A little tidbit from the Washington Post about the Abramoff scandal before we get to the REAL outrage

(Speaker of the House Dennis) Hastert appears secure in the speakership, despite his own ties to Abramoff-related fundraising and other activities. Abramoff’s guilty pleas have renewed scrutiny of a letter the speaker sent to Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton in June 2003 urging her to block a casino opposed by Abramoff’s Indian tribe clients. The letter was sent just days after Abramoff’s tribal clients contributed more than $20,000 to Hastert’s political action committee at a fundraiser at Signatures, the swank restaurant the lobbyist owned at the time.

If the following story weren’t serious, it’d be hilarious. Instead it’s sad and makes me wonder how this jerk can remain on television and out of the mental hospital

Pat Robertson: Sharon’s stroke is God’s wrath
Televangelist suggests illness is divine punishment for ‘dividing God’s land’

Updated: 7:48 p.m. ET Jan. 5, 2006
NORFOLK, Va. – Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was divine punishment for “dividing God’s land.”

“God considers this land to be his,” Robertson said on his TV program “The 700 Club.” “You read the Bible and he says ‘This is my land,’ and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, ‘No, this is mine.”’

Sharon, who ordered Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza last year, suffered a severe stroke on Wednesday.

In Robertson’s broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach, the evangelist said he had personally prayed about a year ago with Sharon, whom he called “a very tender-hearted man and a good friend.” He said he was sad to see Sharon in this condition.

He also said, however, that in the Bible, the prophet Joel “makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who ‘divide my land.”’

Sharon “was dividing God’s land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU (European Union), the United Nations, or the United States of America,” Robertson said.

Invokes 1995 Rabin slaying

In discussing what he said was God’s insistence that Israel not be divided, Robertson also referred to the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had sought to achieve peace by giving land to the Palestinians. “It was a terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless he was dead,” he said.

The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement urging Christian leaders to distance themselves from the remarks. Robertson made similar comments as the Gaza withdrawal occurred, it said.

“It is outrageous and shocking, but not surprising, that Pat Robertson once again has suggested that God will punish Israel’s leaders for any decision to give up land to the Palestinians,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the group, which fights anti-Semitism. “His remarks are un-Christian and a perversion of religion. Unlike Robertson, we don’t see God as cruel and vengeful.”

Pro and con

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said a religious leader “should not be making callous political points while a man is struggling for his life.”

“Pat Robertson has a political agenda for the entire world, and he seems to think God is ready to take out any world leader who stands in the way of that agenda,” Lynn said in a statement.

Robertson spokeswoman Angell Watts said of critics who challenged his remarks, “What they’re basically saying is, ‘How dare Pat Robertson quote the Bible?”’

“This is what the word of God says,” Watts said. “This is nothing new to the Christian community.”

In August, Robertson suggested on “The 700 Club” that American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has long been at odds with U.S. foreign policy. Robertson later apologized for his remarks, saying he “spoke in frustration.”

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

Meanwhile, back in Oklahoma, the Abramoff scandal hits 5th Dist. U.S. Congressman Ernest Istook, who is reportedly getting ready to run against Brad Henry. I worked alongside Ernie Istook when he was covering city hall for KTOK radio and he was the dumbest guy in the press corps at that time. We used to rib him and make fun of him for not being able to understand the issues. Once, we passed out little frog clickers from T.G. & Y. (remember that store? an old time five and dime.) and clicked them every time he tried to record something for his radio report. Suffice it to say I think Istook is not the sharpest pencil in the drawer. Anyway, here’s a little something from an Oklahoma Democrat Party website I read, but mostly don’t subject others to reading.

DemoOkie Editorial:
You may recall that Istook was busted taking contributions directly from Jack Abramoff. He tried to defend it by saying Democrats took money from him too. What Iscrook fails to mention is that the Democrats did NOT take money from Abramoff but rather from tribes who are also a client of Abramoff, such as…… the CHEROKEE TRIBE of OKLAHOMA who gave over two thirds of the money. Hmmmm. The other money came from the CHOCTAWS.

Wonder if he thinks we are all too stupid to realize that money donated went to the Carson Race and Carson was A MEMBER OF THE CHEROKEE TRIBE. Istook would rather say this is an Abramoff connection.

What Istook should do is offer his explanation how a “Self professed Indian Sovereignty hater” got money from Abramoff directly and from Abramoff’s clients.

Could it explain how “Anti-Gambling Advocate” Istook accidentally amended a bill which would have allowed Indian Casino’s in Oklahoma County. Istook said the amendment was a mistake and removed the amendment after it was revealed in the press. He claimed the same thing when he inserted a spying provision into the tax code. We say it needs an investigation.

From today’s Slate Magazine, a roundup of NSA horror stories. Violations of law, violations of our Constitutional rights, violations of our freedoms and liberty. Resist Bush while we can.

