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Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 10:42 AM Today's news from Iraq: Suicide Bomber Rams U.S. Convoy in Iraq. A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives next to a U.S. convoy on Baghdad's dangerous airport road on Tuesday, and several casualties were seen lying next to a damaged vehicle, witnesses and authorities said. In the weeks since the elections, the death count in Iraq has increased dramatically. The attacks came as the military announced that a U.S. Army soldier died from injuries suffered after a roadside bomb exploded late Monday next to his patrol north of Baghdad, bringing to 134 the number of American troops killed in Iraq this month, according to an unofficial count. This makes November the deadliest month for the U.S. military since last April when 135 troops died. Fierce fighting in Fallujah and insurgents' counterattacks elsewhere in Iraq have fueled the high death toll this month. 1,165 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 579 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
bada bing	Got to you, didn't I? Posted: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 10:47 AM Been There, didn't you say you weren't going to answer me?  Last month you did. Guess nobody can trust an idiot like you. Better stick your head into an oven to warm it up.
Cousin Jack	Got to you, didn't I? Posted: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 2:38 AM Yes you did, bb... And when you post a rational argument for any of your political views you might really GET to those folks who actually give a second-chance crapola about a damn thing you have to say. Until then....persona non grata...   Capeche, Amigo?   CJ
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 12:34 PM The casualty figures for November are now in: U.S. Military in Iraq Suffers Deadliest Month. The U.S. military in Iraq suffered its deadliest month since last year's invasion with more military personnel killed in action in November than in any equivalent period, the Pentagon's figures show.   ...   November also saw an upsurge in violence elsewhere in Iraq, as insurgents took advantage of the U.S. focus on Fallujah to launch attacks in other cities. In the northern city of Mosul, rebels captured several police stations, forcing American and Iraqi troops to deploy there. Attacks also took place in cities such as Ramadi, near Fallujah, and Baqubah, north of Baghdad.   Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on Nov. 7 declared a state of emergency across most of the country, and has since closed roads and borders, and imposed curfews on cities including Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi. 1,166 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 580 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Friday, December 03, 2004 10:59 AM Today's news from Iraq: 30 die in Baghdad attacks. AT LEAST 30 people were today killed in two separate attacks by rebels in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.   A car bomb exploded at a Shi’ite mosque in the Azamiyah, killing 14 and injuring 19 others.   And at least 16 police officers were killed, and several others injured, when gunmen stormed into a police station near the dangerous road to Baghdad International Airport.   The rebels also stole weapons, released detainees and torched several vehicles after arriving in 11 cars and attacking the station in the Amil district of the city with rocket-propelled grenades, US military spokesman Lt Col Jim Hutton said.   ...   Elsewhere, an American soldier was killed by rebels in the city of Mosul. 1,168 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 582 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Saturday, December 04, 2004 1:40 PM With Colin Powell on the way out, the Bush administration neo-cons can impose their will unimpeded. Twenty months ago the neo-cons said that Iraq would be a grateful democratic ally of ours--after a giddy period of dancing in the streets--using oil revenues to finance their own reconstruction costs. How are the Bush neo-cons doing so far? Iraq elections are scheduled for next month but, even after this month's conquest of Fallujah, insurgents continue to fight our occupation: Seven Iraqi Policemen Killed in Baghdad Bombings. In simultaneous blasts, insurgents detonated two car bombs Saturday at a police station near the fortified headquarters of the U.S. Embassy and interim Iraqi government, killing at least seven people and wounding more than 50 in the latest assault against Iraq's fledgling security forces. The U.S. military, meanwhile, reported the deaths of four more U.S. troops from roadside bombs in Baghdad and near Baqubah Saturday and a suicide car bombing Friday that targeted a U.S. outpost on the Iraqi-Jordanian border. 1,169 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 583 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Cousin Jack	Alternative Energy Sources Posted: Saturday, December 04, 2004 11:06 PM Ever since reading Amory Lovin's "Soft Energy Paths" over 25 years ago, I've been a firm believer in pursuing a redundancy of alternative energy sources both for economic and foreign policy reasons so after reading Tom Friedman's Sunday column tonight I thought it might be worthwhile to post three excerpts of his that have made sense to me for so long I don't even want to think about it:   If President Bush is looking for a legacy, I have just the one for him - a national science project that would be our generation's moon shot: a crash science initiative for alternative energy and conservation to make America energy-independent in 10 years. Imagine if every American kid, in every school, were galvanized around such a vision.   You give me an America that is energy-independent and I will give you sharply reduced oil revenues for the worst governments in the world. I will give you political reform from Moscow to Riyadh to Tehran. Yes, deprive these regimes of the huge oil windfalls on which they depend and you will force them to reform by having to tap their people instead of oil wells. These regimes won't change when we tell them they should. They will change only when they tell themselves they must.   If President Bush made energy independence his moon shot, he would dry up revenue for terrorism; force Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to take the path of reform - which they will never do with $45-a-barrel oil - strengthen the dollar; and improve his own standing in Europe, by doing something huge to reduce global warming. He would also create a magnet to inspire young people to contribute to the war on terrorism and America's future by becoming scientists, engineers and mathematicians.   http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/opinion/05friedman.html?hp C'mon George, pick up your old college bullhorn and lead the freedom cheer for a major course correction in American energy policy or we'll be militarily chained to the Persian Gulf for another generation of blood, sweat and tears.   CJ
look2it	Alternative Energy Sources Posted: Sunday, December 05, 2004 12:21 AM CJ, that makes a lot of sense. Doubt that Bush would consider it though. G'night.
Been There	Alternative Energy Sources Posted: Sunday, December 05, 2004 11:06 AM Cousin Jack, If President Bush took the proactive energy approach outlined by Tom Friedman in the link you gave, I'd willingly give him praise and support for his statemanship. I don't see the faintest chance that he'll support such a thing--good for America, but bad for Republican politics--but I'd love to be wrong about that. Look2It, did you post something faintly positive? Great! Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Sunday, December 05, 2004 11:08 AM Iraqis and the US military experienced more violence this weekend: Insurgents' Attacks Kill at Least 26 Iraqis, 4 Americans. In Baghdad, a suicide bomber rammed a minibus packed with explosives into a police station near the capital's protected Green Zone on Saturday morning, killing 8 officers and wounding 38 in a blast that toppled the station's roof. In Mosul, a suicide bomber in a sedan drove into a convoy of buses carrying Kurdish militiamen in the eastern part of the city, killing at least 18 and wounding 16, officials said. Also in Mosul, two American soldiers were killed and four wounded during an afternoon gun battle during which insurgents fired from a mosque, military officials said. Two United States soldiers died in other parts of the country. 1,170 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 584 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Monday, December 06, 2004 4:15 PM The Iraq elections are scheduled for next month, but day after day the headlines look like today's: 21 Killed in Fresh Iraq Violence. Seventeen civilians were killed and 13 wounded in Tikrit yesterday as gunmen ambushed a bus full of Iraqis working for the US military, while a car bomb and a gun attack killed four members of the Iraqi security forces elsewhere in northern Iraq.   The violence was the latest in a string of deadly attacks targeting Iraqi forces and others allied with the US military that have killed at least 68 Iraqis since Friday. The surge in bloodshed has come despite major US offensives last month to suppress guerrillas ahead of elections set for Jan. 30.   UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned that credible elections cannot be held Jan. 30 under current conditions. About 40 small, mostly Sunni political parties met yesterday to demand the elections be postponed by six months, but stopped short of calling for a boycott. 1,171 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 585 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Cousin Jack	Ukrainian Election Posted: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 3:21 AM   President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday adjusted his hard-line position on the presidential election in Ukraine, saying that he would accept the choice of the Ukrainian people and would work with whichever candidate wins the second runoff election, now scheduled for Dec. 26.   http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/international/europe/07putin.html   Way to go, Vlad!   CJ
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 11:55 AM Cousin Jack,   Yes, I too hope Vladimir Putin now gets the idea behind free elections.   With the latest bombings in Saudi Arabia and the station chief's assessment of the Iraq situation, things still don't look good in the Middle East: 2 C.I.A. Reports Offer Warnings on Iraq's Path. A classified cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials.   The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior C.I.A. official who recently visited Iraq. Soldiers are taking action against the Bush administration's "stop-loss" policy: 8 Soldiers Sue Over Army’s Stop-Loss Policy. But the eight share a bond of anger: each says he has been prevented from coming home for good by an Army policy that has barred thousands of soldiers from leaving Iraq this year even though the terms of enlistment they signed up for have run out. And each of these eight soldiers has separately taken the extraordinary step of seeking legal help, through late-night Internet searches and e-mail inquiries from their camps in the conflict zone, or through rounds of phone calls by an equally frustrated wife or mother back home. And, of course, the violence continues: Gunfight breaks out near Iraq green zone. Heavily armed insurgents have been emboldened by a spate of attacks across Iraq that have claimed more than 90 lives in recent days, mostly Iraqis working for the coalition or Iraqi national security forces, but which included five U.S. soldiers killed in separate attacks in the volatile Anbar province. 1,172 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 586 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 10:59 AM The total number of US deaths in Iraq, including accidents, exceeded 1000 several weeks ago. Yesterday President Bush achieved a new milestone in his war to save us from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction: US combat deaths in Iraq hit 1,000.  US troops suffered their 1,000th combat death in Iraq yesterday when a US soldier was killed in Baghdad. Although no weapons of mass destruction have actually been found, our government has made use of this opportunity to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world by torturing prisoners--even after the Abu Ghraib scandals made the news: Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Reported After Abu Ghraib Disclosures. Two Defense Department intelligence officials reported observing brutal treatment of Iraqi insurgents captured in Baghdad in June, several weeks after disclosures of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison created a worldwide uproar, according to a memorandum disclosed Tuesday. The memorandum, written by the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency to a senior Pentagon official, said that when the two members of his agency objected to the treatment, they were threatened and told to keep quiet by other military interrogators. Of course, prisoners at our Guantanamo Bay base suffer the same treatment, as the Arab world knows well. The Associated Press reported Monday that one F.B.I. official had written in a memorandum of witnessing a series of coercive procedures at Guantánamo, among them a female interrogator squeezing the genitals of a detainee and bending back his thumbs painfully. Taking action against those who tell the truth is, of course, standard operating prococedure for the Bush administration. A case in point is the attempt of "senior White House officials" to have the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson murdered in retaliation for his calling attention to one of the lies in President Bush's state of the union address. Almost everyone in the government has taken this cue from the White House: those who tell the truth must suffer severe consequences. Nevertheless, a few still possess the character to resist the criminal elements who now control our government lock, stock, and barrel. 1,173 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 587 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Cousin Jack	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 5:13 PM Been There writes: A case in point is the attempt of "senior White House officials" to have the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson murdered in retaliation for his calling attention to one of the lies in President Bush's state of the union address.   Could you document this "attempted murder" plot,  BT?  Otherwise it smells of the hyperbolic air surrounding the alleged Clintonian Plot to murder Vincent Foster.   Thanks, CJ
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 11:42 PM Cousin Jack,   Why do you suppose it is a felony to reveal the names of covert CIA agents? Because to do so puts their lives in danger, to say nothing of the people who risked working with those agents. The Bush administration considers that particular felony to be a good response to those individuals who have the audacity to tell the truth: The curse of Bush. Some might think that whistleblowers will come forward and provide the information the public needs to know. They will only if they have a particularly strong desire to commit career suicide. FBI whistleblowers have been sent off to bureaucratic Siberias. And for those who can't be assaulted directly, there are other tactics, like attacking the person's family. When retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson pointed out that Bush was using a report, known to be false, that Iraq had sought to acquire uranium from Niger, the administration attempted to discredit him. When that didn't work it thought nothing of damaging national security by revealing that his wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA employee. Let's not sugarcoat what this really is. Tom Daschle said it well: On the Abuse of Government Power. There are some things that simply ought not be done – even in politics. Too many people around the President seem not to understand that, and that line has been crossed. When Ambassador Joe Wilson told the truth about the Administration's misleading claims about Iraq, Niger, and uranium, the people around the President didn't respond with facts. Instead, they publicly disclosed that Ambassador Wilson's wife was a deep-cover CIA agent. In doing so, they undermined America's national security and put politics first. They also may well have put the lives of Ambassador Wilson's wife, and her sources, in danger. At the Gridiron Club dinner, Bob Novak explained himself in song: Little Big Man. Novak starred in a skit about the Plame leak. Dressed in a top hat and cut-away coat, the columnist hammed it up in front of an audience of his peers, crooning to the tune of "Once I Had a Secret Love." Novak sang off-key about outing "a girl spy" thanks to "a secret source who lived within the great White House." And he finished it off with a killer closing line, delivered with a wink and a grin: "Cross the right wing you may try / Bob Novak's coming after you." The audience howled. Of course they put her life in danger intentionally! What better warning could there be to those determined to tell the truth? When thugs and criminals get power, that's the way they behave.   Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Thursday, December 09, 2004 10:06 AM Sent to Iraq on the false pretext of saving us from weapons of mass destruction, our soldiers continue to face death: U.S. combat deaths climb to 1,001 as Samarra sees repeated attacks. An American soldier was slain Tuesday by small-arms fire while on patrol in Baghdad. On Wednesday, the Pentagon's Web site listed the total number of U.S. combat deaths at 1,001. The military also said a Marine died in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad. The two deaths brought the number of U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to 1,278, according to an Associated Press tally. The gunmen in Samarra stormed a police station, looted the weapons inside and blew up the building, according to a police officer. A policeman and a child standing nearby were killed during the clashes before the insurgents fled. The violence in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, killed four Iraqis and wounded several others. The city's police chief later announced he was resigning; his house was had attacked earlier Wednesday and he said his family had asked him not to go back to work. In a "morale-building" visit to troops in Kuwait, Donald Rumsfeld told the soldiers to ask him "the tough questions," Iraq-Bound Troops Confront Rumsfeld Over Lack of Armor, then seemed surprised when some took him up on it. Specialist Thomas Wilson, a scout with a Tennessee National Guard unit scheduled to roll into Iraq this week, said soldiers had to scrounge through local landfills here for pieces of rusty scrap metal and bulletproof glass - what they called "hillbilly armor" - to bolt on to their trucks for protection against roadside bombs in Iraq. "Why don't we have those resources readily available to us?" Specialist Wilson asked Mr. Rumsfeld, drawing cheers and applause from many of the 2,300 troops assembled in a cavernous hangar here to meet the secretary. Mr. Rumsfeld responded that the military was producing extra armor for Humvees and trucks as fast as possible. A few minutes later, a soldier from the Idaho National Guard's 116th Armor Cavalry Brigade asked Mr. Rumsfeld what he and the Army were doing "to address shortages and antiquated equipment" National Guard soldiers heading to Iraq were struggling with. Mr. Rumsfeld seemed taken aback by the question and a murmur began spreading through the ranks before he silenced them. "Now settle down, settle down," he said. "Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning and I'm gathering my thoughts here." ... Colonel Zimmerman said he appreciated the efforts by Army supply officials here, but he and his troops said they could not help but fume at the sight of the fully "up-armored" Humvees and heavy trucks set out on display here for Mr. Rumsfeld's visit. "What you see out here isn't what we've got going north with us," he said. As during the Vietnam war, some U.S. soldiers have gone to Canada seeking asylum. A former U.S. Marine staff sergeant who served in Iraq testified yesterday on behalf of one of those soldiers: Former U.S. Marine in Iraq tells Canadian board some comrades became 'psychopaths' who enjoyed killing unarmed civilians. "I take full responsibility for my actions," he said. "We deliberately gunned down people who were civilians. I became so concerned because I felt that Marines were honestly enjoying it. I saw plenty of Marines become psychopaths. They enjoyed the killing." The Marine Corps denied Massey's allegations. "We're not saying he's lying, but his perception of what the situation was in relation to the rules of engagement, and what was justified, is different than ours," said Maj. Douglas Powell, a spokesman for the Marine Corps at the Pentagon. "It was investigated and any acts of wrongdoing, in regards to violations of the laws of war, the laws of armed conflict, were unsubstantiated." Those of us with combat experience know how terrible the reality of war is--on those fighting as well as on the civilians caught in the middle. That's why war must always be a last resort. It's a tragedy for our military and for our country that we've elected a man who does not realize that. 1,174 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 588 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Cousin Jack	The Iraq War Posted: Thursday, December 09, 2004 6:10 PM Again, here's what you wrote, BT: A case in point is the attempt of "senior White House officials" to have the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson murdered in retaliation for his calling attention to one of the lies in President Bush's state of the union address.  You are quite plainly accusing "Senior White House officials" of attempted murder, Been There, and my concern is with the overall credibility of your political blog. "Let's not sugarcoat what this really is." And who exactly might you be accusing of this "sugarcoat"? It couldn't be me. I simply asked you for documentation of this attempted murder plot.   If someone has actually committed a felony then they will be prosecuted for it. As I understand it, disclosure of an undercover intelligence officer's identity can be a federal crime if prosecutors can show the leak was intentional and the person who released that information knew of the officer's secret status. According to Senator Schumer, Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales said that if confirmed he would recuse himself from the Justice Department probe into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to a columnist Robert Novak. Now personally, I've long disliked Robert Novak and his snarling brand of Republican toadyism and this recent action of his only strengthened that dislike. But we have no way of knowing at this point whether Novak is even telling the truth. He's been around a long long time and has undoubtedly gathered a lot of political insider knowledge over the years. For all we know, Novak invented those two senior administration sources just to cover his own ass. In addition, the relationship between Salon and Joseph Wilson is hardly disinterested and they have been promoting his spin on this since it started.   In any event, you are accusing "Senior White House officials" of attempted murder and I asked if you could document that. You can't, plain and simple, and there's no sugarcoat in asking whether you could. The truth will come out in it's own time and the chips will fall where they may. I would prefer you let justice take its natural course and wait for the outcome of the ensuing investigation before casting such defamatory stones.   Cheers, CJ
