anachronism. I dare them to take a look at the bulk of the last year's offerings on the CIA leak and do anything other than groan. The reporting is execrable and the dot connection worse. They've handed the keys to the kingdom to the village idiots and they shouldn't be stunned when bloggers merely point that out.

UPDATE 2: Wow again. Bush actually takes questions (a whole 4 of them, two of whom identified themselves as Bush supporters) from the press following his latest "Everything Is Still Going Great" speech. Some highlights:

Thank you. Sit down, please.

I've got a little extra time on my hands, so I thought I might answer some questions...

How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis... [sounds like he is using the Iraqi Body Count figure, which counts only casualties that have been publicly verified by two credible sources]

..

When we first got going, we said, `We'll train an army that will be able to deal with external threats and a civil defense corps that will be able to deal with internal threats.'

And the problem with that strategy was that the internal threats were a heck of a lot more severe than the external threats and the civilian corps we trained was not properly trained and equipped.

So we adjusted... [er, weren't the "terrrrrsts" considered an "external threat" in the beginning, before they started being a home-gronw one?]

And that's what - and so the strategy has been to - let me just say, we adjusted our strategy. And there's about 200,000-plus capable units.

Now, not all of them are ready to take the fight to the enemy. In order to have a division or a battalion ready to fight, you got to be able to communicate, you got to be able to move, you got to be able to have logistical supplies. But more and more the Iraqis are in the lead in the fight, and more and more Iraqis are being trained so they can hold the positions once we clear.

We haven't completed the job of training the Iraqis... [in other words, they are still not ready and NOT "capable"].

...

These are people that have got a totalitarian vision. They've got designs and ambitions. They've laid our their strategy and they explained their tactics. And we've got to listen to them and take them seriously.

And part of their tactics is to create vacuums so that their hateful ideology flows in.

Listen, the attack of September the 11th was a part of a broad strategy to get us to retreat from the world.

And people say, He's making it up, that they want to want to establish a totalitarian empire that stretches from Spain to Indonesia. I'm telling you what they said, not me. This is what Zawahiri has said, the number two man in al-Qaida.

It seems like, to me, we need to take it seriously when the enemy says something.

...

Look, I recognize we got an image issue, particularly when you got Arabic television stations that are constantly just pounding America, you know, saying, America is fighting Islam. Americans can't stand Muslims. This is a war against a religion. [see, he DID want to bomb AlJazeera!]

.. I mean, their propaganda machine is pretty darn intense. And so we're constantly sending out messages. We're constantly trying to reassure people. But we're also acting. [some are better actors than others]

And that's what's important for our citizens to realize. Our position in the world is such that I don't think we can retreat...

The long run in this war is going to require a change of governments in parts of the world.

A dangerous idiot.

UPDATE 3: More from Bush:

"I don't see a lot of the news. Every morning I look at the newspaper. I can't say I've read every single article in the newspaper. But I definitely know what's in the news. Occasionally, I watch television. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but it's occasionally. I'm working at that point, as are you.

"But I'm very aware of what's in the news. I'm aware because I see clips. I see summaries. I have people on my staff that walk in every morning and say, 'This is what's -- this is how I see it. This is what's brewing today,' on both the domestic and international side. Frankly, it is probably part of my own fault for needling people, but it's a myth to think I don't know what's going on. And it's a myth to think that I'm not aware that there is opinions that don't agree with mine. Because I'm fully aware of that. . . .

"I read the newspaper. I mean, I can tell you what the headlines are. I must confess, if I think the story is, like, not a fair appraisal, I'll move on. But I know what the story's about."

In other words, Bush knows which way the news is spinning, and he pays attention to that, but he doesn't even care about the substance of it.

Germany's influential Der Spiegel accuses the CIA of murder, abduction and torture.

Partisan Politics Top Bush Agenda

Bush fiddles while the earth burns...

Turns out the main obstacle to a US agreement on climate change was the fact that Bill Clinton was giving a speech at the conference!

Officials in the Bush administration privately threatened the organizers of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal, saying that any chance there might have been for the United States to sign the Kyoto Protocol would be lost if Bill Clinton spoke Friday at the meeting.