Listening In and Naming Names
The old tricks of the National Security Agency.
By Patrick Radden Keefe
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2005, at 3:22 PM ET

The storm of controversy notwithstanding, Friday’s revelation that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless eavesdropping in the United States should come as no surprise. The press tends to shy away from covering America’s largest and most secretive intelligence agency, fearing precisely the kind of scolding President Bush delivered to the New York Times. But the truth is that the NSA—which has an estimated $6 billion annual budget bigger than those of the CIA and the FBI combined—has a decidedly checkered history when it comes to playing by the rules. Both before and after Sept. 11, 2001, the secrecy surrounding the eavesdropping agency has obscured a dangerous institutional tendency to overreach.

In 1978, congressional investigations revealed that the NSA had spied on civilian anti-war protesters during Vietnam. The response was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. To prevent future abuses, the act drew a line between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement. The NSA was free to spy abroad, but when its agents wanted to wiretap in the United States, they had to ask a secret FISA court for a warrant. It was easy enough to get the warrants: Officials had to show probable cause that the person they were after was an agent of a foreign power. And the court, comprised of a rotating panel of federal judges chosen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, almost never rejected an application. Governed by FISA, the supposedly rehabilitated NSA quietly went back to work. On the rare occasions over the last three decades when NSA directors have spoken publicly, it has been to offer assurances that the agency does not spy on U.S. citizens.

The problem was that with FISA under its belt, Congress effectively let the TV be the babysitter. Legislators relied on the new law to do the work, and oversight of electronic intelligence-gathering fell into serious decline. The justifiable secrecy surrounding eavesdropping became a bureaucratic carte blanche, and the NSA refused to produce hard information to back up its generic assurances that it was not abusing its powers. In the Reagan years, Rep. Norman Mineta, D-Calif., who served on the House intelligence committee, neatly summarized the relationship between the spies and the committee: “We are like mushrooms. They keep us in the dark and feed us a lot of manure.”

Two years before Sept. 11, members of the House intelligence committee asked the NSA’s general counsel for the internal legal guidelines that governed eavesdropping on the conversations of U.S. citizens. The agency stonewalled—not a good sign. The NSA’s flimsy excuse was a Procrustean extension of attorney-client privilege, whereby any document that happened to be sitting on the desk of an NSA lawyer did not have to be handed over to Congress. The aftermath of Sept. 11 might have prompted greater oversight of electronic intelligence-gathering. After all, one of the major conclusions of both the bicameral congressional investigation and the 9/11 Commission was that Congress had been lax in that oversight. But after decades of keeping Congress at arm’s length, the 9/11 Commission members were a piece of cake for the NSA. Despite its manifest size and resources, and its failure to hear so much as a whisper about al-Qaida’s 9/11 operation, the agency merited only a few fleeting references in the commission’s 500-page report.

After 9/11, the first sign that the NSA was overreaching on eavesdropping came when the famously circumspect FISA court took the unprecedented step of publishing a 7-0 decision in May 2002. The court, which approved about 10,000 warrant applications between the passage of FISA and Sept. 11, 2001, rebuked the Justice Department and the FBI for giving it wrong information in 75 post-9/11 applications for search warrants and wiretaps. The FISA judges called for stricter policing of FISA’s delineation between domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence operations to “protect the privacy of Americans in these highly intrusive surveillance searches.”

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft appealed, and it emerged that in the years since FISA was passed in 1978, a second secret judicial body—the FISA court of appeals—had been lurking in the wings. The Washington Post called this three-judge panel “a kind of ghost within the American judiciary”—one that had the peculiar distinction of never having had occasion to convene. Why not? Because it was established “to review the denial of any application” to the FISA court. And the court didn’t deny applications.

The following year, as Washington began its full-court press for an invasion of Iraq, the NSA launched a surge of eavesdropping on delegates to the U.N. Security Council in New York. The operation was revealed when an English eavesdropper leaked an NSA e-mail requesting British assistance in the effort. It was a front-page story in Europe and around the world, but the American press didn’t run with it, showing a level of deference to NSA secrecy matched only by Congress. Nevermind that the eavesdropping took place in Manhattan and violated the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, all of which the United States has signed.

More dramatic—and also largely overlooked—was the disclosure last spring during John Bolton’s confirmation hearings that the NSA was giving policy-makers and other intelligence agencies information about U.S. citizens. Since 1978, the NSA has insisted that when it intercepts a communication between a targeted foreigner and a nontargeted American it will redact the name of the American from the resulting intelligence report. The redactions are made to protect the privacy of the individual who was not the target, and to satisfy the Constitution’s prohibition of warrantless searches. Yet at his hearings, Bolton admitted that on several occasions while he was an undersecretary of state he had asked the NSA to reveal the names of Americans in agency intercepts. The NSA obliged without any showing of cause or process of review. Newsweek investigated and learned that during one 18-month period in 2004 and 2005, the NSA supplied the names of 10,000 U.S. citizens to interested bureaucrats and spies.

