Don't you dare call it a change of course!

Or flipflopping, going back on his word, changing his mind, or actually asking for directions!

He's just widening the field of options, opening up the discussion, uh... developing a new plan (#327)....

The Bush administration is retooling its Iraq war strategy. U.S. diplomats will soon sit across the table from their Iranian counterparts, as they did recently with the Syrians, to discuss ways Iraq’s neighbors can play a more positive role. Washington reportedly has also invited the United Nations (Guardian) to have a more direct presence in Iraq, including a larger role for its humanitarian missions and even the potential creation of a UN command. Finally, once the surge of troops into Baghdad tapers down, the U.S. military will increasingly look to shift its role in Iraq away from combat operations and into training and advisory missions (WashPost).

If any of these steps sound familiar, it’s because many of them were recommendations from the Iraq Study Group report, the blue-ribbon panel commissioned by Congress to find an alternative strategy on Iraq. Coolly received by the White House after its publication last December, the report has been dusted off and given a second look by Bush administration officials.

Soon it will have been Georgie's idea all along cuz he meant to do that. He's the Deciderer, remember. The Commander Guy does not change his squinty steely vision of the world. The world changes for him.

Supporting the troops

By sending them back again and again:

Soldiers getting ready to go on leave would talk about things they planned to do at home with tones of relief and elation. Soldiers returning to their units would move about anxiously and hope for delays in their returns back to the line. When details of their returns were received, and when all hope of delay had been exhausted, their muscles visibly tightened and their movements became jolted, almost angry, and they began to speak of their hopelessness, the friends they had seen killed. They began to question and criticize the war, late into the night on their cots in the darkness. In the morning, they would be gone, their empty cots a reminder of them, and of where they would be by now. Often when we spoke to them, we wondered secretly if they would become one more of those we had talked with who might later appear on a memorial flier before us, an inverted rifle and bayonet, a Kevlar, a pair of boots, and dog tags, a typed message naming who they left behind back home.

One soldier who had been back too many times:

"No, sir, I don't really sleep. Well, maybe an hour or two, then I get up. I don't want to dream," the soldier said to us. His name was Staff Sgt. Johnson. He was a good soldier, and you could tell when you spoke to him. He was a man of honor. He was ashamed to be speaking with us, but his leaders had insisted. He had served three combat tours as a squad leader in a line unit. His body and his hands shook during pauses in his speaking and he stared at us, and sometimes past us, with a wide-eyed look of hyper alertness. He had just returned from leave and two guys in his squad were killed days before his return.

"You know, I think I thought, or...you would think, that each time you lose someone in combat it would be easier, but it's not. It's not." He shook his head and looked away from Maj. Johns and down at the floor. "It's not," he repeated as he stared at the floor. He looked back up at me nervously, still shaking his head. When he finally stopped shaking his head, his body erupted into a tiny tremor as he tried to keep still. He pressed and rubbed his palms against his knees as he sat, presumably to try and stop his hands from shaking. "Every time someone dies, I relive all of the other deaths. Over and over." He shook his head and looked back down at the floor and the tremor began again.

"That's a very normal response," Maj. Johns said. I nodded and Staff Sgt. Johnson nodded back at us sadly, and then looked away.

"You know, I think going home on leave really told me how bad I was."

"What happened on your leave?" Maj. Johns asked.

"Well, not too much really. Well, the first few days were good."

"What did you do the first few days?"

"I checked into a nice hotel and got a bottle of scotch and I didn't come out for about four or five days. It was great. I didn't get drunk. I just sipped, you know?"

"What were you doing in there all that time?" Maj. Johns asked.

"Just staring at the wall really," he answered, and then drifted his gaze past us as if remembering. "I didn't turn on the TV or anything. I just stared at the wall. Well, for the first three days anyway. I know it sounds weird but it was really great."

"Then what happened?"

"Well, then my girlfriend came. And don't get me wrong. I love her and she's a great girl and all but it just wasn't the same after she came. She's great though. She's so understanding."

"How did things go with your girlfriend? Did you get along okay?"

"Oh yah, we didn't fight at all. No, we got along. But..." he looked from Maj. Johns toward me and hesitated.

"But what, man?" I asked.

"Well, I couldn't do it, you know? I mean sex. We didn't have sex at all. Her skin just felt really weird. You know what I mean?" He sort of squinted and cocked his head to the side slightly when he asked if we knew what he meant.