The threat was received within minutes of the Associated Press running a story on Clinton being added to the program. "It's just astounding." said one organizer. "It came through loud and clear from the Bush people - they wouldn't sign the deal if Clinton were allowed to speak."

Clinton went ahead and spoke anyway (wingnut talking point: it was Clinton's fault!).

In a separate incident, Dick Cheney allegedly directed the U.S. envoy to walk out Thursday, in response to comments by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. The US delegates claimed that they walked out because the wording of a draft was not to their liking, yet they later signed up to a draft with changes that were called "trivial".

There is so much ugly politicking at these sort of events that it's impossible to ascertain any pure truths, but one thing is obvious: Bush's USA has once again been sidelined after another embarrassing attempt to deny the bloody obvious.

In the end, the USA would only agree to informal talks that will not "open to any discussion leading to new commitments."

The earth has warmed by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century. Most scientists agree that carbon dioxide and other gases that accumulate in the atmosphere as byproducts of fossil fuel burned by automobile engines, power plants and industry accounted for part of the temperature increase. The warming has melted glaciers, heated oceans and shrunk the Arctic ice cap...

One hundred fifty-seven countries, including every major developed nation except the United States and Australia, have agreed under the Kyoto Protocol to cut their 1990 greenhouse gas levels by an average of 5 percent over the next seven years.

For shame.

Torture: The New Transatlantic Agenda

Turns out the EU has a concealed deal with Bush's USA to allow 'rendition' flights:

The minutes of the Athens meeting on January 22, 2003, were written by the then Greek presidency of the EU after the talks with a US delegation headed by a justice department official. EU officials confirmed that a full account was circulated to all member governments, and would have been sent to the Home Office.

The document, entitled New Transatlantic Agenda, EU-US meeting on Justice and Home Affairs, details the subjects discussed by the 31 people present. The agenda included the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and extradition agreements.

According to the full version, "Both sides agreed on areas where co-operation could be improved [inter alia] the exchange of data between border management services, increased use of European transit facilities to support the return of criminal/ inadmissible aliens, co-ordination with regard to false documents training and improving the co-operation in removals."

But this section, and others referring to US policy, were deleted - as a "courtesy" to Washington, according to a spokesman for the EU Council of Ministers.

That sure would help explain cases like this:

Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'. In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.

After his capture in Pakistan, Mohammed says British officials warned him that he would be sent to a country where torture was used. Moroccans also asked him detailed questions about his seven years in London, which his lawyers believe came from British sources.

This is how they get the information to convict (or at least try to convict, eventually, maybe...) other informants like Jose Padilla - by torturing the lot of them!

'They took a scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Then they cut my left chest. One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute watching. I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming... They must have done this 20 to 30 times in maybe two hours. There was blood all over.'

Who the f*ck ARE these people!!!??!? Slicing a penis with a scalpel - is that something that qualifies as "turture" under the Condi Rice definition? Because if it is NOT torture, maybe the Justice Department should be using the same techniques to get information out of Rove and Cheney!

P.S. God bless the whistle-blowers! Bush, Blair & Co better start taking their own bloody minutes!

FT: Bush plans overhaul of US foreign aid system. Amazingly, USAID is now being scape-goated for the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos...

Top Story

NYT: Military's Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive.

The War On Christmas

I try to stay focussed and ignore these side issues, like whatever Bill O'Reilly is talking about this week. But here is a good observation from Consortiumnews.com:

You have to hand it to political operatives who can turn the Christmas celebration of Jesus’s birth into a nasty wedge issue, transforming a traditional message of love, peace and tolerance into one of anger, conflict and resentment.

The success of the American Right in extracting a “war on Christmas” out of a few well-meaning gestures to non-Christians, such as using the greeting “Happy Holidays,” is a testament to the investment conservatives have made in media over three decades.

With their vertically integrated media apparatus – from newspapers and magazines, to TV and radio, to books and the Internet – the Right now can take a few scattered anecdotes on almost any topic and heat them up into a hot-button issue.