That violation is arguably more egregious than the new revelations of warrantless eavesdropping. It involved vastly more people. (Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping reportedly targeted between 500 and 1,000 people a year.) And it was an informal practice, without even the thin legitimacy of a secret executive order.

To be sure, the Times story is a bombshell. And if President Bush and Alberto Gonzales continue to argue that warrantless eavesdropping was justified under the authority granted by Congress after Sept. 11, this story will be an important chapter in the narrative of the Bush administration’s promotion of executive power. But the shock—shock—professed in Congress and on editorial pages that a U.S. intelligence agency would exceed its mandate and play fast and loose with statutory and constitutional curbs? That seems at best naive and at worst a too-little-too-late gesture by the very people who should have seen this coming. Bush’s executive order authorizing the NSA wiretaps is just the latest iteration (and not even the latest: See today’s story about the FBI’s surveillance of an Indianapolis Vegan Community Project) in a consistent pattern of inadequate oversight of legally questionable eavesdropping operations.

In 2002, then-director of the NSA Michael Hayden took the unusual step of asking for more debate about what his agency should and should not be able to do. “What I really need you to do,” he told Congress, “is to talk to your constituents and find out where the American people want the line between security and liberty to be.” That debate did not occur, and to judge by events and revelations in the intervening years, the agency—and the White House—interpreted the absence of protest as a vote of confidence and erred on the side of security. Now the talking heads are talking and a congressional inquiry is planned for January. Four years later, Michael Hayden may get his answer.

This president must be impeached! He has assumed dictatorial powers and wants even more power. He has a plan for world domination. He lied to get us into a war with Iraq. There is nothing he has not failed at: the economy, international relations, balancing the budget, responding to disasters, protecting us from drugs, guns, terrorists, our nation’s education system is a disaster and our medical system is in a freefall to decrepitude. President George W. Bush must be impeached, reviled and disgraced as a top priority of every freedom loving individual American. Write your fucking Congressmen. It is NOT futile! Stick your head out your window and yell: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking it any more!” It is NOT stupid. Draft and sign petitions. Read Anarchist’s Cookbook. It’s on the web and it will teach you skills for armed resistance if that should become necessary. This coming year is an election year. Speak up, goddammit!!! Give money. Give time. Sit on a phone bank or go door to door. GET FUCKING MAD!!! NO TIME FOR BEING NICE NO TIME TO BE SHY SPEAK UP SPEAK UP GET A FUCKING BUMPER STICKER THIS SHIT IS FUCKING IMPORTANT DAMMIT IT’S FUCKING CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND GULAGS IT’S BEING STRIPPED DOWN TO THIRD WORLD STATUS BOTH POLITICALLY AND ECONOMICALLY DON’T YOU GET IT? WE’RE BEING GENTLY LED INTO SLAVERY GET FUCKING ANGRY GODDAMMIT THIS MATTERS

Here’s a story about Bush’s drive for power:

San Fransisco Chronicle

Here’s an excerpt to get you interested:

Experts ponder Bush’s rationale
Some wonder why law wasn’t changed instead of circumvented by administration
Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

During the four years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has responded to questions over its more controversial national security policies, relating to interrogation methods, incarceration policies and investigative techniques, with the argument that they were crucial in the fight against terror.

But some national security experts say that such arguments may not be enough this time to quell questions over the clandestine surveillance of Americans.

“I think there is enormous understanding and tolerance for an argument from necessity, and there’s willingness to retroactively forgive what might strictly speaking be violations of the law,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy of the Federation of American Scientists.

“What becomes harder to understand is four years after 9/11 the administration has not sought modification of the law, but has rather asserted unchecked authority,” he said.

How badly off the beam is President Bush? The next story will give you an idea. A judge on the super-secret, hush-hush court resigned because Bush was so illegal

Washington Post

By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer

Updated: 11:21 p.m. ET Dec. 20, 2005

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush’s secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John D. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court’s work.

The rest of the story includes some stuff about Chuck Hegel and Olympia Snowe jumping ship with Arlen Spector leading in asking for investigations, blah blah blogblah!!!

Judge Quits

This judge takes a hike from a cushy lifetime job. Republicans are starting to go “whoa”. Get fucking mad, people. Impeach this man.

Associated Press
Updated: 3:17 p.m. ET Dec. 18, 2005
WASHINGTON – Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid called the Republican-led Congress “the most corrupt in history” Sunday, and distanced himself from Jack Abramoff, a powerful lobbyist at the center of an escalating probe.

He would know.

Roman Senator Cicero ended all his speeches by saying “Carthage Must Be Destroyed!”. After Hannibal crossed the Alps, Romans sailed against their commercial rivals, forcing Hannibal, who they could not defeat on the field, back home. Eventually, Rome would conquer Carthage, put all its people in slavery and salt the ground.

We face the same daily menace.

Not from a foreign threat.

Not even from terrorists.

From our own government.

We must resist this government, this fascist administration.

