Alberto Gonzalez, the man who before being appointed Attorney General was nicknamed "the Torturer" for his role in Guantanamo Bay; the man who rejects the internationally accepted Geneva Conventions for detainee treatment, calling them "quaint" and "obsolete" and who authorized Bush's illegal line-item vetoes; the man who fired federal prosecutors based on their loyalty to Republicans is finally gone!
Monday, August 27, 2007
Alberto "The Torturer" Gonzalez Resigns
Maliki lashes out at Clinton and others
L.A. Times Article:
BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki lashed out Sunday at U.S. and French politicians who have called on him to step down and accused U.S. forces of committing "big mistakes" in killing and detaining civilians in the hunt for insurgents.
It was the second outburst in recent days from the beleaguered leader, who has come under fire from allies and adversaries who accuse him of failing to unite his Cabinet and get key laws and programs in place. On Sunday, he drew fresh criticism from two influential Republican senators.
At a hastily called news conference after meeting with other Iraqi leaders, Maliki dismissed the calls for him to step down as "ugly interference" in Iraq's domestic affairs.
He trained his angriest words on Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and her fellow Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan.
"There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin," he told reporters. "They should come to their senses."
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Hillary the only one not to get it: The Surge is Not the Solution
The question is not whether the surge is "working" to prevent this IED or that car-bombing. It's not whether you can cherry-pick one area in which one kind of violence is down. What's needed is political change - in the US and in Iraq - and that has to be the question asked every time the word "surge" is used.
"Despite the exemplary performance of our troops, we are coming off the bloodiest summer of this misguided war and it should be clear that there can be no military solution in Iraq.
"It is useless to argue the merits of a specific tactic when the strategy itself is failed.
"In fact, debating over military tactics when there is no military solution only undermines efforts by those of us who believe that we must change course in Iraq now and begin to immediately redeploy US combat forces so that Iraqi leaders will have the impetus to find a political accord."
The disastrous consequences described by President Bush are already in motion and are a direct result of a war that should never have been authorized. There is no military solution to Iraq's problems. The only way to reverse these consequences is to change course through a surge in our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts in Iraq and the region, and a phased withdrawal of our forces that puts real pressure on the Iraqi government to act.
(I like that "surge in our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts" line.)
From the Edwards campaign:
"Our military’s hard-won progress in Al-Anbar province should not distract us from the fact that pouring more military resources into Iraq is no substitute for the comprehensive national political solution that will ultimately resolve the situation in Iraq. President Bush’s failed strategy has led to increased terrorism in Iraq, as we saw with the bombing of the Iraqi Parliament months ago in the Green Zone and the recent horrendous bombings in northwest Iraq that killed over 250 people. And despite the surge, the Al-Maliki government is disintegrating before our eyes. Even worse, President Bush’s mistakes in Iraq have only helped make terrorism worse in the world. As the National Intelligence Estimate recently found, Al Qaeda is as strong now as it was before 9/11.
I looked for statements from the other candidates, but while most of them appear to have addressed Iraq in the past day or so, Dodd, Obama, and Edwards were the ones decisively making the point that the measure of success that matters is not military but political or diplomatic progress. That's a message we need to be hearing from every Democrat.
Giuliani: Worse Than Bush
By Stephen Schlesinger
The Republican presidential frontrunner, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, has just written his foreign policy credo for Foreign Affairs magazine. It is a truly unnerving pronouncement -- even worse than Bush-ism. Not unexpectedly, Mr. Giuliani backs all of the most brazen features of the Bush administration's global agenda. But he tosses in several deeply scary initiatives of his own that George W. never touched.
Giuliani first provides a post-facto assessment of the Vietnam War which serves as his base doctrine. He believes we could have won the war but we precipitously "withdrew" our support in 1972. Had we stayed, he says, South Vietnam would have achieved "political self-sufficiency." Instead, by caving into an "expansionist Soviet Union." we created a "weaker America." Few historians, foreign policy experts or political figures give any credence to this thesis. And, aside from the irony that Giuliani is criticizing Richard Nixon, a president of his own party for such "errors," he fails to acknowledge the fact that 58,000 American soldiers had already died for a South Vietnamese government that was hopelessly corrupt and had no popular support -- and that the American public was utterly fed up with the conflict. Nor does the former mayor address the secondary point that the putatively omnipotent USSR 17 years later lost the Cold War to the apparently "enervated" USA.
