Going Down

When I joined the army and when I reenlisted five times, I did something that every member of Congress does. I took an oath to defend the Constitution as the core commitment of my service. Then the army sent me to eight different conflict areas to attack, or assist others in attacking, people who were not even remotely the enemies of the Constitution. Oddly enough, that oath said I was obliged to “defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.

I’m retired now; and since I got out of the army I’ve had more opportunities to oppose the domestic enemies of the Constitution, because they are mostly those who were or worked for my former Commanders-in-Chief.

[...]

[U]ntil now there has been no attack on Iran because it makes no sense to do so. Such an attack will cost the US a broad tactical defeat in Iraq and the consolidation of nascent counter-US blocs around the globe… but if the numbers come in by September-October that show McCain to be the dangerous dolt that he is — the “hero” whose heroic act was being shot down while he rained bombs on Vietnamese — that McCain doesn’t have a snowball’s chance, then the absurd fantasy that the Bush administration will attack Iran — with all its profound consequences for the US’s malignant but profitable position and influence on the world stage — then… the administration could commit the last spiteful act. They could broaden their little, lost war to include Iran, and leave the new Democratic administration and freshly minted, bloody-handed, instrumental, oath-breaking, Democrat-controlled Congress with a swarming hornets nest of unpredictable and inextricable relations.

And some of us will say, you had opportunity after opportunity to stop this; but you enabled George W. Bush. You protected him and his coterie, because your elections were more important to you than either your oaths or the lives of countless human beings.

Shame on you all.

  Stan Goff

Indeed. Unfortunately, 1) they have no shame, and 2) it will provide us – and the rest of the world - little comfort to be able to lay blame on them.

Those Who Don't Learn from the Past

Are doomed to repeat it.

U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush's funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.

The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine's July 7 and 14 issue, centers around a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.

"The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change," the article cited a person familiar with its contents as saying, and involved "working with opposition groups and passing money."

[...]

Funding for the covert escalation, for which Bush requested up to $400 million, was approved by congressional leaders, according to the article, citing current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources.

[...]

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. U.S. Special Operations Forces have been conducting crossborder operations from southern Iraq since last year, the article said.

[...]

But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which include the Central Intelligence Agency, have now been significantly expanded, the article said, citing current and former officials.

[...]

Among groups inside Iran benefiting from U.S. support is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People's Resistance Movement, according to former CIA officer Robert Baer. Council on Foreign Relations analyst Vali Nasr described it to Hersh as a vicious organization suspected of links to al Qaeda.

[...]

None of the Democratic leaders in Congress would comment on the finding, the article said. The White House, which has repeatedly denied preparing for military action against Iran, and the CIA also declined comment.

  Raw Story

Recipe for disaster. Let’s use it again.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Audio Treat

From Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me - Bill Gates leaves Microsoft. Plus: Clippy Must Die!

Clicky

This week's full show is here.

West Point Summer Leadership Seminar

Send your teenager to summer camp.

Climbing ropes and crawling in the mud under barbed wire, dozens of American high school kids at an unusual summer camp vied to see who could get most dirty as they tackled an Army obstacle course.

And as they ran between obstacles in the woods, the kids shouted Army chants. Asked by a cadet if they were motivated, they shouted back in unison: "Motivated, motivated, downright motivated. Ooh, aah, ooh, aah, I want to kill somebody."

  Raw Story

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Meanwhile in Iraq

Outraged Iraqi officials demanded an investigation into an early morning U.S. military raid Friday near the birthplace of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, saying the operation violated the terms of the handover of Karbala province to Iraqi security forces.

  McClatchy

So naïve, so naïve.

Karbala Gov. Oqeil al Khazaali said U.S. forces killed an unarmed civilian and arrested at least one person in the raid in the southern town of Janaja. The governor's brother, Hassanein al Khazaali, said late Friday that the Iraqi killed in the operation was a relative of the U.S.-backed prime minister.

[...]

Raed Shakir Jowdet, the Iraqi military commander of Karbala operations, said that four Apache helicopters and a jet fighter soared over the area. About 60 U.S. soldiers then stormed the town, "terrifying the families," he said.

Jowdet said that an unarmed civilian named Ali Abdulhussein was killed in his home

[...]

