THE CALAMITY HOWLER #147
 
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 01:07:50 -0500 (CDT)


THE CALAMITY HOWLER

April 23, 2007 Issue #147

Sometimes an intended epithet can be turned to good advantage in
the sole surviving issue of the Decatur, Texas Times one finds the
way Populists not only accepted the label `calamity howler but
insisted that they had ample reason to howl and would continue to
howl until their objectives had been attained. --- THE POPULIST
MIND, edited by Norman Pollack

EDITOR\PUBLISHER: A.V Krebs E-MAIL: avkrebs@comcast.net TO RECEIVE:
Send name and address to avkrebs@comcast.net

OVERVIEW:

* JOHN AND ELIZABETH EDWARDS FAMILY SPEAKS FOR MANY OF US * PROFESSOR'S
VIOLENT DEATH CAME WHERE HE SOUGHT PEACE By Colin Moynihan * WHAT
I THINK ABOUT GUNS By Jane Smiley * IRAQ IS THE ULTIMATE APHRODISIAC
By Frank Rich * "DEVASTATING" BILL MOYERS PROBE OF PRESS AND IRAN
ON PBS, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25 By Greg Mitchell * REPORT OUTLINES
PENTAGON EFFORT TO LINK IRAQ, AL QAEDA By Peter Spiegel * IRAQIS
UNITED NOW --- U.S. GET OUT By Robert Scheer * PATRIOT'S DAY: STOP
THE VIOLENCE By Amy Goodman

JOHN AND ELIZABETH EDWARDS FAMILY SPEAKS FOR MANY OF US

We are simply heartbroken by the deaths and injuries suffered at
Virginia Tech. We know what an unspeakable, life-changing moment
this is for these families and how, in this moment, it is hard to
feel anything but overwhelming grief, much less the love and support
around you. But the love and support is there.

We pray that these families, these students, and the entire Virginia
Tech community know that they are being embraced by a nation. There
is a Methodist hymn that gave us solace in such a moment as this,
and we repeat its final verse here, in hopes it will help these
families, as it helped us:

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;

In our doubt there is believing, in our life, eternity, In our
death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory, Unrevealed until its
season, something God alone can see.

Our dearest wish is that this day could start again, with the promise
of these young people alive. Knowing that cannot be, our prayer is
for Gods grace and whatever measure of peace can be reached on this
terrible day.

PROFESSOR'S VIOLENT DEATH CAME WHERE HE SOUGHT PEACE By Colin
Moynihan New York Times April 19, 2007

Prof. Liviu Librescu faced many trials in his 76 years, growing up
and living in Romania. There were the Nazis, who imprisoned his
family when he was a child. Then there was the totalitarian regime
of Nicolae Ceausescu, which forbade him from working when he refused
to join the Communist Party.

But it was a trial in a most unlikely place that proved to be deadly.
On Monday, Professor Librescu faced danger when a student armed
with pistols and the determination to kill approached the room where
the professor was teaching a class in solid mechanics. Professor
Librescu never moved from the door of Room 204 in Norris Hall at
Virginia Tech, witnesses said, even as the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui,
was shooting. Directing his students to escape through windows,
Professor Librescu was fatally shot.

Yesterday, a funeral was held for the professor in the Borough Park
section of Brooklyn. Professor Librescus body was taken there by
Chesed Shel Emes, a Jewish organization that specializes in helping
people in times of trauma, said Rabbi Edgar Gluck, a member of the
group, who said that the professor had been struck by five bullets.
The professors body was to be flown to Israel last night and he
will be buried before sundown today in Raanana, near Tel Aviv, Rabbi
Gluck said.

About 300 people showed up at the Shomrei Hachomos, an Orthodox
chapel. They arrived to recognize a remarkable, resilient life and
an act of courage that ended that life. This was a man who gave his
ultimate for his fellow man, Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn
told the mourners. He gave his life for his students.