With Vietnam as his global measuring stick, Giuliani ticks off all of the programs he plans to hold fast to from the Bush era. He promises to pursue Bush's strategy in Iraq relentlessly to "eliminate the export of terror," and warns that, as in Vietnam, any withdrawal would be a sign of weakness and "an invitation for more war." He does not conceive of, admit to, or even mention the possibility of a region-wide political settlement which even now the Bush Administration is apparently contemplating. In addition, he would "press ahead" with an anti-ballistic missile system -- regardless of its outsized costs or ineffectiveness. And he would, as he says, "pursue the gains made by the USA Patriot Act and not unrealistically limit electronic surveillance or legal interrogation." Sounds a lot like an embrace of unrestricted presidential power and possibly torture.
For Israel, he now opposes the "creation of another state" in Palestine -- a repudiation of Bush's own stance. On Iran, "should all else fail," he would destroy that nation's nuclear infrastructure -- a mini-Cheney on steroids. More broadly, though, he would ratchet up our public diplomacy, expand the old Cold War radio stations, ditto with Internet networks, and insist that our US ambassadors "clearly advocate for US policies" -- a kind of in-your-face proselytizing of the sort the former mayor practiced so fervently when he ran New York City.
But Mr. Giuliani's most peculiar innovations are with the United Nations and NATO. Predictably, he is anti-UN -- as he was as mayor of NYC. But he goes further and argues that the UN has "proved irrelevant to the resolution of almost every major dispute of the last fifty years." This is a breathtaking display of incomprehension. Just a reminder: the UN stopped the invasion of South Korea; settled the Suez crisis of 1956; assisted in the ending of the Cuban missile crisis of 1963; ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991. It brought peace to conflicts in Guatemala, Angola, Mozambique, El Salvador, Cambodia and helps keep the peace in Cyprus. More recently, it aided Haiti in holding an election and ending violence, pushed the Syrians out of Lebanon, enforced a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon and presently supports a dozen or so other peacekeeping missions.
Now we come to the ex-mayor's most bizarre suggestion -- that NATO be encouraged to act "globally," be reconfigured to confront "significant threats to the international system," and "we should open the organization's membership to any state" -- though it is a European-based body. Is Mr. Giuliani thus proposing that NATO replace the UN as the world's arbiter? And why not? Since the US dominates NATO, this would give Washington a direct means to extend its security purvey over the entire planet. This is a vision consistent with the authoritarian instincts with which Mr. Giuliani governed NYC. Still his retro-policies appear to be out of kilter with the times. He will have a lot of explaining to the American electorate about his foreign policy weltanschauung. It should be an illuminating exercise that may actually remind voters of why the only elected post he has ever risen to is mayor.Sunday, August 12, 2007
Clinton Attacks Obama for Same Comments She Made
This week, we learned that Hillary Clinton was, in fact, for taking nuclear weapons off the table before she was against it. When the AP pointed out the contradiction of Clinton attacking Barack Obama as "irresponsible and frankly naive" for espousing the same position she had espoused, her campaign scrambled to find its hair-splitters. The money quote came from Clinton spokesman Phil Singer, who explained that when Hillary said last year that she wouldn't use nukes she wasn't "speaking as a presidential candidate." Gee, I never realized that when it comes to hypocrisy, U.S. Senators who are members of the Armed Services Committee are held to a different standard than U.S. Senators seeking to be the commander in chief. How frankly naive of me.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Right-wing Extremists Like Clinton for Unfair ("Free") Trade and Iraq War
From an L.A. Times Article:
"What's interesting is how quickly the right's view of Clinton has evolved. Just in May, I published a National Review column that simply noted that she clearly is the most conservative of the three major candidates for the Democratic nomination [continued]"
The article talks about how the editors of the arch-conservative magazines Weekly Standard and National Review are starting to like Clinton, especially on the issue of "Free" Trade and Foreign Policy. These are the bozos who rushed Bush into the Iraq War and they like Hillary. Simply put: not good. About a year ago a report came out saying how Hillary wanted to play herself off as a Goldwater girl, and it seems as though this pandering to conservatives is paying off. Except for that this is a DEMOCRATIC primary, so let's make sure we choose anyone but Hillary (ABH - my new campaign slogan).
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