THE CALAMITY HOWLER #164 Resent-Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:19:43 -0500 (CDT) THE CALAMITY HOWLER July 23, 2007 Issue #164 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: * HOW THE MEDIA IS RIGGING THE 2008 ELECTION By Sam Smith * BUSH IS PREPARED TO VETO BILL TO EXPAND CHILD INSURANCE By Robert Pear * BRIBERY NETWORK TO BLOAT WAR COSTS IS ALLEGED By James Glanz * BUSINESS HAS A VERY GOOD FRIEND IN JUSTICE ALITO By Greg Stohr * DIRECTION OF THE CONSTITUTION COMES DOWN TO ONE JUSTICE By Stewart M. Jay * ALL THE PRESIDENT'S ENABLERS By Paul Krugman * GO THERE MR. BUSH !!! AND FIGHT YOUR WAR YOURSELF By Keith Olbermann HOW THE MEDIA IS RIGGING THE 2008 ELECTION By Sam Smith Undernews June 30, 2007 The national media is rigging the 2008 election. That it doesn't realize this makes as little difference as the unconsciousness of a drunk driver or the upbringing of a prejudiced individual. Intent may explain or mitigate an offense; it does not, however, alter the effect. And the practice should be regarded as disreputable as any form of negligence that contributes to great harm. The main forces driving this manipulation are the cultural isolation of the national media, its incestuous relationship with those in power, its immersion in political mythology and the general collapse of skeptical and investigative journalism. It is not a unique phenomenon. For example, the campaign media overwhelmingly supported the candidacy of Bill Clinton in 1992 and happily created a myth about him even as they ignored readily available evidence of the major corruption in which he was involved. It is still early in the campaign, so we shall probably return to this topic from time to time, but here are some the clearly visible ways in which the media has rigged the election so far: * It created the Barack Obama myth out of whole cloth. A political lightweight from the Chicago Democratic machine with a virtually non-existent record has been turned into JFK II. * It has steadfastly refused to report on the numerous scandals associated with Hillary Clinton's past, sending years of corruption, dissembling and abuse of power down the Orwellian memory hole. * It has not done much better with the true history of Rudolph Giuliani, creating a heroic myth based largely on behavior on one particular day, September 11, that might have been expected of any mayor of a major city. * With both Clinton and Giuliani it has particularly avoided their extraordinary connections with criminal figures. Whatever the ultimate import of these relationships are, the voters are entitled to know with whom their candidates have consorted. * As we have demonstrated with our headline survey, John Edwards has been consistently blacked out of the news coverage despite being ahead of Obama in more than a half dozen states. * When covered, Edwards has been trivialized or criticized in a manner used on no other major candidate. For example, his wealth has been targeted in a way that John Kerry's never was and Hillary Clinton's isn't. While it is fair ground to tell about his $400 haircut, it is not fair meanwhile to censor Obama's parking tickets in Massachusetts that were left unpaid from college days until he decided to run for president. Even when Elizabeth Edwards criticized Ann Coulter for her hateful attacks on her husband, she was later said by major media to have "defended" her remarks as though standing up for her husband was beyond the pale. * The media has bought into the Fred Thompson myth, despite the fact that Thompson --- like Obama --- has virtually nothing on his resume to recommend him for the job. * The media has made little efforts to help voters understand the real differences between the candidates as opposed to the variations in their iconic and fantastical spin * The major media has almost totally ignored the GOP vote caging scandal uncovered by Greg Palast. * The major media has consistently treated majority American positions on the war and healthcare as out of the mainstream. * And it has largely ignored the ever growing evidence of failure and corruption involving the use of electronic voting machines. In short, the major media has used its freedom to manipulate, mythologize and mislead its audience and can be expected to continue to do so. BUSH IS PREPARED TO VETO BILL TO EXPAND CHILD INSURANCE By Robert Pear New York Times July 15, 2007 The White House said on Saturday that President Bush would veto a bipartisan plan to expand the Childrens Health Insurance Program, drafted over the last six months by senior members of the Senate Finance Committee. The vow puts Mr. Bush at odds with the Democratic majority in Congress, with a substantial number of Republican lawmakers and with many governors of both parties, who want to expand the popular program to cover some of the nations eight million uninsured children. Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said: The presidents senior advisers will certainly recommend a veto of this proposal. And there is no question that the president would veto it. The program, which insured 7.4 million people at some time in the last year, is set to expire September 30. The Finance Committee is expected to approve the Senate plan next week, sending it to the full Senate for action later this month. Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is chairman of the committee, said he would move ahead despite the veto threat. The Senate will not be deterred from helping more kids in need, Mr. Baucus said. The president should stop playing politics and start working with Congress to help kids, through renewal of this program. The proposal would increase current levels of spending by $35 billion over the next five years, bringing the total to $60 billion. The Congressional Budget Office says the plan would reduce the number of uninsured children by 4.1 million. The new spending would be financed by an increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco products. The tax on cigarettes would rise to $1 a pack, from the current 39 cents. Mr. Fratto, the White House spokesman, said, Tax increases are neither necessary nor advisable to fund the program appropriately. Democrats in the House would go much further than the bipartisan Senate plan. They would add $50 billion to the program over five years, bringing the total to $75 billion. By contrast, in his latest budget request, Mr. Bush proposed an increase of $5 billion over five years, which would bring the total to $30 billion. White House officials said the president had several other reasons to veto the bipartisan Senate plan. The proposal would dramatically expand the Childrens Health Insurance Program, adding nonpoor children to the program, and more than doubling the level of spending, Mr. Fratto said. This will have the effect of encouraging many to drop private coverage, to go on the government-subsidized program. In addition, Mr. Fratto said, the Senate plan does not include any of Mr. Bushs proposals to change the tax treatment of health insurance, in an effort to make it more affordable for millions of Americans. Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said he would like to consider such tax proposals. But, he said, its not realistic --- given the lack of bipartisan support for the presidents plan --- to think that can be accomplished before the current childrens health care program runs out in September. BRIBERY NETWORK TO BLOAT WAR COSTS IS ALLEGED By James Glanz New York Times July 21, 2007 Federal investigators have uncovered what they describe as a sweeping network of kickbacks, bribes and fraud involving at least eight employees and subcontractors of KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary, in a scheme to inflate charges for flying freight into Iraq in support of the war, according to court papers unsealed yesterday. The latest conviction in the cases related to the scheme came yesterday, when a former Houston-based executive for an air-freight carrier hired by KBR pleaded guilty in federal district court to dispensing bribes and then lying to federal investigators. The executive, Kevin Andre Smoot, 43, of The Woodlands, Texas, served as a managing director for Eagle Global Logistics Incorporated, a carrier that received a subcontract from KBR to ship the freight. The guilty plea by Mr. Smoot is the second by an Eagle executive in the case. But the papers describing his plea indicate that investigators believe at least one more Eagle employee and five KBR employees, all so far unnamed, were also involved. Mr. Smoot alone admitted to delivering bribes, called gratuities in the legalistic language of the court papers, to the employees of KBR on some 90 occasions between 2002 and 2005. At the core of the case is a contract that KBR, previously known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, won before the war to supply the American military with food, fuel, housing and other necessities. The value of the contract soared with the Iraq invasion, and has so far paid KBR some $20 billion. The company hired Eagle in a subcontract to fulfill part of that mission, carrying military goods from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Baghdad. But the scheme by the Eagle executives began in November 2003 when a plane operated by a rival carrier, DHL, was struck by a missile and landed in Baghdad with its left wing in flames. The Eagle executives used that incident to charge a fraudulent war-risk surcharge of 50 cents for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of freight on its own flights, the papers say. Between November 2003 and July 2004, Eagle made 379 flights as part of the subcontract, charging some $13.3 million --- an amount that included $1.1 million in overcharges. It is not clear whether KBR knew of the overcharging scheme, but the papers say that Mr. Smoot and an Eagle subordinate delivered nearly $34,000 in gratuities to KBR employees to obtain or reward favorable treatment in connection with the contract. According to the papers, the gratuities included meals, drinks, golf outings, tickets to rodeo events, baseball and football games and other entertainment items. A spokeswoman for