Unwelcome Truth and the Right Stuff

August 22nd, 2007

I’d be remiss not to post the recent op/ed published in the New York Times written by a group of brave soldiers serving in Iraq — and remind you that, if need be, we’d better be prepared to get their backs as best we can. They told the truth — and the response has been predictable, with some pundits pinging off their “disloyalty” and others ignoring them completely. Below that article is another, written by one of the private contractors that Bush has in place to augment his troops — he tells the truth as well and I’ve seen no commentary on his contribution.

The truth seems easy to get to, these days — days in which Bush has Maliki’s back now that Sen. Carl Levin has called for his ouster due to political flat-line, a change which would be the FOURTH since the United States “liberated” Iraq. Maliki didn’t care for the suggestion, shooting back a response that he and his government could find “other friends.” Yipes! That got Dubby’s attention. No, Maliki’s a “good guy,” the Dubby was quick to insist. Gosh — isn’t it dreadful when the kiddies grow up and start making decisions for themselves?

The majority … the retired military, think tanks and American public … see the truth about Iraq, these days. But that’s not “our place” of course — we’re supposed to shut up and shop … busy, preoccupied little citizens with the attention span of a gnat, blinded by bullshit and too tired to complain. But we’re “growing up” lately, and like Mr. Maliki, we’re looking for “new friends” … it’s about damned time!

John Nichols of The Nation told Bill Moyers [in his series on impeachment] that the government treats the public as children; he cited Nixon’s easy escape from his presidential crimes, prosecution dropped to “spare the public further anxiety.” He believes that sent a signal that we shouldn’t “worry our beautiful minds” about such as that, and created the situation in which we find ourselves now, seemingly unable to hold this administration accountable. The “accountability card” has been missing from the pack for years.

Nichols and constitutional lawyer, Bruce Fein, in Moyers presentation, recommended impeachment not to provoke a constitutional crisis but to provide the SOLUTION to one; the corrective measure put into place [and recommended in several instances] by the Founders. Nichols said that if … IF … we accept our designated place as the meek and lowly child-like governed, we can kiss our Republic goodbye. That’s how it happened in the Roman Empire, said he … and we seem to be taking the same course of decline.

Well, I’ve been asking where the adults were for years now; I guess we’re gonna find out if we’ve got the “right stuff.” Somewhere, the Founders are laying bets [I'm sure THEY'VE got the "accountability card!"]

Mr. Maliki, defiance notwithstanding, may not make the cut, although God/dess help them if it dissolves with the American public so disenchanted as to pull out without giving them a fourth chance to regroup — his government appears to be on its very last legs, and the 9/11 [yes, they'll issue the Petraeus report on The Very Day] report, written and interpreted by the White House, will tell us we’ve made military progress while trying to downplay the absolute failure of the Iraqi government to do same in the political arena.

Great progress report, huh?

Killing: C-
Power Sharing: F

Maliki is likely “history,” as they say — and history appears to be all-important to the Dubby, who seems so nihilistic as not to care about today in favor of a “good review” looking down from that silver cloud he anticipates, halo-crowned, no doubt. So, Mr. Maliki’s government may not make the cut at all, if this keeps up — the question is, will we?

Jude

The War as We Saw It
BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHy, New York Times
August 19, 2007

Baghdad - VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

Bye-Bye Baghdad
By Anonymous, TruthDig
Aug 17, 2007

Editor’s Note: The author of this article is a contractor who has lived and worked in Baghdad. His identity is known to Truthdig’s editors, but he has written anonymously in order to offer an uncensored account.

I have been living and working in Baghdad for the past 16 months and will be leaving next week for good. I am one of those overpaid Department of Defense contractors, or, as some would call me, a “war profiteer.” Yes, I have profited. I am out of debt and have money saved. But it has cost me. I am a changed man. I have become hardened. I almost feel like a zombie.

Although I work in Baghdad, I have no idea what Baghdad looks like. I have been told by soldiers that it is “like one of those Mexican border towns.” I don’t live in the “heavily fortified” Green Zone, which, although heavily fortified, has been getting hit with mortars on a daily basis. No, I live on an Army base. I live in a trailer with four other men. We each have our own space and I am lucky to have quiet roommates. There is a common latrine and shower.

