BUSH'S GOP GOONS IN HOUSE BEAT UP ON SENIORS

The moral rot that is American conservatism was displayed for all to see in the House of Representatives last week.

On Thanksgiving Day, ultra-conservative columnist Robert Novak detailed the debased and immoral conduct of the Republican leadership in the House when Tom Delay and Dennis Hastert contravened all normal customs of that body to overturn a vote that had clearly defeated the Medicare bill soon to be signed by W.

Yes, that's right. The Medicare bill was defeated in the House. You hadn't heard?

Novak's article explains all the details of how the Republicans subverted democracy again--but this time with such blatant disregard to all canons of ethics that not even their ourageous hypocrisy may be able to fend off future consequences.

Here is the link:


Novak: Republicans Mug Themselves

And here is an excerpt:

During 14 years in the Michigan Legislature and 11 years in Congress, Rep. Nick Smith had never experienced anything like it. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, in the wee hours last Saturday morning, pressed him to vote for the Medicare bill. But Smith refused. Then things got personal.

Smith, self term-limited, is leaving Congress. His lawyer son Brad is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him from a GOP district in Michigan's southern tier. On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.

The bill providing prescription drug benefits under Medicare would have been easily defeated by Republicans save for the most efficient party whip operation in congressional history. Although President Bush had to be awakened to collect the last two votes, Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Majority Whip Roy Blunt made it that close. ''DeLay the Hammer'' on Saturday morning was hammering fellow conservatives.

Now it's no news at all to find conservatives fighting dirty. Since they worship at the altar of Power, they never have any scruple about using it. So for them to break rules or violate long-standing customs (contrary to their profession that they are all about "conserving" traditions) is just par for the course. Conservatives seem to think that rules are for suckers.

As reprehensible as that attitude is, it is not nearly as reprehensible as threatening one's own colleagues with financial or political death--let alone the demoniacal vileness of threatening family members of one's own colleagues.

The thugs and goons of the House leadership, who break legs for W's mafiosi handlers, made the White House happy last week. They passed a bell that many stupid Americans will believe offers them a benefit. But like all conservative "solutions" to social problems, the Medicare bill is a poison pill disguised as a life-saving therapy: it is a Republican-crafted boondoggle that will enrich the already obscenely wealthy health-care corporatists while simultaneously destroying Medicare--thus sending millions of people into a health-care limbo in which many will die from lack of coverage.

But what is that to a conservative? Surely conservative ideology is much more important than a few lives of nameless, powerless people? The great conservative principles on which (so Republicans say) America is based must be protected from moral erosion by bleeding-heart liberals--great principles like: No Free Lunch (unless you're well-connected), and No Government Handouts (unless you're well-connected), and Freedom of Opportunity, Not of Condition (unless you're well connected). surely the lives of a few hundreds of thousands of the uninsured elderly is nothing in comparison with upholding the integrity of such lofty principles!

This time, however, Delay and Hastert may have over-served their masters. By threatening their own, they may have effectively lost their majority hold on the House. How will the threatened representatives feel about working with those who strongarmed them? Those who stood up to the threats, like Nick Smith, are now marked men, eternal targets of their own tyrannical leadership. Perhaps they will take the courageous step of leaving the party, as Jim Jeffords did when they tried to strongarm him. Perhaps vicious conservatism is beginning to eat its own tail.

But the blame for placing power in the hands of such ruthless, reckless, regressive conservative politicians cannot be laid anywhere but with the people who continue to elect them. People who are so stupid or mind-contolled that they they actually believe the self-serving, sanctimonious moralism of conscienceless, amoral power-hungry conservatives; people who are so apathetic that they don't even try to see whether conservative deeds match conservative speech; people who are so uncritical and brain-dead that they simply suck up whatever story-line is fed to them by conservative advertising, conservative news media, conservative think-tanks, and conservative spin-masters; people who are so crass and juvenile that they actally resontate with the macho posturing of the gutless conservative hate-mongers--such people are fit only for despotism.

And they now have what they deserve.

Unfortunately, the rest of us have to suffer what they deserve.

BUSH: ANYTHING FOR INDUSTRY BUDDIES

The Republican-crafted "Energy" Bill is pure profit for industry and pure pollution for the people.

The huge bill, which W promptly approved just moments after it came out of committe (an all-Republican committee, by the way, since the Republicans have found it far too pesky to have any Democrats around when they hijack the people's business), is almost nothing but payoffs to big oil and other massive energy conglomerates--who, after all, contribute the most to the Bush junta's continuance in power.

But the arrogance of the Republicans is now getting so wildly out of hand that pretty much everybody can see how rotten their view of legislation is: this bill is being condemned from all sides.

Here is an article in the Washington Post describing the perfidy:

Energy Bill Startles Experts

And here is an excerpt:

Policy analysts across the political spectrum yesterday denounced the energy bill that Republicans in Congress hope to push to approval this week, saying it represented micromanagement of the economy and would open vast new opportunities for tax cheating.

Many experts said they were taken aback by the size of the proposed breaks, estimated by Capitol Hill staff members at $25.7 billion over 10 years. That is more than three times the $8 billion in tax incentives that the Bush administration said last year in a letter to Congress that it wanted for energy producers....

Energy companies would receive three-fourths of the incentives, or $17 billion, with provisions intended to encourage developing oil, gas, coal and nuclear power. Many of the credits would involve complex formulas and require installing specified equipment, rather than leaving industry free to use any equipment that achieved the same energy savings....

In most instances, utilities could simply declare their eligibility for breaks, and the Internal Revenue Service, which is battling a growing tide of corporate tax cheating, would have at most three years to identify scofflaws. No money for additional enforcement would be provided.

The measure would also grant substantial relief from the corporate alternative minimum tax, which seeks to assure that all profitable companies pay taxes and which companies widely denounce as unfair. Congress has for years resisted taking similar steps on individuals' alternative minimum tax, which as middle-class taxpayers' incomes increase can deny them the standard deduction and personal exemptions for themselves and their children.

Jerry Taylor, director of natural resources studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization in Washington, said the bill contradicted Republican free-market principles to promote various interests, notably farmers and agribusiness that would benefit from expanded tax subsides for biodiesel and corn-based ethanol fuel.