In Blacksburg, Virginia, one of those students, Caroline Merrey,
22, described some of the chaos that unfolded inside Room 204. We
had heard the gunfire coming from the classroom behind us, and we
just reacted to it and headed for the windows, Ms. Merrey said.
Professor Librescu never made an attempt to leave. Ms. Merrey said
she and about 20 other students scrambled through the windows as
Professor Librescu shouted for them to hurry. She said she felt
sure his actions helped save lives. Hes a part of my life now and
forever, she said. Im changed. Im not the person I was before Monday.

Speaking to a reporter by telephone from Israel, Professor Librescus
son, Yossi Librescu, 40, a computer engineer, said he took some
solace in the appreciation being expressed for his father. He was
passionate about life, Mr. Librescu said. He had no fear of death.

He said that his father was born in Romania in 1930. After surviving
the Holocaust, Mr. Librescu said, his father became a refusenik in
Romania and lost his job as an aerospace engineer. But in 1976,
Liviu Librescu secretly published a book in Norway that advanced a
theory of aerospace technology that grabbed the attention of others
in the field. In 1978, after lobbying by groups in Israel, he was
permitted to leave Romania and settle there. He began teaching at
Virginia Tech in 1985, university officials said.

Mr. Librescu said that the bucolic environs of Blacksburg provided
a respite from the rigors of his fathers earlier life. His house
was built on the edge of a forest and he took long walks daily,
enjoying nature. He listened to classical music and settled into
the calm, productive rhythms of his new existence. He found Virginia
to be a place that allowed him to be inspired, Mr. Librescu said.

Professor Librescus coffin, draped in black cloth, was wheeled into
the chapel just after 2 p.m. Mr. Hikind spoke briefly and another
man sang a sad lament in Hebrew. At 2:18, several men lifted the
coffin to their shoulders and carried it outside. The professors
wife, Marlena, stood outside and spoke about her husband. His life
was only his family and his students, Ms. Librescu said. Everybody
told me he was like a father.

Down the block, men dressed in black marched toward New Utrecht
Avenue, carrying the coffin. As the N train screeched overhead, the
words of the Kaddish were recited. He was always, always helping,
Ms. Librescu said. But he was not able to help himself.

WHAT I THINK ABOUT GUNS By Jane Smiley HuffingtonPost.com April 18,
2007

Some years ago, I was talking to a man about guns. At the time, I
didn't really know anyone with guns (still don't), but he did. He
had had guns himself. He said, "I gave my gun away, because when I
had it, every time something happened that made me mad, my mind
would start circling around that gun, and I would be thinking about
using it. So I got rid of it and I'm glad I did."

Right up front I will say that I am opposed to casual gun ownership,
but I also realize that Americans will always have guns. Period.
It's a national fetish. But the mental state my interlocutor was
describing years ago is the price we have to pay, along with, of
course, the accidental deaths of children and other unprepared and
careless people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time and in proximity to the wrong gun.

What I would like is for the gun-toting right wing to admit that
there is a price we pay, that senseless accidental deaths and traumas
are a national cost and that it's not so clear that it's worth it,
but hey, we pay it anyway because so many guns are in the hands of
so many people that there would never be any getting rid of them.

I would like the right wing to admit that guns are not "good" and
that the right to bear arms is not an absolute virtue and that the
deaths in the U.S. caused by guns are at least as problematic,
philosophically, as abortion. But I'm not holding my breath.

I hadn't intended to write about guns today --- my original source
of outrage was the op-ed in the New York Times that related the
saga of Georgia Thompson, who worked for the State of Wisconsin.
In the course of doing her job, she put the state's travel business
out for bids. She chose the lowest bidder, but because, unbeknownst
to her, the travel agency making that bid had donated to the
Democratic candidate, the Republican campaign accused her of
corruption, and --- pay attention, this is the scary part --- the
federal prosecuting attorney drummed up a case against her, and got
her put in jail. Right before the election. As part of the Republican
gubernatorial campaign.

Imagine how Kafka-esque all of this seemed to Ms. Thompson --- the
Republicans (possibly at the behest of Washington) destroyed her
life for no reason other than political gain, and with so little
evidence that the appeals court who just released her was appalled
and astonished.