KBR, Heather L. Browne, said in a statement yesterday that the company in no way condones this behavior. We are fully cooperating with the governments investigation of this matter and will continue to do so, Ms. Browne said. The guilty plea by Mr. Smoot was announced yesterday by Rodger A. Heaton, the United States attorney for the Central District of Illinois, where the Army Field Support Command, which administers the logistics contract, is based in Rock Island. BUSINESS HAS A VERY GOOD FRIEND IN JUSTICE ALITO By Greg Stohr Guest Columnist, Seattle Post Intelligencer July 20, 2007 In what may have been the most pro-business U.S. Supreme Court term in decades, standing out as companies' No. 1 ally was no small feat. Justice Samuel Alito managed it in his first full year. As the court term ended, Alito emerged as the justice friendliest to the interests of corporations. He sided with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business lobby, in 13 of 14 cases this term, more often than any of his colleagues. He cast votes to limit punitive damages, ease regulation and restrict suits by investors, consumers and alleged victims of job bias. "On the cases where it's possible to differentiate the justices, he's been on the pro-business side every time," said Roy Englert, a Washington lawyer with Robbins Russell Englert Orseck & Untereiner who won a telecommunications case he argued before the court this year. Alito played a central role in what Robin Conrad, executive vice president of the chamber's litigation unit, called an "absolutely stellar term" -- the best in the unit's 30-year history. The court under Chief Justice John Roberts ruled against the chamber in only two cases, both environmental fights. Alito and Roberts are President Bush's two appointees to the high court. Roberts, who succeeded the late William Rehnquist, is in his second year at the court's helm. "I always thought of the Rehnquist court as a good forum for business," said Maureen Mahoney, a lawyer at Latham & Watkins in Washington who won three of four cases she argued this term. "I think we now know that the Roberts court is even better." In several cases this term, Alito went beyond Roberts in his support for business, breaking with the chief justice by backing restrictions on the ability of local governments to dictate where haulers can deliver garbage and on the power of states to regulate national banks. The bank ruling "was the one case that gave me pause about the chief," Conrad said. Roberts dissented from the ruling, which barred states from regulating the mortgage-lending subsidiaries of federally chartered banks. Alito also went further than Roberts and the court majority in voting to raise the bar for shareholder lawsuits. Alito said the majority hadn't done enough to enforce a 1995 requirement that fraud allegations be described "with particularity" in a shareholder complaint. Alito said the court's interpretation "undermines the particularity requirement's purpose of preventing a plaintiff from using vague or general allegations." "We're very happy with what we're seeing so far with Justice Alito," Conrad said. "He's showing a very balanced approach to business issues." The shareholder case was one of several setbacks for trial lawyers. The court tightened its restrictions on punitive damages, telling a lower court to reconsider a $79.5 million award against Altria Group Inc.'s Philip Morris USA unit in a smoker lawsuit. The court also backed insurers by limiting the rights of consumers under a federal credit-reporting law. And in a second investor case, the justices threw out an antitrust suit accusing Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and other investment banks of rigging 900 initial public offerings. A common thread in those rulings was an unwillingness to let cases go before a jury, said Jeffrey Robert White, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Litigation, a Washington group that challenges laws it believes impede access to justice. White filed a brief at the court on behalf of a trial-lawyer trade group in the shareholder case. The court is saying, "we'll trust the executive branch, we'll trust Congress a little bit, but we really don't trust the American people to do what's right when they sit in the jury box," White said. The only setbacks for business came in the environmental area. The court told the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from new cars and trucks. The justices also ruled against Duke Energy Corp. in a fight over pollution reduction at power plants. Many business cases weren't close calls for the court. A telecommunications antitrust case was decided by a seven to two margin; the justices ruled unanimously in another antitrust dispute over allegations of predatory purchasing; a decision restricting whistleblower suits came on a six to two vote. The vote on the credit-reporting law was seven to two on some issues, unanimous on others. In a number of those cases, David Souter and Stephen Breyer --- justices who typically vote with John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on