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Friday, December 10, 2004 11:57 AM Cousin Jack, Concerning the administration's betrayal of covert agent Valerie Plame, you wrote: For all we know, Novak invented those two senior administration sources just to cover his own ass. If your speculation turns out to be true, then I will immediately agree that I was wrong about the administration in this matter. In fact, I did consider the possibility you mentioned, but rejected it because several other reporters claim that they got the same information. There is, of course, the possibility that they all could be lying, but I doubt that very much. If it turns out they were, I'll chalk up one big point for you (and gladly). Endangering an Agent's Life I notice that in both of your posts on this matter you say that I accused White House officials of "attempted murder." In the interest of accuracy, let's talk about what I really posted. If you re-read the quote you selected from my post, you will observe that I did not accuse White House officials of trying to murder Ms. Plame directly. In fact (if Novak and the other reporters are not lying), revealing Ms. Plame as a covert agent exposed her (and the foreigners she worked with in secret) to murder by the terrorists she was working against. She was risking her life on behalf of our nation, but never expected to be betrayed by our own leaders in the White House. Evaluating Intentions As to whether or not the leak "was intentional," Novak and the other reporters made it clear (if they can be trusted) why Ms. Plame was exposed: the White House did so specifically to retaliate against her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth about the forged documents President Bush used as support for attacking Iraq in his state of the union address. Furthermore, everyone in government knows that it is against the law to endanger an agent in that way.   You might argue that I should not infer evil intention from this particular White House action (assuming that the reporters are not all lying), but I don't see how I can avoid doing so. Are you suggesting that the "secret White House sources" would feel twinges of regret if Ms. Plame were actually murdered as a result of their actions? I suppose a more charitable construction would be that they simply wanted Ms. Plame and her husband to live the rest of their days in the manner of Salman Rushdie. Okay, I'll grant that possibility also. Punishing Honesty Perhaps the White House considers such a fate to be sufficient punishment for Joseph Wilson for telling the truth, and might also serve as a suitable deterrent for others tempted to tell the truth in the future. But why should people be punished at all for telling the truth? This is not an isolated incident, but typifies the stance of the Bush White House toward anyone who speaks truths that the administration wants suppressed. That's why people who care about the morality of our government don't intend to let the matter drop. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Friday, December 10, 2004 12:35 PM The soldiers who questioned Rumsfeld about going on dangerous missions with insufficient armor created quite a flap: Armor Scarce for Big Trucks Transporting Cargo in Iraq. The House Armed Services Committee released statistics on Thursday showing that while many Humvees are armored, most transport trucks that crisscross Iraq are not. Every issue seems to have a lighter side though: Rumsfeld Demands Full Body Armor for Next Meeting with Troops. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld blasted the White House today for not providing him with full body armor for his acrimonious question-and-answer session with troops in Kuwait this week, saying that the lack of body armor put him in a potentially perilous situation. Serious Muslims recognize the need to address the connection between their faith and the actions performed by Muslim terrorists. They face determined and dangerous opposition, though, from Muslim fundamentalists: Muslim Scholars Increasingly Debate Unholy War. Mr. Shahrour says he and an increasing number of intellectuals cannot be deterred by clerical opposition. He describes as ridiculously archaic some Hadith, or sayings, attributed to Muhammad - all assembled in nine bulky volumes some 100 years after his death and now the last word on how the faithful should live. "It is like this now because for centuries Muslims have been told that Islam was spread by the sword, that all Arab countries and even Spain were captured by the sword and we are proud of that," he said. "In the minds of ordinary people, people on the street, the religion of Islam is the religion of the sword. This is the culture, and we have to change it." 1,175 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 589 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	Stealing from Our Children and Grandchildren Posted: Friday, December 10, 2004 1:27 PM Today Princeton Economist Paul Krugman provided a good objective account of Bush's social security scheme: Borrow, Speculate and Hope. If personal investment accounts were invested in Treasury bonds, this whole process would accomplish precisely nothing. The interest workers would receive on their accounts would exactly match the interest the government would have to pay on its additional debt. To compensate for the initial borrowing, the government would have to cut future benefits so much that workers would gain nothing at all. How, then, can privatizers claim that they could secure the future of Social Security without raising taxes or reducing the incomes of future retirees? By assuming that workers would invest most of their accounts in stocks, that these investments would make a lot of money and that, in effect, the government, not the workers, would reap most of those gains, because as personal accounts grew, the government could cut benefits. The intent of the administration's social security scheme is to steal still more billions from our children and grandchildren. Wall street fat cats are rubbing their pudgy hands in glee. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Saturday, December 11, 2004 10:54 AM News from Iraq: 2 G.I.'s Killed as One Copter Hits a 2nd; Marine and Iraqi Die in Attacks. A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, said the airborne helicopter, an AH-64 Apache gunship, had hit a UH-60 Black Hawk transport. He added that the cause of the crash was unclear. Violence continued to flare in the Sunni Triangle, to the north and west of Baghdad. In western Anbar Province, a marine was killed on a security operation, military officials said, without providing details. More news from Iraq: Iraq Insurgents Kill Top Police, Hit U.S. Convoy. Gunmen killed three high-ranking Iraqi police officers in two separate attacks on Saturday, among a daily round of bombings and ambushes targeting U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies. A powerful explosion rocked the northern city of Mosul in late afternoon but it remained unclear what the target or cause was as the U.S. military sealed off the area. 1,176 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 590 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	Texas Justice Posted: Saturday, December 11, 2004 11:23 AM As Governor of Texas, George W. Bush presided over the state that executes more prisoners than any other--and has the worst criminal justice system. Over the years, that has been a point of pride with him. Now the Supreme Court has agreed to hear another case of "Texas justice": Justices to Hear Case of Mexican on Death Row. Mr. Medellín's lawyers raised this issue on his behalf as early as his appeal in the Texas state courts in 1998. But that was not early enough, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in May when it responded to the World Court decision by rejecting Mr. Medellín's request for a writ of habeas corpus. The appeals court ruled that he could obtain no relief on the basis of the consular treaty because, by failing to raise it at his murder trial in 1994 he was procedurally barred from raising it in federal court.   At his 1994 trial for a gang-related murder, Mr. Medellín, an indigent 18-year-old, was given a court-appointed lawyer who called no witnesses. Unknown to the trial judge at the time, Mr. Medellín's lawyer had been suspended from law practice for ethical violations. At the penalty phase of the trial, which lasted two hours, the lawyer put on only one expert witness, a psychologist who had never met Mr. Medellín. White House strategists view this case as a win-win situation for them. If the Supreme Court upholds the death sentence, it will vindicate Bush's "Texas justice." If it overturns the sentence, Republicans will use the decision as evidence that the Supreme Court needs more hard-right justices. Been There
Cousin Jack	The Iraq War Posted: Saturday, December 11, 2004 10:52 PM Been There writes: I notice that in both of your posts on this matter you say that I accused White House officials of "attempted murder." In the interest of accuracy, let's talk about what I really posted. If you re-read the quote you selected from my post, you will observe that I did not accuse White House officials of trying to murder Ms. Plame directly.   And: You might argue that I should not infer evil intention from this particular White House action (assuming that the reporters are not all lying), but I don't see how I can avoid doing so. Are you suggesting that the "secret White House sources" would feel twinges of regret if Ms. Plame were actually murdered as a result of their actions?   What I'm "inferring", Been There, is the friendly editorial suggestion that shouldn't have written the underlined within this sentence the way that you did: A case in point is the attempt of "senior White House officials" to have the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson murdered in retaliation for his calling attention to one of the lies in President Bush's state of the union address. Why not just say they irresponsibly put her life in danger if they did indeed leak this information to Robert Novak (who is the real culprit actually for then leaking this to the rest of the world in his column). We don't know the actual context wherein that information was leaked (or perhaps merely confirmed) and that context may shed much illumination.  (Hmm, imagine a cocktail party wherein heads nod or loose lips let slip and Novak let's what slipped go to his own nodding head for the sake of breaking  a story and punishing, say, in partisan recklessness, a political enemy with whom he'd developed some kind of personal acrimony in the past etc etc)  We don't know at this point if the same 2 sources leaked the same information in the same way to NY Times reporter Miller and Time's reporter Cooper. They aren't talking and may go to jail for protecting their sources. Novak isn't facing any jail time for not revealing his source. Why? There's your story, BT. You see...you need a conscientious editor who understands and sympathizes with what you're trying to dig up and express but wants you to make sure you don't hang yourself and your credibility with the rope you're noosing. Since you don't, I'll chime in now and then and try to keep you on the straight and narrow.   Cheers, CJ
Cousin Jack	The Iraq War Posted: Saturday, December 11, 2004 11:09 PM By the way there's a very good fair-minded article in tomorrow's NY Times Magazine on "Democratic Providentialism" well worth reading. It's ripe pickings for both optimists and pessimists, but here's my favorite cherry:   ...the promotion of democracy by the United States has proved to be a dependably good idea. America may be more unpopular than ever before, but its hegemony really has coincided with a democratic revolution around the world. For the first time in history, a majority of the world's peoples live in democracies. In a dangerous time, this is about the best news around, since democracies, by and large, do not fight one another, and they do not break up into civil war. As a result -- and contrary to the general view that the world is getting more violent -- ethnic and civil strife have actually been declining since the early 1990's, according to a study of violent conflicts by Ted Robert Gurr at the University of Maryland. Democratic transitions can be violent -- when democracy came to Yugoslavia, majority rule at first led to ethnic cleansing and massacre -- but once democracies settle in, once they develop independent courts and real checks and balances, they can begin to advance majority interests without sacrificing minority rights.   Bet you all can find some too.   http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12WWLN.html   Cheers, CJ   ps: If you're still out there, Moots, I'll be getting back to you soon with Part I of my reply to your reply posted seemingly a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
Been There	The Betrayal of Valerie Plame Posted: Sunday, December 12, 2004 12:26 PM Cousin Jack Regarding the administration's betrayal of covert agent Valerie Plame, you posted: [I]magine a cocktail party wherein heads nod or loose lips let slip and Novak let's what slipped go to his own nodding head for the sake of breaking  a story and punishing, say, in partisan recklessness, a political enemy... If White House officials betrayed an agent risking her life for our country (as happened unless Novak and the other reporters are lying), it doesn't matter whether the betrayal occurred at a cocktail party or in a dark parking garage. It's interesting to note the mindset that automatically classifies a person who tells the truth as a political enemy. To promote our attack on Iraq, the administration proclaimed a steady stream of lies about weapons of mass destruction. CIA analysts were among the few who knew the administration's statements to be false. People in the CIA took the White House betrayal of one of their own to be a serious warning to the CIA to keep quiet, or else. And I think that they were correct to take it that way, given the Bush administration's history. You also noted this interesting situation: Novak isn't facing any jail time for not revealing his source. Why? There's your story, BT. I've presumed that the special prosecutor is working his way up to Novak. Do you have information to the contrary? If so, that is the story indeed. Speaking of the need for an editor, what I did was "inferring." What you did was "implying." Been There
Been There	Promoting Democracy Posted: Sunday, December 12, 2004 12:29 PM Cousin Jack, The article you mentioned, The Way We Live Now: Democratic Providentialism, does indeed contain several nuugets worth reading. How China develops politically over the next few years is incredibly important. At some point in the not-too-distant future, China might well be the world's greatest super-power with the U.S. a distant second. When that happens, will China become the world's police force? If it does, how will we fare? To my mind, the very best way for us to promote representative democracy is to make our country as great as its promise, and to live up to our responsibilities in the world community. I can preach to my children all day long but, if I don't practice what I preach, what I say will inevitably fall on deaf ears. When we prop up oppressive dictators for short-term advantages (as we did with Saddam Hussein and many others), we always diminish ourselves in the long run. Corporations constantly make the same mistake when they focus on the quarterly bottom line at the expense of business integrity. That's why I cringe when I hear politicians say that they want to run our government on the corporate model. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Sunday, December 12, 2004 12:33 PM The war launched by President George W. Bush after repeated lies about its necessity continues to slaughter Americans: Roadside Bomb Kills One American, Wounds 3 In Iraq. A U.S. soldier died of wounds sustained when a roadside bomb hit his patrol in Baghdad, the U.S. military said Sunday. Three other American soldiers were slightly wounded in the same attack but returned to duty. The attack occurred in the northern part of Iraq's capital, the military said in a statement. The soldier was evacuated to a military hospital but died within hours. The soldier's name is being withheld pending notification of the next of kin. The war launched by President George W. Bush after repeated lies about its necessity continues to slaughter Iraqis: Series of Insurgent Attacks Kills at Least 4 Iraqi Policemen. At least four Iraqi police officers were killed and 16 American soldiers were wounded Saturday in a string of insurgent attacks across central and northern Iraq, military officials said. Saddam Hussein was captured a year ago, and still no trial. Why? 1,177 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 591 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Monday, December 13, 2004 8:36 AM It's exactly one year today since Saddam Hussein was captured in a hole, but the weekend was a bad one for our troops: 8 US Marines Killed in Iraq Sunday. Sunday, eight American Marines were killed in the Iraqi Anbar Province, which includes the cities Fallujah and Ramadi, west of Baghdad. ... The deaths Sunday equaled the highest number of Marines killed in a single day, since a car bomb exploded outside of Falljuah, October 30th. After the success of its disinformation campaign in the U.S. regarding Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration wants to make more extensive use of that technique throughout the government: Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Arena. The efforts under consideration risk blurring the traditional lines between public affairs programs in the Pentagon and military branches - whose charters call for giving truthful information to the media and the public - and the world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations. The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets. 1,178 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 592 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Betrayal of Valerie Plame Posted: Monday, December 13, 2004 2:17 PM Cousin Jack, The Sunday LA Times published a short piece on the very topic you raised concerning the Bush administration's betrayal of covert agent Valerie Plame: Robert Novak: How Does He Stay Out of Jail? Miller, of the New York Times, and Cooper, of Time magazine, were hauled into court. They refused to testify and now face up to 18 months in jail for contempt. In Washington, there's only one question more pressing than who leaked Plame's name: Why isn't Bob Novak going to jail? The piece goes on to list (and handicap) five possible theories. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 10:35 AM Yesterday the violence in Iraq raged on: 9 Iraqs, 2 U.S. Marines Killed. Violence continued in Iraq, meanwhile, as a suicide bomber struck a checkpoint at the compound housing the interim Iraqi government and embassies, the second such attack at the same location in two days. The number of fatalities was not immediately confirmed, with reports ranging from one to seven. Nine Iraqis died in Monday's attack. Two marines were also killed in action on Monday in Anbar Province, the American military said today, bringing the number of marines killed in the region to 10. On a more positive note, Ayad Allawi announced that the trials of the former regime will begin soon. That should help remind the world that the situation in Iraq was already terrible when our troops arrived. "I can now tell you clearly and precisely that, God willing, next week the trials of the symbols of the former regime will start, one by one, so that justice can take its path in Iraq," Dr. Allawi told Iraq's interim National Council in a televised address. 1,179 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 593 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
bada bing	The Betrayal of Valerie Plame Posted: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 1:39 PM Stop whining about that girl in the CIA. In case you haven't taken off your parka for a few years, here is the deal, politics ain't beanbag. If you can't stand the heat you should stay out of the kitchen. Everyone does the same thing in politics, no heroes, not even your boy Kerry. See you guys are pushing snow around up there, ha ha. I'm going to the beach for some rays.