"No, not exactly. What did her skin feel like to you? Describe it to us," Maj. Johns replied.

"Like rubber, like an animal," he crinkled his cheeks as he remembered, as if it were repulsive to him. "Like she wasn't real."

We talked with Staff Sgt. Johnson for a while longer. He was one of the worst we had ever seen. When we mentioned the thought of him taking his squad out again he simply said, "I can't. I won't. I won't load another body onto that chopper. I can't. I won't."

The politics of food

Are the same the world over. Take what you can get, use who you can exploit, ignore safety and health hazards, get the money:

Today, China does not only produce clothes, electronics and toys, but exports a variety of food items. I challenge a garlic consumer, just to take this one example, to go to the market in Dubai, Muscat, Beirut, London or Los Angeles to test this theory. We all buy the same garlic made in China, packaged in 3, 5 or 6 counts in purple mesh bags, that bear the "Super" tag, followed by the number 3 or 5 or 6.

These innocuous labels carry the "Product of Global Farms" label in Arabic or English (or any in other language), along with a price bar code, although they are all from the same origin.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this "garlic" phenomenon since it is a function of supply and demand. Yet, something is amiss when exporters flood markets on the backs of cheap labourers [workers who suffer "gulaosi," in Chinese "to be literally worked to death,"] and importers, who fling safety records out the window for immediate financial gains.

Working conditions in many countries - and not just in Asia - are poor and labour laws are either non-existent, or inadequately drafted.

In truth, manual and increasingly technical labourers everywhere, are expendable although periodic calls to address dire conditions are made after every confrontation. Often modest modifications are introduced after illegal industrial actions result in work stoppages.

Still, for all the promises made by managers to eliminate sweatshop work conditions, few trade unions are created to protect workers from outright exploitation.

Know where your products come from. Buy locally and seasonally if you can. Be aware.

Cheney's mindcontrol over Georgie is fading

And the Deciderer Commander Guy is coming to and wondering why everyone on earth thinks he's a fucking bastard:

There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.

On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney's team and acolytes -- who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy.

The Pentagon and the intelligence establishment are providing support to add muscle and nuance to the diplomatic effort led by Condi Rice, her deputy John Negroponte, Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, and Legal Adviser John Bellinger. The support that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and CIA Director Michael Hayden are providing Rice's efforts are a complete, 180 degree contrast to the dysfunction that characterized relations between these institutions before the recent reshuffle of top personnel.

However, the Department of Defense and national intelligence sector are also preparing for hot conflict. They believe that they need to in order to convince Iran's various power centers that the military option does exist.

But this is worrisome. The person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney. The person in Iran who most wants a conflict is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force would be big winners in a conflict as well -- as the political support that both have inside Iran has been flagging.

[snip]

The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.

According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands.

Iran is next on the to-do list for the neocons. They may never get another chance at Iran, so it doesn't matter that Afghanistan and Iraq are in ruins, full speed ahead!



Bring me the ring....

Al-Qaeda is coming tegitcha!!

They are going to climb out from under yer bed and eat yer children! (Dammit, Dick, they ain't gitting as skeert as they used ta!)

Attaturk at Rising Hegemon has the pics.

Watch Georgie make a tangle of the reasons why we shouldn't be cynical:



Projects alot, doesn't he?

Countdown

100 to one:

Pregnant women are stupid

Or at the least hysterical and irrational. They really can't think for themselves and need some guidance on what to do.

I've stolen Scott Lemieux's entire post over at Lawyers, Guns and Money because he has the most teeth-grindingly awful quotes in links that make you wonder what century we've wandered into. Have we warped back in time and not noticed?:

Jill Filipovic points us to this Times article about the new strategy to justify using state coercion to force women to carry pregnancies to term by claiming that women are too irrational to know what's good for them, and offers a modest proposal. I would also urge you to read Reva Siegel and Sarah Blustain (see also here.) Quite simply, these justifications are premised on 19th-century conceptions of women as not being rational agents. And such justifications evidently underpin a great deal of anti-choice discourse and policy (most obviously seen in the fact that the official Republican position is that abortion is murder but women who obtain them should be entirely exempt from legal sanctions.) At least Kennedy was decent enough to give away the show, admitting that these assertions are backed by "no reliable data," leaving us with meaningless claims that some women may regret their decision to obtain abortions in retrospect. (If some women regret getting married, can we ban that too? How about anecdotal evidence about women who become depressed after becoming mothers, does this justify state-mandated abortions?) These arguments aren't about women's health; they're about assumptions that women are incapable of making moral judgments, period. That this view is not only part of our national discoruse but has been endorsed by five Supreme Court justices at this late date is dismaying.

