The Escalation

Our Mercenaries in Iraq, by Jeremy Scahill, appears on After Downing Street today.

Bush made no mention of the downing of the helicopter during his State of the Union speech. But he did address the very issue that has made the war's privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy — the need for more troops. The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years. He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.

"Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them," Bush declared. This is precisely what the administration has already done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input, with its revolution in military affairs. Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory.

The State of the Union Policy Initiatives are highlighted further on the White House web page. But, interestingly, there is no mention in the State of the Union Policy Initiatives about the Civilian Reserve Corps.

Scahill need not have bothered to remind us that

Further privatizing the country's war machine — or inventing new back doors for military expansion with fancy names like the Civilian Reserve Corps — will represent a devastating blow to the future of American democracy.

But when the President and his Administration talk about escalating the so-called, "War On Terror" (SCWOT), it's important that we know what they mean.

According to the New York Times,

the Bush administration has authorized the American military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of a new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence in the Middle East and to give up its nuclear ambitions.

In the same article, Bush Allows Force Against Iranian Agents In Iraq, David Stout goes on to report that

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was to hold a news conference at the Pentagon this afternoon. In the meantime, an overriding question was whether the administration had indeed adopted a new, more aggressive approach toward Iranians operating in Iraq.

And according to Dafna Linzner of the Washington Post, in her article, Troops Authorized to Kill Iranian Operatives In Iraq,

The new "kill or capture" program was authorized by President Bush in a meeting of his most senior advisers last fall, along with other measures meant to curtail Iranian influence from Kabul to Beirut and, ultimately, to shake Iran's commitment to its nuclear efforts. Tehran insists that its nuclear program is peaceful, but the United States and other nations say it is aimed at developing weapons.

The administration's plans contain five "theaters of interest," as one senior official put it, with military, intelligence, political and diplomatic strategies designed to target Iranian interests across the Middle East.

So as the fighting in Baghdad intensifies, and BushCo wratchets up the ground forces, the reality is a deepening of the direct conflict with Iran, both against their agents in Iraq as well as against their proxy forces throughout the region.

Today Alternet picked up Robert Parry's article, The 'War On Terror' is Really The War On Our Republic. After decrying the years of lies, increase in government secrecy, erosion of human rights and civil liberties, and the military buildup, Parry concludes by saying,

But the bottom line for Bush's "war on terror" is that it won't just cost countless lives and hundreds of billions of dollars; it also is doomed to fail, at least as presently constituted. If it lasts much longer, it is certain, too, to deliver a death blow to the noble American Republic.

bushco

There's more

In his Friday op-ed spot, Krugman takes up the issue of the independent-minded US attorneys being systematically pushed out and replaced by Republican operatives. He also added a little more spice to the leftovers from yesterday's testimony in front of the Judiciary Committee by Attorney General Gonzales:

In Senate testimony yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to say how many other attorneys have been asked to resign, calling it a “personnel matter.”

But with his usual penetrating insights, Professor Krugman sorts out more of the malfeasance behind the scenes of chicanery and blockheaded clowning in the hallowed institutions of American civilization.

As Paul Kiel of TPMmuckraker.com — which has done yeoman investigative reporting on this story — put it, this clause in effect allows the administration “to handpick replacements and keep them there in perpetuity without the ordeal of Senate confirmation.” How convenient.

Mr. Gonzales says that there’s nothing political about the firings. And according to The Associated Press, he said that district court judges shouldn’t appoint U.S. attorneys because they “tend to appoint friends and others not properly qualified to be prosecutors.” Words fail me.

Mr. Gonzales also says that the administration intends to get Senate confirmation for every replacement. Sorry, but that’s not at all credible, even if we ignore the administration’s track record. Mr. Griffin, the political-operative-turned-prosecutor, would be savaged in a confirmation hearing. By appointing him, the administration showed that it has no intention of following the usual rules.

The broader context is this: defeat in the midterm elections hasn’t led the Bush administration to scale back its imperial view of presidential power.