look2it	The Betrayal of Valerie Plame Posted: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 11:17 PM Girl? I don't think so. What have you risked for your country? Your lottery money? Go back to being a beach bum, with emphasis on the bum. G'night.
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Thursday, December 16, 2004 11:54 AM Bin Laden, still at large more than three years after attacking us on September 11, 2001, has released another tape: Bin Laden Tape Advocates Overthrow of Saudi Government. He also praises the militants who attacked the U.S. consulate in the Saudi city of Jeddah earlier this month, asking God to be merciful on them. The Bush administration, on the other hand, is working to suppress a report by reform-minded Arabs calling for more democracy in Arab countries, as columnist Tom Friedman pointed out today: Holding Up Arab Reform. [T]he Bush team saw a draft of the Arab governance report and objected to the prologue, because it was brutally critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation. This prologue constitutes some 10 percent of the report. While heartfelt, it's there to give political cover to the Arab authors for their clear-eyed critique of Arab governance, which is the other 90 percent of the report. But the Bush team is apparently insisting that language critical of America and Israel be changed - as if language 10 times worse can't be heard on Arab satellite TV every day. And until it's changed, the Bush folks are apparently ready to see the report delayed or killed altogether. And they have an ally. The government of Egypt, which is criticized in the report, also doesn't want it out - along with some other Arab regimes. So suppression of the truth continues to be the hallmark of the Bush administration. No doubt the Iraqis take full notice of that as they head into their own election season: As Iraqi Campaign Begins, a Bomb Kills 9 in Karbala. Iraq's election campaign season opened on a violent note when a bomb exploded Wednesday near the gate of one of Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines in the pilgrim city of Karbala, killing 9 people and wounding 40, including a top aide to the country's senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The attack occurred toward dusk, about 90 minutes after the 4 p.m. deadline for political groups to register their slates of candidates for the elections. The registration deadline marked the official start of 44 days of campaigning, set to end two days before an estimated 14 million eligible voters go to the polls Jan. 30. They will choose among slates from more than 80 political coalitions, individual parties and other groups to fill 275 seats in a provisional national assembly. I sincerely hope that the Iraqi elections will go well and the people of Iraq will realize that, while our forces could remove Saddam Hussein from power, only the people of Iraq can establish a satisfactory replacement for him. Our military simply can't do that for them. Considering that the Iraqis allowed Saddam Hussein to gain power in the first place, I'm not optimistic about how this will turn out. However, a good election process seems to be our best chance to salvage something now from the completely predictable mess (and I predicted it, as did every rational person who took a good hard look at the facts before our attack) that George Bush has created in Iraq. No matter how the elections turn out, our young soldiers (those still alive) will pay the price for years to come: A Flood of Troubled Soldiers Is in the Offing, Experts Predict. What was planned as a short and decisive intervention in Iraq has become a grueling counterinsurgency that has put American troops into sustained close-quarters combat on a scale not seen since the Vietnam War. Psychiatrists say the kind of fighting seen in the recent retaking of Falluja - spooky urban settings with unlimited hiding places; the impossibility of telling Iraqi friend from Iraqi foe; the knowledge that every stretch of road may conceal an explosive device - is tailored to produce the adrenaline-gone-haywire reactions that leave lasting emotional scars. And in no recent conflict have so many soldiers faced such uncertainty about how long they will be deployed. Veterans say the repeated extensions of duty in Iraq are emotionally battering, even for the most stoical of warriors. Serving in Iraq today resembles in many ways serving in Vietnam forty years ago. Again, that result for our soldiers was completely predictable (and I predicted it, as did every rational person who took a good hard look at the facts before our attack). 1,181 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 595 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Cousin Jack	Who Do you Say That I Am? Posted: Friday, December 17, 2004 3:44 AM Moots: Here's Part I of my reply (me being in red & blue) to your reply (you being in black) from God Almighty Knows exactly when:   Cousin Jack, I’ve reread your post several times and even highlighted some points. Before I blunder forward, may I speculate on several things? First off, I suspect you have taken classes at a theological seminary (perhaps even taught at one) or a religious school of some sort.  If not, you seem to at least have associated considerably with persons conversant in theology and church history.   I have researched the field of comparative religion and mythology for many years just out of plain curiosity and I have also been active in an Historical Jesus Forum over the past couple-three years mostly because I wanted to get a better understanding of that 1st-4th  century CE  Mediterranean cultural context whose various religious and literary influences contributed to the evolution of the canonical New Testament. More importantly, I wanted to understand it all from very human level. What was it like to live back then? If I’d been there, how would I have reacted to the multicultural mix of influences?  One of the unforeseen intellectual spinoffs of my internship with this forum was coming to the realization that, barring some indisputable archaeological find, Jesus of Nazareth’s actual historical existence will likely never be convincingly proven or disproven. In some ways, that’s the good-est “Good News” of all.   Secondly, I think you are sufficiently familiar with the Bible that quoting chapter and verse to you would be superfluous. Exactly (and vica versa): the Bible can be cherry-picked to support or argue against almost any political or theological point you want to make and as result I’ve learned to keep political and religious ideologies in separate though somewhat bridged compartments. Thirdly, I think you could do a far more creditable job arguing against your own objections than I could.  I suspect you have been on both sides of these issues, and if you were paid to do so, could make a much more persuasive “evangelical sales pitch” than I could.   I do try to understand all sides of things but I am against evangelizing any particular side at the special interest expense of the others as parts of the larger truth reside in all the facets and no one facet contains the whole truth. Jesus’s story in the New Testament is, for me, just one part of a greater theological story which can be drawn from all the art, literature and science produced by human beings since the dawn of history. It is only at this point in history, due mainly to the internet’s capacity for search and access, that a significant number of people may finally be able to approach an understanding of what this Greater Story may really be.    Fourthly,  I think you still may be on both sides of these issues and the internal debate still ferments, perhaps causing occasional heartburn   My current understanding is that objective reality’, as measurable by science,  has many dimensions to it and therefore, issues argued about it have many dimensions as well. When I first came to this realization a long time ago it may have caused a little heartburn (I can’t recall LOL), but in a true democracy the internal debate over issues will and should always ferment. There are no absolute truths which can forever be chiseled into stone for there are always exceptions to absolute rules. This is what makes both social history and organic evolution possible. The world has always been in the process of transforming itself (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse). “As the human mind evolves, institutions and laws must also change with the times,” as is chiseled in curvelinear fashion atop the pillared Ionic capitols supporting the dome beneath which the statue of Thomas Jefferson stands at his memorial in Washington D.C.’s tidal basin. On the other hand, you may simply be one of these savants to whom knowledge is a toy - something that merely enables you to play chess against yourself and maintain a comfortable, noncommittal detachment.  I hope this is not the case.   Nope. No savant playing chess here. I do enjoy playing with knowledge for creative purposes partly because I believe that one must endure much uncertainty and fact-sifting in order to get closer to genuine “truths” (not to mention all those obstinant subjective particulars within the broad and deep spectrum of human emotion). I think that a long-suffering empathic species of journalistic detachment is necessary in order to complete these learning journeys as it often entails putting one’s self in someone elses shoes for a significant period of time. But within the generosity of that sometimes painful habitation one’s own knowledge and experience become truly “earned”. And that, in the end, is what makes such “truths” worth putting solid faith and trust behind. I’m not telling you this to smoke you out, but so that you may better understand the context of my remarks.  Who you are is your own biz.   And who you are is your own biz too, Moots—though “smoking you out” (as in Bush’s attempt to “smoke out” Bin Laden) is not a metaphor I would have personally chosen (LOL) in describing my underwhelming effort to unveil your dearest kept secret. Regarding evangelical sales pitches:  I’m not smart enough to make the sale with you, and not dumb enough to try.  Even if I were, I have serious reservations about “decision” theology. Regarding the authenticity, reliability, etc. of the scripture,  I’m would prefer to leave that can of worms for you to sort out to your own satisfaction.  I am passing familiar with biblical and ancient history, the concept of the messiah, the inter-testamental period and the history of early church, but I suspect you could tie me in knots and leave red-faced and stammering on that ground.   I have minimal interest in arguing any of these very personal matters with you, Moots (unless it’s a jousting match you truly enjoy). The “Debate Mode” has now become that “last refuge of a scoundrel” rhetorical mind-set for me anyway—evidence I’m finally turning the ineviteable physiological corner on becoming irreversibly old, I humbly suspect. My current affixed bumper sticker reads: “There’s No Turning Back Now”  I only brought up the “reliability of scripture” matter with you, Moots, because I truly believe that this is the existential conundrum“Evangelical” Christianity poses—if one going to proactively peddle what one doubtlessly believes to be the “Inerrant Truth” based on New Testament scripture, one had damn well better have a decent understand-ing of how those 27 books actually evolved into canonical being otherwise one may end up becoming an ignorant and irresponsible pied piper blindly leading your naïve village children into a petrified forest of antiquarian stone. I only feel qualified to pass on the observations of an acquaintance of mine, whose stock and trade are such things.  After reading Paul Johnson’s History of Christianity, I asked him how on earth we could really regard the Bible as God’s Word when the canon itself was the result of very contentious debates.  He answered something like this:   “You are asking that question because you are a modern man.  It is the way we are conditioned to think.  The ancient Jews put it to a different test - does this dirty the hands?, meaning does this ring true, or does it this seem false?”   I agree with Paul Johnson on this point (whose Modern Times  I’ve read—an excellent conservative historical overview of the 20th century btw). The “dirty hand truth” is a philosophical truth, an allegorical truth at times, and I have no problem with those kind of truths in the Bible. Most of us by a certain age can naturally sense by human experience which behavioral “truths” ring true and which ones don’t. Love your neighbor as yourself is basically what it really all comes down to. Imagine the kind of world we would have if everyone actually obeyed that simple suggestion. These are the kind of social verities most of us learn to live by whether we’re brought up on the Bible or Greek Myths or the Tao Te Ching or the Uphanishads or Plato or the Koran or whatever. On the other hand, when this kind of stuff is dogmatically coupled with questionable historical events and political hierarchies built upon those supposed events it can eventually turn out to be quite harmful. My current perception of Jesus's Story in the canonical New Testament and the historical effects of politicized bureaucratic Christianity which followed in it's wake is a mixed bag picture of positive and negative influences (reflected by and from our human nature) whose various aspects both democracies and tyrannies have learned to form symbiotic relationships with for better and for worse.   That of course wouldn’t convince a modern jury against the protests and ridicule of a pack of Philadelphia lawyers,  but I will rest (abandon?) my defense there for now, and shift my focus to something which the scriptures themselves seem to suggest, particularly in the early chapters of Paul‘s first letter to the Corinthian church. God does not seek to overwhelm us.  It seems that the opposite is true: He seeks to “underwhelm” us.    I really like that idea of being “underwhelmed” (undertow) on a steady basis and I think there is an existential physiological truth to it that poetically transcends every religious ideology ever thunk up.  I personally can vouch for at least 2 “overwhelming” experiences (one of which, starting in early1989, lasted extremely powerfully for 3-4 weeks during which time I got 10-20 hours of sleep while my mind navigated itself through some kind of creative ecstasy wherein it seemed that it was completely reorganizing itself toward some higher or more comprehensive orbital of perception before gradually diminishing over the next 6 months during which I released a flood of creative work as my nervous system gradually adjusted to it’s new content and structure). In support of this I would offer your own dissertation.  You raise enough questions and doubts about the Bible that I am left wondering how you could still regard it a “perfect mouse trap“.  If it is a mouse trap it would seem to be a rather ramshackle, random affair, a hodgepodge of disparate elements - one that seems to invite skepticism. I  have no doubt that you and a small team of editors could build a much better mouse trap out of it in short order.  In its current condition, it would seem invite disbelief. I would call the New Testament a kind of Rube Goldberg hall of mirrors mousetrap as painted by MC Escher. Once entered, this mouse trap has many different ways of turning it’s inhabitants round and round without exiting by such methods as demonizing other faiths or by threatening you with eternal damnation all in service to conserving and enriching it's success along with the success of that bureacratic clergy who sponsor and administer it. A similar mutually competitive method, in much faster fashion, seems to have naturally evolved in the way storylines are promoted and marketed on network television today, progessively marbling more and more time devoted to promotional hyperbole which serve both the product being sold and those who sell it. This shouldn’t be too surprising since the evangelical sales-pitch vocabulary of Madison Avenue was derived from a variety of New Testament rhetorical techniques as one of the founding fathers of modern American advertising, Bruce Barton, reveals in his mid 1920’s bestselling pseudo-biography of Jesus as “Master Salesman”—The Man Nobody Knows.   Here’s one rough timeline (courtesy of a fellow HJ Forum scholar far more erudite on the literature than me) as to how the coercive apparatus of this New Testament “mousetrap” may have actually come into being:   Phase I-- First Century: Judean Period, 37 to approximatively 90                                                                                                                                                         Local messianic stories circulate in the Judean/ Syria-Palestine region. We are getting Galilean, Samaritan and Jewish thought experiments and arguments on the coming/came Messiah. From this period come most of the text from the gospels of Mark, John and the so-called 5th Gospel of Thomas (which portrays Jesus as being a  Jewish “Wisdom Tradition” sayings teacher whom some christian scholars currently argue is the “original” Jesus).   Phase 2 -- Second Century, Greek Period: around 90 to 190   Jesus cult churches spread throughout Asia Minor, Greece and Egypt. They have a wide diversity of theologies and practices as they are mixing with local mystery cults in these regions. Ephesus probably becomes the epicenter  of this activity in the early second century. The letters of Paul and the other apostles are edited together in this period, with some new ones being created as well. The Gospel of Matthew is put together early in this period and the the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles come from around 150 but contain earlier material.   Phase 3 -- Third Century, Roman Period, 190-310   Cult Church grows rich and becomes a real political force in the Roman Empire, probably embracing 5% of the total population. The laissez-faire ideological expansions of the first two centuries come to an end as the competition leads to a consolidation of power. The four gospels are brought together as a way to get rid of the smaller churches and groupings who are still using their own gospels. Fiercer doctrinal disputes and differences begin in this period between Christians.   Phase 4 -- Fourth Century, Roman Imperial Period, 310-? Centralization of doctrines and practices throughout the empire. Retrofitting of fourth century doctrines and practices onto earlier texts to make it appear that Constantine's consolidated Church practices and doctrines came from apostolic sources with only devil-inspired heretics covering up this truth.   (Material changes and additions and deletions are made to texts during all these periods. By figuring out the arguments being made in a bit of text, one can get a pretty good handle on what time period the text is actually coming from, regardless of the official line on the dating of a work) A qualification here: While I don’t think that the Bible is a particularly good mouse trap, it appears  to have a very dangerous flaw - it can be easily used by mouse trappers.   –There have always been personality types working in the religion business (as in any other business) who, whether true believer or manipulative cynic, could indeed be defined as “mouse trappers” including Osama Bin Laden—who just so happens to have had an audio tape of his uploaded to the Internet in which he tells his “followers” to attack oil installations in the Persian Gulf and Iraq and also makes harsh political criticisms of the Saudi Regime—whatever validity those critiques may have are undercut by an earlier video showing him joking about the 15 suicidal jihadists from Saudi Arabia who took part in the 9/11 Jet Planes Massacre thus revealing him as more the cynical manipulator (rather than frustrated true believer) type of “Mouse Trapper”. This is your “Da Peninsula” intrepid reporter signing off till the Year of Our Lord 2005 with a Merry Christmas to All and to All a G’Night! http://hometown.aol.com/havrylak/freberg.html Snestle Up Everyone, CJ
