US rejects all proposals on climate change

It appears as if Bush is to humiliate Blair one last time before he steps down by totally rejecting any prospect of a deal on climate change at the G8 summit in Germany next month, according to a leaked document.

Blair has expressed confidence that the US will sign up to "at least the beginnings" of actions to cut carbon emissions, but a leak from the US says that they are "fundamentally opposed" to the proposals.

The note, written in red ink, says the deal "runs counter to our overall position and crosses multiple 'red lines' in terms of what we simply cannot agree to".

"This document is called FINAL but we never agreed to any of the climate language present in the document ... We have tried to 'tread lightly' but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position," it says.

The tone is blunt, with whole pages of the draft crossed out and even the mildest statements about confirming previous agreements rejected. "The proposals within the sections titled 'Fighting Climate Change' and 'Carbon Markets' are fundamentally incompatible with the President's approach to climate change," says another red-ink comment.

Blair said, only on Thursday, that the US was moderating it's position on climate change as the summit approached, so this is embarrassing to say the least. It certainly now seems impossible that Blair will manage to get Bush to sign up to any proposal on climate change before he leaves office.

The truth is that Bush has given Blair nothing for all his support.

Before visiting the White House this month, the prime minister suggested that he was close to persuading George Bush to accept the establishment of carbon trading schemes, one of five main proposals drawn up ahead of the G8. But Washington rejected the sections on carbon trading, saying to back trading schemes would imply acceptance of emission caps.

It is impossible now to imagine the summit producing anything other than a meaningless agreement. I'm really not going to swipe at Blair now as I do think he has honestly tried to sway this stupid man the White House, but the thick little ideologue is obviously so sworn to his particular mindset - that ignores every scientific fact known on this subject - that he is not going to be swayed.

As well as cutting global emissions, Germany had stated in its draft that it wanted agreement to curb the rise in average temperatures this century to 2C and raise energy efficiency in power and transport by 20% by 2020. Both positions are compatible with policies in California and other US states, which have set their own targets and timetables.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, this week suggested that there was little hope of a deal. She said preliminary talks at the EU-Russia summit and in meetings with G8 members had been "difficult".

The director of Greenpeace, John Sauven, said the leaked document proved Britain had failed to influence the US. "Despite his protestations to the contrary Tony Blair's efforts to persuade George Bush of the importance of tackling climate change have singularly failed," he said.

Germany is now about to raise the stakes, saying that they will block decisions on all other matters until the US and others agree to make changes in environmental policies stating: "America doesn't want to commit to firm goals. We can't put the global future of our children at risk because of the narrow-mindedness of individual negotiating partners."

And "narrow-minded" is the best way to describe the Bush mindset. Blair had a hard time persuading a creationist of the importance of scientific research and it's implications for the future of the planet. We can hardly blame Blair for that, can we?

A man who believes that children should be taught creationism in schools obviously doesn't have any understanding of what scientific theory is, so Blair was obviously always hitting his head off a brick wall attempting to persuade such a person of the dangers of climate change.

However, it is the entire planet that will pay the price for Bush's stupidity.

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Pussy Party

Tags: Daily Show, Jon Stewart, Democrats, Iraq war, Iraq war funding

Choice - the Bush way....

Only on Planet Bush could these two statements be made in practically the same sentence.

I obviously thought he had weapons, he didn't have weapons; the world thought he had weapons.

And then, seconds later:

As you might remember back then, we tried the diplomatic route: 1441 was a unanimous vote in the Security Council that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. So the choice was his to make. And he made -- he made a choice that has subsequently left -- subsequently caused him to lose his life.

Saddam did disclose. He said he didn't have them. The problem was that Bush refused to believe that Saddam didn't have them.

And, given the fact that he didn't have the weapons, we can assume it was impossible for him to disarm a second time, so what was Saddam's choice again?

Tags: Saddam, Bush, 1441, press conference, Iraq war

Iran 'accused of attacks in Iraq to bolster US strategy'

A leading British think tank has stated what we all suspect anyway, that the Bush administration may be highlighting accusations that the Iranian government is behind attacks in Iraq in order to strengthen its hand in preparing for military strikes on Iran.

The independent think-tank Basic cast doubt on the US claims of links between attacks in Iraq and the government of Iran, claiming that the intelligence this was based on was "sketchy".

It has always seemed ludicrous to me that the Shia government of Iran would aid and fund the Sunni elements in Iraq who are actually the people fighting the coalition forces. Indeed, they are actually killing Iraqi Shias, which is what makes the Bush administrations accusations so nonsensical.