But Ms. Thompson and guns do have a bit of a connection in the eyes
of the right wing. Some weeks ago, I blogged about the attorneys
scandal as it was just coming to light. My fear was that the federal
attorneys were being groomed to either exonerate members of the
Bush administration who might otherwise be convicted of breaking
laws, or else to drum up show trials against opponents and get rid
of them (bingo).

My first piece elicited lots of responses. Many of them were
schadenfreudenish exclamations of right wing glee --- if Bush
declared martial law, that would show us gun-control adherents,
because it would be the well-armed second amendment fanatics who
would be able to save themselves from the martial law round-up,
while those of us who have no guns would, I assume, be marched off
to our detention centers.

Their implication was that the right wing was going to protect us
from the right wing. My own view was that the trigger-happy ones
were probably going to enlist in private mercenary armies and
continue disdaining and condemning us wimps for putting them in
such a compromising position as making them have to shoot us. But
that's how it is with the right wing, isn't it? Grievance is something
they do, no matter how much power they have. They are shocked,
shocked, that they don't have all the power, shocked and victimized
and angry.

You could tell it in Bush's response to today's shooting. First he
said he was shocked and saddened. Then he said everyone has the
right to bear arms. He wouldn't want to let any of those NRA-types
imagine for a second that any amount of senseless killing could
possibly shake his commitment to a fully-armed populace.

Here's what I think about guns --- guns have no other purpose than
killing someone or something. All the other murder weapons Americans
use, from automobiles to blunt objects, exist for another purpose
and sometimes are used to kill. But guns are manufactured and bought
to kill. They invite their owners to think about killing, to practice
killing, and, eventually, to kill, if not other people, then animals.

They are objects of temptation, and every so often, someone comes
along who cannot resist the temptation --- someone who would not
have murdered, or murdered so many, if he did not have a gun, if
he were reduced to a knife or a bludgeon or his own strength. I
wish that the right wing would admit that, while people kill people
and even an "automatic" weapon needs a shooter, people with guns
kill more people than people without guns do.

JANE SMILEY is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres
won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award
in 1992.

IRAQ IS THE ULTIMATE APHRODISIAC By Frank Rich New York Times April
22, 2007

President Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to
Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New
Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity
not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a
bill interfering in Terri Schiavos end-of-life medical care. Mr.
Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis,
and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics.

Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and hell take six weeks to show
his face --- and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the
Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Virginia, by
contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the
pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.

But he couldnt inspire the kind of public acclaim that followed his
post-9/11 visit to ground zero or the political comeback that buoyed
his predecessor after Oklahoma City. The cancer on the Bush White
House, Iraq, is now spreading too fast. The president had barely
returned to Washington when the empty hope of the surge was hideously
mocked by a one-day Baghdad civilian death toll more than five times
that of Blacksburgs. McClatchy Newspapers reported that the death
rate for American troops over the past six months was at its all-time
high for this war.

At home, the president is also hobbled by the Iraq cancers metastasis
--- the twin implosions of Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz.
Technically, both men have been pilloried for sins unrelated to the
war. The attorney general has repeatedly been caught changing his
story about the extent of his involvement in purging eight federal
prosecutors. The Financial Times caught the former deputy secretary
of defense turned World Bank president privately dictating the
extravagant terms of a State Department sinecure for a crony (a k
a romantic partner) that showers her with more take-home pay than
Condoleezza Rice.

Yet each mans latest infractions, however serious, are mere
misdemeanors next to their roles in the Iraq war. Whats being lost
in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism
and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with
the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military
funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the
fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble
confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web
of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a
haphazard potpourri of individual blunders.