Been There	Who Do you Say That I Am? Posted: Saturday, December 18, 2004 12:46 PM Cousin Jack, I hope Moots is still around to continue his conversation with you. The topic that you've introduced here and have spent considerable time researching on your own has got to be one of the most fascinating in all history. I've been gradually working my way through the papers listed on the link you gave last month, Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism, and found it to be a real gold mine of information, synthesis, and just plain great reading. I highly recommend this link to anyone interested in the roots of Christianity. Merry Christmas to you too, and I'm already looking forward to your posts in 2005! Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Sunday, December 19, 2004 11:20 AM As we appoach Christmas in our exquisitely beautiful peninsula, it's sometimes difficult to imagine what life is like elsewhere in the world. Sometimes a snow storm here  knocks out power for a few minutes or, rarely, a few hours. People in Iraq face long power outages every day: Nation Faces Winter With Little Electricity. Sabotage attacks on power plants, transmission lines, oil pipelines and fuel trucks are keeping the electricity out for more than 12 hours a day in Iraq, leaving many people to face a freezing winter by candlelight. Iraqi officials, wary of growing instability before the elections, say outages have reached crisis proportions, especially in the capital, with no end in sight. When violent crime strikes here, it rocks our communities. In Iraq, people face violence constantly: 2 Car Bombs Detonated in Iraq; Election Workers Ambushed. Several times over the last 21 months, the Bush administration led us to expect a reduction of violence in Iraq, beginning with the president's swaggering "mission accomplished speech" and continuing with milestones such as the capture of Saddam Hussein a year ago, the establishment of a provisional government last June,  and, most recently, the capture of Fallujah right after the conclusion of our presidential election. The next such milestone on the horizon is the upcoming Iraq elections scheduled for January 30. It's very important to our nation for these elections to be successful. Because the Bush administration attacked Iraq without sufficent force to occupy the country effectively (dismissing generals who had the courage to confront them with the truth about the actual force requirements of "nation-building"), our military is stretched too thin and tours of duty have been extended again and again. If the Iraq elections do the trick and inspire the Iraqis to take down the insurgents who live among them, we can start to give our soldiers some much-needed relief. If not, what milestone can we look to next? 1,184 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 598 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Sunday, December 19, 2004 11:32 AM This Sunday two stories appeared in the New York Times concerning intelligence operations and the U.S. military. On the surface these stories are not related, but underneath the surface you can see that they are. Despite adminstration insistence that our efforts in the middle east do not constitute an anti-Muslim crusade, people--including those in the military who face the enemy daily--can hardly overlook that our enemies over the past few years have been mostly Muslims. It's extremely difficult to retain objectivity under those stresses. Last year a West Point graduate, Captain James Yee, and two other U.S. Muslims were arrested, charged with espionage, and threatened with the death penalty: How Dubious Evidence Spurred Relentless Guantánamo Spy Hunt. Now it is clear that anti-Muslim feelings in the military fueled those charges, and none of those soldiers were involved in espionage at all. Captain Yee will be discharged honorably on January 7. Officials familiar with the inquiries said they also fed on petty personal conflicts: antipathy between some Muslim and non-Muslim troops at Guantánamo, rivalries between Christian and Muslim translators, even the complaint of an old boss who saw Airman Al Halabi as a shirker. The soldiers charged with espionage were indeed among those who sympathized with the plight of the Muslims held indefinitely at Guantánamo without charge and without legal counsel. Coloring much of the episode, interviews and documents indicate, were simmering tensions over the military's treatment of the roughly 660 foreign men who were then held at Guantánamo without charge. "Lots of the guards saw us as some sort of sympathizers with the detainees," Airman Al Halabi recalled in one of several interviews. "We heard it many times: 'detainee-lovers,' or 'sympathizers.' They called us 'sand niggers.' " Airman Al Halabi, who came to the United States at 16 after growing up in poverty in his native Syria, has emphasized his loyalty as a naturalized American citizen. While insisting that he was careful not to share his views with anyone but close friends at Guantánamo, he said he was one of many servicemen and translators there who were uncomfortable with the way the detainees were treated. The related story in today's New York Times has to do with the current reorganization of intelligence services: Pentagon Seeks to Expand Role in Intelligence-Collecting. The Pentagon hopes to use this transition period to expand its intelligence role into entirely new areas. The details of the plan remain secret and are evolving, but indications of its scope and significance have begun to emerge in recent weeks. One part of the overall proposal is being drafted by a team led by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, a deputy under secretary of defense. Among the ideas cited by Defense Department officials is the idea of "fighting for intelligence," or commencing combat operations chiefly to obtain intelligence. The proposal also calls for a major expansion of human intelligence, which is information gathered by spies rather than by technological means, both within the military services and the Defense Intelligence Agency, including more missions aimed at acquiring specific information sought by policy makers. And who is General Boykin? Doesn't that name sound familiar? Yes, it does. General Boykin, who attracted controversy last year for saying in remarks to Christian groups that Muslims worship "an idol" and describing the battle against Muslim radicals as a fight against Satan, has been the prime architect of the proposal, which has been under review at the Pentagon since January 2004. All of this information is widely known in the Muslim world, and we need to be aware of it too. Nothing creates new terrorists against the U.S. faster than the perception that our country is engaged in a modern crusade against the Muslim religion. The Bush administration spinners will not be able to overcome that perception in the Muslim world while our military persecutes its own Muslim soldiers and while militant anti-Muslim Christians advance to high positions in the Bush administration. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 11:03 AM As we approach the start of another year, our country faces severe problems in Iraq. Every one of these problems was caused by the poor leadership of the Bush administration. Violence in Iraq continues to increase: Pentagon: At Least 22 Killed in Mosul Attack. At least 22 people were killed and 50 wounded Tuesday in an attack at a U.S. and Iraqi base near Mosul in Iraq, a Pentagon official said. Abuse of prisoners by the U.S. recruits new terrorists eager to strike back at America: New F.B.I. Files Describe Abuse of Iraq Inmates. The agent, whose name was deleted from the document, wrote on July 29, 2004: "On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for 18 24 hours or more."   The agent said that on another occasion, the air-conditioning had been turned up so high that a chained detainee was shivering. The agent said the military police had explained by saying that interrogators from the previous day had ordered the treatment and "that the detainee was not to be moved." The agent also wrote: "On another occasion, the A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night." The president's fantasy of turning security over to Iragi forces soon is just a pipe dream: Bush Says Iraqis Aren't Yet Able to Quell Rebels. President Bush acknowledged Monday that the United States had achieved only "mixed" success in training Iraqi troops to secure the country, and said that it was "unacceptable" that some Iraqi units had fled as soon as they faced hostile fire. With the first elections in Iraq six weeks away, Mr. Bush's public criticism of how the Iraqis had performed reflected mounting concern, voiced from the White House, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill, that the strategy for training 125,000 Iraqi forces to secure the country is failing. On Sunday, Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who serves as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said a recent trip to the country convinced him that the Iraqi forces were "bottom level" and still had no effective leadership 20 months after the fall of Saddam Hussein. And our people in uniform bear the brunt of the president's failures: The New Military Life: Heading Back to the War. Earlier this year, as Sgt. Alexander Garcia's plane took off for home after his tense year of duty in Iraq, he remembered watching the receding desert sand and thinking, I will never see this place again. Never lasted about 10 months for Sergeant Garcia, a cavalry scout with the First Armored Division who finished his first stint in Iraq in March and is now preparing to return. 1,186 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Another milestone was reached today: 600 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 4:50 PM It's hard to feel truly festive this Christmas season knowing what's happening in Iraq: U.S. General Says Mosul Blast Appears to Be Suicide Bomb. Thirteen of those killed were United States military personnel; the others killed were five American civilians, three Iraqi National Guard members and one unidentified person described by the Army as a "non-U.S. person." Fifty-one of the wounded were American military personnel and the rest Americans, foreign civilians and Iraqi forces. Twenty-nine people have been released from the hospital. And at home, our president is issuing another set of denials: FBI Memo: Bush's Executive Order Approved Torture Techniques. The harsh treatment of prisoners continues to haunt the Bush Administration. Today, an e-mail from the FBI claims that President Bush personally approved the use of abusive methods of questioning detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The White House denies all such allegations. 1,187 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 601 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Thursday, December 23, 2004 12:32 PM Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, but today more of our soldiers died in Iraq--the result of the terrible mistakes of our president. The capitol city, Baghdad, where our military headquarters and the Iraq provisional government holes up, is not at all safe: Bomb Kills U.S. Soldier, Wounds Two in Baghdad. Roadside bombs, which the military refers to as improvised explosive devices, are one of the most common and deadly of the weapons used by militants in their 18-month insurgency against the U.S.-led occupation. Commanders have estimated that up to 30 percent of troops wounded or killed in Iraq have been hit by the devices. More than 1,030 U.S. troops have been killed in action since the beginning of the war, and nearly 10,000 have been wounded, the majority of them seriously. Fallujah, the scene of heavy house-to-house fighting since our presidential election, is still far from safe also: Three More U.S. Marines Killed in Iraq. [T]he deaths were reported as U.S. troops fought insurgents in the city of Fallujah, which is in Anbar. F-18 fighter jets dropped several bombs in the city, sending up plumes of smoke, while tank and machine gun fire could be heard to the south. 1,188 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 602 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
bada bing	Merry Christmas Posted: Friday, December 24, 2004 10:27 AM Best wishes to all you hardy souls up there. To be honest, this is the only time I miss the winter up there. Hang some mistletoe over the wife, girlfriend or special pet and give them a big kiss from me.
look2it	Merry Christmas Posted: Saturday, December 25, 2004 1:10 AM Merry Xmas to all and to all a G'night.
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Monday, December 27, 2004 10:20 AM Today's news from Iraq: U.S. Soldier Killed by Roadside Bomb in Iraq. A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier and wounded another when their patrol was attacked north of Baghdad overnight, the U.S. military said on Monday.   The attack occurred in the town of Samarra, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, the military said in a statement. 1,192 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 606 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 12:58 PM George W. Bush is in Texas celebrating the impending start of his second term. The damage to our country from his first term will already linger for a long time.   Today's news from Iraq: Iraqi Rebels Kill 24 in Multiple Attacks. Insurgents launched multiple attacks on Iraqi police across the dangerous Sunni Triangle on Tuesday, killing 24 people -- including 19 policemen -- a day after the major Sunni Muslim political party pulled out of the Jan. 30 elections citing the deteriorating security situation.   Also Tuesday, a militant group claimed to have executed eight Iraqi employees of the Sandi Group, American security company, saying they had supported the U.S.-led occupation. 1,193 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 607 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 10:33 AM Violence in Iraq continued to increase yesterday: Insurgents Kill at Least 54. Car bombs, ambushes and assassinations killed a total of at least 54 people in the Iraqi capital and across the volatile Sunni Triangle on Tuesday, including 31 policemen and a deputy provincial governor. The attacks -- including one in which 12 policemen had their throats slit -- were the latest by insurgents targeting Iraqis working with the American military or the U.S.-backed government ahead of the Jan. 30 national elections. In related news, prosecutors are working on the evidence needed to convict Saddam Hussein: DNA Evidence May Be Key in Saddam Trial. Analysts say prosecutors should have ample evidence when Saddam goes to trial, pointing to dramatic advances in DNA technology as a prosecutorial tool in recent years. They say DNA will help to clearly establish the identity of many of Saddam's victims who ended up in the country's mass graves.   The process has been used widely in the former Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia, where DNA has helped identify about 7,000 missing victims of the war there a decade ago -- and helped the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in pursuing perpetrators. 1,194 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 608 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Thursday, December 30, 2004 10:00 AM As we approached the new year two years ago, President Bush was beating the drums for war on the grounds that Iraq threatened us with weapons of mass destruction. The weapons of mass destruction were fictional, but the lives lost every day because of Bush's blunders are real: 25 Insurgents Are Killed Trying to Overrun U.S. Outpost in Mosul; 1 U.S. Soldier Dies. United States troops and warplanes killed at least 25 insurgents who used car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to try to overrun an American combat outpost in Mosul on Wednesday afternoon, the American military said. It was the fiercest fighting the restive northern city has seen in weeks. Fifteen American soldiers were wounded, military officials said. An American soldier died in hospital on Wednesday from wounds sustained in the attack, the miltary said Thursday. 1,195 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 609 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 10:42 AM Today's news from Iraq: Suicide Bomber Rams U.S. Convoy in Iraq. A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives next to a U.S. convoy on Baghdad's dangerous airport road on Tuesday, and several casualties were seen lying next to a damaged vehicle, witnesses and authorities said. In the weeks since the elections, the death count in Iraq has increased dramatically. The attacks came as the military announced that a U.S. Army soldier died from injuries suffered after a roadside bomb exploded late Monday next to his patrol north of Baghdad, bringing to 134 the number of American troops killed in Iraq this month, according to an unofficial count. This makes November the deadliest month for the U.S. military since last April when 135 troops died. Fierce fighting in Fallujah and insurgents' counterattacks elsewhere in Iraq have fueled the high death toll this month. 1,165 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 579 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
bada bing	Got to you, didn't I? Posted: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 10:47 AM Been There, didn't you say you weren't going to answer me?  Last month you did. Guess nobody can trust an idiot like you. Better stick your head into an oven to warm it up.