Incidentally, I picked up my Mum's Sunday tabloid paper yesterday and saw a big heading "I'M SORRY" Who could that be, I wondered? John Howard apologizing for the WMD lies? The Queensland government apologising for the state of our Health System? No, it was a school principal being forced to apologize for saying "Merry Christmas".

The US Conservative media machine has long tentacles. No surprise they run deep here in the Australian media, Rupert Murdoch's orginal stomping grounds. I think you could write a good long book about how US interests now permeate Australian media, society, politics and business. BushWorld, c'est nous.

PS: Sorry for the lack of posting recently - sick baby, sick Mum, tired Dad and a PC crash. Great fun.

"Secret Laws"

Seriously WTF! Via The Washington Monthly:

"Seriously, is this true? I'm just gobsmacked. Congress is passing laws that the American public isn't allowed to know about? Any of us might be prosecuted under one of these laws that we don't know exists? Courts are being asked to interpret laws they've never seen?

This gives Kafakesque a very chilling and newly concrete meaning."

Weekend Reading

Ted Rall is going to cop a lot of flak for challenging the myth that you can oppose the war and still support the troops:

The military used to be an honorable calling. Not under Bush. Ethical Americans considering a military career should seek a civilian job until a lawful, elected government has been restored in Washington and we have withdrawn our forces from occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Those who are already enlisted should refuse to reenlist. Soldiers trapped by "stop loss" orders should apply for conscientious objector status (which is difficult to obtain) or refuse deployment based on the unlawful order principle. And if all else fails, there's always desertion.

Condi has left Germany but the debates rumble on in her wake. Common Dreams reviews the German press, including this from Süddeutsche Zeitung:

"Injustice remains injustice and a wrong policy remains a wrong policy," writes the paper. "On this basis you can't re-launch the trans-Atlantic relationship." The debate over secret CIA flights and prisons shows how far Europe and the US have drifted apart since Sept. 11 when it comes to what methods are acceptable in waging war on terror. "Condoleezza Rice gave the best example of this by adopting what almost seemed like a blackmailing tone in saying that whoever discloses the work of their intelligence services would have to live with a higher threat of terror," the paper writes. "American secret service information would only be available to allies that could keep silent about how that information was obtained. The message can also be translated thus: The end justifies the means, terrorism can be fought with borderline methods on the outer edges of legality." The paper concludes: "Rice came to Germany to begin a new era. She has resoundingly failed to do so."

Worth a read: Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture.

MUST READ

The final part of Maureen Farrell's three-part series is out now at Buzzflash. Here's a teaser:

The National Security Agency intercepts two messages on Sept. 10. "Tomorrow is zero hour," reads one. "The match begins tomorrow," says the other. NSA does not translate the messages until Sept. 12.

Pentagon officials cancel travel plans for Sept. 11. As Newsweek reports, "On Sept. 10, Newsweek has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns." That same day, California mayor Willie Brown receives a similar warning.

Condi Rice: A Farce On Wheels

Like I said yesterday, Condi's trip to Europe is quickly becoming a huge embarrassment for an administration that is totally bereft of not just morality but also basic logic.

On the issue of secret renditions through European air-space, Rice made a broad aknowledgement that mistakes may have been made:

Any policy will sometimes result in errors, and when it happens, we will do everything we can to rectify it.

But she still defended the practice of renditions:

If you don't get to them before they commit their crimes, they will commit mass murder. We have an obligation to defend our people and we will use every lawful means to do so.

But Condi, that's the whole point: it is not lawful to grab people off the streets in foreign countries and rush them off to foreign torture centres! Oh, but you don't render prisoners to countries that torture, do you? Even George agrees:

We do not render to countries that torture, that has been our policy and that policy will remain the same.

So tell us, why DO you fly these kidnapped people around the world, to places like Morroco, Egypt, Uzbequistan and Albania? If not for the purpose of torture, then WHY???

You have no answer, do you?

The Khaled El-Masri case has become the focus of debate in Germany this week. The new German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said she had discussed the case with Rice, who admitted the US made a mistake:

"I'm pleased to say that we spoke about the individual case, which was accepted by the United States as a mistake...," Merkel said in response to questions about the Masri case, which has caused a furor in Germany.