It threatens us and the world.

We are no longer free. Even if we sit in front of our televisions in our own homes, we are captives of cruel and cunning jailers.

President Bush not only admits to making 30 orders to violate the Fourth and Fifth Amendments by requiring the National Security Agency to intercept and monitor American citizens’ cell phone calls overseas without benefit of warrants, but he attacks those who question his decision as irresponsibly aiding and abetting terrorists.

He also warns Congress they must re-enact the Patriot Act, giving him war powers to roust Americans without warrants and lawyers and the possibility of being kidnapped and tortured in a North African dungeon. It is tantamount to the legislation passed in the 1930s by Germany after the phony Reichstag Fire, giving Adollph Hitler the power to be Der Fuerher.

How is Bush any different from Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Napoleon, any of the dictators?

He even has a plan for world domination.

We must resist.

While we still can.

Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet named “Common Sense” that became a “best seller” and helped prompt the American Revolution. He also wrote pamphlets that helped spark the French Revolution.

We need him today.

The news of the past week or two leads me to believe that a new revolution is necessary in our nation.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, the tree of liberty must at times be watered by the blood of tyrants.

I believe that now is that time.

We learned today that this president authorized the warrantless eavesdropping on American cell phone calls overseas. Thousands of Americans calling overseas were intercepted by the National Security Agency. It is such a blatant violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments that several NSA employees refused to participate, despite the secret presidential order.

I wonder if the half British lovely Juliet and her visiting friends Laura and Amber, who made dozens of calls to England with silly girl calls to friends about how much fun it is to be young and beautiful and visiting Los Angeles, were among the calls intercepted.

We also learned this week that the military, the Department of Defense, has spied on thousands of Americans who have protested the Iraqi war. They even infiltrated a Quaker meeting in Florida.

Does this mean that my picture standing along Classen Blvd. in front of Memorial Park with a “Honk for Peace” sign is somewhere in a DOD file? How about Lisa Ghariani and Tara Feurborn? How about our friend Rex Friend the Quaker attorney and former partner of Doug Parr? Are we all headed for a concentration camp that once housed German Nazis in El Reno?

Have you used your credit card this holiday season? American commercial records of credit card use is being “data mined” by our government looking for terrorists. Is your purchase of a sweater for cousin Bill in a government data base? Is it like that silly Mel Gibson movie “Conspiracy Theory” where everyone who buys “Catcher in the Rye” is flagged?

Our libraries are required to allow the government to search their records of books loaned to citizens under the Patriot Act. Been to Oklahoma City’s new library yet?

President Bush now admits that our pre war intelligence on Iraq was wrong, but he takes responsibility for leading us into war for the wrong reasons because deposing Saddam was the right thing to do. What? The ends justify the means? Will he next tell us, as Mussolini did his country, that he’s making the trains run on time? Or, perhaps, as Hitler did, that we must break some eggs to make an omlette? Madness, I tell you, MADNESS!!!

It is now clear beyond dispute that America is running torture chambers, defended by Vice President Cheney, in Eastern Europe and North Africa. We — and I mean you and I through the CIA — kidnap people off the streets of Germany and Italy and take them away and torture them in violation of the Geneva Convention and the American Constitution. This is not a wild charge by some mad foreigner, it is documented truth reported by American and European journalists.

Speaking of journalists, did you know that America is now in the top five of countries who jail journalists? We are tied with Myanmar, the former Burma, a regime that is among the most outlaw of the military juntas in the world, a country and government that is of, by and for heroin dealers in south Asia.

America now incarcerates more of its citizens — over 1,000,000 — than any other country in the world, including Russia and China. Oklahoma, for example, incarcerates more women than any other state in the United States.

Did you realize that it is now legal, under the Patriot Act, for police agencies to “sneek and peek” search your house? They can LEGALLY enter your home when you are gone, search your files and computer and leave without ever telling you. You do not even have the right to know WHY they are interested in you nor what they were looking for.

I would take comfort in my moral superiority should I read that these things were done by Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. I am outraged that I am writing about my own country.

I can’t even blame Bush, really. I blame you and me for allowing Tom DeLay to take illegal corporate cash, laundring it through the Republican National Committee and using it to redistrict Texas so that 5 additional Republicans could be elected to the House of Representatives, giving the GOP control over a branch of government. We just let it happen. You and me. Voters. Americans who haven’t paid enough attention and who lack a capacity for outrage.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be blinded by false issues like abortion and creationism while our basic freedoms have been crushed under a blinding blizzard of seemingly innocent legalistic paper.

I would prefer to overthrow this government by legal means of a free election. I am not so sure that we any longer have free elections in a practical sense. How is it any longer possible for common citizens to raise these issues and inform the electorate when there is so much corrupt corporate cash on the other side? Will Halliburton allow us to upset their billionaire club shell game? I think not.

I believe the time approaches when we must take up arms against a sea of troubles. When the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune require us to inquire whether we will be or not be. When our lives of quiet desperation can no longer be quiet.