Mr. Gonzaless politicizing of the Justice Department is a mere
bagatelle next to his role as White House counsel in 2002, when he
helped shape the administrations legal argument to justify torture.
That paved the way for Abu Ghraib, the episode that destroyed
Americas image and gave terrorists a moral victory. But his efforts
to sabotage national security didnt end there. In a front-page
exposi lost in the Imus avalanche two Sundays ago, The Washington
Post uncovered Mr. Gonzaless reckless role in vetting the nomination
of Bernard Kerik as secretary of homeland security in December 2004.

Mr. Kerik, you may recall, withdrew from consideration for that
cabinet post after a week of embarrassing headlines. Back then, the
White House ducked any culpability for the mess by attributing it
to a single legal issue, a supposedly undocumented nanny, and by
pinning it on a single, nonadministration scapegoat, Mr. Keriks
longtime patron, Rudy Giuliani. The presidents spokesman at the
time, Scott McClellan, told reporters that the White House had had
no reason to believe that Mr. Kerik lied during his vetting process
and that it would be inaccurate to say that process had been rushed.

Thanks to John Solomon and Peter Baker of The Post, we now know
that Mr. McClellans spin was no more accurate than his exoneration
of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Wilson leak case. The Kerik
vetting process was indeed rushed  by Mr. Gonzales --- and the
administration had every reason to believe that it was turning over
homeland security to a liar.

Mr. Gonzales was privy from the get-go to a Kerik dossier ablaze
with red flags pointing to questionable financial deals, an ethics
violation, allegations of mismanagement and a top deputy prosecuted
for corruption, not to mention a friendship with a businessman who
was linked to organized crime. Yet Mr. Gonzales and the president
persisted in shoving Mr. Kerik into the top job of an already
troubled federal department encompassing 22 agencies, 180,000
employees and the very safety of America in the post-9/11 era.

Mr. Kerik may soon face federal charges, and at a most inopportune
time for the Giuliani presidential campaign. But its as a paradigm
of the Bush White Houses waging of the Iraq war that the Kerik case
is most telling. The crucial point to remember is this: Even had
there been no alleged improprieties in the former police chiefs New
York risumi, there still would have been his public record in Iraq
to disqualify him from any administration job.

The year before Mr. Keriks nomination to the cabinet, he was
dispatched by the president to take charge of training the Iraqi
police  and completely failed at that mission. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran
recounts in his invaluable chronicle of Green Zone shenanigans,
Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Mr. Kerik slept all day and held
only two staff meetings, one upon arrival and one for the benefit
of a Times reporter doing a profile. Rather than train Iraqi police,
Mr. Kerik gave upbeat McCain-esque appraisals of the dandy shopping
in Baghdads markets.

Had Mr. Kerik actually helped stand up an Iraqi police force instead
of hastening its descent into a haven for sectarian death squads,
there might not now be extended tours for American troops in an
open-ended escalation of the war. But in the White Houses priorities,
rebuilding Iraq came in a poor third to cronyism and domestic
politics. Mr. Keriks P.R. usefulness as a symbol of September 11
was particularly irresistible to an administration that has exploited
the carnage of September 11 in ways both grandiose (to gin up the
Iraq invasion) and tacky (in 2004 campaign ads).

Mr. Kerik was an exploiter of September 11 in his own right: he had
commandeered an apartment assigned to ground zero police and rescue
workers to carry out his extramarital tryst with the publisher
Judith Regan. The sex angle of Mr. Wolfowitzs scandal is a comparable
symptom of the hubris that warped the judgment of those in power
after September 11.

Not only did he help secure Shaha Riza her over-the-top raise in
2005, but as The Times reported, he also helped get her a junket
to Iraq when he was riding high at the Pentagon in 2003. No one
seems to know what she actually accomplished there, but the bill
was paid by a Defense Department contractor that has since come
under official scrutiny for its noncompetitive contracts and poor
performance. So it went with the entire Iraq fiasco.

You dont have to be a cynic to ask if the White Houses practice of
bestowing better jobs on those who bungled the war might be a form
of hush money. Mr. Wolfowitz was promoted to the World Bank despite
a Pentagon record that included (in part) his prewar hyping of bogus
intelligence about W.M.D. and a nonexistent 9/11-Saddam connection;
his assurance to the world that Iraqs oil revenues would pay for
reconstruction; and his public humiliation of Gen. Eric Shinseki
after the general dared tell Congress (correctly) that several
hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure Iraq after the
invasion.