"Not one Iraqi soldier took part in the airdrop, and the operation was not coordinated with any Iraqi authority," he said. "We are still looking for an answer as to why this has taken place, and we still have no logical explanation from the American forces."

[...]

The U.S. military command in Baghdad had no comment.

They rarely do.

Has anyone asked George why he isn’t “taking out” Mugabe?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Keith Olbermann Defends Himself

Against Glenn Greenwald's column.

And suggests that Obama may have supported the FISA mess because of a loophole which may allow for future prosecution of the telecom culprits.

You think Obama's that clever? I'm skeptical.

McCain Predicts Win

“I’m the underdog. I’m behind,” the presumptive GOP nominee told reporters in Ohio.

“I’ve got to catch up and get ahead. And I expect to do that about 48 hours before the general election,” he said with a laugh.

  Fox

Laugh indeed. McCain knows the GOP hasn’t left the presidency up to an honest election in a long time.

The joke’s on us.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

What a Crock of Shit

Or...

Just Another Day Under the New Amerikan Sun

Steven Hatfill has settled for close to $6 mil against the "US Government" for having been publicly targeted in the anthrax poisoning cases shortly after 9/11. Cases which, by the way, have never been solved.

The crock of shit is that the "US Government" that has to pay the multi-million-dollar settlement is the American taxpayers. Why are we punished when it was Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bush Administration who "leaked" information with the intent and consequence of destroying Hatfill's reputation? How is the award going to prevent future such incidents? Is it designed to make us choose our future presidents more carefully, knowing they could be careless about responsibility, costing us millions in taxes to settle lawsuits? If that's the idea, he didn't get nearly a big enough settlement. The trillions we're forking over to occupy Iraq doesn't seem to be clearly making us think about our ballots.

Specific people need to be held responsible, and those specific people need to be individuals in the Bush Administration that made the decision to target Hatfill in the way they did, not a collection of US taxpayers who had no part in the affair.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

"Better Than McCain" Isn't Good Enough: The FISA Sham

So that you don't accuse me of being racist, I’m going to change my opening sentence from: “Let’s call a spade a spade,” to “Let’s call a wanker a wanker.”

Disappointed over [Barack Obama’s] position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the online activists feel jilted and betrayed and have taken to questioning his progressive credentials. One prominent blogger, Atrios, has even given him the moniker “Wanker of the Day.”

“He broke faith,” said Matt Stoller, a political consultant and blogger at OpenLeft.com. “Obama pledged to filibuster, and he is part of that old politics, in this case, that he said he wasn’t. It will spur us to challenge him.”

[...]

“I don’t want to hear him talk about leadership. I don’t want to hear him talk about defending the Constitution. I want to see him do it,” [Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of Daily Kos] said. “If he does, it will increase the intensity and level of support he gets from base Democrats. If he doesn’t, we may worry he is just another one of these spineless Democrats who are more afraid of controversy in doing the right thing than they are in actually doing the right thing.”

[...]

Obama’s statement was viewed as a reversal from a pledge last year to oppose any bill with retroactive immunity for telecom companies.

  CBS

Seen that way because that’s pretty much what it is.

Over the weekend, Barack Obama announced that -- although not in favor of the idea of retroactive immunity for the shady corporatations that helped our own government spy on us -- he supports the FISA legislation that the Senate is about to pass that will magically make all the illegal wire-tapping that the White House did legal after all.

But it's all alright, because he super double-dog swears that, as president, he won't take advantage of the power to watch over all of America like Big Brother...

  Indecision 2008

Glenn Greenwald goes after Keith Olbermann (and others) for giving Obama a pass on the issue:

Those who spent the last five years mauling Bush for "shredding the Constitution" and approving of lawbreaking -- only to then praise Obama for supporting a bill that endorses and protects all of that -- are displaying exactly the type of blind reverence that is more dangerous than any one political leader could ever be.

Amen.

