Natalya Estemirova, R.I.P.

Human rights activist shot dead in
Russia

An award-winning Russian human rights activist was murdered today after dedicating much of her life to investigating abuses by the Chechen regime.

Natalya Estemirova was shot twice in the head at close-range after she was bundled into a car in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.

The activist, who was one of Anna Politkovskaya's key collaborators, was found dead near the city of Nazran in Ingushetia. A single mother in her early 40s, Estemirova had collected evidence of human rights abuses in Chechnya since the start of the second war there in 1999.

As well as the murdered Politkovskaya, she worked with Stanislav Markelov, a prominent lawyer and another opponent of rights abuses in Chechnya, who was shot and killed on a Moscow street in January.

Estemirova took part in a rally to protest his murder, reading out one of the numerous threats he had received for his campaigns against disappearances, false imprisonments and rights abuses.

A year after Politkovskaya was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building in 2006, Estemirova became the first recipient of an award in her name for work for the leading Russian rights group Memorial.

As she received the Anna Politkovskaya prize, she said: "Nothing has been done to investigate the crimes that have been committed in Chechnya since 2000.”

The Memorial rights group said in a statement today that Estemirova “was forcefully taken from her house into a car and shouted that she was being kidnapped” at 8.30 am (0330 BST) in Grozny.

“Chechen authorities had expressed dissatisfaction with her work more than once,” Memorial said. The group’s statement did not give any indication of who might have carried out the abduction.

Concerns have grown in the last weeks about the stability of the Caucasus after Ingushetia’s leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was seriously wounded in a car bombing on June 22.

Security forces are being killed in clashes with militants on an almost daily basis and ten Chechen police officers were killed in a militant ambush in Ingushetia last week.

Memorial and Human Rights Watch had earlier this month issued a report accusing Chechen security forces of punishing families of alleged militants by burning down their homes.

The authorities have failed to secure any convictions over the 2006 killing in Moscow of Politkovskaya, who exposed abuses by Russian security forces in Chechnya and vehemently criticised the Kremlin. Also unsolved are the January murders of young journalist Anastasia Baburova and Mr Markelov, who were gunned down in central Moscow as they left a news conference.

Source

Happy Bastille Day!

I have always observed Bastille Day in a wide variety of ways.

Back in my radical days 1960's I used to have a huge back yard party around a punch bowl full of an elixir which I dubbed my Bastille Day Massacre. It was suitably named. this traditional observance lasted a few years until Trophy Wife put her foot down: it was always our furniture that was getting busted up.

Long story short, today I have less irreverent, more solemn feelings.

The French Embassy (somewhere) explains it thus:

Bastille Day, or the Fourteenth of July, is the symbol of the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the Republic. The national holiday is a time when all citizens celebrate their membership to a republican nation. It is because this national holiday is rooted in the history of the birth of the Republic that it has such great significance.

… The people of Paris rose up and decided to march on the Bastille, a state prison that symbolized the absolutism and arbitrariness of the Ancien Regime.

The storming of the Bastille, on July 14, 1789, immediately became a symbol of historical dimensions; it was proof that power no longer resided in the King or in God, but in the people, in accordance with the theories developed by the Philosophes of the 18th century.

On July 16, the King recognized the tricolor cockade: the Revolution had succeeded.

For all citizens of France, the storming of the Bastille symbolizes, liberty, democracy and the struggle against all forms of oppression.

To me, this grand anthem communicates a sense of arrival, of self-deliverance from the forces of tyranny. In a sense, in 2009, I feel I'm just short of such a destiny. Here, in America, I feel we are in a state of limbo. We have bit more of a path to navigate. We have walls which still have to be torn down.
Be that as it may, let's celebrate Bastille Day for its Audacity of Hope!

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet!

What Bothers Me about Sarah Palin...

Has very little to do with the ex-governor of Alaska.
But it has a lot to do with the current senior Senator from Arizona as well as the mounted posse with whom he rides around.

Not long ago, in the company of two bloggers whose respect I dearly covet, I swore up and down with my hand on my copy of Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope, that I would never, ever post on Sarah Palin.

So, this column is really about the superannuated warmonger who headed last year's Republican ticket. I'm really only going to post a couple of excerpts from writers who really hit their nails into the pustule of what's been bothering me, going forward, through 2009 and beyond. They both make the same point, but their spot-on eloquence demands my sharing.