Once the war began, Mr. Wolfowitz cited national security to bar
businesses from noncoalition countries (like Germany) from competing
for major contracts in Iraq. That helped ensure the disastrous
monopoly of Halliburton and other White House-connected companies,
including the one that employed Ms. Riza.

Had Iraqi reconstruction, like the training of Iraqi police, not
been betrayed by politics and cronyism, the Iraq story might have
a different ending. But maybe not all that different. The cancer
on the Bush White House connects and contaminates all its organs.
Its no surprise that one United States attorney fired without
plausible cause by the Gonzales Justice Department, Carol Lam, was
in hot pursuit of defense contractors with administration connections.

Or that another crony brought by Mr. Wolfowitz to the World Bank
was caught asking the Air Force secretary to secure a job for her
brother at a defense contractor while she was overseeing aspects
of the Air Force budget at the White House. A government with values
this sleazy couldnt possibly win a war.

Like the C.I.A. leak case, each new scandal is filling in a different
piece of the elaborate White House scheme to cover up the lies that
took us into Iraq and the failures that keep us mired there. As the
cover-up unravels and Congress steps up its confrontation over the
wars endgame, our desperate president is reverting to his old
fear-mongering habit of invoking September 11 incessantly in every
speech. The more we learn, the more its clear that hes the one with
reason to be afraid.

"DEVASTATING" BILL MOYERS PROBE OF PRESS AND IRAN ON PBS, WEDNESDAY,
APRIL 25 By Greg Mitchell Editor&Publisher April 19, 2007

The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in
its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear next
Wednesday, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called "Buying the War," which
marks the return of "Bill Moyers Journal." E&P was sent a preview
DVD and a draft transcript for the program this week.

While much of the evidence of the media's role as cheerleaders for
the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with
many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert
and Walter Pincus) along with numerous embarrassing examples of
past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly
misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by
Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal
responsibility.

The war continues today, now in its fifth year, with the death toll
for Americans and Iraqis rising again --- yet Moyers points out,
"the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the
Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses." Among the few
heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight
Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson,
who headed CNN, observes, "The people at Knight Ridder were calling
the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and
finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We
should've all been doing that."

At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the
war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas
Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith
Miller, and William Safire.

But Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, admits, "I don't think there
is any excuse for, you know, my performance and the performance of
the press in general in the roll up to the war&hellipWe didn't dig
enough. And we shouldn't have been fooled in this way." Bob Simon,
who had strong doubts about evidence for war, was asked by Moyers
if he pushed any of the top brass at CBS to "dig deeper," and he
replies, "No, in all honesty, with a thousand mea culpas.nope, I
don't think we followed up on this." Instead he covered the marketing
of the war in a "softer" way, explaining to Moyers: "I think we all
felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive
as this, we should keep it, in a way, almost light --- if that
doesn't seem ridiculous."

Moyers replies: "Going to war, almost light."

Walter Isaacson is pushed hard by Moyers and finally admits, "We
didn't question our sources enough." But why? Isaacson notes there
was "almost a patriotism police" after September 11 and when the
network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls from
advertisers and the administration and "big people in corporations
were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here.'"

Moyers then mentions that Isaacson had sent a memo to staff, leaked
to the Washington Post, in which he declared, "It seems perverse
to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan" and
ordered them to balance any such images with reminders of September
11. Moyers also asserts that editors at the Panama City (Florida)
News-Herald received an order from above, "Do not use photos on
Page 1A showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so
and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails."

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post explains that even at his paper
reporters "do worry about sort of getting out ahead of something."
But Moyers gives credit to Charles J. Hanley of The Associated Press
for trying, in vain, to draw more attention to United Nations
inspectors failing to find WMD in early 2003.