Chalk one up for the tough-talking new German Chancellor, right? But then US officials travelling with Rice immediately denied she had admitted an error:

While the U.S. government had informed Germany about his detention and release, it did not say that was a mistake, one senior administration official told reporters.

"We are not quite sure what was in her head," he said, referring to Merkel.

These comments were made as Rice's entourage (conveniently) flew out of Germany en route to Romania. In other words, it's the old Bush media one-two: you tell people what they want to hear, in carefully chosen words, to get the headlines you want. Then deny you ever said anything of the sort.

We all know that the Bush administration never, ever, ever admits to mistakes. I suspect what's happening here is that the Bush team is looking for an out of court settlement with El-Masri (who is suing the CIA). Of course, when the case finally settles for a hefty (taxpayer-funded) fee, you can be sure that there will be a silencing clause that gags any further discussion or publicity for the case.

I suspect the German government completed their DNA alaysis of El-Masri's hair a long time ago, but have chosen not to publicise the embarrassing results prior to discussion with US officials. I suspect Rice did admit the USA's error in private to Merkel, but is not willing to do so in public. So Rice is trying to tip-toe through the diplomatic minefield, giving Merkel a chance to look good on camera while still holding the line for the Bush cabal. Either that, or Merkel was not supposed to go public with Rice's admission of guilt, so the Rice team immediately denied she said it. Either way, it's very messy.

And of course the issue of prisoner renditions has so far over-clouded that other embarrassing issue, secret US torture prisons. On to Romania for more on that one...!

The stakes are high: Although they have curried favor with the U.S., any proof of complicity could leave the former communist nations isolated and scorned in a Europe demanding a full accounting from Washington, and threaten Romania's drive to join the European Union in 2007.

Debate centres on the CIA's secretive use of Romanian airbases near the Black Sea. A former Romanian PM says his country has no idea what the USA might have been doing on the airbases:

"There were some bases we put at the Americans' disposal. We can't know what happened there," former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, who served 2001-2004 and now heads the Chamber of Deputies, conceded Tuesday.

So what's Condi's clever solution to this diplomatic dilemma? I know, why doesn't the USA take full control of the airbases! Hey presto, look at that - another Guantanamo Bay has just been born!

Meanwhile, a new AP poll shows that Bush and Rice are playing to a supportive US audience in their embrace of torture tactics:

In the poll, about two-thirds of the people living in Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Spain said they would oppose allowing U.S. officials to secretly interrogate terror suspects in their countries. Almost that many in Britain, France, Germany and Italy said they felt the same way. Almost two-thirds in the United States support such interrogations in the U.S. by their own government.

People seem to think that it is OK to torture people if it is the only way to get the information you need. The problem is (particularly when the person being tortured is innocent), you probably won't get the information you need so much as the information you want. But for the purposes of the Bush team's Spin Wars, that's good enough.

So here's a questions for all those who support torture: where are the results? Where are all the results of this fantastic torture policy? Hey? Where are the imprisoned Al Quaeda leaders? Where's Osama? Where is all the evidence that can be presented in a genuine Democratic court of law to convict these people? Hey?

Sigh... No wonder Bush & Co. cannot even get a four-year-old case like Jose Padilla's through due process in a legitimate court. The criminals are running the government...

UPDATE: SBS has news on Masri's lawsuit (NB: it seems the innocent guy's name is Masri, while the guy the CIA was after was called El-Masri):

He said his aim in filing the suit against former CIA director George Tenet was to force the US government to acknowledge his mistreatment and apologise.

"I want to know why they did this to me and I want an official excuse,"
Mr Masri, who is of Lebanese descent, told a Washington press conference via a satellite link from Germany.

The 42-year-old unemployed car salesman, and father of five, said he had flown to the US on Saturday to present his case but was denied entry at Atlanta airport and put back on a plane to Germany.

Mr Masri said the whole experience had left him a broken man.

Anthony Romero, ACLU executive director, said Mr Masri's case highlighted the "culture of impunity" that has developed under the administration of US President George W Bush.

"It should go without saying that forcibly kidnapping foreign citizens,
holding them without access to a lawyer and brutalizing them is not only illegal but immoral," he said.

It should go without saying, shouldn't it?