"There is a huge discrepancy between what Republicans say about the economy and actual Republican practices," Mr. Taylor said. "If a technology has merit, there is no need to subsidize it, and if a technology does not have merit, no amount of government subsidy is going to give it merit."

Terming the bill stupid, Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a group with labor backing, questioned the logic of the legislation.

"Don't we believe in markets anymore?" Mr. McIntyre asked. "What are we doing with this bill? Are we cutting prices for energy so we use more of it? Do we need to cut taxes for oil companies because oilmen are inherently lethargic and can't work to pay taxes? No. This bill is just political payoffs to people who make contributions."

This is what happens when Republicans are allowed to have too much power. When they hold power, their proclivity for rapacity--which is only barely suppressed by their hollow moralism when they don't have power--balloons and carries them away on flights of legalized larceny that even they cannot justify with their self-serving sophistry.

Looking back over the life of this blog, we cannot even count how many abjectly degenerate schemes, lies, blackmails, power grabs, and unconstitutional machinations we alone have had the misfortune to detail. There are literally hundreds of thousands of others; for each regressive Republican member of Congress has hundreds of minions and allies launching ever new twists on every evil scheme imaginable.

Any one of these reprehensible activities should be enough for a free and independent people to conclude that power has fallen into the worst possible hands. But it appears, from all the polls, that the morons who supported W while he stole the 2000 election still support him after his failure to prevent 9/11, his lying to drum up support for an otherwise insupportable war, his sending hundreds of American soldiers to their deaths, his massive tax giveaways to the rich, his self-serving destruction of constitutional checks on the executive by means of the Patriot Act, and on and on and on...

The conclusion? Americans are no longer free and independent, but half-ignorant, far too susceptible to psychologial manipulation, and far too willing to let a certifiable moron "lead" them into hell.

As an aside, here is a quotation from an interview with Gore Vidal that appears in this week's LA Weekly:

[Benjamin Franklin] said, I am in favor of this Constitution, as flawed as it is, because we need good government and we need it fast. And this, properly enacted, will give us, for a space of years, such government.

But then, Franklin said, it will fail, as all such constitutions have in the past, because of the essential corruption of the people. He pointed his finger at all the American people. And when the people become so corrupt, he said, we will find it is not a republic that they want but rather despotism — the only form of government suitable for such a people.

The conservative portion of the American populace is already over the brink of the pit of Tartarus, and it is dragging the rest of us after it. The decent people who remain must start pulling the conservatives back, or America as we know it will be swallowed up by the yawning maw of Satan, as he welcomes into his digestive trackt his earthly surrogates--W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rice, and all the rest of the ultra-rightist neo-fascists who are turning our democrary into a tyranny.

AARP SHILLS FOR REPUBLICANS

How did the AARP come out IN FAVOR of the Republican bill that will destroy Medicare?

Check out this story from Buzzflash.com:

Head of AARP is Right-Wing Shill

And here is an excerpt:

Seniors and Democrats were stunned when the AARP announced its support of the Trojan Horse Republican Medicare bill.

The AARP message board is burning up with rage against the AARP and its CEO, William D. Novelli, the former public relations whiz kid. Seniors appear to be canceling their memberships and calling for heads to roll at AARP headquarters.

But Novelli defiantly dismissed membership outrage at his alliance with the Republicans, who see the proposed Medicare bill as the first step in the privatization and dismantling of the senior health insurance program.

In response to Senator Tom Daschle's tart prediction that he [Novelli] would face a revolt within his organization over this bill, Novelli said, "There's not going to be a revolt within AARP. There's going to be a problem if Congress fails to pass this legislation."

Mr. Novelli claims he has his AARP seniors in the bag for the GOP. But is being an enthusiastic supporter of Newt Gingrich's wing nut healthcare plan for America doing the best for seniors?

Novelli is such a fan of Gingrich that he wrote a preface to Newt's babbling right wing treatise on how to destroy the healthcare safety net for seniors and other Americans: "Saving Lives & Saving Money."...

Who is Gingrich's ally in putting a knife in the back of American seniors?

Why it's William Novelli, CEO of AARP.

Conservatives have no use for the public welfare. The notion of "there but for the grace of God go I" simply never penetrated into their thick, selfish skulls.

Unless the decent people of this world find a way of shaming all conservatives into the closet, we are all in for a hellish time.

It is good to see that there is a limit to the sort of regressive barbarism and exploitative manipulation that conservatives use to get their way. We are thinking of recent developments in Israel, where the rabid, bloodthirsty government of Sharon is finally beginning to wear thin on the the Israeli people. When the soldiers who are sent to do the killing for the conservative task masters begin to refuse, then there is about to be a sea-change in the society; the decent people are about to say, "Enough."

Let us hope that the decent people left in America are about to say, "Enough" to W and his rotten-to-the-core handers.

It would spare the world untold misery if we could send them packing.

BUSH: SURPRISE! NO CONNECTION BETWEEN SADDAM AND ALQAIDA

Saddam never had any intention of moving weapons of any kind to alQaida. This is no big surprise to those of us who could see the mendacity of the Bushites long before they stole the 2000 election.

But here's the story anyway, from the Washington Post:

Walter Pincus: More Proof of Bush Lies

And here's a self-explanatory excerpt:

The CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert.

Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provided new details about the weapons search and Iraqi insurgency in a report released Friday. It was based on briefings over the past two weeks in Iraq from David Kay, the CIA representative who is directing the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq; L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator there; and military officials.

"No evidence of any Iraqi effort to transfer weapons of mass destruction or weapons to terrorists," Cordesman wrote of Kay's briefing. "Only possibility was Saddam's Fedayeen [his son's irregular terrorist force] and talk only."

One of the concerns the Bush administration cited early last year to justify the need to invade Iraq was that Hussein would provide chemical or biological agents or weapons to al Qaeda or other terrorists.

The Bushites have hoisted themselves on their own petards. Unfortunately, in doing so they sent thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans, Brits, and Italians to their deaths, as well as thousands of Americans wounded.

Isn't conservatism great?

BUSH: SHILL FOR MEDIA CORPORATIONS

W has threatened to veto any legislation rolling back FCC giveaways to media conglomerates.