First, Joe Conason, in Salon, answers the question that's been roiling around in my head for these last several months:

Who cares about Palin now that it's half a year after she lost her bid to become the 1st woman Vice-President?

..... Plainly there is no reason why anyone should care, except for one small nagging concern. It is worth remembering that these are the same people who chose Palin, a manifestly unqualified and incompetent politician unable to string together a series of coherent sentences, as the potential presidential successor to a 72-year-old cancer survivor. So it would be refreshing and salubrious to see the perpetrators of that contemptuous and cynical tactic held accountable for endangering the country.

..... McCain, Schmidt, Davis and Salter chose to listen to Kristol, almost always a political mistake with consequences ranging from the merely absurd to the utterly dire. (The latter category includes the invasion of Iraq, with an astronomical cost in lives and treasure that should be charged to him and his magazine, as he used to boast.)

Enormous as Kristol's errors in judgment surely were, at least he can plausibly claim to be loyal. If anything he is too steadfast, still insisting that Palin deserves to be considered a serious candidate for the presidency and that her qualifications for that position are comparable to those of Barack Obama.

..... Rarely is anyone in Washington, from politicians to operatives to journalists, held accountable for the damage they inflict on the body politic. Those who banged the drum for disastrous war flit from one editorial page to the next; those who insisted on ruinous deregulation return as economic advisors to the president. The men who told us that Sarah Palin should be next in line of succession to the presidency may quarrel among themselves now, but they will all be back with yet more stupid advice -- and we can only blame ourselves if we listen.

Secondly, the inimical Andrew Sullivan on his Daily Dish:

..... McCain knew full well that Palin was unqualified to be commander-in-chief at this period of time; and he knew there was no way she could ever learn enough to do the job. So his decision to pick her was pure cynicism and irresponsibility. The MSM knew full well that there were very serious questions about this unknown person’s background, lies, mental stability, and secrecy - but they were so terrified of being called biased they refused to do the proper vetting.

The Republican establishment has long condescended to the pro-life, anti-gay, de facto soclialist, de iure capitalist heartland voters - and they cynically believed they had found a formula to get them to vote for McCain on ground of pure class resentment and sex appeal to older white males ..... I agree with Richard Cohen this morning:

Naming Palin to the GOP ticket — a top-down choice by McCain — was the most reckless decision any national politician has made in the longest time, and while it certainly says something about McCain, it says even more about his party. It has lost its mind.

The reason we need to get to the truth of what happened is that these people nearly took this country off a cliff. They need to be held accountable. They need to be removed from their positions of power. We cannot move on until they are. And John McCain should retire from public life. After that decision, nothing he says can be taken seriously on the national or international stage.

That's the point I have been trying to isolate and frame: it's not about Palin.

Honduras, Si! Zelaya, No! (Part II)

Last week, when I published Honduras Si, Zelaya No, my usually liberal commentariate sat on their hands in mute silence. Clearly, they are uncomfortable with any criticism of Obama. I have also broken knuckles in both hands, pounding on the walls of closed minds in a couple of Pro-Zelaya Diaries on the Daily Kos. But, as Blomberg reports, the Honduran power struggle fairly splits Democrats, Republicans.

In the meantime, I have seen nothing which encourages me to move off of my original anti-Zelaya position.

Admittedly, Miguel A. Estrada is a conservative attorney. But everything (again) I have read indicates that his chronology, Honduras' Non-coup: Under the country's Constitution, the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya was legal, published yesterday is accurate and reliable. Excerpts:

Something clearly has gone awry with the rule of law in Honduras -- but it is not necessarily what you think. Begin with Zelaya's arrest. The Supreme Court of Honduras, as it turns out, had ordered the military to arrest Zelaya two days earlier. A second order (issued on the same day) authorized the military to enter Zelaya's home to execute the arrest. These orders were issued at the urgent request of the country's attorney general. All the relevant legal documents can be accessed (in Spanish) on the Supreme Court's website. They make for interesting reading.

What you'll learn is that the Honduran Constitution may be amended in any way except three. No amendment can ever change

1. the country's borders
2. the rules that limit a president to a single four-year term and
3. the requirement that presidential administrations must "succeed one another" in a "republican form of government."

In addition, Article 239 specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection "shall cease forthwith" in his duties,

Article 239 — No citizen that has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President.

Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.

and Article 4 provides that any "infraction" of the succession rules constitutes treason. The rules are so tight because these are terribly serious issues for Honduras, which lived under decades of military rule.

As detailed in the attorney general's complaint, Zelaya is the type of leader who could cause a country to wish for a Richard Nixon. Earlier this year, with only a few months left in his term, he ordered a referendum on whether a new constitutional convention should convene to write a wholly new constitution. Because the only conceivable motive for such a convention would be to amend the un-amendable parts of the existing constitution, it was easy to conclude -- as virtually everyone in Honduras did -- that this was nothing but a backdoor effort to change the rules governing presidential succession. Not unlike what Zelaya's close ally, Hugo Chavez, had done in Venezuela.

..... The attorney general filed suit and secured a court order halting the referendum. Zelaya then announced that the voting would go forward just the same, but it would be called an "opinion survey." The courts again ruled this illegal. Undeterred, Zelaya directed the head of the armed forces, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, to proceed with the "survey" -- and "fired" him when he declined. The Supreme Court ruled the firing illegal and ordered Vasquez reinstated.

Zelaya had the ballots printed in Venezuela, but these were impounded by customs when they were brought back to Honduras. On June 25 -- three days before he was ousted -- Zelaya personally gathered a group of "supporters" and led it to seize the ballots, restating his intent to conduct the "survey" on June 28. That was the breaking point for the attorney general, who immediately sought a warrant from the Supreme Court for Zelaya's arrest on charges of treason, abuse of authority and other crimes. In response, the court ordered Zelaya's arrest by the country's army, which under Article 272 must enforce compliance with the Constitution, particularly with respect to presidential succession. The military executed the court's order on the morning of the proposed survey.

..... As noted, Article 239 states clearly that one who behaves as Zelaya did in attempting to change presidential succession ceases immediately to be president. If there were any doubt on that score, the Congress removed it by convening immediately after Zelaya's arrest, condemning his illegal conduct and overwhelmingly voting (122 to 6) to remove him from office. The Congress is led by Zelaya's own Liberal Party (although it is true that Zelaya and his party have grown apart as he has moved left). Because Zelaya's vice president had earlier quit to run in the November elections, the next person in the line of succession was Roberto Micheletti, the Liberal leader of Congress. He was named to complete the remaining months of Zelaya's term.

It cannot be right to call this a "coup." Micheletti was lawfully made president by the country's elected Congress. The president is a civilian. The Honduran Congress and courts continue to function as before. The armed forces are under civilian control. The elections scheduled for November are still scheduled for November. Indeed, after reviewing the Constitution and consulting with the Supreme Court, the Congress and the electoral tribunal, respected Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga recently stated that the only possible conclusion is that Zelaya had lawfully been ousted under Article 239 before he was arrested, and that democracy in Honduras continues fully to operate in accordance with law. All Honduran bishops joined Rodriguez in this pronouncement ......

Watching the on-line comments on Honduras news items, the comment from Hondurans is decidedly anti-Zelaya. That's not a scientific poll, admittedly. But I'm totally fatigued by global statements that the 'rest of the world' agrees that Zelaya should be restored to power. The rest of the world is not paying attention.

Reich-wing, Weimar Republicans may be correct half as often as broken watches. This is one such instance.

Old & New Media: Arianna Huffington Sets Me to Thinking

Nothing new about that!

But here are some unvarified fragments of her words about media at the Guardian's Activate 09 Conference:

Old media has Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). It can't focus on anything for longer than a standard newscycle. Therefore most things fail to change.

New media has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It gets hold of something, and just can't let it go. This means that things are more likely to actually change...

The vested interests fighting reform and the past which they represented are very well organised, and the future that they resist is very poorly organized ….

The government tried to control the message, but there were so many people taking pictures with camera phones that they failed …. I'm interested in how technology can be a countervailing force ….

You consume old media sitting on a couch. You consume new media galloping on a horse….

I want to shift the debate from how to save newspapers to how to save journalism….

Data alone is not enough. Data needs to go viral…..

The blogosphere is now the most vital news source in our country. Rightly or wrongly, I've veered away from the reading of books and magazines. (Those floppy and irksome objects that fold up in your lap when you reach for your coffee or beer).