social issues --- backed business arguments. That put them in accord with Roberts, Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy. "The court overall is good for business," Mahoney said. GREG STOHR writes for Bloomberg News. DIRECTION OF THE CONSTITUTION COMES DOWN TO ONE JUSTICE By Stewart M. Jay Guest Columnist, Seattle Post-Intelligence July 20, 2007 The U.S. Constitution is now controlled by one man, Justice Anthony Kennedy. Or at least that's true when the Supreme Court is closely divided, and especially if the case implicates intense ideological differences among the justices. Last year's term was chock-full of such contentious cases. In the term that recently ended, the court decided 24 of 68 cases by five to four votes. Kennedy cast the decisive vote in all 24 of those cases, usually on the side of the court's four hard core conservatives: veterans Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, together with the fresh faces of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. For the court's four constant conservatives, the only question was how far to press their advantage. Scalia on occasion openly mocked Roberts and Alito for not taking more aggressively conservative stands. In the end, however, it was Kennedy who determined the outcomes in virtually every key case, as well as the rationales for the decisions. Kennedy dissented only twice in the 68 cases. At critical moments in American history the court has reshaped the Constitution after one or more justices has been replaced by successors with diametrically opposite views. The nation has arrived at another such constitutional juncture in which the direction of the Constitution will be set by a handful of justices, with Kennedy currently in the catbird seat. The willingness to disregard or drastically reinterpret prior precedent was the hallmark of this year's term. Most of the time the court did not admit that it actually had overruled a precedent; rather, the majority distinguished prior cases with the most tenuous logic. For example, an opinion by Roberts effectively gutted the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which the Rehnquist court had upheld in 2003. Scalia, while agreeing with the result, chided the new chief justice for his "indefensible" effort to distinguish the 2003 decision, which Scalia thought should be overruled explicitly. "This faux judicial restraint is judicial obfuscation," Scalia added, making Roberts the latest victim of his furious pen. Scalia's jab was aimed at Roberts' repeated claim during his confirmation hearings that he wished to be known as a "modest judge," one who has "the humility" to appreciate that he must decide cases "within a system of precedent, shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath." As a justice, Roberts claimed he would not vote to overrule simply because he regarded a precedent as "flawed." Doing so undermined "the values of respect for precedent, evenhandedness, predictability, [and] stability," and exposed the court to the charge that the Constitution meant whatever five justices thought at a given moment. It now turns out that the Constitution means what Anthony Kennedy thinks. Here are the constitutional highlights from the year: School desegregation In one of the term's most important decisions, five justices condemned the use of racial tiebreakers for school assignments in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. Roberts flatly declared: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens (the sole survivor of the Burger Court) asserted, "that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision." Stevens was surely correct. Chief Justice Burger himself wrote for a unanimous court in 1973 to state that school districts could voluntarily assign students to schools for the purpose of achieving racial balance, which would "prepare students to live in a pluralistic society." Roberts dismissed this statement as dictum --- not essential to resolving the earlier case. Technically that was true, but nevertheless it is sobering that the unanimous view of the court most familiar with the travails of busing would be cast aside as irrelevant. American public schools are becoming more racially imbalanced each year. Thanks to the court's rulings this term, school boards no longer have the option of using school assignments to maintain integrated schools, which will hasten the pace of resegregation. A city such as Louisville, which had dismantled its Jim Crow system of all-white and all-black schools under court order, cannot persist in busing to preserve the gains it had made while under court supervision. Nor can Seattle employ a racial "tiebreaker" system that affected only a few hundred students a year. On the court, the divide is between conservatives, who believe that Brown mandated only an end to official segregation, and liberals who think that Brown demanded that schools be actually integrated. In the middle sits Kennedy, who agrees with the liberals that racial balance in schools is critically important, but who thinks that forced busing "may entrench the very prejudices we seek to overcome." Unlike the conservatives, Kennedy was willing to let school districts take race into account in other ways, such as by using magnet programs. The problem with these alternatives is that they have proven to be ineffective in producing integrated schools. Given the range of school attendance patterns across the nation, and the unique challenges facing many cities in achieving integration, the troubling question is why five Justices think they are better equipped than local authorities to overcome one of our society's most enduring challenges. Minority groups are not clamoring to end busing; it seems a bit paternalistic for Kennedy and company to declare forced integration is not in their best interests. Abortion The court decided its first "partial-birth abortion" case in 2000, when a five to four majority declared a Nebraska ban on a specific abortion technique to be unconstitutional because the law did not have an exception allowing the procedure to protect the woman's health. The medical community was divided on the necessity for the procedure, yet many doctors believed it to be the safest method for ending certain pregnancies. Kennedy dissented, agreeing with Nebraska that the procedure offended "the dignity and value of human life." This was the same Kennedy who in 1992 voted with Justice O'Connor and the four liberals to save Roe v. Wade from being overruled. By a five to four margin, the court this year upheld the federal Partial Birth Abortion Act, a piece of legislation essentially indistinguishable from Nebraska's statute. The difference was that in the 2000 case O'Connor ruled with the more liberal justices in striking the law as a violation of the principles of Roe. Kennedy wrote a bitter dissent in that case, whereas this year --- with O'Connor replaced by Alito --- he turned that dissent into an equally vigorous majority opinion. Kennedy concluded that a legislature could outlaw this abortion technique because it degraded the medical profession and lessened respect for human life. Although many physicians continued to believe the procedure was best for protecting the woman's health, Kennedy ruled that Congress was entitled to disagree, effectively telling doctors how to practice medicine. Women should appreciate the law, Kennedy added, because "some women come to regret their choice to abort." What is most disturbing about Kennedy's rationale is that it would apply equally to a law that banned all abortions out of "respect for human life" or to assure that doctors are perceived as healers rather than killers. Kennedy's views may one day be quoted by the court as reasons for overruling Roe entirely. Campaign reform In 2002, Congress banned corporations from sponsoring campaign ads shortly before elections. The court upheld the law in principle in 2003 as a legitimate way to purge elections of the undue influence of "big money." Replaying the same arguments, five justices held the law unconstitutional as applied to ads sponsored by a Wisconsin anti-abortion group. Justices Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy thought the prohibition was entirely invalid under the First Amendment. Roberts, writing for himself and Alito, held the law was merely unconstitutional as applied to the ads in question. Still, Roberts' opinion effectively disemboweled the law. In the earlier case, the court upheld the law because it permitted corporations (which could include non-profit advocacy organizations) to publish "genuine issue ads" at any time before an election. Clarifying that standard, Roberts wrote that a political ad could be banned before an election "only if the ad is susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate." Any political consultant worth hiring can readily construct ads that are immune from regulation under this standard. Establishment clause The court has long permitted taxpayers to bring suits challenging legislative spending on religion. This year the court ruled 5-4 that taxpayers had no standing to complain that the Bush administration was unconstitutionally promoting religion through its "faith-based initiatives." Alito's majority opinion barred taxpayer challenges to executive spending from general appropriations. Allowing such suits, he declared, would turn federal courts into "general complaint bureaus." If taxpayers cannot sue to stop the executive from violating the Establishment Clause, literally no one can do so. Alito agreed that courts could not stop the president from diverting funds to explicit religious purposes, such as constructing churches. But if such a thing happened, he assured that "Congress could quickly step in." Alito's reasoning turns the Establishment Clause on its head. The point of the Clause was to prevent popular majorities from spending public money on religion. What if Congress and the president agree on religious spending? Alito's logic equally applies to taxpayer challenges to legislative spending on religion, a point gleefully made by Scalia and Thomas, who demanded that taxpayer standing be abolished