Julian [Sanchez] goes through the changes to the bill one by one, and demonstrates what an absurd, and even insulting, farce it's been for the Democrats to call this some kind of victory. They opposed the original FISA bill because it allowed for warrantless surveillance of Americans and legal immunity for telecom companies who turn over information to the government. The revised FISA bill, as Julian explains, allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans and legal immunity for telecom companies who turn over information to the government. So there are two options here: Either the Democrats were lying about why they opposed the bill in the first place, or they're lying about having extracted meaningful concessions on the bill now. Whichever you choose, it's been a shameful, saddening performance.

  Ezra Klein

At least we still have Russ Feingold.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said he opposed language in the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that likely would give retroactive immunity from lawsuits to telephone companies that complied with warrantless surveillance requests from the government, The Hill reported Thursday.

Because Feingold wants more time to delay consideration until after the Independence Day recess, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said, "(it) doesn't look like" the Senate will consider the FISA bill this week.

  UPI

[W]iretapping is so classified, and the language of the bill so opaque, that no one without a "top secret" clearance can say with any authority just how much surveillance the proposal will authorize the government to do. (The best assessment yet comes from former Justice Department official David Kris, who deems the legislation "so intricate" that it risks confusing even "the government officials who must apply it.")

  Slate

Feel better?

Read that Slate article. It explains “five myths” about the bill.

Myth No. 1: This bill is a compromise.

Myth No. 2: We need the bill to intercept our enemies abroad.

Myth No. 3: The courts will still review the telecom cases.

Myth No. 4: The Democrats must fold because of the November election.

Myth No. 5: The law will be the "exclusive means" for surveillance.

I'm sorry, but not particularly surprised, that Keith Olbermann is lock-stepping the Democratic candidate. Josh Marshall seems to be taking the tack to just not talk about it. The subject is conspicuously missing from today's posts.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oh, So It's Blackmail, Is It?

"Obama has been calling Hillary's top money people and asking for their support, but the fundraisers are in some cases being critical of Obama's operation," said a senior Hillary person who works directly with her top donors on a regular basis.

According to sources, the Hillary fundraisers' criticism of Obama on these calls has focused partly -- but not exclusively -- on a demand that Obama do more to retire Hillary's campaign debt. This perhaps explains why Obama went out of his way yesterday on a call with his own donors to ask them to help her out.

But these criticisms from the donors suggests that bitterness may remain until Obama's efforts show actual results on her behalf.

  TPM

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Price of Gas

There's a lot of chatter on CNN this morning here in my hotel room about the price of gasoline and where it's going. The ticker heading says: Cheaaper gas in 30 days? A couple of weeks ago, I caught the wild chatter on NPR about a $10 or so jump in the cost of a barrel of oil. They were squealing about how totally unprecedented such a high jump in one day was and warning that within 10 days gasoline prices would jump 50 cents a gallon.

All you need to know about the price of gas can be boiled down to this simple economic point: Producers use current events to let per gallon cost run up to the price where people begin to seriously cut back on use. Bingo. The magic number is reached.

All the talk about regulations and increased or decreased production is just talk.

Check me to see if I'm wrong.

Trading Dollars

The Obama campaign is offering a major olive branch to Hillary Clinton and her supporters. On a conference call with his top fundraisers, Obama asked them to help raise money to retire Clinton's $10 million in debts to vendors -- bills that were racked up in the long primary campaign that in many cases involved attacks against himself.

  TPM

I’m sorry, Barack, but she continued campaigning after it was obvious she would not be getting the nomination. She loaned her campaign money, apparently believing it was a good investment. She’s responsible for the debts her campaign incurred, not Obama supporters.

But, if you’re in the helping-people-out-of-debt mode, I have a truck that has a few more payments due.

One point of clarification: The Obama camp's help extends only to the vendor debts, but not the more than $10 million in personal debt from Hillary's own self-financing loans. Clinton herself has told her own donors that while she needs help paying off vendors, she is not asking for help paying off the money the campaign owes her personally.

Barely better.

On a private conference call moments ago, Hillary urged her top fundraisers in no uncertain terms to throw their weight behind Barack Obama, and directly asked them in surprisingly candid terms to give or raise money to help her pay off her campaign's debt.

  TPM

After you get my debts paid off, get behind Obama.

Only fair. Only fair.

On the topic of her debts, Hillary said: "Many of you also know that my campaign is facing debt. That happens when you're outspent.”

No, Hill, that happens when you’ve overspent.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.