Since such regulations are attached to the appropriations bills going throug Congress, it means that W is at least posturing as if he's prepared to shut down the government over this issue.

Why? Because he's shilling for the conservative-controlled media giants: they get more ownership, he gets more outrageously favorable press. See? It's win-win.

Here is a report on the issue from the Center for American Progess:

CAP: FCC Showdown (click on "FCC Pushback.")

A showdown is shaping up between the Bush Administration and one of the most powerful conservative Senators in America – Appropriations Chairman Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). The issue: the FCC's June decision to deregulate the media industry and allow more consolidation of large media conglomerates. In September, a bipartisan group of Senators, motivated by a ground swell of public opposition – including 2.3 million calls of protest to the FCC, voted 55-40 to roll back the FCC rulemaking. But the White House remains steadfast in its threat to veto any legislation with the rollback attached – including the final 2004 spending bills, where it exists today. In other words, the White House claims it is willing to shut down the government in order to protect large media corporations like Viacom, Fox, and GE against the will of majority public opinion (AP reported earlier this year, 50% of the public viewed the FCC's decision negatively, while only 10% viewed it favorably). Stevens, a strong opponent of the FCC regulations, has promised to ignore the veto threat and send a bill rescinding the FCC rules to the President. He first has to contend with Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), who is trying to avoid having the bill sent to the President's desk. Meanwhile, more than 200 members of the House have sent a letter to Speaker Dennis Hastert demanding an opportunity to vote on the Senate measure. The President, however, has threatened to veto any attempt by Congress to roll back the FCC rules.

BACKGROUND ON THE DECISION: The FCC's decision – engineered by Bush-FCC Chairman Michael Powell, advanced the most significant relaxation of media ownership rules in three decades. The FCC regulations, now temporarily enjoined by a federal court, would "let a company own as many as three TV stations, eight radio stations, a newspaper, and a cable-TV station in one city" and allow a single TV network to acquire local stations that reach up to 45% of the national audience (For a good summary of these complex regulations take a look at this chart).

THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY IS AT STAKE: In a striking example of how recent FCC action has motivated the grassroots, over 1600 people – about 1400 more than organizers initially expected – gathered in Madison, WI at the National Conference of Media Reform to speak out against the concentration of media outlets. Michael Copps, one of the two FCC members to vote against the new rules, who spoke at the conference said, "I don't think there is a more important meeting taking place in America today." The local Capital Times reported the event, which also feature Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), revealed that "nothing less than the future of democracy is at stake if the concentration of media outlets continues unchecked."

DEBUNKING THE RIGHT WING MEDIA MYTH: The American Journalism Review reports "[t]hat the much-ballyhooed 'liberal press' hasn't been nearly as tough on President Bush as it was on his predecessor." Matt Taibbi of the New York Press calls the President's March 6 press conference, where no a single question was asked about the deficit, oil prices, unemployment, prescription drug prices or any other domestic issue, "a mini-Alamo for American journalism, a final announcement that the press no longer performs anything akin to a real function." Mark Halperin, ABC News Political Director, remarks that "[a]ny objective person would say…Bush is not covered aggressively enough." On MSNBC, correspondent Bob Kur lead into coverage of the President's May First "Mission Accomplished" stunt this way: "Now, a little bit more on what we're calling the President's excellent adventure." His colleague John Elliott responded, "It's cool. I mean, it's history in the making."

Is there any single issue which W's handlers give him the correct, the reasonable, the generous, or the decent position?

We can't think of one.

BUSH: HOW A FASCIST CELEBRATES VETERANS DAY

On this Veterans Day, W and his criminal handlers are using our military for their private imperialist aims, while not even having the decency to support the young men who they are sending to their deaths.

To get the true picture of what the Bushites are doing to our brave soldiers, read the excerpts from this letter from a recently deceased soldier that was published today in the New York Times (a free subscription is required):

Excerpt of a letter from Army Pfc. Jesse A. Givens, 34, of Springfield, Mo. Private Givens was killed May 1 when his tank fell into the Euphrates River after the bank on which he was parked gave way. This letter was written to be delivered to his family if he died. Melissa is his wife, Dakota his 6-year-old stepson and Bean the name he used for his son, Carson, who was born May 29.

My family,

I never thought that I would be writing a letter like this. I really don't know where to start. I've been getting bad feelings, though and, well, if you are reading this. . . .

The happiest moments in my life all deal with my little family. I will always have with me the small moments we all shared. The moments when you quit taking life so serious and smiled. The sounds of a beautiful boy's laughter or the simple nudge of a baby unborn. You will never know how complete you have made me. You saved me from loneliness and taught me how to think beyond myself. You taught me how to live and to love. You opened my eyes to a world I never dreamed existed.

Dakota . . . you taught me how to care until it hurts, you taught me how to smile again. You taught me that life isn't so serious and sometimes you just have to play. You have a big, beautiful heart. Through life you need to keep it open and follow it. Never be afraid to be yourself. I will always be there in our park when you dream so we can play. I love you, and hope someday you will understand why I didn't come home. Please be proud of me.

Bean, I never got to see you but I know in my heart you are beautiful. I know you will be strong and big-hearted like your mom and brother. I will always have with me the feel of the soft nudges on your mom's belly, and the joy I felt when I found out you were on your way. I love you, Bean.

Melissa, I have never been as blessed as the day I met you. You are my angel, soulmate, wife, lover and best friend. I am sorry. I did not want to have to write this letter. There is so much more I need to say, so much more I need to share. A lifetime's worth. I married you for a million lifetimes. That's how long I will be with you. Please keep my babies safe. Please find it in your heart to forgive me for leaving you alone. . . . Teach our babies to live life to the fullest, tell yourself to do the same.

I will always be there with you, Melissa. I will always want you, need you and love you, in my heart, my mind and my soul. Do me a favor, after you tuck the children in. Give them hugs and kisses from me. Go outside and look at the stars and count them. Don't forget to smile.