On the contrary, now that President Bush can no longer count on Congress to do his bidding, he’s more determined than ever to claim essentially unlimited authority — whether it’s the authority to send more troops into Iraq or the authority to stonewall investigations into his own administration’s conduct.

The next two years, in other words, are going to be a rolling constitutional crisis.

So what do we have to say to all the unconvinced, noncommittal CONSERVATIVES who say to me, "Oh I don't think we should/can/ought to impeach Bush and Cheney!" "We won!" "That's a waste of time?"



We don't really have any choice. Nothing right is going to happen as long as they're in there. And there's too much that can go wrong.

Sinking Into Waste and Want

Last night we watched, Walk The Line, the story of Johnny Cash. It says something about the idea of "entertainment" in our culture when somebody with a Master's degree watches a boring movie about a boring country singer for entertainment, and then needs to spend forty-five minutes watching the interview clips on the website before he understands what the movie was supposed to be about.

But that was Johnnie's take on life, too, in a way. I guess it's appropriate that such a film should hit the theaters and the video screens today, because today is a time of dislocation, depression, cultural regression and enormous human disappointment and frustration.

For example,

The American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management.

We invaded Iraq and privatized the rebuilding of the country. Oops.

Today Reuters has an article describing a running squabble in the international news coverage of diplomatic relations between Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki and Condoleezza Rice.

Baghdad Bombs Kill 19 As Violence Mounts, by Miriam Karouny includes this candid exchange:

Maliki also criticised Bush for complaining about the manner of Saddam Hussein's execution and saying that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was helping "terrorists" by noting publicly that political problems could cost Maliki his job.

"It seems to me that Bush has given in to domestic pressure," Maliki said of Bush's criticism this week that his government had "fumbled" the hanging of Saddam, which was marred by Shi'ite officials making sectarian jibes, captured on video.

"Maybe he has lost control of the situation," the prime minister added, saying Bush was normally a strong character.

Of Rice, Maliki was quoted as saying: "I would advise Condoleezza Rice to avoid statements that may aid terrorists."

I suppose with Scooter Libbey on trial for perjury, BushCo is counting their blessings that the Decider and his Vice President probably aren't going to be impeached. Everything else is other people's problems.

On the domestic front, the country was treated on Thursday to the spectacle of Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States of America, "testifying" in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The New York Times heralded the event with grandiose suggestions about Bush's crumbling clout to trample on the Constitution and expand Presidential powers to forward his domestic security agenda. In White House Retreats Under Pressure, by Scott Shane, the Times speculates that:

The Bush administration’s abrupt abandonment on Wednesday of its program to eavesdrop inside the United States without court approval is the latest in a series of concessions to Congress, the courts and public opinion that have dismantled major elements of its strategy to counter the terrorist threat.

But this is wishful thinking. In fact, before the end of the article, Shane admits,

The several proposals pending in Congress to rein in the N.S.A.’s eavesdropping may now become moot.

In other words, by merely signaling to the Judiciary Committee that they are "going legal" with the domestic spying program, BushCo has deflated the opposition.

The extent of the effrontery in this dynamic became evident in Glenn Greenwald's report on the Gonzales hearing.

For all the posturing and grandiose speech regarding the Epic Terrorist Threat, Gonzales spent a good deal of time testifying on less emergent problems:

So in the middle of the Epic, Overarching, Greatest and Most Important War of Civilizations of this Time and Any Other Time, Alberto Gonzales and Orrin Hatch spent their time at a Congressional hearing designed to exercise Justice Department oversight talking solmenly about Girls Gone Wild.

This is nothing less than reducing the people's government of our country, and the Senate's solemn duty of oversight to the chicanery of clownish distractions. It's another tactic for "running out the clock."

Greenwald points out that Gonzales's testimony on the re-legalized, reined-in domestic spying program revealed nothing about how the program has really changed, whether or not it actually complies with FISA now, whether it will comply with FISA in the future, or even whether BushCo actually thinks they have to obey FISA anyway.