Cousin Jack	Got to you, didn't I? Posted: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 2:38 AM Yes you did, bb... And when you post a rational argument for any of your political views you might really GET to those folks who actually give a second-chance crapola about a damn thing you have to say. Until then....persona non grata...   Capeche, Amigo?   CJ
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 12:34 PM The casualty figures for November are now in: U.S. Military in Iraq Suffers Deadliest Month. The U.S. military in Iraq suffered its deadliest month since last year's invasion with more military personnel killed in action in November than in any equivalent period, the Pentagon's figures show.   ...   November also saw an upsurge in violence elsewhere in Iraq, as insurgents took advantage of the U.S. focus on Fallujah to launch attacks in other cities. In the northern city of Mosul, rebels captured several police stations, forcing American and Iraqi troops to deploy there. Attacks also took place in cities such as Ramadi, near Fallujah, and Baqubah, north of Baghdad.   Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on Nov. 7 declared a state of emergency across most of the country, and has since closed roads and borders, and imposed curfews on cities including Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi. 1,166 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 580 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Friday, December 03, 2004 10:59 AM Today's news from Iraq: 30 die in Baghdad attacks. AT LEAST 30 people were today killed in two separate attacks by rebels in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.   A car bomb exploded at a Shi’ite mosque in the Azamiyah, killing 14 and injuring 19 others.   And at least 16 police officers were killed, and several others injured, when gunmen stormed into a police station near the dangerous road to Baghdad International Airport.   The rebels also stole weapons, released detainees and torched several vehicles after arriving in 11 cars and attacking the station in the Amil district of the city with rocket-propelled grenades, US military spokesman Lt Col Jim Hutton said.   ...   Elsewhere, an American soldier was killed by rebels in the city of Mosul. 1,168 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 582 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Saturday, December 04, 2004 1:40 PM With Colin Powell on the way out, the Bush administration neo-cons can impose their will unimpeded. Twenty months ago the neo-cons said that Iraq would be a grateful democratic ally of ours--after a giddy period of dancing in the streets--using oil revenues to finance their own reconstruction costs. How are the Bush neo-cons doing so far? Iraq elections are scheduled for next month but, even after this month's conquest of Fallujah, insurgents continue to fight our occupation: Seven Iraqi Policemen Killed in Baghdad Bombings. In simultaneous blasts, insurgents detonated two car bombs Saturday at a police station near the fortified headquarters of the U.S. Embassy and interim Iraqi government, killing at least seven people and wounding more than 50 in the latest assault against Iraq's fledgling security forces. The U.S. military, meanwhile, reported the deaths of four more U.S. troops from roadside bombs in Baghdad and near Baqubah Saturday and a suicide car bombing Friday that targeted a U.S. outpost on the Iraqi-Jordanian border. 1,169 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 583 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Cousin Jack	Alternative Energy Sources Posted: Saturday, December 04, 2004 11:06 PM Ever since reading Amory Lovin's "Soft Energy Paths" over 25 years ago, I've been a firm believer in pursuing a redundancy of alternative energy sources both for economic and foreign policy reasons so after reading Tom Friedman's Sunday column tonight I thought it might be worthwhile to post three excerpts of his that have made sense to me for so long I don't even want to think about it:   If President Bush is looking for a legacy, I have just the one for him - a national science project that would be our generation's moon shot: a crash science initiative for alternative energy and conservation to make America energy-independent in 10 years. Imagine if every American kid, in every school, were galvanized around such a vision.   You give me an America that is energy-independent and I will give you sharply reduced oil revenues for the worst governments in the world. I will give you political reform from Moscow to Riyadh to Tehran. Yes, deprive these regimes of the huge oil windfalls on which they depend and you will force them to reform by having to tap their people instead of oil wells. These regimes won't change when we tell them they should. They will change only when they tell themselves they must.   If President Bush made energy independence his moon shot, he would dry up revenue for terrorism; force Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to take the path of reform - which they will never do with $45-a-barrel oil - strengthen the dollar; and improve his own standing in Europe, by doing something huge to reduce global warming. He would also create a magnet to inspire young people to contribute to the war on terrorism and America's future by becoming scientists, engineers and mathematicians.   http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/opinion/05friedman.html?hp C'mon George, pick up your old college bullhorn and lead the freedom cheer for a major course correction in American energy policy or we'll be militarily chained to the Persian Gulf for another generation of blood, sweat and tears.   CJ
look2it	Alternative Energy Sources Posted: Sunday, December 05, 2004 12:21 AM CJ, that makes a lot of sense. Doubt that Bush would consider it though. G'night.
Been There	Alternative Energy Sources Posted: Sunday, December 05, 2004 11:06 AM Cousin Jack, If President Bush took the proactive energy approach outlined by Tom Friedman in the link you gave, I'd willingly give him praise and support for his statemanship. I don't see the faintest chance that he'll support such a thing--good for America, but bad for Republican politics--but I'd love to be wrong about that. Look2It, did you post something faintly positive? Great! Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Sunday, December 05, 2004 11:08 AM Iraqis and the US military experienced more violence this weekend: Insurgents' Attacks Kill at Least 26 Iraqis, 4 Americans. In Baghdad, a suicide bomber rammed a minibus packed with explosives into a police station near the capital's protected Green Zone on Saturday morning, killing 8 officers and wounding 38 in a blast that toppled the station's roof. In Mosul, a suicide bomber in a sedan drove into a convoy of buses carrying Kurdish militiamen in the eastern part of the city, killing at least 18 and wounding 16, officials said. Also in Mosul, two American soldiers were killed and four wounded during an afternoon gun battle during which insurgents fired from a mosque, military officials said. Two United States soldiers died in other parts of the country. 1,170 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 584 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Monday, December 06, 2004 4:15 PM The Iraq elections are scheduled for next month, but day after day the headlines look like today's: 21 Killed in Fresh Iraq Violence. Seventeen civilians were killed and 13 wounded in Tikrit yesterday as gunmen ambushed a bus full of Iraqis working for the US military, while a car bomb and a gun attack killed four members of the Iraqi security forces elsewhere in northern Iraq.   The violence was the latest in a string of deadly attacks targeting Iraqi forces and others allied with the US military that have killed at least 68 Iraqis since Friday. The surge in bloodshed has come despite major US offensives last month to suppress guerrillas ahead of elections set for Jan. 30.   UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned that credible elections cannot be held Jan. 30 under current conditions. About 40 small, mostly Sunni political parties met yesterday to demand the elections be postponed by six months, but stopped short of calling for a boycott. 1,171 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 585 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Cousin Jack	Ukrainian Election Posted: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 3:21 AM   President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday adjusted his hard-line position on the presidential election in Ukraine, saying that he would accept the choice of the Ukrainian people and would work with whichever candidate wins the second runoff election, now scheduled for Dec. 26.   http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/international/europe/07putin.html   Way to go, Vlad!   CJ
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 11:55 AM Cousin Jack,   Yes, I too hope Vladimir Putin now gets the idea behind free elections.   With the latest bombings in Saudi Arabia and the station chief's assessment of the Iraq situation, things still don't look good in the Middle East: 2 C.I.A. Reports Offer Warnings on Iraq's Path. A classified cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials.   The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior C.I.A. official who recently visited Iraq. Soldiers are taking action against the Bush administration's "stop-loss" policy: 8 Soldiers Sue Over Army’s Stop-Loss Policy. But the eight share a bond of anger: each says he has been prevented from coming home for good by an Army policy that has barred thousands of soldiers from leaving Iraq this year even though the terms of enlistment they signed up for have run out. And each of these eight soldiers has separately taken the extraordinary step of seeking legal help, through late-night Internet searches and e-mail inquiries from their camps in the conflict zone, or through rounds of phone calls by an equally frustrated wife or mother back home. And, of course, the violence continues: Gunfight breaks out near Iraq green zone. Heavily armed insurgents have been emboldened by a spate of attacks across Iraq that have claimed more than 90 lives in recent days, mostly Iraqis working for the coalition or Iraqi national security forces, but which included five U.S. soldiers killed in separate attacks in the volatile Anbar province. 1,172 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 586 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 10:59 AM The total number of US deaths in Iraq, including accidents, exceeded 1000 several weeks ago. Yesterday President Bush achieved a new milestone in his war to save us from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction: US combat deaths in Iraq hit 1,000.  US troops suffered their 1,000th combat death in Iraq yesterday when a US soldier was killed in Baghdad. Although no weapons of mass destruction have actually been found, our government has made use of this opportunity to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world by torturing prisoners--even after the Abu Ghraib scandals made the news: Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Reported After Abu Ghraib Disclosures. Two Defense Department intelligence officials reported observing brutal treatment of Iraqi insurgents captured in Baghdad in June, several weeks after disclosures of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison created a worldwide uproar, according to a memorandum disclosed Tuesday. The memorandum, written by the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency to a senior Pentagon official, said that when the two members of his agency objected to the treatment, they were threatened and told to keep quiet by other military interrogators. Of course, prisoners at our Guantanamo Bay base suffer the same treatment, as the Arab world knows well. The Associated Press reported Monday that one F.B.I. official had written in a memorandum of witnessing a series of coercive procedures at Guantánamo, among them a female interrogator squeezing the genitals of a detainee and bending back his thumbs painfully. Taking action against those who tell the truth is, of course, standard operating prococedure for the Bush administration. A case in point is the attempt of "senior White House officials" to have the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson murdered in retaliation for his calling attention to one of the lies in President Bush's state of the union address. Almost everyone in the government has taken this cue from the White House: those who tell the truth must suffer severe consequences. Nevertheless, a few still possess the character to resist the criminal elements who now control our government lock, stock, and barrel. 1,173 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 587 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Cousin Jack	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 5:13 PM Been There writes: A case in point is the attempt of "senior White House officials" to have the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson murdered in retaliation for his calling attention to one of the lies in President Bush's state of the union address.   Could you document this "attempted murder" plot,  BT?  Otherwise it smells of the hyperbolic air surrounding the alleged Clintonian Plot to murder Vincent Foster.   Thanks, CJ
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 11:42 PM Cousin Jack,   Why do you suppose it is a felony to reveal the names of covert CIA agents? Because to do so puts their lives in danger, to say nothing of the people who risked working with those agents. The Bush administration considers that particular felony to be a good response to those individuals who have the audacity to tell the truth: The curse of Bush. Some might think that whistleblowers will come forward and provide the information the public needs to know. They will only if they have a particularly strong desire to commit career suicide. FBI whistleblowers have been sent off to bureaucratic Siberias. And for those who can't be assaulted directly, there are other tactics, like attacking the person's family. When retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson pointed out that Bush was using a report, known to be false, that Iraq had sought to acquire uranium from Niger, the administration attempted to discredit him. When that didn't work it thought nothing of damaging national security by revealing that his wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA employee. Let's not sugarcoat what this really is. Tom Daschle said it well: On the Abuse of Government Power. There are some things that simply ought not be done – even in politics. Too many people around the President seem not to understand that, and that line has been crossed. When Ambassador Joe Wilson told the truth about the Administration's misleading claims about Iraq, Niger, and uranium, the people around the President didn't respond with facts. Instead, they publicly disclosed that Ambassador Wilson's wife was a deep-cover CIA agent. In doing so, they undermined America's national security and put politics first. They also may well have put the lives of Ambassador Wilson's wife, and her sources, in danger. At the Gridiron Club dinner, Bob Novak explained himself in song: Little Big Man. Novak starred in a skit about the Plame leak. Dressed in a top hat and cut-away coat, the columnist hammed it up in front of an audience of his peers, crooning to the tune of "Once I Had a Secret Love." Novak sang off-key about outing "a girl spy" thanks to "a secret source who lived within the great White House." And he finished it off with a killer closing line, delivered with a wink and a grin: "Cross the right wing you may try / Bob Novak's coming after you." The audience howled. Of course they put her life in danger intentionally! What better warning could there be to those determined to tell the truth? When thugs and criminals get power, that's the way they behave.   Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Thursday, December 09, 2004 10:06 AM Sent to Iraq on the false pretext of saving us from weapons of mass destruction, our soldiers continue to face death: U.S. combat deaths climb to 1,001 as Samarra sees repeated attacks. An American soldier was slain Tuesday by small-arms fire while on patrol in Baghdad. On Wednesday, the Pentagon's Web site listed the total number of U.S. combat deaths at 1,001. The military also said a Marine died in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad. The two deaths brought the number of U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to 1,278, according to an Associated Press tally. The gunmen in Samarra stormed a police station, looted the weapons inside and blew up the building, according to a police officer. A policeman and a child standing nearby were killed during the clashes before the insurgents fled. The violence in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, killed four Iraqis and wounded several others. The city's police chief later announced he was resigning; his house was had attacked earlier Wednesday and he said his family had asked him not to go back to work. In a "morale-building" visit to troops in Kuwait, Donald Rumsfeld told the soldiers to ask him "the tough questions," Iraq-Bound Troops Confront Rumsfeld Over Lack of Armor, then seemed surprised when some took him up on it. Specialist Thomas Wilson, a scout with a Tennessee National Guard unit scheduled to roll into Iraq this week, said soldiers had to scrounge through local landfills here for pieces of rusty scrap metal and bulletproof glass - what they called "hillbilly armor" - to bolt on to their trucks for protection against roadside bombs in Iraq. "Why don't we have those resources readily available to us?" Specialist Wilson asked Mr. Rumsfeld, drawing cheers and applause from many of the 2,300 troops assembled in a cavernous hangar here to meet the secretary. Mr. Rumsfeld responded that the military was producing extra armor for Humvees and trucks as fast as possible. A few minutes later, a soldier from the Idaho National Guard's 116th Armor Cavalry Brigade asked Mr. Rumsfeld what he and the Army were doing "to address shortages and antiquated equipment" National Guard soldiers heading to Iraq were struggling with. Mr. Rumsfeld seemed taken aback by the question and a murmur began spreading through the ranks before he silenced them. "Now settle down, settle down," he said. "Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning and I'm gathering my thoughts here." ... Colonel Zimmerman said he appreciated the efforts by Army supply officials here, but he and his troops said they could not help but fume at the sight of the fully "up-armored" Humvees and heavy trucks set out on display here for Mr. Rumsfeld's visit. "What you see out here isn't what we've got going north with us," he said. As during the Vietnam war, some U.S. soldiers have gone to Canada seeking asylum. A former U.S. Marine staff sergeant who served in Iraq testified yesterday on behalf of one of those soldiers: Former U.S. Marine in Iraq tells Canadian board some comrades became 'psychopaths' who enjoyed killing unarmed civilians. "I take full responsibility for my actions," he said. "We deliberately gunned down people who were civilians. I became so concerned because I felt that Marines were honestly enjoying it. I saw plenty of Marines become psychopaths. They enjoyed the killing." The Marine Corps denied Massey's allegations. "We're not saying he's lying, but his perception of what the situation was in relation to the rules of engagement, and what was justified, is different than ours," said Maj. Douglas Powell, a spokesman for the Marine Corps at the Pentagon. "It was investigated and any acts of wrongdoing, in regards to violations of the laws of war, the laws of armed conflict, were unsubstantiated." Those of us with combat experience know how terrible the reality of war is--on those fighting as well as on the civilians caught in the middle. That's why war must always be a last resort. It's a tragedy for our military and for our country that we've elected a man who does not realize that. 1,174 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 588 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Cousin Jack	The Iraq War Posted: Thursday, December 09, 2004 6:10 PM Again, here's what you wrote, BT: A case in point is the attempt of "senior White House officials" to have the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson murdered in retaliation for his calling attention to one of the lies in President Bush's state of the union address.  You are quite plainly accusing "Senior White House officials" of attempted murder, Been There, and my concern is with the overall credibility of your political blog. "Let's not sugarcoat what this really is." And who exactly might you be accusing of this "sugarcoat"? It couldn't be me. I simply asked you for documentation of this attempted murder plot.   If someone has actually committed a felony then they will be prosecuted for it. As I understand it, disclosure of an undercover intelligence officer's identity can be a federal crime if prosecutors can show the leak was intentional and the person who released that information knew of the officer's secret status. According to Senator Schumer, Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales said that if confirmed he would recuse himself from the Justice Department probe into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to a columnist Robert Novak. Now personally, I've long disliked Robert Novak and his snarling brand of Republican toadyism and this recent action of his only strengthened that dislike. But we have no way of knowing at this point whether Novak is even telling the truth. He's been around a long long time and has undoubtedly gathered a lot of political insider knowledge over the years. For all we know, Novak invented those two senior administration sources just to cover his own ass. In addition, the relationship between Salon and Joseph Wilson is hardly disinterested and they have been promoting his spin on this since it started.   In any event, you are accusing "Senior White House officials" of attempted murder and I asked if you could document that. You can't, plain and simple, and there's no sugarcoat in asking whether you could. The truth will come out in it's own time and the chips will fall where they may. I would prefer you let justice take its natural course and wait for the outcome of the ensuing investigation before casting such defamatory stones.   Cheers, CJ