in all instances. Death penalty The court reversed several Texas death penalty cases, holding in one that the Eighth Amendment forbade the execution of a convicted murderer who was so mentally ill that he did not comprehend why he was being put to death. Kennedy supplied the fifth vote. In another death case, however, the court made it easier to strike potential jurors due to their reservations about capital punishment, a result that produces juries more likely to impose the ultimate penalty. And it continued to apply a federal law to limit access to federal courts to challenge state death penalties, increasing the odds that an innocent person will be executed. First Amendment This term's comic relief was the "Bong Hits for Jesus" case, in which an Alaska high school student was suspended for unfurling a banner with that message at a "school-sanctioned and school-supervised event." The student lost, in part because he insisted that the slogan was "meaningless," and intended only to attract TV cameras --- hardly the stuff that the First Amendment was intended to protect. Alito and Kennedy supplied the critical two votes to uphold the suspension, noting that the student's expression could not "plausibly be interpreted as commenting on any political or social issue." Punitive damages Another five to four decision invalidated a $79.5 million punitive damage verdict against the maker of the cigarettes that killed the plaintiff's husband. The Oregon Supreme Court had upheld the award because of Philip Morris' 40-year record of "extraordinarily reprehensible" conduct in denying the link between smoking and illness. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a six to three decision criticizing the Oregon court for allowing the jury to take into account harms to other smokers who were not plaintiffs. An unusual band of dissenters (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thomas, Scalia and Stevens) objected, observing that punitive damages punished outrageous conduct, and harms caused to others besides the plaintiff were thus relevant. For years, the mantra of conservatives has been that the court was excessively activist, meaning that its decisions overturned actions of legislatures and executive branches in pursuit of liberal agendas. There was much truth in this claim. The modern Constitution has been shaped by the court with an eye toward expanding personal freedoms and overcoming the legacy of prejudice that has stifled the lives of racial minorities, women, gays and a long list of others. Liberal activism also stopped the state from suppressing speech and freed religious minorities from oppression. At the same time, the court promoted democracy by insisting that every person's vote counted the same. And rather than restricting Congress and the president, the "liberal activists" endorsed a vast expansion of congressional and executive powers. We now are in era of conservative legal activism. These new activists have no compunctions against overturning precedents, reversing the decisions of elected bodies, and construing statutes to further conservative objectives. Aside from hypocrisy, in the abstract there is nothing wrong with conservative activism. It is time to move beyond the simplistic condemnation of the court as "activist," inasmuch as judicial activism is vital to our system of checks and balances. Rather, we should debate the wisdom of the court's decisions, case by case. This year's term proves beyond doubt that one or two changes in the court's membership can determine the outcome of cases that could affect our grandchildren's grandchildren. Consequently, the next presidential election could very well determine which version of judicial activism will prevail for generations to come. STEWART M. JAY is a professor at the University of Washington Law School ALL THE PRESIDENT'S ENABLERS By Paul Krugman New York Times July 20, 2007 In a coordinated public relations offensive, the White House is using reliably friendly pundits --- amazingly, they still exist --- to put out the word that President Bush is as upbeat and confident as ever. It might even be true. What I dont understand is why were supposed to consider Mr. Bushs continuing confidence a good thing. Remember, Mr. Bush was confident six years ago when he promised to bring in Osama, dead or alive. He was confident four years ago, when he told the insurgents to bring it on. He was confident two years ago, when he told Brownie that he was doing a heckuva job. Now Iraq is a bloody quagmire, Afghanistan is deteriorating and the Bush administrations own National Intelligence Estimate admits, in effect, that thanks to Mr. Bushs poor leadership America is losing the struggle with Al Qaeda. Yet Mr. Bush remains confident. Sorry, but thats not reassuring; its terrifying. It doesnt demonstrate Mr. Bushs strength of character; it shows that he has lost touch with reality. Actually, its not clear that he ever was in touch with reality. I wrote about the Bush administrations infallibility complex, its inability to admit mistakes or face up to real problems it didnt