Mao famously said that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. All the guns are at present on the other side. We have blogs and posters. When is it right to arm ourselves? I’m not talking about buying a 9 mm. I do not mean for the pupose of personal security, because no amount of shotguns and pistols will protect us from the military might of this repressive government. What I mean is no less than this: at what point is it legitimate for Americans to seek the violent overthrow of their own elected government?

If they come and get me for writing this, how much longer will it be before they come for you? If they do not come for you, when are you no longer free, even if you do sit in your own home in front of your own television?

I am asking you what IS America?

Is America the First Amendment? Do we have Freedom of the Press if we are jailing journalists? Do we have freedom of assembly if you can’t attend a Quaker meeting without being observed by spies? Do we have freedom of religion if the government can put policemen in the examining rooms of gynecologists to keep them from recommending an abortion because of the religious beliefs of a minority that is temporarily in power?

Is America the Second Amendment? Is the freedom to have an armed militia free if all the militia are run by the government? Is it freedom to be armed when the arms you can buy cannot fight the repressive Department of Defense that is monitoring you?

Is America the Fourth Amendment? The right to be free of unreasonable search and siezure absent a judicial warrant is no freedom if they can listen to your cell calls, look in your computer without telling you and track your purchases through your credit cards.

Is America the Eighth Amendment? Sorry about that. We torture, so the freedom from cruel and unusual punishment is now out the window.

Is America the Sixth Amendment? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges. You no longer have the right to an attorney. We can take you to Gitmo and try you without recourse to the courts or representation.

Is America the Fourteenth Amendment? Not if you are Muslim. Your chance for equal treatment under the law is out the window.

Did they tell you in grade school that America would be the kind of country where SuzArt’s 81 year old mother is separated from her walker/cane and strip searched before being allowed on a plane?

When is enough just that: Enough?

What does your common sense tell you?

The following article from Slate Magazine looks at three published suggestions about how to slog out of the Iraq quagmire. Yes, I think it’s fair to now call it a “quagmire”. I agree with Kaplan that my ’04 candidate, Gen. Wes Clark, seemed to be a bit muddled in his weekend op-ed piece. I really have not had a chance to closely review the other two plans discussed. I have previously suggested my own plan which I’ll expand on at this time.

I would bargain with the Arab League to send troops to Iraq to provide peacekeeping and security in the Baghdad and Sunni Triangle area. One of the things that’s important to know is that there are far more than religious differences between the Kurds, the Sunni and the Shia. One of the differences is that the Sunni tend to be Arab while the Shiites in the south tend to be Persian, as are the Shia in Iran. Kurds are both ethnically and religiously different from both the Sunni and Shia. Arab League troops would put the Sunni insurgents in the position of not only fighting Islamic troops, but also fighting ethnically similar Arabs from other nations. So far, the Arab League has refused — understandably — to bail out the Bush administration by providing any troops. So, how to get this done? I propose that we bribe them. Yes, bribe them. Arabs are by culture mercantile and very very canny at it. They understand “the deal”. So, let’s make them an offer they can’t refuse. Let’s offer to spend billions, literally, in Palestine for the building of infrastructure for the new Palestinian state. We will publicly offer to build roads, bridges, sewage treatment plants, schools, hospitals, libraries and museums in the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for Arab League troops acting as peacekeepers in an Arab minority area of Iraq. What would it look like if those Arab countries refused? After all these years of trumpeting their approval and support for the Palestinians? They couldn’t refuse. They might bargain about how much we spend and on what and where, but, essentially, we’d have them trapped by their own rhetoric. We would also get a “two-fer” — our troops released from the most difficult area of Iraq AND we could coordinate with the Israeli peace process and actually help reduce terrorism by giving Palestinians jobs and increasing their standard of living and getting Palestinian youths off the stone throwing streets and into jobs where they become entrepeneurial and have a paycheck and something to do besides fight. We’d also build enduring monuments to American respect for Muslims and Palestinians and peace.

Kurdish militia should be sent to the south of Iraq for the purpose of securing the border with Iran. Kurds have been fighting the Persian Shia for, oh, 15,000 years or so and have a stake in keeping the theocracy of Iran from interfering in Iraqi politics. They will do a much better job than American and British troops.

U.N. peacekeepers should be sent to the three areas of Kurdish control (I’m thinking of Mosul, here) that are trouble spots between the Kurds and the Sunnis. It’s something the U.N. can actually do, as they have done in Cyprus, for example.

American troops should provide border patrol along the Jordanian border since the U.S. retains good relations with Jordan’s monarchy.

NO MORE AMERICAN CONTRACTORS, ESPECIALLY HALLIBURTON. Reconstruction should be Iraqi, paid for by Iraqi oil purchasing goods, principally American at bargain prices subsidized by taxpayer dollars here at home. It is the Iraqi economy we must build, not our own.