I like the interactive and liberating blogosphere where random and spontaneous thoughts are expected and accepted, and where passion reigns. Old journalism resembles stenography repeating the narrow conventional wisdom, without any semblance of passion. Bipartisanship or non-partisanship is pursued by the old journalism as if it represented some kind of state of perfect objectivity or Byzantine symmetry. Such a goal is un-attainable. It's not worth pursuing. The late great Hunter S. Thompson had it down perfectly in his Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail:

The only thing I ever saw that came close to Objective Journalism was a closed-circuit TV setup that watched shoplifters in the General Store at Woody Creek, Colorado. I always admired that machine, but I noticed that nobody paid any attention to it .... So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here -- not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market quotations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

There are two or more sides to every question. I like a logical fearless presentation of ideas on one side of the question. If I want to examine the other side(s), I know where to go to find them. Reading, viewing, and listening to partisan reporting gives me an opportunity, ultimately, to discern fact from fiction. The passionate interactive interchange of versions of reality to be found on the Internet informs me also of the vitality of fact(s).

But use of the Internet falls short of its potential. Few political consumers reach out and walk in the shoes of those who disagree with us. Way too infrequently. Of those commenting in my pages, I can think of only two or three with whom I expect to find lively disagreement: The Commentator, Petro-Sexual, and Wizard. Of these, only Wizard stays long enough to cobble together some coherence in his alternate 'reality'.

I make an effort to reach out to Righty and independent sites, whenever I have something to say with enough energy and time to deliver it. Again, Wizard's site is one of my favorites.

But too often I am confronted with having to "join" a blog, because "membership" is a prerequisite for participation in conversation. Another objective barrier to spontaneous dialogue is "comment moderation", wherein the site's Administrator has to pass on a reader's response's propriety before it appears in a thread. That leads to disjointed conversation, because I cannot view the last comment offered for publication before I compose mine. Secondly, I cannot view my comment immediately after posting; thus, a glaring error is missed which could have been corrected by deleting and reposting.

Finally, a major disappointment. My tripping across the 'Net to new and unfamiliar blogsites, is really a gift of my time. It all too often is not received as such. Righties, especially, interpret my comment as "trolling". Does that mean I'm trying to hook them up? I never figured that epithet out. All I'm trying to communicate is that, "Hey! I'm out here and I have a different point of view." What I get, usually, is a verbal slam upside the face. Occasionally, a reasoned reply. Rarely do I get what I'm really looking for which is a visit in return.

The newest thingies on the Internet is the Twittering and the Face-Booking. I haven't figured out what to call one who twitters. Would it be a 'twit' or a 'twat'? When I figure I'm willing to be called whatever it turns out to be, I might try Twittering. Just not yet.

I've been trying Face-Booking for about a week. My first impression is that it's crap. I haven't figured out how it supports embedded HTML links; naked links are hideous, esthetically. But FaceBook does offer a way to allocate your time and multiply your contacts on the Internet without fragmenting your blogging. You just have to be careful as to how many minutes you burn and how many "friends" you allow into your "virtual" Book.

I'll see how it goes.

George Soros on Barack Obama

Creditable job, short of perfect, well short of perfect.

Robert S. McNamara

(June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) R.I.P.


What are the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq? These are the two catastrophic wars in the history of American foreign policy, so it is critically important to ask that question. Even if we can't remember the answer longer than 1½ generations.

What I have learned is that it is not the generals and their uniformed subordinates who are responsible for the massive killing, maiming and burning in unnecessary wars. Not the uniforms. It is the suits and ties in the Pentagon, the White House, and within the august corridors of Congress. From each generation, they are self-recruited as among the 'Best and the Brightest'.

As far as Vietnam is concerned, McNamara was present at its conception. (Pretty much so, anyway.) Present at JFK's elbow in 1961, he's rightfully pegged by history as The Architect. He was a second-tier technocrat. He had been president of Ford only a month when Kennedy offered him the post as secretary of defense.

Names are indelibly burned into my mind. Not only McNamara, but there was McGeorge Bundy (NSC). And there was ubiquitous Dean Rusk, Secretary of State: a bloodless, tireless man who would endlessly repeat his answer to the last question he was asked.

All of them - the architects - are gone now, except Henry Kissinger.