want to deal with, in June 2002. Around the same time Ron Suskind, the investigative journalist, had a conversation with a senior Bush adviser who mocked the reality-based community, asserting that when we act, we create our own reality. People who worried that the administration was living in a fantasy world used to be dismissed as victims of Bush derangement syndrome, liberals driven mad by Mr. Bushs success. Now, however, its a syndrome that has spread even to former loyal Bushies. Yet while Mr. Bush no longer has many true believers, he still has plenty of enablers --- people who understand the folly of his actions, but refuse to do anything to stop him. This weeks prime example is Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who made headlines a few weeks ago with a speech declaring that our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests. Mr. Lugar is a smart, sensible man. He once acted courageously to head off another foreign policy disaster, persuading a reluctant Ronald Reagan to stop supporting Ferdinand Marcos, the corrupt leader of the Philippines, after a stolen election. Yet that political courage was nowhere in evidence when Senate Democrats tried to get a vote on a measure that would have forced a course change in Iraq, and Republicans responded by threatening a filibuster. Mr. Lugar, along with several other Republicans who have expressed doubts about the war, voted against cutting off debate, thereby helping ensure that the folly he described so accurately in his Iraq speech will go on. Thanks to that vote, nothing will happen until Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, delivers his report in September. But dont expect too much even then. I hope he proves me wrong, but the generals history suggests that hes another smart, sensible enabler. I dont know why the op-ed article that General Petraeus published in The Washington Post on September 26, 2004, hasnt gotten more attention. After all, it puts to rest any notion that the general stands above politics: I dont think its standard practice for serving military officers to publish opinion pieces that are strikingly helpful to an incumbent, six weeks before a national election. In the article, General Petraeus told us that Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously. And those security forces were doing just fine: their leaders are displaying courage and resilience and momentum has gathered in recent months. In other words, General Petraeus, without saying anything falsifiable, conveyed the totally misleading impression, highly convenient for his political masters, that victory was just around the corner. And the best guess has to be that hell do the same thing three years later. You know, at this point I think we need to stop blaming Mr. Bush for the mess were in. He is what he always was, and everyone except a hard core of equally delusional loyalists knows it. Yet Mr. Bush keeps doing damage because many people who understand how his folly is endangering the nations security still refuse, out of political caution and careerism, to do anything about it. GO THERE MR. BUSH !!! AND FIGHT YOUR WAR YOURSELF By Keith Olbermann MSNBC Coundown July 19, 2007 Good evening from Los Angeles. And we begin with a special comment on this days ominous, almost indescribable events. It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons of history, a country, a government, a military machine can screw up a war seven ways to Sunday. It can get thousands of its people killed. It can risk the safety of its own citizens. It can destroy the fabric of its nation. But as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain or even gain power. The Bush administration has tonight opened this Pandoras box about Iraq. It has found its scapegoats: Hillary Clinton and us. The lies and terror tactics with which it deluded this country into war, they had nothing to do with the abomination that Iraq has become. It isnt Mr. Bushs fault. The selection of the wrong war in the wrong time in the wrong place, the most disastrous geopolitical tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process, that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become. It isnt Mr. Bushs fault. The criminal lack of planning for the war, the total jump off a bridge and hope you can fly tone to the failure to anticipate what would follow the deposing of Saddam Hussein, that had nothing to do with the chaos in which Iraq has been enveloped. It isnt Mr. Bushs fault. The utter blinkered idiocy of staying the course, of sending Americans to Iraq and sending them a second time and a third and a fourth until they get killed or maimed, the utter de-prioritization of human life simply so a politician can avoid having to admit he made a mistake, that had nothing to do with the tens of thousands of individual tragedies darkening of lives of American families forever. It isnt Mr. Bushs fault. The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict is somehow defeating or containing or merely engaging the people who attacked us on September 11, the total Alice Through