Love Always,
Your husband,
Jess

Now read this about what Rumsfeld is saying these days (story from the Ocala Star Banner):

In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. forces would be welcomed by the Iraqi citizenry and that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

Now, after both statements have been shown to be either incorrect or vastly exaggerated, Rumsfeld - with the same trademark confidence that he exuded before the war - is denying that he ever made such assertions.

In recent testy exchanges with reporters, Rumsfeld interrupted the questioners and attacked the premise of the questions if they dealt with his pre-war comments about weapons of mass destruction and Americans-as-liberators.

For example, on Feb. 20, a month before the invasion, Rumsfeld fielded a question about whether Americans would be greeted as liberators if they invaded Iraq.

"Do you expect the invasion, if it comes, to be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?" Jim Lehrer asked the defense secretary on PBS' "The News Hour."

"There is no question but that they would be welcomed," Rumsfeld replied, referring to American forces. "Go back to Afghanistan, the people were in the streets playing music, cheering, flying kites, and doing all the things that the Taliban and the al-Qaeda would not let them do."

The Americans-as-liberators theme was repeated by other senior administration officials in the weeks preceding the war, including Rumsfeld's No. 2 - Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - and Vice President Cheney.

But on Sept. 25 - a particularly bloody day in which one U.S. soldier was killed in an ambush, eight Iraqi civilians died in a mortar strike and a member of the U.S-appointed governing council died after an assassination attempt five days earlier - Rumsfeld was asked about the surging resistance.

"Before the war in Iraq, you stated the case very eloquently and you said . . . they would welcome us with open arms," Sinclair Broadcasting anchor Morris Jones said to Rumsfeld as the prelude to a question.

The defense chief quickly cut him off.
"Never said that," he said. "Never did. You may remember it well, but you're thinking of somebody else. You can't find, anywhere, me saying anything like either of those two things you just said I said."

Get that? Rumsfeld is lying outright about the rationale he himself used to send loyal soldiers like Jesse Givens to their deaths! He doesn't have the guts to own up to his mistakes, let alone his the base truth underneath his public posturing--namely that he and the whole Bushite junta have hijacked the entire government to do their supercapitalist, ultrafascist bidding.

By the way, some correspondents have objected to our use of the term "fascist" in relation to W and his handlers. We beg to disagree: "fascist" is the entirely proper term for the present "administration."

Benito Mussolini said this about fascism: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

There can be no denying that the Bushites have turned the entire government over to corporate interests. If fascism is corporatism, the Bushites are certainly fascists.

A dictionary also defines fascism this way: "A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."

The Bushites have centralized all authority in the White House, and no one in the government dare express a criticism under pain of severe retaliation, as if under the control of a dictator; the Bushites has turned over control of the economy to their crony corporations by all but eliminating enforcement actions against corporate crooks, and they are trying to shove their regressive, repressive social agenda down the throats of every single American by putting their radical authoritarian attitudes into law; the Bushites have terrorized tried to intimidate everyone in government that might speak out against them by threats of retaliation, even by endangering the life of an active CIA agent wife of a critic to demonstrate just how ruthless their sense of retaliation is, and they have censored (and manufactured!) news coming out Iraq, prevented citizens from effective protesting with so-called "free speech zones" designed to keep protestors far away from where they might be seen by television cameras or the press, while their surrogates in the conservative-controlled media constantly pressure reporters to play down--if not scrub--stories critical of the Bushites; their belligerent nationalism is too evident to need comment, and their racism is disguised as a sophistical commitment to "equal rights for all"--especially angry white males.

On every count of the definition, W and his handlers are major fascists.

So what was Maximum Fascist Leader doing on this Veterans Day? Mouthing unthinkingly a speech he could never have written at the ultra right-wing Heritage Foundation to an audience of adoring faux Christians and scheming ultra-capitalists. Here is some of the words that came out of his puppet-mouth:

We come to this Veterans Day in a time of war. And today's military is acting in the finest traditions of the veterans who came before them. They've given all that we've asked of them. They are showing bravery in the face of ruthless enemies, and compassion to people in great need. Our men and women in uniform are warriors and they are liberators, strong and kind and decent. By their courage, they keep us safe; by their honor, they make us proud. (Applause.)

When we lose such Americans in battle we lose our best. And the time -- this time of brave achievement is also a time of sacrifice. Not far from this place, at Army and Navy medical centers, young service members are recovering from injuries of war. Not far from here, at Arlington National Cemetery, as in home towns across America, we have laid to rest young men and women who died in distant lands. For their families, this is a terrible sorrow, and we pray for their comfort. For the nation, there is a feeling of loss, and we remember and we honor every name. (Applause.)

Our people in uniform know the cost and risk of war. They also know what is at stake in this war. Army Command Sergeant Major Loakimo Falaniko recently lost his son, Private Jonathan Falaniko, in an attack near Baghdad. Father and son both served in Iraq, in the same unit, the 1st Armored Division's Engineer Brigade. At his son's memorial service, Command Sergeant Major Falaniko said this: "What our country brings to Iraq is a chance for freedom and democracy. We're making a difference every day. My son died for a good cause. He answered the nation's call."

Now take a look at this story from the Army Times (a military newspaper):

Commissaries and the Defense Department’s stateside schools are in the crosshairs of Pentagon budget cutters, and military advocates, families and even base commanders are up in arms.

Defense officials notified the services in mid-October that they intend to close 19 commissaries and may close 19 more, mostly in remote areas.

At the same time, the Pentagon is finishing a study to determine whether to close or transfer control of the 58 schools it operates on 14 military installations in the continental United States.

The two initiatives are the latest in a string of actions by the Bush administration to cut or hold down growth in pay and benefits, including basic pay, combat pay, health-care benefits and the death gratuity paid to survivors of troops who die on active duty.

The roots of all these efforts reach back to the highest levels of the Defense Department.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has made no secret of his desire to get the military out of support activities that are not central to its core war-fighting functions, said Joseph Tafoya, director of the Department of Defense Education Activity. As soon as he arrived at the Pentagon three years ago, Tafoya said, Rumsfeld began asking: “Why am I running stores? Why am I in education?”

On Oct. 16, at the headquarters of the Domestic Dependent Elementary and Secondary Schools in Peachtree City, Ga., Tafoya hosted more than 70 senior officers, school administrators, teachers, military parents and students for a forum on the future of the U.S.-based schools.