...Bean connects the dots. See also Shakes, Jill2 and what Digby said.

Digby:

The "great moral issue" of when life begins is fascinating I'm sure. Much more fascinating than whether the state can compel people to bear children against their will. But I guess that's an argument for another day. Today, we are talking about the meaning of "life" and that has no bearing on the vessel that contributes its DNA and lifeblood, incubates it for nine months inside itself and potentially bears its siblings. Certainly that vessel's personhood and agency is irrelevant to the much greater issue of blastocyst rights. Why even bring it up?

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast:

The idea of a male Supreme Court Justice, or for that matter, a woman who had an abortion and wishes she hadn't, thinking he or she has the right to dictate what any other woman does is repugnant. There is no credible scientific research indicating widespread mental illness resulting from abortion, and that this bogus notion has crept into government is a crime. And to hide behind a paternalistic "We're just trying to save your from your evil, unchaste self" notion of "We know what's best for you" is insulting.

In this life we're all going to do things we regret. As the years went by and I hadn't changed my mind about not having children, people would ask me, "Well, what are you going to do if you regret your decision later on?" And I would say, "Live with it." Because we make decisions every day. Some of them are intelligent decisions and some are stupid. But we all, male and female, have to live with the consequences of what we do. We do what seems right at the time, and if we have regrets later on, well, such is life. Abortion is no different.

I'd post more but I've got to go get some guidance from my husband. He's the one without the womb so obviously so much more capable of thinking and stuff.

Back then the offerings to the gods were symbolic icons

Not sacrificial soldiers slaughtered on the altars of Greed, Oil, and Eternal War:

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Archaeologists in central Greece have discovered thousands of miniature clay pots and statuettes in the ruins of an ancient sanctuary possibly dedicated to the Three Graces, officials said on Wednesday.

In volume, it is one of the richest finds in recent years.

Excavations near Orchomenos, 80 miles northwest of Athens, revealed sparse remains of retaining walls from a small rural shrine, a Culture Ministry statement said.

But a rock-carved shaft was found to contain thousands of pottery offerings, dating from the early 5th century B.C. until at least the 3rd century B.C, the statement said.

The finds included miniature pots, clay figurines of women and animals, as well as clay busts and lamps.

What? Can't a country do war exercises?

So what if it's right on off the coast of Iran? The Persian Gulf is a small place! With all the warships and subs we have here, there might just be an acci... OMG!! Did you see that? One of our ships had a collision!! Bomb Iran! Bomb it now!! Bom... oh. Just us. Jeez, tell the admiral to stop making the ship do wheelies.

Carry on:

THE US today threatened new UN sanctions to punish Iran's nuclear drive as it ratcheted up tensions with the biggest display of naval power in the Gulf in years.

A bristling US armada led by two aircraft carriers steamed into waters near Iran for exercises, hours before UN watchdogs said Iran was expanding its uranium enrichment program in defiance of international sanctions.

[snip]

The US Navy said the Gulf exercises were not directed at Iran but Mustafa Alani, senior analyst with the UAE-based Gulf Research Centre, said it was no coincidence the powerful flotilla arrived on the day of the IAEA report.

"The aim of this step, which coincides entirely with the end of the UN deadline (to suspend enrichment), is to send a clear message to Iran that a military option is available to Washington," Mr Alani said.

The carriers USS John Stennis and USS Nimitz sailed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf along with a helicopter carrier and amphibious assault ships carrying an estimated 2200 marines.

And here:

WASHINGTON - As the United States and Iran prepare to hold talks on stabilizing Iraq, tensions between Tehran and Washington are ratcheting up again.

The U.S. Navy on Wednesday began its largest war games off the Iranian coast since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, with two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers leading a flotilla of nine ships, dozens of combat aircraft and more than 2,100 Marines.

As the air and sea exercises commenced, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reported that Iran is expanding its nuclear program - which U.S. officials charge is aimed at developing nuclear weapons - in defiance of U.N. Security Council demands that it suspend uranium enrichment.

Iran also has stepped up arms shipments to insurgents battling American troops and the U.S.-backed governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. For the first time, Iran has begun supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan with explosively formed projectile bombs, which have been used to destroy U.S. armored vehicles in Iraq, the officials said.