The disgraceful press reaction to Colin Powell's presentation at
the United Nations seems like something out of Monty Python, with
one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a
student's thesis, downloaded from the Web --- with the student later
threatening to charge U.S. officials with "plagiarism."

Phil Donahue recalls that he was told he could not feature war
dissenters alone on his MSNBC talk show and always had to have "two
conservatives for every liberal." Moyers resurrects a leaked NBC
memo about Donahue's firing that claimed he "presents a difficult
public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time our competitors
are waving the flag at every opportunity."

Moyers also throws some stats around: In the year before the invasion
William Safire (who predicted a "quick war" with Iraqis cheering
their liberators) wrote "a total of 27 opinion pieces fanning the
sparks of war." The Washington Post carried at least 140 front-page
stories in that same period making the administration's case for
attack. In the six months leading to the invasion the Post would
"editorialize in favor of the war at least 27 times."

Of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news
in the six months before the war, almost all could be traced back
to sources solely in the White House, Pentagon or State Dept.,
Moyers tells Russert, who offers no coherent reply.

The program closes on a sad note, with Moyers pointing out that "so
many of the advocates and apologists for the war are still flourishing
in the media." He then runs a pre-war clip of President Bush
declaring, "We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun
that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Then he explains:
"The man who came up with it was Michael Gerson, President Bush's
top speechwriter.

"He has left the White House and has been hired by the Washington
Post as a columnist."

GREG MITCHELL is editor and author of seven books on politics and
history, including two for Random House, "The Campaign of the
Century" and "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady."

REPORT OUTLINES PENTAGON EFFORT TO LINK IRAQ, AL QAEDA By Peter
Spiegel Los Angeles Times April 6, 2007

Just four months after the September 11 attacks, then-Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz dashed off a memo to a senior Pentagon
colleague, demanding action to identify connections between Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda. "We don't seem to
be making much progress pulling together intelligence on links
between Iraq and al Qaeda," Wolfowitz wrote in the January 22, 2002,
memo to Douglas Feith, the department's No. 3 official.

Using Pentagon jargon for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he
added: "We owe SecDef some analysis of this subject. Please give
me a recommendation on how best to proceed. Appreciate the short
turn-around."

Wolfowitz's memo, released Thursday, is included in a recently
declassified report by the Pentagon's inspector general. The memo
marked the first days of what would become a controversial, yearlong
Pentagon project supervised by Feith to convince the most senior
levels of the Bush administration that Hussein and al Qaeda were
linked --- a conclusion that was hotly disputed by U.S. intelligence
agencies at the time and discredited in the years since.

In excerpts released in February, Thomas Gimble, the acting inspector
general of the Pentagon, criticized the effort as an alternative
intelligence assessment operation and denounced it as improper.
However, Gimble said, the intelligence operation was not illegal
or unauthorized because Pentagon directives allowed Rumsfeld and
Wolfowitz to assign the work.

Many of the activities of the intelligence unit Feith headed have
become known. But the release of the full inspector general's report
provided more detail about how a group of Pentagon officials and
on-loan intelligence analysts were able to shunt aside contradictory
reports and persuade top administration officials that they had
powerful evidence of connections between Hussein's regime and al
Qaeda. The 121-page report was released by Sen. Carl Levin,
Dem.-Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Feith has defended his conduct, insisting it was an appropriate,
rigorous effort to question assumptions made by U.S. intelligence
agencies. On a Web site Feith set up to rebut the charges, he states:
"This IG report controversy is, in essence, a debate over whether
the CIA should be protected against criticism by policy officials."

The current defense secretary, Robert Gates, has disavowed Feith's
work, saying both in his confirmation hearings and in other public
statements that he believes all intelligence analysis should be
left to the CIA and other intelligence agencies, which are subject
to congressional oversight.

In making its case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush
administration relied heavily on evidence that Hussein was stockpiling
weapons of mass destruction. However, an important secondary reason
was the allegation of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. While
the CIA has been criticized for erroneously gauging Iraq's weapons
programs, its assessment of Iraq's ties to al Qaeda turned out to
be more accurate.