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Friday, December 10, 2004 11:57 AM Cousin Jack, Concerning the administration's betrayal of covert agent Valerie Plame, you wrote: For all we know, Novak invented those two senior administration sources just to cover his own ass. If your speculation turns out to be true, then I will immediately agree that I was wrong about the administration in this matter. In fact, I did consider the possibility you mentioned, but rejected it because several other reporters claim that they got the same information. There is, of course, the possibility that they all could be lying, but I doubt that very much. If it turns out they were, I'll chalk up one big point for you (and gladly). Endangering an Agent's Life I notice that in both of your posts on this matter you say that I accused White House officials of "attempted murder." In the interest of accuracy, let's talk about what I really posted. If you re-read the quote you selected from my post, you will observe that I did not accuse White House officials of trying to murder Ms. Plame directly. In fact (if Novak and the other reporters are not lying), revealing Ms. Plame as a covert agent exposed her (and the foreigners she worked with in secret) to murder by the terrorists she was working against. She was risking her life on behalf of our nation, but never expected to be betrayed by our own leaders in the White House. Evaluating Intentions As to whether or not the leak "was intentional," Novak and the other reporters made it clear (if they can be trusted) why Ms. Plame was exposed: the White House did so specifically to retaliate against her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth about the forged documents President Bush used as support for attacking Iraq in his state of the union address. Furthermore, everyone in government knows that it is against the law to endanger an agent in that way.   You might argue that I should not infer evil intention from this particular White House action (assuming that the reporters are not all lying), but I don't see how I can avoid doing so. Are you suggesting that the "secret White House sources" would feel twinges of regret if Ms. Plame were actually murdered as a result of their actions? I suppose a more charitable construction would be that they simply wanted Ms. Plame and her husband to live the rest of their days in the manner of Salman Rushdie. Okay, I'll grant that possibility also. Punishing Honesty Perhaps the White House considers such a fate to be sufficient punishment for Joseph Wilson for telling the truth, and might also serve as a suitable deterrent for others tempted to tell the truth in the future. But why should people be punished at all for telling the truth? This is not an isolated incident, but typifies the stance of the Bush White House toward anyone who speaks truths that the administration wants suppressed. That's why people who care about the morality of our government don't intend to let the matter drop. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Friday, December 10, 2004 12:35 PM The soldiers who questioned Rumsfeld about going on dangerous missions with insufficient armor created quite a flap: Armor Scarce for Big Trucks Transporting Cargo in Iraq. The House Armed Services Committee released statistics on Thursday showing that while many Humvees are armored, most transport trucks that crisscross Iraq are not. Every issue seems to have a lighter side though: Rumsfeld Demands Full Body Armor for Next Meeting with Troops. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld blasted the White House today for not providing him with full body armor for his acrimonious question-and-answer session with troops in Kuwait this week, saying that the lack of body armor put him in a potentially perilous situation. Serious Muslims recognize the need to address the connection between their faith and the actions performed by Muslim terrorists. They face determined and dangerous opposition, though, from Muslim fundamentalists: Muslim Scholars Increasingly Debate Unholy War. Mr. Shahrour says he and an increasing number of intellectuals cannot be deterred by clerical opposition. He describes as ridiculously archaic some Hadith, or sayings, attributed to Muhammad - all assembled in nine bulky volumes some 100 years after his death and now the last word on how the faithful should live. "It is like this now because for centuries Muslims have been told that Islam was spread by the sword, that all Arab countries and even Spain were captured by the sword and we are proud of that," he said. "In the minds of ordinary people, people on the street, the religion of Islam is the religion of the sword. This is the culture, and we have to change it." 1,175 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 589 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	Stealing from Our Children and Grandchildren Posted: Friday, December 10, 2004 1:27 PM Today Princeton Economist Paul Krugman provided a good objective account of Bush's social security scheme: Borrow, Speculate and Hope. If personal investment accounts were invested in Treasury bonds, this whole process would accomplish precisely nothing. The interest workers would receive on their accounts would exactly match the interest the government would have to pay on its additional debt. To compensate for the initial borrowing, the government would have to cut future benefits so much that workers would gain nothing at all. How, then, can privatizers claim that they could secure the future of Social Security without raising taxes or reducing the incomes of future retirees? By assuming that workers would invest most of their accounts in stocks, that these investments would make a lot of money and that, in effect, the government, not the workers, would reap most of those gains, because as personal accounts grew, the government could cut benefits. The intent of the administration's social security scheme is to steal still more billions from our children and grandchildren. Wall street fat cats are rubbing their pudgy hands in glee. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Saturday, December 11, 2004 10:54 AM News from Iraq: 2 G.I.'s Killed as One Copter Hits a 2nd; Marine and Iraqi Die in Attacks. A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, said the airborne helicopter, an AH-64 Apache gunship, had hit a UH-60 Black Hawk transport. He added that the cause of the crash was unclear. Violence continued to flare in the Sunni Triangle, to the north and west of Baghdad. In western Anbar Province, a marine was killed on a security operation, military officials said, without providing details. More news from Iraq: Iraq Insurgents Kill Top Police, Hit U.S. Convoy. Gunmen killed three high-ranking Iraqi police officers in two separate attacks on Saturday, among a daily round of bombings and ambushes targeting U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies. A powerful explosion rocked the northern city of Mosul in late afternoon but it remained unclear what the target or cause was as the U.S. military sealed off the area. 1,176 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 590 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	Texas Justice Posted: Saturday, December 11, 2004 11:23 AM As Governor of Texas, George W. Bush presided over the state that executes more prisoners than any other--and has the worst criminal justice system. Over the years, that has been a point of pride with him. Now the Supreme Court has agreed to hear another case of "Texas justice": Justices to Hear Case of Mexican on Death Row. Mr. Medellín's lawyers raised this issue on his behalf as early as his appeal in the Texas state courts in 1998. But that was not early enough, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in May when it responded to the World Court decision by rejecting Mr. Medellín's request for a writ of habeas corpus. The appeals court ruled that he could obtain no relief on the basis of the consular treaty because, by failing to raise it at his murder trial in 1994 he was procedurally barred from raising it in federal court.   At his 1994 trial for a gang-related murder, Mr. Medellín, an indigent 18-year-old, was given a court-appointed lawyer who called no witnesses. Unknown to the trial judge at the time, Mr. Medellín's lawyer had been suspended from law practice for ethical violations. At the penalty phase of the trial, which lasted two hours, the lawyer put on only one expert witness, a psychologist who had never met Mr. Medellín. White House strategists view this case as a win-win situation for them. If the Supreme Court upholds the death sentence, it will vindicate Bush's "Texas justice." If it overturns the sentence, Republicans will use the decision as evidence that the Supreme Court needs more hard-right justices. Been There
Cousin Jack	The Iraq War Posted: Saturday, December 11, 2004 10:52 PM Been There writes: I notice that in both of your posts on this matter you say that I accused White House officials of "attempted murder." In the interest of accuracy, let's talk about what I really posted. If you re-read the quote you selected from my post, you will observe that I did not accuse White House officials of trying to murder Ms. Plame directly.   And: You might argue that I should not infer evil intention from this particular White House action (assuming that the reporters are not all lying), but I don't see how I can avoid doing so. Are you suggesting that the "secret White House sources" would feel twinges of regret if Ms. Plame were actually murdered as a result of their actions?   What I'm "inferring", Been There, is the friendly editorial suggestion that shouldn't have written the underlined within this sentence the way that you did: A case in point is the attempt of "senior White House officials" to have the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson murdered in retaliation for his calling attention to one of the lies in President Bush's state of the union address. Why not just say they irresponsibly put her life in danger if they did indeed leak this information to Robert Novak (who is the real culprit actually for then leaking this to the rest of the world in his column). We don't know the actual context wherein that information was leaked (or perhaps merely confirmed) and that context may shed much illumination.  (Hmm, imagine a cocktail party wherein heads nod or loose lips let slip and Novak let's what slipped go to his own nodding head for the sake of breaking  a story and punishing, say, in partisan recklessness, a political enemy with whom he'd developed some kind of personal acrimony in the past etc etc)  We don't know at this point if the same 2 sources leaked the same information in the same way to NY Times reporter Miller and Time's reporter Cooper. They aren't talking and may go to jail for protecting their sources. Novak isn't facing any jail time for not revealing his source. Why? There's your story, BT. You see...you need a conscientious editor who understands and sympathizes with what you're trying to dig up and express but wants you to make sure you don't hang yourself and your credibility with the rope you're noosing. Since you don't, I'll chime in now and then and try to keep you on the straight and narrow.   Cheers, CJ
Cousin Jack	The Iraq War Posted: Saturday, December 11, 2004 11:09 PM By the way there's a very good fair-minded article in tomorrow's NY Times Magazine on "Democratic Providentialism" well worth reading. It's ripe pickings for both optimists and pessimists, but here's my favorite cherry:   ...the promotion of democracy by the United States has proved to be a dependably good idea. America may be more unpopular than ever before, but its hegemony really has coincided with a democratic revolution around the world. For the first time in history, a majority of the world's peoples live in democracies. In a dangerous time, this is about the best news around, since democracies, by and large, do not fight one another, and they do not break up into civil war. As a result -- and contrary to the general view that the world is getting more violent -- ethnic and civil strife have actually been declining since the early 1990's, according to a study of violent conflicts by Ted Robert Gurr at the University of Maryland. Democratic transitions can be violent -- when democracy came to Yugoslavia, majority rule at first led to ethnic cleansing and massacre -- but once democracies settle in, once they develop independent courts and real checks and balances, they can begin to advance majority interests without sacrificing minority rights.   Bet you all can find some too.   http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12WWLN.html   Cheers, CJ   ps: If you're still out there, Moots, I'll be getting back to you soon with Part I of my reply to your reply posted seemingly a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
Been There	The Betrayal of Valerie Plame Posted: Sunday, December 12, 2004 12:26 PM Cousin Jack Regarding the administration's betrayal of covert agent Valerie Plame, you posted: [I]magine a cocktail party wherein heads nod or loose lips let slip and Novak let's what slipped go to his own nodding head for the sake of breaking  a story and punishing, say, in partisan recklessness, a political enemy... If White House officials betrayed an agent risking her life for our country (as happened unless Novak and the other reporters are lying), it doesn't matter whether the betrayal occurred at a cocktail party or in a dark parking garage. It's interesting to note the mindset that automatically classifies a person who tells the truth as a political enemy. To promote our attack on Iraq, the administration proclaimed a steady stream of lies about weapons of mass destruction. CIA analysts were among the few who knew the administration's statements to be false. People in the CIA took the White House betrayal of one of their own to be a serious warning to the CIA to keep quiet, or else. And I think that they were correct to take it that way, given the Bush administration's history. You also noted this interesting situation: Novak isn't facing any jail time for not revealing his source. Why? There's your story, BT. I've presumed that the special prosecutor is working his way up to Novak. Do you have information to the contrary? If so, that is the story indeed. Speaking of the need for an editor, what I did was "inferring." What you did was "implying." Been There
Been There	Promoting Democracy Posted: Sunday, December 12, 2004 12:29 PM Cousin Jack, The article you mentioned, The Way We Live Now: Democratic Providentialism, does indeed contain several nuugets worth reading. How China develops politically over the next few years is incredibly important. At some point in the not-too-distant future, China might well be the world's greatest super-power with the U.S. a distant second. When that happens, will China become the world's police force? If it does, how will we fare? To my mind, the very best way for us to promote representative democracy is to make our country as great as its promise, and to live up to our responsibilities in the world community. I can preach to my children all day long but, if I don't practice what I preach, what I say will inevitably fall on deaf ears. When we prop up oppressive dictators for short-term advantages (as we did with Saddam Hussein and many others), we always diminish ourselves in the long run. Corporations constantly make the same mistake when they focus on the quarterly bottom line at the expense of business integrity. That's why I cringe when I hear politicians say that they want to run our government on the corporate model. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Sunday, December 12, 2004 12:33 PM The war launched by President George W. Bush after repeated lies about its necessity continues to slaughter Americans: Roadside Bomb Kills One American, Wounds 3 In Iraq. A U.S. soldier died of wounds sustained when a roadside bomb hit his patrol in Baghdad, the U.S. military said Sunday. Three other American soldiers were slightly wounded in the same attack but returned to duty. The attack occurred in the northern part of Iraq's capital, the military said in a statement. The soldier was evacuated to a military hospital but died within hours. The soldier's name is being withheld pending notification of the next of kin. The war launched by President George W. Bush after repeated lies about its necessity continues to slaughter Iraqis: Series of Insurgent Attacks Kills at Least 4 Iraqi Policemen. At least four Iraqi police officers were killed and 16 American soldiers were wounded Saturday in a string of insurgent attacks across central and northern Iraq, military officials said. Saddam Hussein was captured a year ago, and still no trial. Why? 1,177 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 591 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Monday, December 13, 2004 8:36 AM It's exactly one year today since Saddam Hussein was captured in a hole, but the weekend was a bad one for our troops: 8 US Marines Killed in Iraq Sunday. Sunday, eight American Marines were killed in the Iraqi Anbar Province, which includes the cities Fallujah and Ramadi, west of Baghdad. ... The deaths Sunday equaled the highest number of Marines killed in a single day, since a car bomb exploded outside of Falljuah, October 30th. After the success of its disinformation campaign in the U.S. regarding Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration wants to make more extensive use of that technique throughout the government: Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Arena. The efforts under consideration risk blurring the traditional lines between public affairs programs in the Pentagon and military branches - whose charters call for giving truthful information to the media and the public - and the world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations. The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets. 1,178 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 592 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Betrayal of Valerie Plame Posted: Monday, December 13, 2004 2:17 PM Cousin Jack, The Sunday LA Times published a short piece on the very topic you raised concerning the Bush administration's betrayal of covert agent Valerie Plame: Robert Novak: How Does He Stay Out of Jail? Miller, of the New York Times, and Cooper, of Time magazine, were hauled into court. They refused to testify and now face up to 18 months in jail for contempt. In Washington, there's only one question more pressing than who leaked Plame's name: Why isn't Bob Novak going to jail? The piece goes on to list (and handicap) five possible theories. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 10:35 AM Yesterday the violence in Iraq raged on: 9 Iraqs, 2 U.S. Marines Killed. Violence continued in Iraq, meanwhile, as a suicide bomber struck a checkpoint at the compound housing the interim Iraqi government and embassies, the second such attack at the same location in two days. The number of fatalities was not immediately confirmed, with reports ranging from one to seven. Nine Iraqis died in Monday's attack. Two marines were also killed in action on Monday in Anbar Province, the American military said today, bringing the number of marines killed in the region to 10. On a more positive note, Ayad Allawi announced that the trials of the former regime will begin soon. That should help remind the world that the situation in Iraq was already terrible when our troops arrived. "I can now tell you clearly and precisely that, God willing, next week the trials of the symbols of the former regime will start, one by one, so that justice can take its path in Iraq," Dr. Allawi told Iraq's interim National Council in a televised address. 1,179 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 593 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
bada bing	The Betrayal of Valerie Plame Posted: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 1:39 PM Stop whining about that girl in the CIA. In case you haven't taken off your parka for a few years, here is the deal, politics ain't beanbag. If you can't stand the heat you should stay out of the kitchen. Everyone does the same thing in politics, no heroes, not even your boy Kerry. See you guys are pushing snow around up there, ha ha. I'm going to the beach for some rays.