“As Marines, we take the short end of the stick in many ways,” said Col. James Lowe, commander of Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. “But when it comes to our children, we’re very intolerant about them being shortchanged.”

And shortchanged is exactly how military families and family advocates are feeling, said Joyce Raezer, director of government relations for the National Military Family Association.

“How can leadership be talking about cutting back on quality-of-life benefits right now when the force and everyone supporting the force is at such a high stress level?” Raezer said.

The week the commissary cuts became known, 11 soldiers were killed in Iraq, and as many as 30 failed to show up on scedule for return flights to Baghdad at the end of their two-week R&R visits.

A ‘personal affront’

“Betrayal — write that down and put it in your report,” said Col. John Kidd, garrison commander of Fort Stewart, Ga., testifying at Tafoya’s forum on the need to keep military-run schools on his post. “As a commander, I will fight this tooth and nail. Folks down there are not just militant on this issue. They will march on Washington.”

Lowe, the Quantico base commander, said he never has seen his community more united than it is over the schools issue.

“The very fact that this transfer study is being conducted at this time when Marines, sailors, soldiers and airmen and their families are increasingly required to give more of themselves and to go in harm’s way is taken by many as a personal affront,” he said. “It raises serious questions about DoD’s commitment to all quality-of-life issues.”

The bald-faced gall of W--the fake president, the usurper, the liar, the deserter--to even let a word about the sacrifice of soldiers pass his ignorant, cowardly lips is just breathtaking. And the acceptance of even a single American citizen of such an obvious charlatan, such a shameless cretin, is even more breathtaking. He is using soldiers to carry out his own personal pursuit of empire, glory, and despotism--and he won't even pay them living wages, attend their funerals, or stop fund-raising long enough to meet a plane carrying their bodies home.

This is beyond bizarre. In a healthy nation, W would have been impeached and probably sentenced to death for treason long ago.

Where is the outrage?

Perhaps it is coming. We have just been listening to a call in talk show that began with a reading of the letter from Jesse Givens above. For the next hour, one veteran after another called in and vilified W, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the whole Bushite junta for their callous misuse of war powers and their disgusting treatment of our soldiers.

Perhaps it is coming.

Let us hope that it comes before the Bushites complete their conversion of our once-proud democracy to a radical right-wing fascist state.

GORE: FINALLY SOMEONE IS SPEAKING TRUTH!

Al Gore gave a speech today at Constitution Hall in DC that is the first public speech by a major political figure to actually tell the real truth about the Bushite junta's desire to turn America into a fascist state.

Here is the transcript:

Gore: Bush is a Tyrant!

And here are some excerpts:

President Bush is claiming the unilateral right to do that to any American citizen he believes is an “enemy combatant.” Those are the magic words.  If the President alone decides that those two words accurately describe someone, then that person can be immediately locked up and held incommunicado for as long as the President wants, with no court having the right to determine whether the facts actually justify his imprisonment.

Now if the President makes a mistake, or is given faulty information by somebody working for him, and locks up the wrong person, then it’s almost impossible for that person to prove his innocence – because he can’t talk to a lawyer or his family or anyone else and he doesn’t even have the right to know what specific crime he is accused of committing.  So a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as “inalienable” can now be instantly stripped from any American by the President with no meaningful review by any other branch of government....

For America’s first 212 years, it used to be that if the police wanted to search your house, they had to be able to convince an independent judge to give them a search warrant and then (with rare exceptions) they had to go bang on your door and yell, “Open up!” Then, if you didn’t quickly open up, they could knock the door down.  Also, if they seized anything, they had to leave a list explaining what they had taken.  That way, if it was all a terrible mistake (as it sometimes is) you could go and get your stuff back.

But that’s all changed now.  Starting two years ago, federal agents were given broad new statutory authority by the Patriot Act to “sneak and peak” in non-terrorism cases.  They can secretly enter your home with no warning – whether you are there or not – and they can wait for months before telling you they were there.  And it doesn’t have to have any relationship to terrorism whatsoever.  It applies to any garden-variety crime.  And the new law makes it very easy to get around the need for a traditional warrant -- simply by saying that searching your house might have some connection (even a remote one) to the investigation of some agent of a foreign power.  Then they can go to another court, a secret court, that more or less has to give them a warrant whenever they ask.

Three weeks ago, in a speech at FBI Headquarters, President Bush went even further and formally proposed that the Attorney General be allowed to authorize subpoenas by administrative order, without the need for a warrant from any court....

I want to challenge the Bush Administration’s implicit assumption that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists.

Because it is simply not true. 

In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin Laden.

In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target.

In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much more important challenges that would actually help to protect the country.

In both cases, the administration has fostered false impressions and misled the nation with superficial, emotional and manipulative presentations that are not worthy of American Democracy.

In both cases they have exploited public fears for partisan political gain and postured themselves as bold defenders of our country while actually weakening not strengthening America.

In both cases, they have used unprecedented secrecy and deception in order to avoid accountability to the Congress, the Courts, the press and the people.

Indeed, this Administration has turned the fundamental presumption of our democracy on its head.  A government of and for the people is supposed to be generally open to public scrutiny by the people -- while the private information of the people themselves should be routinely protected from government intrusion. 

But instead, this Administration is seeking to conduct its work in secret even as it demands broad unfettered access to personal information about American citizens.  Under the rubric of protecting national security, they have obtained new powers to gather information from citizens and to keep it secret.  Yet at the same time they themselves refuse to disclose information that is highly relevant to the war against terrorism.

They are even arrogantly refusing to provide information about 9/11 that is in their possession to the 9/11 Commission – the lawful investigative body charged with examining not only the performance of the Bush Administration, but also the actions of the prior Administration in which I served.  The whole point is to learn all we can about preventing future terrorist attacks,

Two days ago, the Commission was forced to issue a subpoena to the Pentagon, which has – disgracefully – put Secretary Rumsfeld’s desire to avoid embarrassment ahead of the nation’s need to learn how we can best avoid future terrorist attacks. The Commission also served notice that it will issue a subpoena to the White House if the President continues to withhold information essential to the investigation.