IRAQIS UNITED NOW --- U.S. GET OUT By Robert Scheer Creators Syndicate
Inc.

April 11, 2007

You have to hand it to Sen. Joe Lieberman, Ind.-Connecticut, for
having the chutzpah to cite the fiercely anti-American rally that
dominated the anniversary of Iraq's fourth year of U.S. occupation
as evidence that the troop "surge" is working. As opposed to
Lieberman, who continues to act as President Bush's over-eager
lapdog, his masters in the White House knew better than to celebrate
at this depressing moment.

After a weekend in which ten U.S. soldiers were killed --- four
more were killed on Monday, totaling 45 already in April --- and
the citizens of once bustling Baghdad cowered in their homes under
a U.S.-imposed round-the-clock curfew, Bush had the good sense for
once to say not a word about the glorious "liberation" of Iraq.
Instead, as Dana Milbank noted in the Washington Post, the president
never mentioned Iraq in a 24-minute speech he gave on the happier
subject of illegal immigration, nor did any of his top aides touch
on the topic. The White House Web site ignored Iraq entirely under
the heading "LATEST NEWS," instead featuring Clifford the Big Red
Dog's romp at the South Lawn's annual Easter egg hunt.

Meanwhile, back in liberated Iraq, the anniversary of Saddam Hussein's
overthrow was marked by only one sign of public response: In the
Shiite holy city of Najaf, hundreds of thousands gathered to burn
American flags and otherwise denounce the United States. "Yes! Yes!
Iraq. No! No! America," chanted the demonstrators organized by
cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, reported the BBC. "We were liberated from
Saddam. Now we need to be liberated again. Stop the suffering.
Americans leave now."

What part of "leave now" doesn't Lieberman get? Speaking of the
rally called by Sadr to blast the Americans as Iraq's "arch enemy"
and to demand "that the occupiers withdraw from our land," Lieberman
surreally sought to find a silver lining of support for U.S. policy:
"[Sadr] is not calling for a resurgence of sectarian conflict. He's
striking a nationalist chord. He's acknowledging that the surge is
working," he said.

Ugh. What tortured logic. Ponder that sentence for the sheer mendacity
of its optimism, which conveniently ignores the fact that the
nationalist chord is a stridently anti-American one. Yes, there
were Sunni clerics in the Najaf march and Sadr's followers heeded
his call to wrap themselves, literally, in the Iraqi flag while
shunning sectarian slogans --- but what united them was the demand
to end the U.S. occupation, which Lieberman so fervently supports.

So apparently the surge is working ... to unite all Iraqis against
us. As Hazim al-Araji, one of Sadr's top Baghdad representatives
described the by-all-accounts massive rally: "There are people here
from all different parties and sects. We are all carrying the
national flag, which is a symbol of unity. And we are all united
in calling for the withdrawal of the Americans."

What irony: The final refuge of the scoundrels who sold us on this
war, Lieberman included, was that although it could not be justified
by claims that Hussein had WMD or an alliance with al Qaeda and
Osama bin Laden, the invasion would implant American ideals of
democracy on Iraqi soil. What is being implanted instead is a
virulent anti-American and anti-Israeli nationalism, Sadr's current
cause, competing with a smoldering sectarian civil war, which this
multitasking demagogue has also fueled. Yet, spinning like a top,
Lieberman desperately finds solace in a resurgent Iraqi nationalism
based on hatred of the United States.

It is true that Sadr has consistently opposed the breakup of Iraq
into three ethnicity-based entities, but it is scant comfort that
this son of a famed Shiite cleric killed by Saddam Hussein should
now, in a sentiment that recent BBC/USA Today poll shows is shared
by a majority of his countrymen, consider Iraq's self-proclaimed
liberators as evil occupiers. Indeed, the legacy of Bush's invasion
is that the tired anti-U.S. nationalism of Hussein, never endorsed
by the Shiite majority, now has a virulent energy that it never
previously possessed.