Greenwald speculates:

What seems to have happened is that they convinced one single FISA judge whom they like to sign a broad, sweeping Order allowing them to do everything they were doing before but declaring it all to be in compliance with FISA. That is why the Committee Democrats are so eager to get the Order. But, as Schumer pointed out, they could just start eavesdropping without FISA warrants again any time they want because they continue to insist that they have that power. And if they did, we would never know (unless someone told Jim Risen again).

There's a trend here. This, notice, is following right on the heels of Charles D. Stimson's outrageous remarks last week in which he publicly attacked the attorneys of major law firms, which he then attempted to blacklist, for their pro bono defense work on behalf of the untried and unrepresented prisoners at Camp X-Ray.

The Times reports:

A senior Pentagon official apologized on Wednesday to the lawyers of Guantánamo Bay detainees for suggesting that corporations should consider severing business ties with law firms that represent the detainees.

Yesterday, Steve Dannhauser sent around this email to the Firm:

Last week, a mid-level official in the Department of Defense criticized a number of major law firms, including ours, for their representation of the detainees being held at the Guantanamo military base. The official even went so far as to suggest that the corporate clients of these firms should consider taking their legal business elsewhere. The remarks have received widespread condemnation from numerous organizations and bar associations throughout the country, and have been disavowed by more senior officials in the administration.
The Supreme Court has determined that those being held at Guantanamo are entitled to counsel in defending themselves. The provision of legal representation to individuals who would otherwise go unrepresented is a fundamental ethical obligation of the legal profession in this country and part of the pro bono tradition of this and other firms, even where we do not believe in what those needing representation represent. It is for this reason that our firm, like many others, accepted these representations.
I have personally received an outpouring of support from many, including clients, for our pro bono efforts on behalf of Guantanamo detainees. We should all be deeply gratified – and proud – of this response.

So, who cares? BushCo tried to lock the country and the Constitution in a dark, dank cellar and throw away the key. Now they're publicly eating crow in every forum in every society in the world.

But they've dragged the country, and possibly the world, into the quagmire with them. As they drown in the muck of their own making, we're all left grasping for lifelines while the quicksand keeps rising.

Though the projected budget deficit shrank significantly by the end of the year, mainly due to lower flood insurance liabilities and increased corporate tax revenues, along with the revenue from the sale of the broadband spectrum, the long term budget and economic outlook remains iffy.

Who knew that the House and the Senate were unable to reconcile a budget for 2007, and are just operating on the House budget "deemed" to have been passed.

Behind the scenery of all the political melodrama and slapstick of the last few months,

the House budget plan is now in force in the House of Representatives (but not the Senate) as if it had been adopted by a House-Senate conference committee and then approved by both houses of Congress.

The plan would cut funding for domestic “discretionary” (or non-entitlement) programs by $10.3 billion in fiscal year 2007 and $167 billion over five years, relative to the Congressional Budget Office baseline. (The baseline reflects the amounts that CBO estimates to be needed to maintain current levels of service in these programs, and equals the 2006 funding levels adjusted for inflation.) The plan also would reduce entitlement programs by $5.1 billion over five years. House committees would be required to produce entitlement reductions of $6.8 billion, but $1.7 billion would be allowed for increased entitlement spending, apparently for outstanding flood insurance claims.

The savings from these program reductions would not, however, be used for deficit reduction. They would instead be used to offset a portion of the cost of the budget plan’s $228 billion in tax cuts, as well as its defense spending increases. The net result would be significant further increases in the deficit. The plan would increase the deficit over the next five years by $254 billion above what deficits would be if current policy was left unchanged.

In a Democracy where tax cuts take precedence over fundamental social programs and fiscal responsibility, citizens have to wonder who their representatives really represent, or whether our whole society is simply so corrupt that everyone accepts the quicksand status quo. We look backward wistfully on the days when people knew they had to walk the line.

Energo-fascism

Michael Klare is still smashing up the china shop of BushCo idols with his Tom Dispatches.