I can't improve on a comment made by a listener of Talk Radio News Service named Bennett who recalls that, in part,

.... Unlike Mr. Rumsfeld, McNamara admitted he was wrong. He told President Johnson numerous times that we did not know enough to escalate. It was Johnson’s own desire to look as tough on Communism as Goldwater to politically neutralize the Republicans. The Vietnamese foreign minister was almost right in his accusing McNamara of not knowing history and the final mistake was not learned by McNamara or do our leaders today seem to understand it. Our country was founded in a guerrilla war. We won two major battles, Saratoga and Yorktown. Lost all the others. No standing army in history has ever defeated a guerrilla force. The only exceptions to this is when the military power fought a war of annihilation. That is our choice when fighting unconventional foes. We must make a conscious decision to become genocidal war criminals or get out. There are no other political or military options. I do not know if we would have been better off if Mr. McNamara had decided to get rich and stay at Ford. He saved thousands of lives with safety improvements in a few months .... Sent 58,000 Americans to their deaths and ruined a million more American lives. Cost millions of lives of our enemies. The man worked by numbers and those are his numbers....

Robert McNamara does not sit in the first tier of seats of our America's great unindicted war criminals. His incomplete mea culpa, along with LBJ's, places him in a row behind Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith.

But he's in the room with them. He's there. Forever.

Manny Ramirez Day!

The Dude of Swing is Back

When Manny Ramirez was suspended eight weeks ago, the Dodgers had a 6½ -game lead in the National League West. Now the lead is seven. But that's hardly the whole story.

With Manny, in the first 29 Games, the Dodgers were the best team in Baseball. They are still the best team in MLB, but just barely:

Dodgers (50-29)
Red Sox (48-30)
Yankees (45-32)
Rangers (42-35)
Angels (42-34)

Without him, they played 29-21: good enough to be the best team in their division. Maybe good enough to stay there for the rest of ther season. Definitely not good enough to get through October.

I'm glad he was suspended for PED's. And I'm glad he's back!

Honduras, Si! Zelaya, No!

I have to believe,
up to this point in time anyways, that
Mr. Obama & Ms. Clinton
answered their
3 A.M. phone calls
from the wrong sides of their respective beds.

I have read from a variety of sources since this so-called "constitutional coup d'etat" occurred. My current position has not moved beyond my initial tentative impulses.

A correspondent on Beautiful Horizons, Tambopaxi, gives a succinct summation of my evolving thinking: S/He writes:

... I gotta go against conventional wisdom pronounced by all, including Obama (whom I support on most other things), the OAS ... et al, on the Honduran coup. References to rule of law, due process, and so on, are all well and good, and valid only so far as all parties to a given dispute are willing to adhere to said rules, processes, and so on. Zelaya violated several Constitutional articles expressly written to prevent his kind of referendum initiative. As well, he ignored Constitutional and legal actions taken by the Honduran Supreme Court, the Electoral Tribunal and the Congress there to force him to comply with the Constitution and the law. In short, Zelaya went rogue and went off the legal reservation in his push to keep himself in office. Absolutely no one, including the OAS, or the USG (Obama) can assert that Zelaya would have submitted himself to the due process of impeachment, which he certainly deserved. On the contrary, had the other branches of government been foolish enough to play by the rules that Zelaya flaunted, they would very soon have been subjugated to executive authority as has happened in Venezuela (and will happen soon in Ecuador, I'm afraid).

I lived in Honduras two times for a total of seven years. While I wouldn't qualify Honduran politicians as the most honest or visionary of their kind, I think they got it right this time in

1. establishing rules to prevent Presidential dictatorships we see springing up elsewher in the region


2. acting on those rules to try and head off Zelaya's move toward continuance (and almost assuredly consolidation) of power; and


3. having the courage to act swiftly and decisively - and by exactly the same rules used by Zelaya - to get this rogue out of the country.

I know none of the above is politically correct in this day and age, but unfortunately, Chavez, Correa, Morales, Ortega - and pretty quick here, Uribe - are all using politically correct rules (Constitutions) to keep themselves in power indefinitely, suborn democratic institutions, and abuse the democratic rights of their countrymen. This is morally and politically wrong, and it's injurious to long term development interests of the region. Somehow, in contrast, little backward Honduras got it right both in terms of its Constitution and in terms of being willing to get down and play dirty just like the bad guys. It ain't pretty, it ain't clean, but Honduras showed someone like Chavez that if you play by the very same rules, you can whip them at their nefarious game...