These developments are part of a wider pattern of tit-for-tat actions and reactions that some members of Congress, U.S. officials and Arab governments worry could escalate into an armed confrontation.

Another example of the back-and-forth: As U.S. forces in Iraq continue to hold five Iranians it seized from a diplomatic facility in Irbil in the Kurdish zone, Iran has detained three Iranian-Americans, among them Haleh Esfandiari, a leading Middle East expert at the at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Let me just repost what I put up February 12 of this year:

In the Strait of Hormuz:

U.S. Navy nuclear submarines maintaining vigil off the coast of Iran indicate that the Pentagon’s military plans include not only control over navigation in the Persian Gulf but also strikes against Iranian targets, a former commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Eduard Baltin has told the Interfax news agency.

“The presence of U.S. nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf region means that the Pentagon has not abandoned plans for surprise strikes against nuclear targets in Iran. With this aim a group of multi-purpose submarines ready to accomplish the task is located in the area,” Admiral Baltin said.

He made the comments after reports that a U.S. submarine collided with a Japanese tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.

“American patience is not unlimited,” he said. “The submarine commanders go up to the periscope depth and forget about navigation rules and safety measures,” the admiral said.

Currently there is a group of up to four submarines in the Persian Gulf area, he said. So far they only control navigation in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and in the Arabian Sea, he said. They might receive different orders in future: to block off the Gulf of Oman, that is the Iranian coast, and, if need be, launch missile strikes against ground targets in Iran, he said.

We've packed so many warships and subs into the area, 'accidents' are bound to happen:

The Straits of Hormuz carry a vast quntity of the worlds oil in a huge number of ships. Traffic is very heavy there. There is a “Traffic Separation Scheme” in place that separates opposing shipping traffic to reduce the possibility of collision in this vital, and narrow, passage.

The USS Newport News and the Mogamigawa were travelling in the same direction so the “Traffic Separation Scheme” did not offer any protection to them. Since the USS Newport News was fully submerged the Mogamigawa was not even aware of her presence and could not take action to avoid the collision.

As LondonYank observes:

Somehow I always thought it would be other guys who would sink a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz to block the Persian Gulf. I reckoned without the peculiar incompetence of this administration and the bad luck our military has had in the region.

Update: And Francis Townsend (a White House 'Counter Terror' Official) sounds just a little bit too excited to tell us that Bush is keeping all options on the table (starts at 1:13):

Keith Olbermann takes the Democrats to the woodshed

Which is better than the tarring and feathers we had planned.

Update: It's been YouTubed:

Keith Olbermann: (watch the video at this link or this one.)

A Special Comment about the Democrats’ deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq—and to do so on his terms:

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.

Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:

Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”;

The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;

The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.

You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.
You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning... is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.
Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.

And this President!
How shameful it would be to watch an adult... hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.
But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm’s way, are bled white.
You lead this country, sir?
You claim to defend it?
And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness—your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs—you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.
How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.
Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally—first, last and always—that the troops would not suffer.
A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a ‘second surge,’ but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe—even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there.
Well, any true President would have done that, Sir.
You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.

Not that these Democrats, who had this country’s support and sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can carry home.

“We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame,” Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. “My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…”

That’s what this is for the Democrats, isn’t it?

Their “Neville Chamberlain moment” before the Second World War.
All that’s missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee “peace in our time,” but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.
The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.
Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.

And where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening?
See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself?

Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is ancient history now.

The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided... tomorrow.
The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the President’s dishonest construction “fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy,” the promise of tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do, and now perceive your ears as closed to practical politics.
Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us.

Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats... have failed us.
They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.

Mr. Bush and his government... have failed us.
They have behaved venomously and without dignity—of course.
That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted.
We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here.

With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidates have (so far at least) failed us.

They must now speak, and make plain how they view what has been given away to Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in the thousand tomorrows to come.

Because for the next fourteen months, the Democratic nominating process—indeed the whole of our political discourse until further notice—has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become about one thing, and one thing alone.
The electorate figured this out, six months ago.
The President and the Republicans have not—doubtless will not.
The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay there—and permanently.
Because, on the subject of Iraq...
The people have been ahead of the media....
Ahead of the government...
Ahead of the politicians...
For the last year, or two years, or maybe three.

Our politics... is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.
Mr. Bush has failed.
Mr. Warner has failed.
Mr. Reid has failed.
So.
Who among us will stop this war—this War of Lies?
To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.
To all the others—presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.