American troops should be strike force troops held in reserve in remote areas, highly mobile and charged with entering into battles only when absolutely necessary to preserve the general civil order of the country — in other words, to stop the beginnings of civil war while the Iraqi Parliament establishes itself and becomes self governing in a practical and not just “on paper” sense.

Shi’ite militia should be charged with the Syrian border. Again, you have the Shia Persians with good reason to stop the Arab influences of Syrian Arabs.

Iraqi troops should be transported immediately upon enlistment to South America for training by the U.S. trained militaries there and indoctrinated fully before being returned to the Middle East. We’ve spent zillions on training the military in South America and they especially know how to keep populations under control — can you say “death squads” boys and girls? Sure you can.

We can’t change the eons old ethnic struggles of Iraq, but we CAN use those tensions to get the stability we want. In addition, capitalism works, as we well know, and we can use our money in ways that make sense. I’m willing to spend lots of money in order to save American lives. I also have the abiding belief that if we settle down the “Palestinian question”, we have cut the legs out from under all the other terrorist cells and Islamo-fascist movements.

Oh, one last thing: I’d trade some Afghan mujahadeen troops for Iraqi troops, sending Iraqis to Afghanistan to help fight the Taliban and Afghans to Iraq to stop the insurgents. Another “two-fer”.

Anyway, here’s Fred Kaplan’s take on getting out.

How To Withdraw
Three plans for leaving Iraq: Which is best?

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Dec. 8, 2005, at 6:37 PM ET

Now that some sort of troop withdrawal from Iraq seems in the cards, it’s time to focus on questions of strategy and tactics: How many U.S. troops will leave Iraq and how quickly? Which troops will stay and for how long? What will they do? Where do the departing troops go? How do we pull out without triggering civil war or appearing to surrender?

If President George W. Bush has answers, he’s not saying. It takes a close parsing of his recent “strategy for victory” speeches—supplemented by the more explicit remarks of his secretary of state and others—to realize that they imply the start of a pullout soon after the New Year.

It’s regrettable that Rep. John Murtha, who pushed the withdrawal option to the political center, made his move before Iraq’s Dec. 15 elections. A U.S. pullout would be far more palatable—politically, strategically, and morally—if it at least appeared to come at the request of the new, democratically chosen Iraqi government. The Bush administration may even have been leaning toward that scenario before Murtha spoke up.

But now the issue is out there. So, how do we do it? Withdrawal plans are wafting through the journals and op-ed pages. Let’s look at a few.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who submitted a surprisingly impractical plan for winning (or at least not losing too badly) to the Washington Post this past September, wrote another odd piece for the Dec. 6 New York Times. Clark should know this territory; he led troops in Vietnam, commanded the war over Kosovo, and helped negotiate the peace in Bosnia. Yet his latest piece seems like something scribbled over breakfast.

On the one hand, Clark calls for deploying 20,000 U.S. troops to provide “training, supervision, and backup” along Iraq’s borders, as well as 30,000 troops to step up operations against insurgents. Yet he also recommends drawing down 30,000 troops after Iraq’s elections. Which is it—more troops, fewer troops, both?

His math is merely confusing; his politics are head-spinning. The Iraqi government, he writes, “must begin to enforce the ban on armed militias.” Ideally, he adds, this should be done voluntarily, but “American muscle will have to be made available as a last resort.” Is Clark really proposing that, beyond the already exhausting tasks of securing cities and fighting insurgents, U.S. troops should start battling and disarming the Kurdish peshmerga and Muqtada al-Sadr’s army?

“And,” Clark goes on, “we must start using America’s diplomatic strength with Syria and Iran” to get those two countries to stop interfering in Iraqi affairs. OK. Any suggestions how? Clark seems to think we still control what happens in and around Iraq, when the most basic, unnerving fact about the present phase of our occupation is that we control so very little.

For this reason, the two most thoughtful and persuasive essays on the Iraqi endgame are also the least ambitious and reassuring: James Fallows’ article in the December issue of the Atlantic and Barry Posen’s plan for an exit strategy in the forthcoming January/February Boston Review.

Fallows explains all too clearly why the Iraqi security forces aren’t up to the task of defending or stabilizing the country by themselves and why they won’t be for a long time. But rather than leaving his article as a thoroughly researched piece of journalism, he takes a step out on the plank and asks what we should do about it.

“What is needed for an honorable departure,” he writes, “is, at minimum, a country that will not go to war with itself, and citizens who will not turn to large-scale murder.” If we can manage that goal, he states, we can leave in good conscience, regardless of what might happen a few years down the road.

However, he recognizes that even this goal may be beyond our resolve and resources. It requires a “national army strong enough to deter militias … and loyal enough to the new Iraq to resist becoming the tool of any faction.” It also requires policemen who are “sufficiently competent, brave, and honest to keep civilians safe.”