I read that Zelaya was Latin America's least popular leader. Only 25 percent of the nation supported him. Survey found that 67 percent of Hondurans would never vote for him again. A huge majority of the country -- including the two major political parties (including Zelaya's), the Christian churches, the other branches of government and the armed forces -- do not want him as president. People were agreed to put up with him until his term ran out and he left power in in January 2010. And then he pulls this so-called non-binding plebiscite to override his constitutional terms limits? With ballots flown in from Venezuela?

Come on, People!

Dick Cheney Is Back - Testifying in His Own Defense

But not under oath, of course….

Yesterday, Cheney told The Washington Times' America's Morning News radio show that America cannot withdraw from Iraq yet:

But what … concerns me: that there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks.

I hope Iraqis can deal with it. At some point they have to stand on their own. But I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point…

This is consistent with what Cheney said last year. On 10 April 2008, Cheney was on Sean Hannity’s radio show and fear-mongered about the consequences of withdrawing from Iraq. He told Hannity,

For us to walk away from Iraq I think would have at least that bad an effect, probably worse, because if al Qaeda were to take over big parts of Iraq, among other things, they would acquire control of a significant oil resource. Iraq has almost 100 billion barrel reserves, producing 2.5-3 million barrels of oil a day. If you take a terrorist organization like al Qaeda and give it that kind of revenue, there's no telling the amount of trouble they could get into.

Ten days earlier Cheney had told Virginia Republicans that withdrawing US troops from Iraq would be 'an act of betrayal.'

The only way to lose this fight is to quit. That would be an act of betrayal and dishonor, and it's not going to happen on our watch.

What's going on here is nothing short of thinly disguised attempts to save his sorry ass legacy.

When Americans were understandably scared out of our minds in the aftermath of the 911 attacks, our incompetent government lost their minds.

Talk about not being able to handle that 3 a.m. call (in the form of hijacked airliners)!

Dick Cheney and his puppet president, Bush, totally freaked out, striking about blindly and randomly. In his 'post 9/11 mind set', Cheney did a complete flip-flop and decided on invading Iraq.

Cheney had better judgment in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, (Gulf War I). In 1991, Cheney's mind was cool and collected when he wisely counseled against following up the Liberation of Kuwait with an invasion of Iraq:

Once you get to Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime, a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that going to have if it's set up by the American military there? How long does the United States military have to stay there to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens once we leave?

Three years later, Cheney interviewed at the A.E.I., level-headedly counseled that invading Iraq was not rationally in the national interests of the United States. He said we would find ourselves in a Quagmire:
Nevertheless, after 911, the once-cerebral Cheney became the impulsive Cheney. Invading Iraq became the way for America to prove its military potency, "because Afghanistan was not enough" of a target. Moreover, he assured us on the eve of the invasion that "we would be received as liberators". Nine months later he told us, "There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government". Four years ago this month he told us that in Iraq "they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

Well, this is the record of willful deceit and fraud which Cheney wants to obscure by kicking the Iraq can further down the dusty road toward continuous and indefinite occupation. He wants and expects President Obama to invest even further in his geo-political ponzi scheme. After all is said and done, he and his puppet president have squandered:

• 4,321 American lives. (That's counting five soldiers shot down today in Baghdad, but not counting the life-altering injuries sustained by our WIA's.)


• 3,000,000,000,000 of our treasury (Not counting the fact that as a nation, we are fucking broke).


• Our two century-plus record of not starting international wars (not counting countless interventions in Banana republics)


• Our reputation of adherence to international laws and covenants (including the use of torture of prisoners)

As long as our world-renown international war criminal can manipulate his followers to house, feed and tender to the beast which he has bequeathed our current and future generations, the more he can hope to delay any reckoning with his responsibility for I-Wreck.

I cannot understand how any public appearance by this liar is not greeted with thrown shoes and cat-calls of "Guilty".

I do not want to hear another minute of self-serving public testimony from this war-mongering perp which is not received under oath.

The Obama Method

First he did it to Boehner, now Ahmadinejad.

Excerpted and boldfaced from Jonathan Chait, senior editor at The New Republic:

The thing that people haven't figured out about President Obama's conduct of foreign policy is that it's the same as his conduct of domestic policy. Obama believes in the power of negotiation and public dialogue to split his adversaries--Republicans at home, Islamists abroad--and strengthen his own position. Obama's speech in Cairo to the Muslim world was simply the foreign analogue of his dealings with the GOP.