He offers this excerpt from Vladimir Putin's doctoral dissertation, Mineral Raw Materials in the Strategy for Development of the Russian Economy:

"The state has the right to regulate the process of the acquisition and the use of natural resources, and particularly mineral resources, independent of on whose property they are located," he wrote. "In this regard, the state acts in the interests of society as a whole." No better justification for Energo-fascism can be imagined.

Klare has a lot to say on this in terms of recent Russian energy policy.

In December, Gazprom pulled the same sort of trick on Belarus, demanding a major readjustment of prices from a close (and impoverished) ally that had recently been showing mild signs of independence.

This, then, is another face of Energo-fascism in Russia: the use of its energy as an instrument of political influence and coercion over weak have-not states on its borders. "It is not that energy is the new atomic weapon," Cliff Kupchan of the Eurasia Group consultancy told the Financial Times, "but Russia knows that petro-power, aggressively and cleverly applied, can yield diplomatic influence."

I can think of another country that would love to have more energo-diplomatic influence.

Dreiser Moment

An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser is the story of a love affair that turns foul. It inspired the film, A Place In The Sun.

We're arriving at a Dreiser moment today in America. Between the military, the economy, the White House and the media, we're concocting an epic, 2nd rate tragedy, and I don't even want to wait for the ending to find out what happens.

I spent an hour talking to Kim Jones about how we want to move to Europe because we're so disappointed in the future prospects for life in this country. It's not even the surge in Iraq or the military and intelligence spying, either, as much as the economic forecast as portrayed in Faux's, The Global Class War or Uchitelle's, The Disposable American.

It's as if my worst fears about American leadership economically selling out the people, the country and the future are coming true.

Wow. When I think of the willow tree outside Audubon's back door, overlooking the long grassy slope down to the Schuylkill, and the perfect sunlight and air of the moments I spent there, and that Audubon must have spent there! Or I think of the quiet, unassuming grave of Winfield Hancock, or the statue of Tedeuscum, and I know that this country, this people--all people--are being cheated by our leaders and the corporate media we rely on to keep us honestly informed.

Tonight I watched the local Fox 5 news with Loretta. There was a story about high school girls beating another girl up. They showed the footage several times of 2 or 3 girls pulling a younger girl's hair, punching her and kicking her. Then there was the story of a contractor taking payoffs, of a caterer stiffing her help for their paychecks. There was also a story about the capture of a cop-killer, twenty-three year old "career criminal." It was one petty story of nonvirtuous behavior after another.

It was a Dreiser moment. It was the last page of The Great Gatsby made real. It was all the innocence and virtue of America--of humanity--turned rotten by greed, lust, and violence.

Iranian Friction

Glenn Greenwald has an eye-popping blog entry on Unclaimed Territory. It has to do with the American mainstream media's attention deficit regarding Bush's Iranian intentions.

Greenwald claims that the rhetoric Bush used in his speech last night amounts to more than threats against Iran, should they interfere with American goals in Iraq. He says they amount to a declaration of war with Iran.

In some of his sharpest words of warning to Iran, Mr. Bush accused the Iranian government of “providing material support for attacks on American troops” and vowed to “seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies.”

He left deliberately vague the question of whether those operations would be limited to Iraq or conducted elsewhere, and said he had ordered the deployment of a new aircraft carrier strike group to the region, where it is in easy reach of Iranian territory.

While Mr. Bush has previously vowed to work diplomatically, largely inside the United Nations to stop Iran’s nuclear program, in this speech he said nothing about diplomacy.

This is alarming when viewed alongside the more than half a dozen incidents of threats of escalating regional conflict between the US and Iran over the last several months, including the dispatch of naval forces to the region, the arrest of high ranking Iranian military officers, the declaration by Israel of nuclear weapons capability and willingness to use it, and a new report from the BBC today about a US Army raid on the Iranian consulate in Irbil. That is an act of war.