By the way, for any Aussie readers, I thoroughly recommend you watch the second part of Dateline's BBC special, "The Power Of Nightmares" on SBS tonight at 8:30. Try to get your friends and family to watch it too. A real eye-opener!

UPDATE 2: The Financial Times takes a good look at the threefold failures of Rice's Mission Implausible:

In the wake of the CIA allegations, Mr Bush will probably have to start again from scratch. Who knows, he could even reconsider the benefits of international law.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: The NYT says " it would be hard to imagine a more sudden and thorough tarnishing of the Bush administration's credibility than the one taking place here right now."

The Mysterious LEADER

This one just begs to be recorded for posterity. Pakistan is deleting a 'pro-Bush' poem that mysteriously turned up in school text books. Check the first letter of each line:

THE LEADER by anonymous

Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn't afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn't conform to the usual mould,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won't do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.

Going forward and knowing he's right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won't hear.
Growing in strength he won't be unnerved,
Ever assuring he'll stand by his word.

Wanting the world to join his firm stand,

Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.

From the BBC article:

Officials cannot explain how the poem entered the curriculum. Pupils are being told to ignore it.

The textbook is due to be reprinted next year...

The education ministry said it would remove the poem from the textbook and discipline the person responsible for including it.

Rummy's Ministry Of Mad Propaganda

I heard that Rumsfeld was attacking the press on Iraq coverage but didn't realise how freakin' ridiculously manic it all was:

We've arrived at a strange time in this country where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press, and reported and spread around the world, often with little context and little scrutiny, let alone correction or accountability after the fact...

How will history judge, if it does, the reporting some decades from now when Iraq's path is settled?

... You couldn't tell the full story of Iwo Jima simply by listing the nearly 26,000 Americans that were casualties in a brief 40 days at Iwo Jima. So too, in Iraq, it's appropriate to note not only how many Americans have been killed -- and may God bless them and their families -- but what they died for, or more accurately what they lived for.

To be responsible, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks.

What is it with these bogus WWII analogies? Back then, Hitler was the one invading countries, repressing civil rights, torturing people and breaking international laws...

Stephen Pizzo argues that Rumsfeld is sounding more and more like a madman:

So we now have a certifiable loon in charge of the most powerful military on the face of the earth. Shouldn't someone do something?

"Someone"? That would be YOU, George...

Mind you, latest rumours are that Rummy's replacement will be Joe Liebermann. Uuurgh!!

UPDATE: Speaking of madness, how's this sound:

STEPHANOPOULOS: If you had known that no weapons of mass destruction would be found, would you have advocated invasion?

RUMSFELD: I didn't advocate invasion.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You didn't?

RUMSFELD: No, I wasn't asked.

Hello???? Rummy was agitating for war in Iraq on 9/11!!!

You know you have really lost it when you start to believe your own shit.

Judy Miller: GOP Slut

Judy Miller gets sucked into the growing GOP sex scandal. From a new article at Vanity Fair:

[NYT colleague Seth] Mnookin pulls no punches in stating that over the years Miller 'had built a reputation for sleeping with her sources,' had dated one of Sulzberger's best friends, Steve Ratner, 'and had even, for a time, shared a vacation home with Sulzberger,' whatever that means."

Remember, Miller's sources included Scotter Libby and other top White House officials. Now that would help explain some of the flowery prose in Libby's love letter to the jailbird...

The article also reveals that NYT publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jnr. barred NYT reporters from talking to former CEO Russell Lewis:

... when the reporters pressed Sulzberger on why he did that, he replied with a laugh and a quip: "Because I don't know what the f---he's going to tell you."

UPDATE: More GOP sex scandal fodder from Freedom Rider:

In his novel, The Apprentice, Libby imagined a caged bear having sex with children.

"At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest."

Libby is obviously a freak. Only a freak would be able to imagine girls and bears and then put pen to paper and write about it. Libby is clearly a sick, depraved man who shouldn’t be trusted around children, or bears either for that matter.

Grrr!!! I'm a bear, Judith!!! Grrrrr!!!!!