I have had a lot of experiences over these 16 months, and the situation has not changed one bit. I feel like I am leaving a sinking ship. The only thing that has changed is that more trailers have had to be added for the “surge” of troops that have come in. Oh, and our laundry now takes 72 hours to get done.

The majority of my co-workers are Iraqi, and every single one has been deeply affected by the war. Everyone knows someone who has been killed or kidnapped, whether a family member or a friend. It’s a daily occurrence, and they feel helpless, frustrated and, of course, very sad. Those that had the means have gone to either Jordan or Syria. The others are trapped. No country wants them.

Every day, the Iraqis risk their lives to come to work because they have no choice. The average salary is $300 a month, and many of them are supporting large families. Some of the Iraqis I work with just live in the building we work in rather than risk going home every day. Also, the building usually has electricity, which means there is air conditioning. In Baghdad there is usually one hour of electricity a day and hardly any water. People pitch in and buy a generator and get just enough electricity out of it to have the ceiling fan and refrigerator run.

Most Iraqis come to work by bus since there is a shortage of gasoline in Baghdad. People have to wait in line overnight in order to get gas for their cars. I wonder how we in America would react if we had even one hour without electricity or water and had to wait in a line to fuel our gas-guzzling SUVs. For us on the base, getting gas is a breeze. We just drive up to one of the many gas depots and fill our cars up. I can’t figure out how we have such easy access to gasoline and the Iraqis have none.

I was recently on vacation in the States when the bridge collapsed in Minneapolis. Yes, it was a terrible tragedy, but to the Iraqis that is nothing. Our media spent hours talking about how the bridge collapsed and how people were coping with the grief. The authorities immediately brought in grief counselors. There aren’t enough grief counselors in the world to come to Baghdad and ask the Iraqis how they are coping. But coping they are, and every day is a crapshoot.

Will I get killed or kidnapped or suffer some other horrible tragedy? Most Iraqis feel that they will indeed be killed, whether by the Sunni militia, the Shiite militia, the American Army or a car bomb. They live in constant fear. Could you imagine having to live like that? And why are they suffering so terribly? Because we are giving them freedom. Freedom is something that I fear the Iraqis will not have any time in the near future.

It is with a heavy heart that I leave behind my Iraqi friends. Their lives are absolutely horrible, but they have to keep moving every day to survive. Every day, as they leave for home, I always wonder if it will be the last time I see them.

We have made a mess of Iraq, and the Iraqis, who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, are the ones that are paying the price.

Our troops are losing morale. They know they are fighting a war that will never end, and I feel sorry for them. I feel that the ship will eventually sink and we will have caused the most terrible suffering for a people that just want a day when they can leave their house without the fear of being kidnapped or killed. For the Iraqis, freedom certainly isn’t free: They are paying a heavy price for it.

82nd Airborne Soldiers Come Under Fire From MSNBC’s Tucker
ThinkProgress
8/21/07

On MSNBC’s Tucker yesterday, host Tucker Carlson attempted to refute a recent New York Times op-ed, entitled “The War As We Saw It,” authored by members of the 82nd Airborne Division finishing up a 15 month deployment to Iraq. They wrote that “recent press coverage” of Iraq has “neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day.”

Speaking with retired Col. Jack Jacobs, Carlson said he was “a little bit uncomfortable with” the op-ed because he says “weighing in on a political question such as this” may “squander the awesome moral authority that these guys have.” “I think there is some detriment to the moral authority,” agreed Jacobs.

While saying he “instinctively” respects “people who are serving in a war zone,” Carlson went on to attack the op-ed, saying that he also “instinctively distrust[s]” some of the assertions made by the soldiers, such as their argument that “a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force.”

[Open to] Watch the video.

While Carlson claims to have respect for people serving in a war zone, he appears to have no hesitations in calling out the credibility of soldiers when they present a viewpoint that doesn’t confirm his own. On MSNBC’s Countdown last night, Paul Rieckhoff — executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) — said soldiers are the “subject matter experts” when it comes to Iraq. “That’s why this op-ed is so important,” he explained. He added:

The soldiers who wrote this piece just completed a 15-month tour. One of them was actually shot in the head before this piece was published, and he’s recovering in the U.S. now. These guys know what they are talking about and they present a very nuanced understanding of the battlefield that the politicians and the policy wonks haven’t been able to provide.