look2it	The Betrayal of Valerie Plame Posted: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 11:17 PM Girl? I don't think so. What have you risked for your country? Your lottery money? Go back to being a beach bum, with emphasis on the bum. G'night.
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Thursday, December 16, 2004 11:54 AM Bin Laden, still at large more than three years after attacking us on September 11, 2001, has released another tape: Bin Laden Tape Advocates Overthrow of Saudi Government. He also praises the militants who attacked the U.S. consulate in the Saudi city of Jeddah earlier this month, asking God to be merciful on them. The Bush administration, on the other hand, is working to suppress a report by reform-minded Arabs calling for more democracy in Arab countries, as columnist Tom Friedman pointed out today: Holding Up Arab Reform. [T]he Bush team saw a draft of the Arab governance report and objected to the prologue, because it was brutally critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation. This prologue constitutes some 10 percent of the report. While heartfelt, it's there to give political cover to the Arab authors for their clear-eyed critique of Arab governance, which is the other 90 percent of the report. But the Bush team is apparently insisting that language critical of America and Israel be changed - as if language 10 times worse can't be heard on Arab satellite TV every day. And until it's changed, the Bush folks are apparently ready to see the report delayed or killed altogether. And they have an ally. The government of Egypt, which is criticized in the report, also doesn't want it out - along with some other Arab regimes. So suppression of the truth continues to be the hallmark of the Bush administration. No doubt the Iraqis take full notice of that as they head into their own election season: As Iraqi Campaign Begins, a Bomb Kills 9 in Karbala. Iraq's election campaign season opened on a violent note when a bomb exploded Wednesday near the gate of one of Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines in the pilgrim city of Karbala, killing 9 people and wounding 40, including a top aide to the country's senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The attack occurred toward dusk, about 90 minutes after the 4 p.m. deadline for political groups to register their slates of candidates for the elections. The registration deadline marked the official start of 44 days of campaigning, set to end two days before an estimated 14 million eligible voters go to the polls Jan. 30. They will choose among slates from more than 80 political coalitions, individual parties and other groups to fill 275 seats in a provisional national assembly. I sincerely hope that the Iraqi elections will go well and the people of Iraq will realize that, while our forces could remove Saddam Hussein from power, only the people of Iraq can establish a satisfactory replacement for him. Our military simply can't do that for them. Considering that the Iraqis allowed Saddam Hussein to gain power in the first place, I'm not optimistic about how this will turn out. However, a good election process seems to be our best chance to salvage something now from the completely predictable mess (and I predicted it, as did every rational person who took a good hard look at the facts before our attack) that George Bush has created in Iraq. No matter how the elections turn out, our young soldiers (those still alive) will pay the price for years to come: A Flood of Troubled Soldiers Is in the Offing, Experts Predict. What was planned as a short and decisive intervention in Iraq has become a grueling counterinsurgency that has put American troops into sustained close-quarters combat on a scale not seen since the Vietnam War. Psychiatrists say the kind of fighting seen in the recent retaking of Falluja - spooky urban settings with unlimited hiding places; the impossibility of telling Iraqi friend from Iraqi foe; the knowledge that every stretch of road may conceal an explosive device - is tailored to produce the adrenaline-gone-haywire reactions that leave lasting emotional scars. And in no recent conflict have so many soldiers faced such uncertainty about how long they will be deployed. Veterans say the repeated extensions of duty in Iraq are emotionally battering, even for the most stoical of warriors. Serving in Iraq today resembles in many ways serving in Vietnam forty years ago. Again, that result for our soldiers was completely predictable (and I predicted it, as did every rational person who took a good hard look at the facts before our attack). 1,181 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 595 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Cousin Jack	Who Do you Say That I Am? Posted: Friday, December 17, 2004 3:44 AM Moots: Here's Part I of my reply (me being in red & blue) to your reply (you being in black) from God Almighty Knows exactly when:   Cousin Jack, I’ve reread your post several times and even highlighted some points. Before I blunder forward, may I speculate on several things? First off, I suspect you have taken classes at a theological seminary (perhaps even taught at one) or a religious school of some sort.  If not, you seem to at least have associated considerably with persons conversant in theology and church history.   I have researched the field of comparative religion and mythology for many years just out of plain curiosity and I have also been active in an Historical Jesus Forum over the past couple-three years mostly because I wanted to get a better understanding of that 1st-4th  century CE  Mediterranean cultural context whose various religious and literary influences contributed to the evolution of the canonical New Testament. More importantly, I wanted to understand it all from very human level. What was it like to live back then? If I’d been there, how would I have reacted to the multicultural mix of influences?  One of the unforeseen intellectual spinoffs of my internship with this forum was coming to the realization that, barring some indisputable archaeological find, Jesus of Nazareth’s actual historical existence will likely never be convincingly proven or disproven. In some ways, that’s the good-est “Good News” of all.   Secondly, I think you are sufficiently familiar with the Bible that quoting chapter and verse to you would be superfluous. Exactly (and vica versa): the Bible can be cherry-picked to support or argue against almost any political or theological point you want to make and as result I’ve learned to keep political and religious ideologies in separate though somewhat bridged compartments. Thirdly, I think you could do a far more creditable job arguing against your own objections than I could.  I suspect you have been on both sides of these issues, and if you were paid to do so, could make a much more persuasive “evangelical sales pitch” than I could.   I do try to understand all sides of things but I am against evangelizing any particular side at the special interest expense of the others as parts of the larger truth reside in all the facets and no one facet contains the whole truth. Jesus’s story in the New Testament is, for me, just one part of a greater theological story which can be drawn from all the art, literature and science produced by human beings since the dawn of history. It is only at this point in history, due mainly to the internet’s capacity for search and access, that a significant number of people may finally be able to approach an understanding of what this Greater Story may really be.    Fourthly,  I think you still may be on both sides of these issues and the internal debate still ferments, perhaps causing occasional heartburn   My current understanding is that objective reality’, as measurable by science,  has many dimensions to it and therefore, issues argued about it have many dimensions as well. When I first came to this realization a long time ago it may have caused a little heartburn (I can’t recall LOL), but in a true democracy the internal debate over issues will and should always ferment. There are no absolute truths which can forever be chiseled into stone for there are always exceptions to absolute rules. This is what makes both social history and organic evolution possible. The world has always been in the process of transforming itself (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse). “As the human mind evolves, institutions and laws must also change with the times,” as is chiseled in curvelinear fashion atop the pillared Ionic capitols supporting the dome beneath which the statue of Thomas Jefferson stands at his memorial in Washington D.C.’s tidal basin. On the other hand, you may simply be one of these savants to whom knowledge is a toy - something that merely enables you to play chess against yourself and maintain a comfortable, noncommittal detachment.  I hope this is not the case.   Nope. No savant playing chess here. I do enjoy playing with knowledge for creative purposes partly because I believe that one must endure much uncertainty and fact-sifting in order to get closer to genuine “truths” (not to mention all those obstinant subjective particulars within the broad and deep spectrum of human emotion). I think that a long-suffering empathic species of journalistic detachment is necessary in order to complete these learning journeys as it often entails putting one’s self in someone elses shoes for a significant period of time. But within the generosity of that sometimes painful habitation one’s own knowledge and experience become truly “earned”. And that, in the end, is what makes such “truths” worth putting solid faith and trust behind. I’m not telling you this to smoke you out, but so that you may better understand the context of my remarks.  Who you are is your own biz.   And who you are is your own biz too, Moots—though “smoking you out” (as in Bush’s attempt to “smoke out” Bin Laden) is not a metaphor I would have personally chosen (LOL) in describing my underwhelming effort to unveil your dearest kept secret. Regarding evangelical sales pitches:  I’m not smart enough to make the sale with you, and not dumb enough to try.  Even if I were, I have serious reservations about “decision” theology. Regarding the authenticity, reliability, etc. of the scripture,  I’m would prefer to leave that can of worms for you to sort out to your own satisfaction.  I am passing familiar with biblical and ancient history, the concept of the messiah, the inter-testamental period and the history of early church, but I suspect you could tie me in knots and leave red-faced and stammering on that ground.   I have minimal interest in arguing any of these very personal matters with you, Moots (unless it’s a jousting match you truly enjoy). The “Debate Mode” has now become that “last refuge of a scoundrel” rhetorical mind-set for me anyway—evidence I’m finally turning the ineviteable physiological corner on becoming irreversibly old, I humbly suspect. My current affixed bumper sticker reads: “There’s No Turning Back Now”  I only brought up the “reliability of scripture” matter with you, Moots, because I truly believe that this is the existential conundrum“Evangelical” Christianity poses—if one going to proactively peddle what one doubtlessly believes to be the “Inerrant Truth” based on New Testament scripture, one had damn well better have a decent understand-ing of how those 27 books actually evolved into canonical being otherwise one may end up becoming an ignorant and irresponsible pied piper blindly leading your naïve village children into a petrified forest of antiquarian stone. I only feel qualified to pass on the observations of an acquaintance of mine, whose stock and trade are such things.  After reading Paul Johnson’s History of Christianity, I asked him how on earth we could really regard the Bible as God’s Word when the canon itself was the result of very contentious debates.  He answered something like this:   “You are asking that question because you are a modern man.  It is the way we are conditioned to think.  The ancient Jews put it to a different test - does this dirty the hands?, meaning does this ring true, or does it this seem false?”   I agree with Paul Johnson on this point (whose Modern Times  I’ve read—an excellent conservative historical overview of the 20th century btw). The “dirty hand truth” is a philosophical truth, an allegorical truth at times, and I have no problem with those kind of truths in the Bible. Most of us by a certain age can naturally sense by human experience which behavioral “truths” ring true and which ones don’t. Love your neighbor as yourself is basically what it really all comes down to. Imagine the kind of world we would have if everyone actually obeyed that simple suggestion. These are the kind of social verities most of us learn to live by whether we’re brought up on the Bible or Greek Myths or the Tao Te Ching or the Uphanishads or Plato or the Koran or whatever. On the other hand, when this kind of stuff is dogmatically coupled with questionable historical events and political hierarchies built upon those supposed events it can eventually turn out to be quite harmful. My current perception of Jesus's Story in the canonical New Testament and the historical effects of politicized bureaucratic Christianity which followed in it's wake is a mixed bag picture of positive and negative influences (reflected by and from our human nature) whose various aspects both democracies and tyrannies have learned to form symbiotic relationships with for better and for worse.   That of course wouldn’t convince a modern jury against the protests and ridicule of a pack of Philadelphia lawyers,  but I will rest (abandon?) my defense there for now, and shift my focus to something which the scriptures themselves seem to suggest, particularly in the early chapters of Paul‘s first letter to the Corinthian church. God does not seek to overwhelm us.  It seems that the opposite is true: He seeks to “underwhelm” us.    I really like that idea of being “underwhelmed” (undertow) on a steady basis and I think there is an existential physiological truth to it that poetically transcends every religious ideology ever thunk up.  I personally can vouch for at least 2 “overwhelming” experiences (one of which, starting in early1989, lasted extremely powerfully for 3-4 weeks during which time I got 10-20 hours of sleep while my mind navigated itself through some kind of creative ecstasy wherein it seemed that it was completely reorganizing itself toward some higher or more comprehensive orbital of perception before gradually diminishing over the next 6 months during which I released a flood of creative work as my nervous system gradually adjusted to it’s new content and structure). In support of this I would offer your own dissertation.  You raise enough questions and doubts about the Bible that I am left wondering how you could still regard it a “perfect mouse trap“.  If it is a mouse trap it would seem to be a rather ramshackle, random affair, a hodgepodge of disparate elements - one that seems to invite skepticism. I  have no doubt that you and a small team of editors could build a much better mouse trap out of it in short order.  In its current condition, it would seem invite disbelief. I would call the New Testament a kind of Rube Goldberg hall of mirrors mousetrap as painted by MC Escher. Once entered, this mouse trap has many different ways of turning it’s inhabitants round and round without exiting by such methods as demonizing other faiths or by threatening you with eternal damnation all in service to conserving and enriching it's success along with the success of that bureacratic clergy who sponsor and administer it. A similar mutually competitive method, in much faster fashion, seems to have naturally evolved in the way storylines are promoted and marketed on network television today, progessively marbling more and more time devoted to promotional hyperbole which serve both the product being sold and those who sell it. This shouldn’t be too surprising since the evangelical sales-pitch vocabulary of Madison Avenue was derived from a variety of New Testament rhetorical techniques as one of the founding fathers of modern American advertising, Bruce Barton, reveals in his mid 1920’s bestselling pseudo-biography of Jesus as “Master Salesman”—The Man Nobody Knows.   Here’s one rough timeline (courtesy of a fellow HJ Forum scholar far more erudite on the literature than me) as to how the coercive apparatus of this New Testament “mousetrap” may have actually come into being:   Phase I-- First Century: Judean Period, 37 to approximatively 90                                                                                                                                                         Local messianic stories circulate in the Judean/ Syria-Palestine region. We are getting Galilean, Samaritan and Jewish thought experiments and arguments on the coming/came Messiah. From this period come most of the text from the gospels of Mark, John and the so-called 5th Gospel of Thomas (which portrays Jesus as being a  Jewish “Wisdom Tradition” sayings teacher whom some christian scholars currently argue is the “original” Jesus).   Phase 2 -- Second Century, Greek Period: around 90 to 190   Jesus cult churches spread throughout Asia Minor, Greece and Egypt. They have a wide diversity of theologies and practices as they are mixing with local mystery cults in these regions. Ephesus probably becomes the epicenter  of this activity in the early second century. The letters of Paul and the other apostles are edited together in this period, with some new ones being created as well. The Gospel of Matthew is put together early in this period and the the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles come from around 150 but contain earlier material.   Phase 3 -- Third Century, Roman Period, 190-310   Cult Church grows rich and becomes a real political force in the Roman Empire, probably embracing 5% of the total population. The laissez-faire ideological expansions of the first two centuries come to an end as the competition leads to a consolidation of power. The four gospels are brought together as a way to get rid of the smaller churches and groupings who are still using their own gospels. Fiercer doctrinal disputes and differences begin in this period between Christians.   Phase 4 -- Fourth Century, Roman Imperial Period, 310-? Centralization of doctrines and practices throughout the empire. Retrofitting of fourth century doctrines and practices onto earlier texts to make it appear that Constantine's consolidated Church practices and doctrines came from apostolic sources with only devil-inspired heretics covering up this truth.   (Material changes and additions and deletions are made to texts during all these periods. By figuring out the arguments being made in a bit of text, one can get a pretty good handle on what time period the text is actually coming from, regardless of the official line on the dating of a work) A qualification here: While I don’t think that the Bible is a particularly good mouse trap, it appears  to have a very dangerous flaw - it can be easily used by mouse trappers.   –There have always been personality types working in the religion business (as in any other business) who, whether true believer or manipulative cynic, could indeed be defined as “mouse trappers” including Osama Bin Laden—who just so happens to have had an audio tape of his uploaded to the Internet in which he tells his “followers” to attack oil installations in the Persian Gulf and Iraq and also makes harsh political criticisms of the Saudi Regime—whatever validity those critiques may have are undercut by an earlier video showing him joking about the 15 suicidal jihadists from Saudi Arabia who took part in the 9/11 Jet Planes Massacre thus revealing him as more the cynical manipulator (rather than frustrated true believer) type of “Mouse Trapper”. This is your “Da Peninsula” intrepid reporter signing off till the Year of Our Lord 2005 with a Merry Christmas to All and to All a G’Night! http://hometown.aol.com/havrylak/freberg.html Snestle Up Everyone, CJ