This can be done, even as we withdraw combat troops, but only if we step up training—building more facilities, recruiting more translators, and changing our military culture so that the trainer of an Iraqi battalion gets more rewards than the commander of an American battalion—and only if we maintain an active presence of U.S. air, logistical, medical, intelligence, and communications forces, and do so “for years.”

Fallows’ capper: The U.S. government should either do all this or “face the stark fact that it has no orderly way out of Iraq.” This is the fallacy of Bush’s “stay the course” policy: It leads nowhere. Fallows insists that we either make the commitment—which doesn’t require ground troops but does require patience, money, and imagination—or pack it in; anything else is a waste.

Barry Posen, a military historian in MIT’s security studies program, goes further than Fallows in some ways and not as far in others. The present course of open-ended occupation, he argues, “infantilizes” Iraqi politics. As long as everyone thinks our troops will stick around, the Iraqi army will never grow up, the Kurds will continue to flirt with secession, the Sunnis will blame their diminished power on our occupation (not on their minority status), and the majority Shiites will rule without seeing a need to make compromises. Only after we start to leave will Iraq’s army take its responsibilities seriously, and only then will the sectarian factions realize the limits of their power and seek reconciliation.

Posen’s five-point plan:

First, make clear we’re withdrawing most U.S. forces within 18 months. Use the time to train and organize an army and police force capable of internal security.

Second, retain—for a longer period—a small contingent of special operations forces to advise the Iraqi army and help with command, control, and intelligence.

Third, maintain an “over-the-horizon” force in the region to deter and defend against an invasion of Iraq’s borders.

Fourth, let everyone know of the continuing U.S. interest in the Persian Gulf and Iraq’s territorial integrity. Don’t just try to persuade Iran and Syria to help out on this score; offer them inducements. For instance, drop the rhetoric about “regime change” and “spreading democracy” in exchange for their cooperation on a stable Iraq.

Fifth, aim for a stalemate in Iraq’s ongoing sectarian conflict, with the ultimate hope of inducing a loose federation—each faction essentially governing itself—within a central government that does little more than divvy up oil revenue.

I’m a bit leery of this last point. Posen has said, in a radio interview and in e-mail correspondence with me, that, once we leave, Iraq’s factions—Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds—will need to take a true measure of their relative power. This will almost certainly involve some fighting, perhaps even civil war, but he sees this process as a precondition to an enduring political settlement.

He may be right, but civil wars—especially those inflamed by religious rivalry—tend to rage well beyond rational limits. Millions of people could die, in which case little comfort should be derived from a calculation that the combatants will strike some balance of power in the long run.

I emerge from this debate somewhat torn. I agree with Posen’s case for a timed withdrawal. Fallows’ proposal for an open-ended commitment is, by his own admission, unlikely to be followed, and I don’t accept—maybe I don’t want to accept—his notion that the only alternative is sheer chaos. Posen spells out a plan to keep internal turmoil from spilling out into regional warfare, but I think more should be done to dampen the internal conflict as well. A civil war, fought to a stalemate, is not an acceptable outcome, nor do I see how the neighboring powers can be kept out of the fray once it ignites.

One thing is clear: The serious withdrawal plans are not “cut-and-run” jobs. They’re designed, on their own, to promote security and stability. None of them—not even Murtha’s—call for a total U.S. pullout. This isn’t a point in the debate, and the White House shouldn’t be allowed to get away with pretending that it is.

Fred Kaplan writes the “War Stories” column for Slate. He can be reached at [email protected].

I pass on this email from Marcy about Tuesday’s vote on cell phone 911 calls even though I know not one thing about it.

Hi Friends, there’s a vote on Tuesday to give 911 Operators access to cell phone locations.

I have a very good friend who has been a 911 Operator for over 20 years and I asked her if I should vote yes for this bill. It is her opinion that this is NOT a good idea.

The job of a 911 Operator is intense at best. They field hundreds of calls every day and many of them are erroneous or repetitious and more of them are simply unnecessary. Example, when a car accident happens they receive a cell phone call from everyone who passes by. They receive an abundance of cellular phone calls daily. What this bill would do is simply make this 911 Operator have to call the cellular server to locate the position, and by the time they are able to dispatch an officer to that location….it’s most likely that the person would be 15 miles down the road from the location that was pinpointed. My friend cited several other problems in addition that I won’t go into here. But made me realize that not only would this bill make her life hell, but also take valuable time away from real distress calls. Tho it is good in theory, it won’t work in application.

I don’t know if I’m explaining all of this very clearly. But I wanted to make you aware that 911 Operators do not see this bill as something that will aid them in their jobs to help those in distress calling for help. Please send this on, so that maybe we can stop this bill from passing on Tuesday.

Thanks,
Marcy

This is the Associated Press story from the Seattle Post Intelligencer. It’ll be interesting to see what The Daily Oklahoman feeds us tomorrow instead of this.