Obama's method begins with attempts to find common ground, expressions of respect for the adversary's core beliefs, and profuse hope for cooperation. In his iconic 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention, Obama famously announced that Democrats, too, "worship an awesome God." In his Cairo speech, Obama pointed to the contributions and freedoms of American Muslims. In both speeches, Obama signaled cultural respect by adapting the other side's own rhetorical formulations--invoking "a belief in things not seen" (2004) or calling the Middle East the region where Islam "was first revealed" (Cairo).

This rhetoric removes the locus of debate from the realm of tribal conflict-- red state versus blue state, Islam versus America--and puts it onto specific questions--Is the American health care system fair? Is terrorism justified?-- where Obama believes he can win support from soft adherents of the opposing camp.

Naturally, Obama's pacific expressions tend to alarm the more hawkish elements of his own camp, who interpret his idealistic rhetoric as naivete or weakness .....

Democratic partisans think the enemy is vicious and must be met with uncompromising force. That's exactly how conservative foreign policy hawks feel about the world. Unsurprisingly, the right-wing foreign policy critique of Obama today sounds eerily like the partisan Democratic critique of Obama during the primary.

..... in his Cairo speech, Obama touted the historic role of Muslims in the United States. Conservative pundit David Frum complained:

One of the most disturbing things about the Cairo speech is the persistent misrepresentation of history. It is really absurd to say that Islam for example has 'always been a part of America's story.'

Obama probably realizes that Muslims have played a marginal role in American life throughout most of its history. He also probably believes that the U.S. economy in the 1970s suffered primarily from oil shocks and irresponsible monetary policy rather than from the absence of a Reaganesque cheerleader for entrepreneurship. But Obama's method entails small acts of intellectual dishonesty in the pursuit of common ground.

Critics such as Krugman and Frum are correct that surrendering intellectual ground comes at a cost. Our most successful presidents articulate clear, forceful public rationales for their beliefs --think of Roosevelt or Truman excoriating reactionary Republicans at home, or Truman, Kennedy, or Reagan standing up to the Soviets internationally. It is a mistake, however, to view Obama's strategy as an act of submission.

Consider how Obama explained his approach toward Iran during a recent interview with Newsweek:

Now, will it work? We don't know. And I assure you, I'm not naive about the difficulties of a process like this. If it doesn't work, the fact that we have tried will strengthen our position in mobilizing the international community, and Iran will have isolated itself, as opposed to a perception that it seeks to advance that somehow it's being victimized by a U.S. government that doesn't respect Iran's sovereignty.

This is a perfect summation of Obama's strategy. It does not presuppose that his adversaries are people of goodwill who can be reasoned with. Rather, it assumes that, by demonstrating his own goodwill and interest in accord, Obama can win over a portion of his adversaries' constituents as well as third parties. Obama thinks he can move moderate Muslim opinion, pressure bad actors like Iran to negotiate, and, if Iran fails to comply, encourage other countries to isolate it. The strategy works whether or not Iran makes a reasonable agreement.

The results remain to be seen. But it eerily resembles the way Obama has already isolated the GOP leadership. Obama began his presidency by elaborately courting the opposition party. Republicans in Congress believed that, by flamboyantly withholding cooperation, they could deny Obama his stated goal of bipartisan harmony and thus render him a failure. Instead, they wound up handing Obama the alternative victory of appearing to be the reasonable party. Polls showed that the public, by overwhelming margins, believed that Obama was trying to work with Republicans and that Republicans were not reciprocating.

Likewise, by defusing the complaint among Islamists that the United States disrespects their religion, Obama can more easily force the Iranian leadership to negotiate on the terms of its stated goals. American Prospect editor Mark Schmitt wrote in 2007 that this is actually,

a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers ..... One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem."

This apparent paradox is one reason Obama's political identity has eluded easy definition. On the one hand, you have a disciple of the radical community organizer Saul Alinsky turned ruthless Chicago politician. On the other hand, there is the conciliatory post-partisan idealist. The mistake here is in thinking of these two notions as opposing poles. In reality it's all the same thing. Obama's defining political trait is the belief that conciliatory rhetoric is a ruthless strategy.

Iran: A River (of Green) Runs Through It

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