the Looking Glass quality that ignores that in Iraq we have made the world safer for al Qaeda. It isnt Mr. Bushs fault. The fault brought down, as if a sermon from this mount of hypocrisy and slaughter by a nearly anonymous undersecretary of defense, the fault has tonight been laid on the doorstep of Senator Clinton and by extension on the doorstep of every American, the now vast majority of us who have ever dared to criticize this war or protest it or merely ask questions about it or simply plaintively, innocently, honestly plead, dont take my son, dont take my daughter. Senator Clinton has been sent, and someone has leaked to the Associated Press a letter sent in reply to her own asking if there exists an actual plan for evacuating the U.S. troops from Iraq. This extraordinary document was written by an undersecretary of defense named Eric Edelman. Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, Edelman writes, reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. Edelman adds: Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks. A spokesman for the senator says Mr. Edelmans remarks are at once both outrageous and dangerous, and those terms are entirely appropriate and may, in fact, understate the risk the Edelman letter poses to our way of life and all that our fighting men and women are risking, have risked and have lost in Iraq. After the South was defeated in our Civil War, a scapegoat was Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the ideas of the lost cause and Jim Crow were born in that wake. After the French were beaten by the Prussians in 1870 and 1871, it was the imaginary Jewish influence in the French army general staff, and there was born 30 years of self destructive anti-Semitism culminating in the horrific Dreyfus case. After the Germans lost the First World War, it was the backstabbers and profiteers at home on whose broken bodies the National Socialists rose to prominence in the succeeding decades, and whose accused membership eventually wound up in torture chambers and death camps. And after the generation just before ours, and leaders of both political parties escalated and re-escalated and carpet-bombed and re-carpet-bombed Vietnam, it was the protest movement and Jane Fonda, and as late as just three years ago, Senator John Kerry, who were assigned the blame, the kind of blame which no rational human being could concur and yet which still across vast sections of our political landscape resonates unchallenged and accepted. And now, Mr. Bush, you have picked out your own Jefferson Davis, your own Dreyfus, your own profiteer, your own scapegoat, not for the sake of this country, not for the sake of Iraq, not even for the sake of your own political party, but for the sake of your own personal place in history. But in reaching for that place, you have guaranteed yourself tonight not honor but infamy. In fact, you have condemned yourself to a place among that remarkably small group of Americans whom Americans cannot forgive, those who have sold this country out and who have willingly declared their enmity to the people at whose pleasure they supposedly serve. A scapegoat, sir, might be forgivable if you had not just happened to choose a prospective presidential nominee from the opposition party. And the accusation of spreading enemy propaganda, that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia, might be someday atoned for, sir, if we all didnt know, you included, and your generals and the Iraqis that we are leaving Iraq, and sooner rather than later. And we are doing it even if to do so requires first that you must be impeached and removed as president of the United States sooner rather than later. You have set this government at war against its own people and then blamed those very people when they have said enough. And thus it crystallizes, Mr. Bush, when the Civil War General Ambrose Burnside ordered a disastrous attack on Fredericksburg in which 12,000 of his men were killed, he had to be physically restrained from personally leading the next charge himself. After the first lord of the British admiralty, Winston Churchill, authored and enabled the disastrous Gallipoli campaign that saw a quarter million allied soldiers cut down in the First World War, Churchill resigned his office and took a commission as a front line officer in the trenches of France. Those should be your new role models, Mr. Bush. Let your minions try to spread the blame to the real patriots here who have sought only to undo the horrors you have wrought since 2002. Let them try that until the end of time, though the words might be erased from a million books and a billion memories, though the world be covered knee-deep in your lies, the truth shall prevail: This, sir, is your war. Senator Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for therapy you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq? Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush. Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations. Go there and fight your war, yourself. 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