“The Alabama Department of Homeland Security has taken down a Web site it operated that included gay rights and anti-war organizations in a list of groups that could include terrorists.”
U.S. troops in Iraq no longer ‘true believers.’
“‘In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war,’ said Sergeant First Class David Moore, a self-described ‘conservative Texas Republican’ and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. ‘Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.’”
Politics First
It turns out that training soldiers isn’t very helpful unless you’re sure the trained soldiers aren’t going to turn around and shoot at you once the training’s done:
But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.
Of course the media refuses to report the good news — many of the people we’re training don’t attack us!
Back to the Schools
Oh man. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone make a serious effort to argue that ongoing school construction endeavors in Iraq outweigh the fact that we aren’t achieving any of our mission objectives, but apparently Chris Muir didn’t get the memo that these talking points are inoperative:
I’m pretty sure that these reconstruction projects have, in fact, largely been halted. And, of course, a lot of the refurbishing of public buildings is necessary precisely because the war has been so destructive. But all that aside, the level of bad faith here is really mind-boggling. If I proposed that the United States appropriate $87 billion to build 306 schools and refurbish 364 additional schools in Ecuador, would conservatives be applauding that? But that’s what congress appropriated in its 2003 supplemental for Iraq. The bill the president just signed appropriates $95 billion for just the next six months. Does Chris Muir intend to get behind a $95 billion disease eradication program? It only costs $1 to give someone a measles vaccine and “approximately 410,000 children under the age of five die globally of measles each year.”
But, of course not; take the value as a talking point away and conservatives don’t care about education in the developing world or global public health at all.
Cheney on Geneva
Did Dick Cheney really say this?
As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.
This, of course, is exactly the sort of thing one would point to as an example of the moral superiority enjoyed by a liberal democracy when fighting a group of murderous fanatics — we treat people in accordance with domestic and international law in a manner consistent with the basic principles of human rights and human dignity; they do not. But in Dick Cheney’s America our delicate sensibilities fall away too.
Start Snitchin’
I got to meet Corey Booker last week. He seemed like a nice guy. People should help him out and cooperate with the police.
Actually, I really was quite surprised that I met him at a UNITE-HERE event. I didn’t actually know anything about the man, but judging by his fan base I had formed this impression of him as a wanker who wouldn’t be attending somewhat obscure union functions.
Does Grassley have confidence in Gonzales? It’s a secret.
On a conference call with reporters last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a senior member on the Judiciary Committee, “passed on an opportunity to support Gonzales, although he noted that the calls for a vote seemed to have quieted down. Asked if he would vote ‘no confidence,’ Grassley replied, ‘I told my press secretary when she was asked that … just better play it close to our vest. So, I guess I won’t answer your question.’”
Alaskan: I dont want to live in permafrost no more.
Thanks to global warming, the permafrost is no longer very perma, nor very frosty. We’ve noted before about how the ultimate release of huge amounts of greenhouse gases formerly trapped in the tundra could create a “self-perpetuating climate time bomb.” But we shouldn’t ignore the severe local impacts.
Sea ice that would normally protect coastal villages is forming later in the year, allowing fall storms to pound away at the shoreline.
Erosion has made Newtok an island…. The village is below sea level, and sinking…. The ragged wooden houses have to be adjusted regularly to level them on the shifting soil.
Studies say Newtok could be washed away within a decade….
The corps has estimated that to move Newtok could cost $130 million because of its remoteness, climate and topography. That comes to almost $413,000 for each of the 315 residents.
Not that anyone is offering to pay.
The Global Warming Deniers always say we must adapt, but that is mostly empty rhetoric. The Bush administration is too busy dumbing down G-8 statements and muzzling U.S. climate scientsts to take real action.
The Alaskan quoted in the headline, Frank Tommy, 47, says, “It’s too muddy. Everything is crooked around here.” That last sentence would seem to be a fitting epitaph for the Bush Administration.
John McCain:
“I have tried to discourage my Republican colleagues from saying that September is some kind of seminal moment” for judging Bush’s escalation. A recent National Journal poll found that 67 percent of congressional Republicans say that even if conditions in Iraq have not improved significantly by September, Congress will still not pass legislation withdrawing U.S. forces out of Iraq.
UPDATE: Not everyone is listening to McCain.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a loyal supporter of President Bush, indicated Sunday that Republicans will be ready by September to look at bipartisan efforts to draw down the troops that were part of the surge to help secure Baghdad. [...]
The senator added that, when General David Petraeus is reporting back on the progress of the surge in September, “I think most of the people in Congress believe, unless something extraordinary occurs, that we should be on a move to draw those surge numbers down.”
Storm of a Century
“Two Hillary Clinton biographies create gossip storm in Washington” — that’s a headline in The Los Angeles Times. The reporting in the article, however, doesn’t support that at all:
The books are “interesting and perhaps illuminating, but they didn’t drop any new revelations into the campaign,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who headed up public opinion surveys for Sen. John F. Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004.
Even some Republicans saw no reason for Clinton to be concerned about the books’ fallout. “It doesn’t strike me that there was anything new in either of these books that I didn’t already know about Hillary Clinton,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster and strategist.
The Clinton campaign heartily agreed, pouncing on an early wave of ho-hum reviews from political bloggers. “The biggest news here is three reporters have spent the last 10 years combined looking at Sen. Clinton’s life and finding nothing new to report,” said Howard Wolfson, the campaign’s communications director. “They’ve got zero.”
The only reason anyone’s talking about these books at all is that newspapers keep writing stories on them. The LAT‘s reporter, Stephen Braun, at least had the good sense to report how pointless this all was. But then along comes the headline writer to say it’s the talk of the town. Obviously, Memorial Day Weekend is tough for everyone in the news biz, but this is really pathetic.