Been There	Who Do you Say That I Am? Posted: Saturday, December 18, 2004 12:46 PM Cousin Jack, I hope Moots is still around to continue his conversation with you. The topic that you've introduced here and have spent considerable time researching on your own has got to be one of the most fascinating in all history. I've been gradually working my way through the papers listed on the link you gave last month, Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism, and found it to be a real gold mine of information, synthesis, and just plain great reading. I highly recommend this link to anyone interested in the roots of Christianity. Merry Christmas to you too, and I'm already looking forward to your posts in 2005! Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Sunday, December 19, 2004 11:20 AM As we appoach Christmas in our exquisitely beautiful peninsula, it's sometimes difficult to imagine what life is like elsewhere in the world. Sometimes a snow storm here  knocks out power for a few minutes or, rarely, a few hours. People in Iraq face long power outages every day: Nation Faces Winter With Little Electricity. Sabotage attacks on power plants, transmission lines, oil pipelines and fuel trucks are keeping the electricity out for more than 12 hours a day in Iraq, leaving many people to face a freezing winter by candlelight. Iraqi officials, wary of growing instability before the elections, say outages have reached crisis proportions, especially in the capital, with no end in sight. When violent crime strikes here, it rocks our communities. In Iraq, people face violence constantly: 2 Car Bombs Detonated in Iraq; Election Workers Ambushed. Several times over the last 21 months, the Bush administration led us to expect a reduction of violence in Iraq, beginning with the president's swaggering "mission accomplished speech" and continuing with milestones such as the capture of Saddam Hussein a year ago, the establishment of a provisional government last June,  and, most recently, the capture of Fallujah right after the conclusion of our presidential election. The next such milestone on the horizon is the upcoming Iraq elections scheduled for January 30. It's very important to our nation for these elections to be successful. Because the Bush administration attacked Iraq without sufficent force to occupy the country effectively (dismissing generals who had the courage to confront them with the truth about the actual force requirements of "nation-building"), our military is stretched too thin and tours of duty have been extended again and again. If the Iraq elections do the trick and inspire the Iraqis to take down the insurgents who live among them, we can start to give our soldiers some much-needed relief. If not, what milestone can we look to next? 1,184 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 598 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Sunday, December 19, 2004 11:32 AM This Sunday two stories appeared in the New York Times concerning intelligence operations and the U.S. military. On the surface these stories are not related, but underneath the surface you can see that they are. Despite adminstration insistence that our efforts in the middle east do not constitute an anti-Muslim crusade, people--including those in the military who face the enemy daily--can hardly overlook that our enemies over the past few years have been mostly Muslims. It's extremely difficult to retain objectivity under those stresses. Last year a West Point graduate, Captain James Yee, and two other U.S. Muslims were arrested, charged with espionage, and threatened with the death penalty: How Dubious Evidence Spurred Relentless Guantánamo Spy Hunt. Now it is clear that anti-Muslim feelings in the military fueled those charges, and none of those soldiers were involved in espionage at all. Captain Yee will be discharged honorably on January 7. Officials familiar with the inquiries said they also fed on petty personal conflicts: antipathy between some Muslim and non-Muslim troops at Guantánamo, rivalries between Christian and Muslim translators, even the complaint of an old boss who saw Airman Al Halabi as a shirker. The soldiers charged with espionage were indeed among those who sympathized with the plight of the Muslims held indefinitely at Guantánamo without charge and without legal counsel. Coloring much of the episode, interviews and documents indicate, were simmering tensions over the military's treatment of the roughly 660 foreign men who were then held at Guantánamo without charge. "Lots of the guards saw us as some sort of sympathizers with the detainees," Airman Al Halabi recalled in one of several interviews. "We heard it many times: 'detainee-lovers,' or 'sympathizers.' They called us 'sand niggers.' " Airman Al Halabi, who came to the United States at 16 after growing up in poverty in his native Syria, has emphasized his loyalty as a naturalized American citizen. While insisting that he was careful not to share his views with anyone but close friends at Guantánamo, he said he was one of many servicemen and translators there who were uncomfortable with the way the detainees were treated. The related story in today's New York Times has to do with the current reorganization of intelligence services: Pentagon Seeks to Expand Role in Intelligence-Collecting. The Pentagon hopes to use this transition period to expand its intelligence role into entirely new areas. The details of the plan remain secret and are evolving, but indications of its scope and significance have begun to emerge in recent weeks. One part of the overall proposal is being drafted by a team led by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, a deputy under secretary of defense. Among the ideas cited by Defense Department officials is the idea of "fighting for intelligence," or commencing combat operations chiefly to obtain intelligence. The proposal also calls for a major expansion of human intelligence, which is information gathered by spies rather than by technological means, both within the military services and the Defense Intelligence Agency, including more missions aimed at acquiring specific information sought by policy makers. And who is General Boykin? Doesn't that name sound familiar? Yes, it does. General Boykin, who attracted controversy last year for saying in remarks to Christian groups that Muslims worship "an idol" and describing the battle against Muslim radicals as a fight against Satan, has been the prime architect of the proposal, which has been under review at the Pentagon since January 2004. All of this information is widely known in the Muslim world, and we need to be aware of it too. Nothing creates new terrorists against the U.S. faster than the perception that our country is engaged in a modern crusade against the Muslim religion. The Bush administration spinners will not be able to overcome that perception in the Muslim world while our military persecutes its own Muslim soldiers and while militant anti-Muslim Christians advance to high positions in the Bush administration. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 11:03 AM As we approach the start of another year, our country faces severe problems in Iraq. Every one of these problems was caused by the poor leadership of the Bush administration. Violence in Iraq continues to increase: Pentagon: At Least 22 Killed in Mosul Attack. At least 22 people were killed and 50 wounded Tuesday in an attack at a U.S. and Iraqi base near Mosul in Iraq, a Pentagon official said. Abuse of prisoners by the U.S. recruits new terrorists eager to strike back at America: New F.B.I. Files Describe Abuse of Iraq Inmates. The agent, whose name was deleted from the document, wrote on July 29, 2004: "On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for 18 24 hours or more."   The agent said that on another occasion, the air-conditioning had been turned up so high that a chained detainee was shivering. The agent said the military police had explained by saying that interrogators from the previous day had ordered the treatment and "that the detainee was not to be moved." The agent also wrote: "On another occasion, the A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night." The president's fantasy of turning security over to Iragi forces soon is just a pipe dream: Bush Says Iraqis Aren't Yet Able to Quell Rebels. President Bush acknowledged Monday that the United States had achieved only "mixed" success in training Iraqi troops to secure the country, and said that it was "unacceptable" that some Iraqi units had fled as soon as they faced hostile fire. With the first elections in Iraq six weeks away, Mr. Bush's public criticism of how the Iraqis had performed reflected mounting concern, voiced from the White House, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill, that the strategy for training 125,000 Iraqi forces to secure the country is failing. On Sunday, Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who serves as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said a recent trip to the country convinced him that the Iraqi forces were "bottom level" and still had no effective leadership 20 months after the fall of Saddam Hussein. And our people in uniform bear the brunt of the president's failures: The New Military Life: Heading Back to the War. Earlier this year, as Sgt. Alexander Garcia's plane took off for home after his tense year of duty in Iraq, he remembered watching the receding desert sand and thinking, I will never see this place again. Never lasted about 10 months for Sergeant Garcia, a cavalry scout with the First Armored Division who finished his first stint in Iraq in March and is now preparing to return. 1,186 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Another milestone was reached today: 600 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 4:50 PM It's hard to feel truly festive this Christmas season knowing what's happening in Iraq: U.S. General Says Mosul Blast Appears to Be Suicide Bomb. Thirteen of those killed were United States military personnel; the others killed were five American civilians, three Iraqi National Guard members and one unidentified person described by the Army as a "non-U.S. person." Fifty-one of the wounded were American military personnel and the rest Americans, foreign civilians and Iraqi forces. Twenty-nine people have been released from the hospital. And at home, our president is issuing another set of denials: FBI Memo: Bush's Executive Order Approved Torture Techniques. The harsh treatment of prisoners continues to haunt the Bush Administration. Today, an e-mail from the FBI claims that President Bush personally approved the use of abusive methods of questioning detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The White House denies all such allegations. 1,187 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 601 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Thursday, December 23, 2004 12:32 PM Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, but today more of our soldiers died in Iraq--the result of the terrible mistakes of our president. The capitol city, Baghdad, where our military headquarters and the Iraq provisional government holes up, is not at all safe: Bomb Kills U.S. Soldier, Wounds Two in Baghdad. Roadside bombs, which the military refers to as improvised explosive devices, are one of the most common and deadly of the weapons used by militants in their 18-month insurgency against the U.S.-led occupation. Commanders have estimated that up to 30 percent of troops wounded or killed in Iraq have been hit by the devices. More than 1,030 U.S. troops have been killed in action since the beginning of the war, and nearly 10,000 have been wounded, the majority of them seriously. Fallujah, the scene of heavy house-to-house fighting since our presidential election, is still far from safe also: Three More U.S. Marines Killed in Iraq. [T]he deaths were reported as U.S. troops fought insurgents in the city of Fallujah, which is in Anbar. F-18 fighter jets dropped several bombs in the city, sending up plumes of smoke, while tank and machine gun fire could be heard to the south. 1,188 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 602 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
bada bing	Merry Christmas Posted: Friday, December 24, 2004 10:27 AM Best wishes to all you hardy souls up there. To be honest, this is the only time I miss the winter up there. Hang some mistletoe over the wife, girlfriend or special pet and give them a big kiss from me.
look2it	Merry Christmas Posted: Saturday, December 25, 2004 1:10 AM Merry Xmas to all and to all a G'night.
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Monday, December 27, 2004 10:20 AM Today's news from Iraq: U.S. Soldier Killed by Roadside Bomb in Iraq. A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier and wounded another when their patrol was attacked north of Baghdad overnight, the U.S. military said on Monday.   The attack occurred in the town of Samarra, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, the military said in a statement. 1,192 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 606 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 12:58 PM George W. Bush is in Texas celebrating the impending start of his second term. The damage to our country from his first term will already linger for a long time.   Today's news from Iraq: Iraqi Rebels Kill 24 in Multiple Attacks. Insurgents launched multiple attacks on Iraqi police across the dangerous Sunni Triangle on Tuesday, killing 24 people -- including 19 policemen -- a day after the major Sunni Muslim political party pulled out of the Jan. 30 elections citing the deteriorating security situation.   Also Tuesday, a militant group claimed to have executed eight Iraqi employees of the Sandi Group, American security company, saying they had supported the U.S.-led occupation. 1,193 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 607 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 10:33 AM Violence in Iraq continued to increase yesterday: Insurgents Kill at Least 54. Car bombs, ambushes and assassinations killed a total of at least 54 people in the Iraqi capital and across the volatile Sunni Triangle on Tuesday, including 31 policemen and a deputy provincial governor. The attacks -- including one in which 12 policemen had their throats slit -- were the latest by insurgents targeting Iraqis working with the American military or the U.S.-backed government ahead of the Jan. 30 national elections. In related news, prosecutors are working on the evidence needed to convict Saddam Hussein: DNA Evidence May Be Key in Saddam Trial. Analysts say prosecutors should have ample evidence when Saddam goes to trial, pointing to dramatic advances in DNA technology as a prosecutorial tool in recent years. They say DNA will help to clearly establish the identity of many of Saddam's victims who ended up in the country's mass graves.   The process has been used widely in the former Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia, where DNA has helped identify about 7,000 missing victims of the war there a decade ago -- and helped the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in pursuing perpetrators. 1,194 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 608 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There
Been There	The Iraq War Posted: Thursday, December 30, 2004 10:00 AM As we approached the new year two years ago, President Bush was beating the drums for war on the grounds that Iraq threatened us with weapons of mass destruction. The weapons of mass destruction were fictional, but the lives lost every day because of Bush's blunders are real: 25 Insurgents Are Killed Trying to Overrun U.S. Outpost in Mosul; 1 U.S. Soldier Dies. United States troops and warplanes killed at least 25 insurgents who used car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to try to overrun an American combat outpost in Mosul on Wednesday afternoon, the American military said. It was the fiercest fighting the restive northern city has seen in weeks. Fifteen American soldiers were wounded, military officials said. An American soldier died in hospital on Wednesday from wounds sustained in the attack, the miltary said Thursday. 1,195 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." 609 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech. Been There