Newsview: Bush nears admission of errors

By TOM RAUM
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON — President Bush came as close as he ever has to admitting mistakes on Iraq Wednesday, acknowledging setbacks and uneven results in the training of Iraqi troops in his latest defense of the war 2 1/2 years after he first declared victory.

And while he vowed U.S. troops would not be withdrawn to satisfy “artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington,” his Naval Academy speech in Annapolis, Md., could help set the stage for a reduction in troops next year.

That’s because Bush emphasized progress, if initially halting, in the training of Iraqi troops who will one day replace U.S. forces. Any U.S. reduction, the president said, will be driven by “the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders.”

Democratic critics focused on the fact that Bush’s speech, and an accompanying 35-page document entitled “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq,” broke no new ground, mostly restating administration aims put forth in 2003.

Bush “once again missed an opportunity to lay out a real strategy for success in Iraq that will bring our troops safely home,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

But Bush’s speech, the first of several he’s expected to make in the run-up to Dec. 15 elections to seat a permanent Iraqi government, appeared to reflect an administration repositioning to highlight exit preparations – if not exactly an exit timetable – and to more closely define the nature of the enemy.

“I think he’s sharpened his language a lot today. Obviously, things haven’t been flowing in his direction lately,” said Frederick Barton, an Iraq specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Barton said that Bush’s intended audience, besides the military, the broader American public and Iraqi voters, included members of Congress who have grown increasingly skeptical of the Iraq mission – including “reluctant members of his own party” who sit on committees with jurisdiction over defense spending.

Bush’s approval rating is at the low point of his presidency, at 37 percent in a recent AP-Ipsos poll, with a majority of Americans – 53 percent – saying they believe the war was a mistake. Republicans on the ballot next year are becoming increasingly restive

Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee and a strong supporter of the military, called two weeks ago for the withdrawal of all 160,000 U.S. troops from Iraq over the next six months, igniting protests from the White House and Republican congressional leaders.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who earlier suggested Murtha spoke for himself, said Wednesday, “I believe that a majority of our caucus clearly supports Mr. Murtha.”

Also, the Senate has voted overwhelmingly to require the administration to send Congress regular reports on the war’s progress and has suggested that 2006 be made a key year of transition toward Iraqi self-protection.

Thus, the debate over troop withdrawal was very much on the agenda during Bush’s speech. The president said those advocating withdrawal now are “sincerely wrong” and would “send a signal to our enemies that if they wait long enough, America will cut and run and abandon its friends.”

At the same time, Bush declared that progress was indeed being made on training Iraqi forces to replace U.S. troops.

“The training of the Iraqi forces is an enormous task and it always hadn’t gone smoothly,” Bush conceded.

But, he said, “many of those forces have made real gains over the past year and Iraqi soldiers take pride in their progress.”

He cited statistics, saying there were “over 120 Iraqi army and police combat battalions” in the fight against insurgents, with each battalion typically consisting of 350-800 troops. Of those, about 80 battalions are fighting alongside coalition forces and “about 40 others are taking the lead in the fight,” Bush said.

Michele Flournoy, a senior Pentagon official in the Clinton administration, said there’s no question that the performance of Iraqi units has improved – but probably not to the extent that would allow a major U.S. troop withdrawal anytime soon. Still, withdrawal “is forcing its way onto the agenda,” Flournoy said.

“From the administration’s perspective, there are huge political pressures to begin some redeployment before the 2006 elections so a measure of victory can be declared,” she said.

Republican supporters of the president insisted he wasn’t about to declare victory for political expediency – and then leave.

“Democrats ignore the real progress on the ground, caught up in the headline of the moment” said Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Our commander in chief remains committed to completing the mission in Iraq.”

One Democrat, Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado, said that Bush’s Annapolis speech “begins to address the Senate’s call for a successful exit strategy with measurable benchmarks. I look forward to hearing more.”

Unfortunately, President Bush’s “plan” for Iraq is as illusory as his reasons for going there in the first place. Remember, our original “plan” was for everyday Iraqis to greet us with cheers and flowers in the streets of Baghdad and for us to hand the country over to Ahmed Chalabi, the Iranian spy and Jordanian embezzler who hoodwinked Dick Cheney, Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz into believing there were A-Bombs being handed over to Osama bin Laudin. This 35-pages of utter bullshit is the exact same plan: dream of a good ending made in Hollywood and then insist it’s the truth. Unfortunately, it just isn’t the truth. The truth is that Iraq presents a problem far too subtle and complex for our village idiot from Crawford, TX, to understand. There is no black and white, good and evil going on in Iraq. The bad guys refuse to wear black hats so that our cowboys know who to gun down in the OK corral. Sure wish “W” could get that hint.

Yesterday’s story about Repug Randy Cunningham pleading guilty to bribery is the followup to a story I blogged for you guys on Nov. 10. We have a $44 Billion “black” defense budget that has virtually no oversight because it’s for defense intelligence spending. That’s where all the defense contracts were awarded thanks to Rep. Cunningham. Just wanted to help you guys put two and two together.