The writer reminds us that Dr. W. David Hager, the Bush appointee in the Food and Drug Administration, was forced to resign after his ex-wife revealed that he forced her to have anal intercourse over a period of many years.

What is it with right-wingers and FUBAR attitudes to sex anyway?

Rice And Merkel: Woman To Woman

Condi Rice might well be flying into the perfect storm. To date, she has managed to dodge and weave her way around the world of international diplomacy. But Germany has a new Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who will be thinking twice about her election pledge to restore good relations with Washington.

And while the tabloid media may now be ready to pounce on it, all this stuff about secret CIA prisons and torture renditions is - to those of us in the know, at least - nothing all that new.

I was amazed that my blog was ever rated #2 on the Google Web for information on Khaled el-Masri, but guess who is now #6 in the Google Top Ten as the story breaks?

Our good friend Elendil from RUMMY'S DIARIES!!!

Now where are the REAL journalists...? Hmmn?

Viva La Revolucion!

Kind of ironic, isn't it? After Presidents Reagan and Bush Snr spent so much time, trouble, money and lives on supporting right-wing puppets across the same region: it now looks like Central and South America is ready to swing sharply back to the left.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez just won yet another election, increasing his majority from 89 to 114 seats. The five main opposition parties boycotted the election, accusing the electoral body of bias, and only about 25% of registered voters cast a ballot. This has led the Bush adminstration to claim Venezuelans have 'lost faith in polls'. Hmmn... More likely, they are just sick of having to go and vote every other week (and when the opposition has withdrawn from the vote, why bother?).

Having survived an attempted US coup and US-backed offorts to remove him by a forced referenudm, Chavez is nowing donating oil to poor citizens in Bush's USA and implementing social reforms like giving factory workers control of their factories. Sounds terrible, doesn't it?

CIA Tainted By Corruption Scandals

Talking Points Memo ties the Duke Cunningham scandal to the CIA, specifically the Agency's Executive Director. Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo. Foggo is the number three man today at the CIA, after being promoted by Bush's new "Intelligence Czar" Porter Goss.

Foggo has embarrassingly close ties to the top co-conspirator in the Duke case, Mr. Brent Wilkes of San Diego:

Wilkes is commonly referred to as a 'defense contractor'. His real line of work, though, seems a bit different. Wilkes' specialized in finding companies or products for which the DoD had little or no use and then lathering up a few members of Congress so they'd force the Pentagon to buy his junk.

Government Executive magazine quotes "numerous current and retired CIA officials" tipping Foggo to take a fall.

See, George, that's the problem with blowing the cover of CIA agents, promoting cronies over the heads of other CIA agents and then encouraging any remaining half-decent CIA agents to resign: these are not the kind of people you want to piss off.

Update: Curioser and curioser... More dirt on lobbyist Brent Wilkes:

According to the U-T, Wilkes also "ran a hospitality suite, with several bedrooms, in" DC -- "first in the Watergate Hotel and then" in a Capitol Hill hotel.

Does such a "hospitality suite" indicate a prostitution ring for GOP insiders? That's the gossip...

It's about time Bush's GOP had its own sex scandal - they have covered pretty much every other kind of depravity. Amused discussion at Daily Kos suggests this could explain how Mr Gannon/Guckert got through the back door of the White House!

Condi: With US or Against US on Torture

This quote from Condi Rice is probably worth recording:

The US does not use the airspace or airport of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee when we believe he or she will be tortured.

Rice also said:

With respect to detainees, the US complies with its laws, its Constitution and its treaty obligations... The US has fully respected the sovereignty of other countries that have cooperated in these matters. The US is a country of laws. The US must protect its citizens.

Yeah, about that "protecting citizens" thing, Condi...

The 9/11 Commission released its final report on Monday, outlining an array of shortcomings in the government's response to the 2001 terrorist attacks and calling overall progress disappointing...

On the one hand, Bush's cabalists want to terrify the world into abandoning civil rights, using the threat of terrorism as a justification. On the other hand, they don't really care too much about spending money on protecting their own citizens, because they know that the threat is not really as dangerous as it appears (since they themselves fix the cherry-picked intelligence and massage it through the media to inflate and distort the terror threat). You can't have your cake and eat it, guys...