And the White House is also refusing to respond to repeated bipartisan Congressional requests for information about 9/11 – even though the Congress is simply exercising its Constitutional oversight authority. In the words of Senator McCain, “Excessive administration secrecy on issues related to the September 11 attacks feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public’s confidence in government.”

In a revealing move, just three days ago, the White House asked the Republican leadership of the Senate to shut down the Intelligence Committee’s investigation of 9/11 based on a trivial political dispute.  Apparently the President is anxious to keep the Congress from seeing what are said to have been clear, strong and explicit warnings directly to him a few weeks before 9/11 that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial airliners and use them to attack us. 

Astonishingly, the Republican Senate leadership quickly complied with the President’s request.  Such obedience and complicity in what looks like a cover-up from the majority party in a separate and supposedly co-equal branch of government makes it seem like a very long time ago when a Republican Attorney General and his deputy resigned rather than comply with an order to fire the special prosecutor investigating Richard Nixon.

Yes, Mr. Gore, it seems like a very, very long time ago when America had true patriots who would stand up to an evil president.

Are there any such men or women left?

Let us hope they show themselves soon, or America will be lost.

BUSH: MAJOR NEW OFFENSIVE OF LIES

The Bushite junta has launched a new barrage of lies and deceptions at credulous conservatives in order to keep fomenting hatred against liberals and shore up support for the next election.

Deception No. 1
The Bushites are looking for someone to scapegoat for their disastrous leap into unnecessary and immoral war in Iraq, and for the disgusting aftermath of their bellicose war-mongering. Their probable target: Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. Here is an article outlining the strategy:

Bush: Pinning the Blame on a Lackey

And here is an excerpt:

"What's gonna happen with Feith?" is the question animating the Washington cogniscenti as the debate heats up over whether a major shift in the Bush administration's unilateralist and ultra-hawkish foreign policy is or is not underway. Feith, who occupies an obscure but nonetheless strategic position, reports directly to the deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld....

A protege of Richard Perle, the former chairman of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB) who stands at the center of the neoconservative foreign policy network in Washington, Feith has long opposed territorial compromise by Israel and was an outspoken foe of the Oslo process and even the Camp David peace agreement mediated by former President Jimmy Carter between Egypt and Israel. His former law partner, L. Marc Zell, is a spokesman for the Jewish settlers' movement on the occupied West Bank.

But, more to the point, virtually everything that has gone wrong in Iraq--especially those matters that Congress is either investigating or is poised to investigate--is linked directly to his office. "All roads lead to Feith," noted one knowledgeable administration official this week.

It was his now-defunct Office of Special Plans (OSP) that is alleged to have collected--often with the help of the neoconservatives' favorite Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi--and "cooked" the most alarmist pre-war intelligence against Saddam Hussein and then "stovepiped" it to the White House via Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney unvetted by the intelligence agencies.

It was also his office that was in charge of post-war planning and rejected the product of months of work by dozens of Iraqi exiles and Mideast experts in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who anticipated many of the problems that have wrong-footed the occupation. It also excluded many top Mideast experts from the State Department from playing any role in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq.

And it is his office that, with the CPA, has recommended companies for huge and, in some cases, no-bid contracts in Iraq that have amounted, in the eyes of some critical lawmakers, to flagrant profiteering....

"Until they get rid of Feith, no one is going to believe that the administration is seriously reassessing its policies," said one congressional aide whose boss has been a strong critic of administration policy in Iraq.

There are hints that Feith has seen his authority dwindle since the first half of October when national security adviser Condoleezza Rice announced that she would head a new interagency Iraq Stabilization Group (ISG)....

There have been unconfirmed reports that top White House officials reached a decision two months ago that Feith had to go, but were then dissuaded by Rumsfeld, who argued that his departure would be seen as an admission that things had gone seriously wrong in Iraq. It was in that context, according to these reports, that the administration moved to quietly reduce Feith's authority in part by creating the ISG.

When they are about to get caught, the Bushites always look for a fall guy. They buy him out with promises of future wealth (which the vast right-wing conspiracy can always deliver without it being connected directly to the Bushites), and no doubt also with threats of future harm.

The end result is, as always, a massive deception of the American people, who are led to believe that it was a low-level lackey's decisions that caused the "administration" to lead the nation into disaster.

Deception No. 2
The Bushites are using government statistics to lie about the economic "rebound." The so-called increase in jobs noted last week is a trick of statistics. Here is an article that covers both sides--the "administration"'s lies and the actual facts:

Jobs Not Really Gained

And here is an excerpt:

The new jobs added last month mostly were in lower-paying industries such as retail and temporary employment firms. Average weekly earnings in those sectors are $366 and $318 respectively, said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, an employment research and recruiting firm. The national average is $521 per week.

Also, 1.4 million workers were only able to find part-time work, up 27 percent from a year ago. To make ends meet, 7.5 million Americans worked two or more jobs last month, up from 7.3 million a year ago.

One of four people out of work were unemployed for 27 weeks or longer last month. Nearly half of those were white-collar workers in management, professional, sales and office jobs, Challenger said.

The hard-hit manufacturing sector continued to shed jobs in October, losing 24,000. It was the 37th consecutive month of declines, though the pace has slowed considerably.

For blacks, the jobless rate climbed three-tenths of a percentage point last month to 11.5 percent. The rate fell for whites, Hispanics, Asians, men and women.

"It's quite alarming that the Bush administration is celebrating ... a very, very minuscule decrease in the overall unemployment rate while African-Americans are still standing in the unemployment line," said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

"I see nothing to celebrate in these numbers," he said.

So: another pathetic attempt to deceive America--which, given conservative control of the media and conservative mind-control of the stupid, will probably succeed.

Deception No. 3
The "administration" is hiding an imminent attack on another mideastern nation. Here is an article noting alarming pre-war signs in norther Great Britain:

Bushites Now Planning New War Without Congressional Notice?

And here is an excerpt:

Since Saturday, people in the Highlands of Scotland have been
witnessing large movements of US warplanes overhead.
Experienced observers say the large numbers are reminiscent
of those that preceded the bombing of Iraq in 1998 and military
strikes on Libya in the1980's as well as the first Gulf War.