The only alternative to this Iraqi nationalism is not the democratic
and pro-Israel fantasy of the neoconservatives like Lieberman who
talked our clueless president into this irresponsible folly, but
rather the subjection of Iraq to a Shiite militancy allied with
Iran.

Sadr, who is rumored to be living these days in Iran, seems torn
between those two futures, perhaps positioning himself to benefit,
no matter which path proves more popular.

Colin Powell was only partially right when he warned of the impending
U.S. invasion, "If you break it, you will own it." What he didn't
add is that the locals will hate you for it, and try to kill you
every day until you give it back.

PATRIOT'S DAY: STOP THE VIOLENCE By Amy Goodman King Features
Syndicate April 18, 2007

Historian Howard Zinn ascended the stage at renowned Faneuil Hall
in Boston on Patriot's Day, the Massachusetts holiday commemorating
the start of the American Revolution. The "shot heard round the
world," the first shot of that revolution, was fired April 19, 1775,
in Concord, Mass. He spoke about patriotism: "What is patriotism,
and what is not? Who is patriotic, and who is not?"

"Patriotism is about dissent. It's about criticism and civil
disobedience," Zinn began. Not far from Faneuil Hall, Henry David
Thoreau, born in Concord, built a little hut on Walden Pond. Thoreau
wrote "Civil Disobedience," which profoundly influenced Mohandas
Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Zinn continued, "He was arrested for not paying his tax because he
was protesting the Mexican-American War in the way there are tax
resisters today for protesting the war in Iraq." Thoreau went to
jail. While there, his mentor, the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, is
said to have asked Thoreau, "Henry, what are you doing in there?"
Thoreau replied, "What are you doing out there?"

Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," with well more
than 1.5 million copies sold, is essential reading for anyone hoping
to truly understand the U.S. in its current role as sole superpower.
He tells the story of America, from the bottom up. Zinn, 84, with
a grandfatherly smile and self-deprecating wit, defiantly smashes
the icons of American history, exposing the myths that are so often
invoked in defense of bad policy.

Zinn continued his homage to patriots, like Helen Keller. Everyone
is taught that she was deaf and blind, yet went on to great success.
What the textbooks don't tell children, Zinn says, is about Keller's
deep-seated political beliefs. "Helen Keller was a patriot. She was
a radical, an educator, an agitator, a socialist. She spoke at
Carnegie Hall against war, supported the labor unions of her day.
She refused to cross a picket line at a theater that was showing a
play about her."

Zinn praised Mark Twain's patriotism. Twain spoke out after President
Theodore Roosevelt congratulated a general involved in a 1906
massacre in the Philippines. The late Kurt Vonnegut read these words
of Twain at an event celebrating the work of Zinn, a fellow World
War II veteran: "It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and
duty to make these people free and let them deal with their own
domestic questions in their own way; and so I am an anti-imperialist.
I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."

As Zinn spoke Monday night, they were counting the dead in Blacksburg,
Virginia, after the horrific shooting rampage at Virginia Tech. The
figure was 32 dead, plus the shooter himself, also a student at the
university. I thought back to three months ago, to a similar horror.
This one in Baghdad, at Mustansiriya University. On January 16, a
double car and suicide bombing there killed 70 students. Those
killed were mainly young female students leaving classes.

As our country mourns the dead at Virginia Tech, we are at the same
time inured to the daily slaughter in Iraq. Imagine attacks of this
scale happening to Iraqi young people day after day.

Zinn has seen war, has seen its effects. He has seen violent civil
strife in the U.S. He says the answer is to bring out those voices
who say no to the violence: "To omit or to minimize these voices
of resistance is to create the idea that power only rests with those
who have the guns. ... I want to point out that people who seem to
have no power, whether working people, people of color or women ---
once they organize and protest and create movements --- have a voice
no government can suppress."

Fighting to stop the war in Iraq, fighting to stop gun violence at
home: Nothing could be more patriotic.

AMY GOODMAN is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news
program, Democracy Now!

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