In terms of the January 10th speech from the White House library, the decider signaled that the American and Iraqi security forces he's unleashing on Baghdad will be unrestrained.

In earlier operations, Iraqi and American forces cleared many neighborhoods of terrorists and insurgents, but when our forces moved on to other targets, the killers returned. This time, we'll have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared. In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter those neighborhoods -- and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.

Greenwald is right in his assertion, too, that this lays the groundwork for a near-inevitable conflict with the Iranians.

a war with Iran can happen in many ways other than by some grand announcement by the President that he wants to start a war, followed by a debate in Congress as to whether such a war should be authorized. That is the least likely way for such a confrontation to occur.

We have 140,000 troops (soon to be 20,000 more) sitting in a country that borders Iran and where Iran is operating, with an announced military build-up in the Persian Gulf imminent, increased war rhetoric from all sides, the beginning of actual skirmishes already, a reduction (if not elimination) on the existing constraints with which our military operates in Iraq, and a declaration by the President that Iran is our enemy in the current war.

That makes unplanned -- or seemingly unplanned -- confrontations highly likely, whether through miscalculation, miscommunication, misperception, or affirmative deceit.

So Bush is determined to carry out the AEI, PNAC, Weekly Standard, Fox News neocon-Office of Special Plans agenda. He wants us to go for all the marbles in the midEast, while we have the initiative. We're going to escalate into Iran, widen the war so we can bring our full arsenal to bear, and try to secure our access to oil and our military hegemony through one early showdown.

It's a pipe dream, though. No matter what we do to them, we'll never be able to consolidate our "victory." It's not our territory.

Warming the Subject

Marc Kaufman of the Washington Post writes in Climate Experts Worry as 2006 Hottest Year on Record in U.S. that the National Climatic Data Center reports

the record-breaking warmth -- which caused daffodils and cherry trees to bloom throughout the East on New Year's Day -- was the result of both unusual regional weather patterns and the long-term effects of the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned scientists said we have to realistically fight global warming in the next ten years if we want to pass on "a safe environment" for our children and grandchildren.

Experts have been pointing out that the last nine or ten years have all been among the twenty-five warmest years on record, which shows that evidence of global warming is not due to sporadic short term fluctuations in temperature.

Burning of fossil fuels is causing an increase in greenhouse gases, and there's a broad scientific consensus that is producing climate change,

according to Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Kaufman concluded that,

Climate scientists report that there has not been this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the past 650,000 years.

The Bush administration has rejected proposals to cap carbon dioxide emissions or impose carbon taxes as a way to limit global warming. Lawrimore said he believes the problem could and should be addressed by developing new technologies for powering vehicles and industry.

In a press release dated Tuesday, January 9, 2007, covering the Annual Climate Review Summary, on a positive spin,

NOAA scientists determined that the nation's residential energy demand was approximately 13.5 percent lower than what would have occurred under average climate conditions for the season.

The price of oil is coming down, too, though, so people won't be conserving on top of the decreased demand.

But it does seem like a form of cosmic equilibrium for global warming to decrease the need for people to burn fuel for heating.

Unfortunately, it won't be enough. BushCo is pressing the Iraqi parliament to allow US and British oil companies to profit from developing the Western Iraq oilfields. According to Fortson, Murray-Watson, and Webb of the Independent,

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil.

No one expects big players such as Exxon, BP and Shell to jump into the country until the security situation stabilises. They are jockeying to stake their claims now for exploitation later. "It's a mad rush to get something there," said James Paul, the executive director of Global Policy Forum, a New York watchdog group. "The companies are saying, 'Before any troops are withdrawn, we have to have these contracts.'"

All the money, resources, and lives we're spending to ensure American majors' access to Iraqi oil will be wasted if the atmosphere is too warm to allow its continued widespread use indefinitely.

It's more than likely that newer, cleaner technologies for energy production will supplant oil once the new technologies are developed and disseminated. They may already be more widespread and economically accessible now if it weren't for the US economy's addiction to oil.