At the weekend warplanes were flying over at a rate of roughly
one every 15 minutes. As well as watching them from the ground
the plane spotters have also been able to overhear pilots talking
by listening to their radio frequencies.

At this rate some 288 warplanes would have passed over Scotland
in three days.

It is thought that the planes have flown on a route from the US
over the north pole to bases in Europe and the Mediterranean.
The size and scale of the movement suggests that the US may
be preparing to strike at a country in the Middle East in the
next week to ten days.

So, having learned their lesson that informing the world of their war-mongering intentions just infuriates people of good will, the Bushites will no longer bother to put up fake justifications for military attacks BEFORE the fact; they will save their fake justifications for AFTER the fact.

Remember: nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, is out-of-bounds to the utterly amoral, super-capitalist, ultra-Machiavellian schemers of the Bush "administration." Death, destruction, lies, subversion, secret assassinations, economic blackmail--it's all in a day's work for the team that stole the 2000 election.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

BUSH: HIDE THE BODY BAGS!

W, America's great savior, doesn't even have the guts to let us see the dead returning from Iraq.

Here is a link to a must-read article from the Toronto Star, demonstrating the duplicity and vileness of W and his handlers in their treatment of the brave and self-sacrificing soldiers who die for their pursuit of world domination:

Toronto Star: Bush--A Coward is as a Coward Does

And here is an excerpt:

Charles H. Buehring came home last week.

He arrived at the air force base in Dover, Del., in the middle of the night, in an aluminum shipping case draped in an American flag.

When the military truck drove his remains across the tarmac, workers paused and removed their hats.

He was met by a six-member honour guard acting as pallbearers, to allow a "dignified transfer" to the Charles C. Carson mortuary, where he became one of an estimated 60,000 American casualties of war that have been processed there over almost five decades.

"It reminds us we are at war," says Lt.-Col. Jon Anderson, who describes business at the Dover mortuary as "steady."

But America never saw Lt.-Col. Buehring's arrival, days after a rocket from a homemade launcher ended his life at age 40 in Baghdad's heavily fortified Rasheed Hotel last Monday.

Americans have never seen any of the other 359 bodies returning from Iraq. Nor do they see the wounded cramming the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington or soldiers who say they are being treated inhumanely awaiting medical treatment at Fort Stewart, Ga.

In order to continue to sell an increasingly unpopular Iraqi invasion to the American people, President George W. Bush's administration sweeps the messy parts of war — the grieving families, the flag-draped coffins, the soldiers who have lost limbs — into a far corner of the nation's attic.

No television cameras are allowed at Dover.

Bush does not attend the funerals of soldiers who gave their lives in his war on terrorism.

Buehring of Winter Springs, Fla., described as "a great American" by his commanding officer, had two sons, 12 and 9, was active in the Boy Scouts and his church and had served his country for 18 years.

No government official has said a word publicly about him.

If stories of wounded soldiers are told, they are told by hometown papers, but there is no national attention given to the recuperating veterans here in the nation's capital.

More than 1,700 Americans have been wounded in Iraq since the March invasion.

"You can call it news control or information control or flat-out propaganda," says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor at Washington's American University.

"Whatever you call it, this is the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defence has ever undertaken in this country."

Simpson notes that photos of the dead returning to American soil have historically been part of the ceremony, part of the picture of conflict and part of the public closure for families — until now.

"This White House is the greatest user of propaganda in American history and if they had a shred of honesty, they would admit it. But they can't."

Lynn Cutler, a Democratic strategist and former official in Bill Clinton's White House, says this is the first time in history that bodies have been brought home under cover of secrecy.

"It feels like Vietnam when Lyndon Johnson was accused of hiding the body bags ....

"This is a big government and a big Pentagon and they could have someone there to meet these bodies as they come back to the country."

But today's military doesn't even use the words "body bags" — a term in common usage during the Vietnam War, when 58,000 Americans died.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon began calling them "human remains pouches" and it now refers to them as "transfer tubes."

One term that has crept into the U.S. military lexicon, however, is the "Dover test," shorthand for the American public's tolerance for wartime fatalities.

The policy of banning cameras at Dover dates back to the 1991 Gulf War, under Bush's father, Pentagon officials say.

But it has been unevenly applied: You can see photos of soldiers' bodies returning in coffins from Afghanistan at Ramstein airbase in Germany.

Clinton met returning coffins from Kosovo and, in an elaborate ceremony, was on hand for the arrival of the bodies of his former commerce secretary Ronald Brown 32 others killed in a 1996 plane crash.

Pictures were allowed of incoming caskets after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and President George H.W. Bush helped eulogize Americans killed in Panama and Lebanon.

But last March, a directive came down reaffirming the banning of cameras, likely in anticipation of the sheer volume of casualties being repatriated.

At Dover, Lt.-Col. Anderson says the policy is strictly in place to respect the privacy of the families, although he is well aware that there are those who think it was a political decision.

"The administration has clearly made an attempt to limit the attention that would build up if they were showing Dover every day," says Joseph Dawson, a military historian at Texas A & M University.

The White House policy works — to a point.

If there are no pictures of caskets being delivered to U.S. airbases, citizens don't think of them, analysts say.

Dawson says television pictures of the wounded at Walter Reed would be a jolt to Americans as they head out to dinner or are thinking of the week's NFL matchups.

Every American should be lucky enough to read this article. It shows just how snakelike our so-called "administration" really is.

And insofar as America continues to back up the Bushite propensity for evil, it too is culpable; anyone who approves of them is one of them.

A few weeks ago, we were at a gathering in which a mind-controlled conservative came up to our group, interrupted our perfectly civil conversation about the evils of the Bushites, and starting blowing on with pure cant about "supporting our President in time of war" and "standing with America against liberals" and other such conservative nonsense.

We interrupted that person in turn and demanded the answer to one question: did that person know how many Iraqis had been killed since the war began? When that person replied in the negative, we responded that we did not know either--and that tells us all that we need to know about "America." A nation that doesn't even want to know how many people it is killing is not a nation that deserves support. It is a nation without a soul.

W and his handlers--not liberals!--have crushed the soul of America and bent it to their Machiavellian wills.