Additionally, Carlson’s feigned skepticism of the soldier’s assertions about Iraqi views is contradicted by actual studies of Iraqi public opinion. A national survey of Iraq from June 2007 found an “ebbing hope in a landscape of loss”:

– 39 percent of Iraqis said they feel their lives are “going well,” compared to 71 percent in November 2005.”

– 26 percent of Iraqis said they feel “very safe” in their neighborhoods, compared to 63 percent in November 2005.

– 82 percent of Iraqis said they “lack confidence” in coalition forces.

– 69 percent of Iraqis said coalition forces make “the security situation worse.”

Faced with the sophisticated argument that the soldiers present, Carlson is resorting to simple-minded, ignorant views to discredit their op-ed.

Sen. Feinstein: Iraqi PM al-Maliki on Last Legs; Moqtada al Sadr is in the Wings
Nathan Gardels, HuffPo
August 22, 2007

Last night at a meeting of the Pacific Council in Los Angeles, Senator Dianne Feinstein offered an alarming assessment of the rapidly deteriorating political situation in Iraq and a sober perspective on the limited ability of the Congress to stop a president still bent on war.

Sen. Feinstein agreed with Hillary Clinton’s statement before the VFW convention yesterday that the security situation in Al Anbar province was improving; but she pointedly added that there is no military solution to the Iraq mess, only a diplomatic and political one.

And here there is little cause for immediate hope. In the California Senator’s view, Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, “is on his last legs,” the Iraqi majority is yearning for a strong man and the militant Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr is waiting in the wings.

According to Feinstein, an Iranian poll shows him to be the most popular political figure in Iraq.

Why the political impasse? In her view the Shiite majority has become intractable because, after centuries of waiting, they are finally in power and are not about to give that up.

Mike Medavoy, head of Phoenix Pictures, asked how she and others in the Democratic majority defend allowing this war to continue when their electoral mandate and public opinion generally clearly wants an end to it now.

Feinstein responded that the Democrats had no magic wand, but needed 60 votes in the Senate to cut off funding, which they don’t have. And that is largely because no one wants to cut the funds for armor in the field of an army at war, even if it is difficult to accept that the current mission of U.S. forces in Iraq is in the national interest.

The best that could be hoped for, she said, was to force the president to sign onto a new mission for Iraq attached to any funding bill. Instead of providing security for Iraq, that new mission would have three pillars: force protection, counter-terrorism and training of Iraqis. For that, there would be 60 votes.

When asked if U.S. withdrawal or even draw back would invite a bloodbath, Feinstein argued that a bloodbath is already underway, with 1,000 Iraqis killed each month, and the U.S. can do nothing to stop it.

Bush Bunker Crew’s Legacy: “Dangerous Losers”
Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers
Aug 22 2007

President Lyndon Johnson gave up his chance for re-election in hopes that the ongoing Vietnam War eventually would resurrect his political reputation and land him a place of honor in history. George W. Bush sacrificed Donald Rumsfeld in the hope that by jettisoning that unpopular baggage, the ongoing Iraq War (and perhaps the attack on Iran that is coming) eventually will demonstrate that he was right and that history will rebuild his historical legacy.

It didn’t happen for LBJ — the war, which lasted for seven more years, resulted in a death-total of 58,000 American troops and at least two million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians — and it’s not likely to happen for Bush, who is planning on having a strong U.S. presence in Iraq for at least a decade or more.

Both presidents ignored the central fact at the heart of their self-made disasters: Their wars were unnecessary, tragically wrong from the outset, based on lies, deceptions, and gross misreadings of the cultures they invaded and occupied.

When the foundations of your house are rotten, you can’t expect it to stand straight and tall, especially when you put great weight and stress on it; and no amount of last-minute jerry-rigged repairs will make it right. The misbegotten house skews, twists, eventually collapses. That’s CheneyBush’s Iraq War.

In short, Bush, already widely believed to be one of the worst presidents in American history, will not have the legacy he so desperately wants, that of a historical giant who, in the space of a few years, transformed the Greater Middle East by bringing “democracy” and free-market capitalism to the region.

Instead, he will be remembered as the American president, ignorant and uncaring as to consequences and cultures, who recklessly stirred the pot of chaos in that area of the world and wound up commiting numerous war crimes, endangering the national security of the United States and creating more anti-American terrorists all around the globe. He also will be remembered as the president who, in the name of bringing democracy to the world, trampled it at home.