It will take a revolution at the polls to thrash them and get our nation's decency back again--if they haven't rigged all the polling machines by then!

BUSH: GOD'S CHOICE?

We all know that W thinks he is God's anointed. A new book by a self-described "Christian" shows just how deep W's messiah complex goes.

The book, The Faith of George W. Bush by Stephen Mansfield, reveals that W always thought God had chosen him to lead America. It also reveals that W has no apparent compunctions about mixing his particular brand of religiosity together with his official duties, and that he expects those around him to share his beliefs.

Here is a link to a brief report on the book:

Bush: Son of God

And here is an excerpt from the report:

President George W. Bush stood before a cheering crowd at a Dallas Christian youth centre last week, and told them about being 'born again' as a Christian.

'If you change their heart, then they change their behaviour. I know,' he said, referring to his own conversion, which led to him giving up drinking.

Behind Bush were two banners. 'King of Kings', proclaimed one. 'Lord of Lords', said the other. The symbolism of how fervent Christianity has become deeply entwined with the most powerful man on the planet could not have been stronger.

Few US Presidents have been as openly religious as Bush. Now a new book has lifted the lid on how deep those Christian convictions run. It will stir up controversy at a time when the administration is keen to portray its 'war on terror' as non-religious.

The book, which depicts a President who prays each day and believes he is on a direct mission from God, will give ammunition to critics who claim Bush's administration is heavily influenced by extremist Christians.

It is perhaps no surprise that a profoundly ignorant and nearly illiterate man like Bush might come to imagine that he is God's chosen one, when in fact he was chosen by power-hungry neo-con world supremacists to front for their take-over of American democracy. This is not a secret. The same people now controlling W had used Bob Dole as a front-man in their attempt to seize control from Bill Clinton in 1996. A child could see that the players stay the same while the puppet changes.

But it is a surprise that the American people have become so stupid that they actually either approve of W's ignorance or tolerate it. W's brand of "Christianity"--which combines self-righteous arrogance with vengeful ruthlessness--is not "Christian" except in name. And yet the papers are full of the opinions of half-educated and ill-informed "Christians" who both approve of W's bastardization of Christianity and continue to see him as Christ's avatar.

Here's a picture from the Associated Press portraying visually the image that W's "Christian" supporters have of him:

Bush: Lord of Lords

Why the AP, which now has published two pictures of W as Savior (an earlier picture is a closeup of Bush's face with what appears to be a halo around his head), is pushing W's religiosity is a mystery.

It is all the more a mystery because the fact is that W's amorality, his incompetence, and his powermongering puppetmasters have all contributed to making his faux administration the most depraved, dishonest, secretive, and unscrupulous in American history.

W's lying is pathological. Does his "Chritianity" make that OK? (If you think W is too "upright" to lie, you are delusional. Just check out David Corn's long list of W's well-documented mendacious behavior in his recent book The Lies of George W. Bush. Here's the link. W's unconcern with the truth is well-known. He often brags of not bothering to read news reports, preferring instead to get his notions on what's happening from what he calls "objective sources"--namely Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, and the rest of his single-minded world-hegemonist puppetmasters. Does his "Christianity" make that OK? He is deeply ignorant and arrogant. Does his "Christianity" make that OK?

And worst of all, he obviously thinks nothing of sending American soldiers to die for whatever cause his puppetmasters whisper in his ear. The Iraq fiasco, marred by W's messianism, which made him absolutely dependent on his war-mongering "advisers," has shown the depth of W's feckless self-aggrandizement and the profundity of his ignorant faith in his divine selection.

Here is a link to a long article in today's New York Times detailing the mess in Iraq and the Bush junta's utter incompetence--not to mention immoral duplicity--in getting America into a quagmire that did not have to happen:

NY Times: Bush the Blunderer

And here is an excerpt:

In Iraq today, there is a steadily increasing disconnect between what the architects of the occupation think they are accomplishing and how Iraqis on the street evaluate postwar progress. And as the security situation fails to improve, these perceptions continue to darken.

The Bush administration fiercely denies that this ''alarmist'' view accurately reflects Iraqi reality. It insists that the positive account it has been putting forward is the real truth and that the largely downbeat account in much of the press is both inaccurate and unduly despairing. The corner has been turned, administration officials repeat.

Whether the United States is eventually successful in Iraq (and saying the mission ''has to succeed,'' as so many people do in Washington, is not a policy but an expression of faith), even supporters of the current approach of the Coalition Provisional Authority concede that the United States is playing catch-up in Iraq. This is largely, though obviously not entirely, because of the lack of postwar planning during the run-up to the war and the mistakes of the first 60 days after the fall of Saddam Hussein. And the more time passes, the clearer it becomes that what happened in the immediate aftermath of what the administration calls Operation Iraqi Freedom was a self-inflicted wound, a morass of our own making.

Call it liberation or occupation, a dominating American presence in Iraq was probably destined to be more difficult, and more costly in money and in blood, than administration officials claimed in the months leading up to the war. But it need not have been this difficult. Had the military been as meticulous in planning its strategy and tactics for the postwar as it was in planning its actions on the battlefield, the looting of Baghdad, with all its disastrous material and institutional and psychological consequences, might have been stopped before it got out of control. Had the collective knowledge embedded in the Future of Iraq Project been seized upon, rather than repudiated by, the Pentagon after it gained effective control of the war and postwar planning a few months before the war began, a genuine collaboration between the American authorities and Iraqis, both within the country and from the exiles, might have evolved. And had the lessons of nation-building -- its practice but also its inevitability in the wars of the 21st century -- been embraced by the Bush administration, rather than dismissed out of hand, then the opportunities that did exist in postwar Iraq would not have been squandered as, in fact, they were.

The real lesson of the postwar mess is that while occupying and reconstructing Iraq was bound to be difficult, the fact that it may be turning into a quagmire is not a result of fate, but rather (as quagmires usually are) a result of poor planning and wishful thinking. Both have been in evidence to a troubling degree in American policy almost from the moment the decision was made to overthrow Saddam Hussein's bestial dictatorship.

The prayers of believers in America should all be directed at asking any God there might be to smite W and the interests that stole the 2000 election for him, so that democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people can once again return to our sorely damaged nation.