In other words, Dick Cheney won.

EXIT, STAGE RIGHT

One by one, the other key players — a good share of whom were incompetent or at least over their heads to begin with — were overwhelmed and forced out by Cheney, the master of political intrigue, duplicity and cutthroat infighting.

John Ashcroft, a hardline supporter of the Patriot Act who once told Congress that criticism of his hardline police tactics gave “aid and comfort” to terrorists, resigned as U.S. Attorney General in November of 2004. Everyone wondered why. Only recently did we learn that a few months before that, Ashcroft, Deputy AG James Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller had threatened to resign over Bush’s warrantless data-mining of American citizens’ phone records and emails unless the program were brought under judicial review. Ashcroft’s days were numbered.

Colin Powell, something of a voice of reason (at least in the context of the ideological zealotry in the rest of the CheneyBush Administration) fought the good fight against the neo-cons Rumsfeld and Cheney before being forced to resign. His moral low point was allowing himself to be forced into the role of chief war-apologist when he delivered his embarrassing list of reasons to attack Iraq before the United Nations in early 2003. He later sort-of owned up to his mistake, one of the few Administration leaders to do so, even if belatedly and over-cautiously.

Paul Wolfowitz, along with Cheney and Rumsfeld one of the key architects of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, was eased out and kicked upstairs to the World Bank, to cover that flank of CheneyBush imperial policy. But his managerial incompetence and neo-connish arrogance led to his removal.

Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security, was eased out for a hard-line Bushie, Michael Chertoff. Ridge later admitted that a lot of the security “alerts” he announced were ordered from above, not because there was actionable intelligence to justify raising the threat level. Often, when the Administration was suffering some bad news or a new scandal, Ridge would appear to issue those fear-mongering “alerts.”

Donald Rumsfeld one of the chief architects of the Iraq war, took the fall for the years of CheneyBush’s disastrous policies and inept management of the occupation. The hope was that the pressure of criticism would lessen after Rumsfeld was forced out. But again, as bumbling as Rumsfeld was, it wasn’t the secretary’s conduct that was the cental problem, it was the war and occupation itself, a war based on mendacities, deceptions, and self-deceptions. Both Cheney and Bush, so psychologically and ideologically insecure, could never admit to that colossal error of judgement.

Scooter Libby, Cheney’s powerful chief of staff, took the fall for Rove and Cheney and Bush, and then, when Bush commuted his sentence, didn’t have to serve a day in jail for commiting perjury and obstruction of justice in the case involving the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Libby’s replacement, David Addington, reportedly is, if you can imagine it, even more authoritarian and ruthless than his predecessor.

Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political strategist, having led his party to the disastrous defeat in 2006 that put the Democrats back in power in Congress, is departing — perhaps to plan a legal defense for his role in a wide variety of scandals, including, to name just a few, his violation of the Hatch Act (using government employees to aid a political party’s election chances), his coverup role in the outing of a covert CIA agent, his power interactions with corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, his role in election fraud in 2000 and 2004, and his involvement in the coverup of the U.S. Attorneys mess.

The key generals, most prominently George Casey and John Abizaid, were unable to put lipstick on the pig of this war; after trying in their own ways to warn the Administration that it was engaged in a futile quagmire in Iraq and that escalation maybe wasn’t such a great idea, they were forced out in favor of lickspittle generals who would swallow the CheneyBush kool-aid and not make waves.

The departure of all those key figures leaves Cheney, Bush, Addington and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as the last creators of major Administration policy left standing. (Rice and Gonzales are toadies, doing the jobs ordered of them by their bosses.)

ADDICTED TO SECRECY

As it turns out, Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will not be writing the much-awaited September report on the progress of the Administration’s escalation (”surge”). Not taking any chances, the White House will write it. One can expect that report will say that enough “progress” is being made on the ground to justify a continuation of the escalation, perhaps with some pre-election fig-leaf alteration in the number of troops and where they will be deployed.

CheneyBush at first indicated that Petraeus and Crocker would defend the war-policies of their masters before the Congress in closed session. (After the Democrats loudly complained, that decision was reversed.) That’s how much confidence this gang of ideological brutes had in its policies. It didn’t want the American people to hear what the general and the ambassador would have to say under oath about this war and CheneyBush’s attempt to string it out until a new president is inaugurated in January 2009.

The obsession with secrecy this Administration has displayed for the past six and a half years is not only an authoritarian knee-jerk reaction to keep the public in the dark about what it’s up to, but is also symbolic of CheneyBush’s deep suspicion of and revulsion towards democratic institutions of all kinds.

Knowing that the public would never support a pre-emptive war of aggression against Iraq based on the neo-con ideology of America ruling the world, CheneyBush invented Saddam’s supposed “weapons of mass destruction” (especially non-existent nuclear weapons), and an imagined tie between Iraq and 9/11. As a result of its lies and deceptions to Congress, the American people and the United Nations, the Administration was able to launch its “shock&awe” war and occupation. The current run-up to a likely war with Iran is starting to resemble the pattern used before the attack on Iraq.

Fearful of the public hearing too much truth about its various domestic and war policies, CheneyBush spent $1.6 billion of taxpayer money to buy journalists and place their propaganda stories in various media outlets, along with pre-packaged “news” reports churned out by its own governmental employees and often run as “news” on small-town TV stations. Administration spokesmen then quoted those stories in mainstream media, as proof of the correctness of its policies.

EVEN ASHCROFT KEPT IN THE DARK

At times the Administration doesn’t even tell the truth to its own high-ranking officials. We now learn that it didn’t keep then-Attorney General John Ashcroft fully informed about aspects of the National Security Administration’s own data-mining operations against American citizens. Thus it made sure that Ashcroft would not have a full range of well-researched legal opinions about the unconstitutional nature of the program.

These facts are now coming to light only as a result of James Comey’s recent Senate testimony about the infamous hospital visit of Alberto Gonzales, then White House Counsel, and then-Chief of Staff Andrew Card to Ashcroft’s bedside in March of 2004. We’ve all heard how Gonzales and Card tried to take advantage of the woozy, post-operative Ashcroft to get him to sign an authorization to continue the illegal eavesdropping — illegal because it was an end-around the FISA court established by law to adjudicate warrant requests for such domestic surveillance. Here are the money quotes about CheneyBush having kept their own Attorney General in the dark about the legal justifications for the data-mining program:

“According to his notes, [FBI Director Robert] Mueller arrived at the hospital at 7:40 p.m., 20 minutes after receiving a call from Comey saying that Gonzales and Card were en route to the hospital and requesting Mueller’s presence in order to ‘witness the condition of the Attorney General.’ By the time Mueller arrived, Gonzales and Card had already left.

Mueller’s notes of the subsequent conversation between Comey, Ashcroft and Mueller reveal that the top law enforcement officer of the United States may have been prevented from reviewing the wiretapping program that had already been put in place by the president.

“In his notes, Mueller says that Ashcroft ‘reviewed for Gonzales and Card the legal concerns relating to the program. The AG also told Gonzales and Card that he was barred from obtaining the advice he needed on the program by the strict compartmentalization rules of the White House’.”

Needless to say, Ashcroft’s replacement was a guaranteed “loyal Bushie,” (wait for it!) Alberto Gonzales.

DOWN IN THE BUNKER

Summing up: These guys, at least those few who remain with Cheney, Addington, Gonzales, Hadley and Bush down in the White House bunker, are getting nervous about their criminal liability as more of their high crimes and misdemeanors are revealed to the public. They would be even more anxious if an impeachment process were to begin.

So far, the Democrats have shied away from taking on CheneyBush frontally with impeachment hearings and arrest warrants for Administration officials who have refused to honor subpoenas to appear and testify and/or provide requested documents. (Remember that the failure to produce subpoenaed documents was one of the three impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon.)

It is possible that as more reports about the thugs in charge of the White House appear in both the internet and via the filter of a somewhat more courageoius corporate news media, the public will come to understand how CheneyBush forces are effectively destroying the Constitution and expanding already-begun wars and preparing to initiate new ones, thus putting both the economy and America’s national-security interests at risk.

At that point, if and when we reach it, the dam holding back red-hot Democratic and even mainstream Republican anger will break, and the public will demand that Congress act to save the country from further ruin by initiating impeachment hearings ASAP. Recent polls indicate the American public is moving inexorably toward that tipping point. The question is: Will they move quickly enough?

It’s long since time for the CheneyBush Bunker crew to be forced to defend themselves in such impeachment hearings in Congress and, later, in front of criminal and civil juries both here and abroad.

Do I hear an amen?

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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