The UK and US governments have frequently accused Iran of aiding militant groups in Iraq who are attacking coalition forces. However, the report said that "despite efforts by the Bush administration to confirm the strength of evidence presented, doubt still surrounds the case against Iran, particularly with regard to the degree of direct involvement of the Iranian leadership.

"Whatever the true extent and nature of Iranian military action in Iraq, few independent analysts believe Tehran is playing a decisive role in the sectarian warfare and insurgency," said the report.

Turning to the US strategic motivation for highlighting the Iranian role in Iraq, Basic (British American Security Information Council) suggested that Iran could be a "useful scapegoat to divert the blame" for failures in Iraq away from the occupying powers. But also, "if Tehran can be cast as a source of regional instability in the eyes of the international community, then the US administration's hand will be strengthened as it seeks support for stronger measures to oppose Iranian nuclear ambitions".

In order to facilitate this new policy of turning logic on it's head, the administration set out a new strategic alignment in January of this year.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.”

She made this bizarre statement at the very moment that US soldiers are being killed by a Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

Seymour Hersh has already reported on this earlier this year:

Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”

So, in order to facilitate an attack on Iran the administration are turning logic on it's head, insisting that Iran is behind attacks on US troops in Iraq.

The real reason they are doing this is because they are refusing to enter into negotiations with Iran regarding her nuclear ambitions, which are, of course, perfectly legal under the nuclear non proliferation treaty as long as they remain for civilian purposes only. The US ultimately want Iran to desist from any nuclear development, which is why I suspect Bush is avoiding negotiations and is, instead, attempting to bully and cajole Iran into stopping it's nuclear programme.

In any negotiations the legality of Iran's civilian nuclear programme would have to be taken as a given under the nuclear non proliferation treaty and we would have to enter into an agreement of inspections to ensure that Iran had no plans to develop a nuclear weapon. Bush would be reluctant to go down this path and would simply prefer a non-nuclear Iran.

One of the consequences of Bush's demands that Iran suspend all nuclear enrichment before talks can begin - and the subsequent sanctions that were imposed because Iran refused to do so - is that the IAEA has been prevented from verifying how far down the line Iran's nuclear programme is.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has warned that there will be "major confrontation" unless a way is found to end this dispute.

I suspect that Dick Cheney and some Likud supporters would love a "major confrontation" with Iran, and Bush is certainly leaving himself with a diminishing set of options. Indeed, there may be some in the administration who would prefer attacking Iran rather than negotiating with her.

Let's be honest, Bush could easily meet the Iranians without them suspending uranium enrichment and arrange for inspectors to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but what he wants is for the nuclear club to be reserved for the US and it's allies.

Indeed, if the Iranians were to suspend nuclear enrichment in order to facilitate negotiations I think Bush would find himself in a corner. For how could the US, as a signatory to NNPT, tell Iran that it actually wanted that country to forego all it's rights to nuclear energy? Now, most of the planet have already worked out that the NNPT is a sham, as none of the nuclear powers who are signatories have made any attempt to disavow themselves of these weapons, which is their obligations under the treaty. No, they are rather using the treaty as a way of maintaining a nuclear club and reserving membership of that club for the select few.

So rather than attempting to solve this problem diplomatically, Bush - as always - is simply upping the ante.

President George Bush said he was instructing the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to press for tougher sanctions against Iran. "The world has spoken and said ... no nuclear weapons programmes. And yet they're constantly ignoring the demands," he said.

Of course, none of us know if Iran is developing a nuclear weapons programme, so Bush has no idea whether Iran is ignoring the world's demands. What he is doing here is conflating demands that Iran suspend it's perfectly legal uranium enrichment with his fear that she might develop a nuclear bomb and presenting one as proof of the other. It's the kind of linguistic sophistry that has come to define this administration.

However, unlike the situation that existed before the invasion of Iraq, when Bush was last issuing similar threats, the military options open to the US regarding Iran are much more limited.

The only serious options open to the US are air strikes, and they are almost guaranteed not to work.

Senior United States military commanders have told the Bush administration that military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities would probably fail to destroy them, the New Yorker magazine reported on Sunday.

"The target array in Iran is huge, but it's amorphous," the magazine quotes one unidentified general as saying.

And not only would they fail to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons, but the price for the US would be huge:

The senior commanders also warned that any attack could have "serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States," the article says, citing unidentified U.S. military officials.

Perhaps Bush is hoping against hope that Ahmadinejad is going to back down under the pressure of further sanctions, because otherwise - by refusing to negotiate unless Iran suspends uranium enrichment - Bush is backing himself into a very tight corner.

It's true, as always, that the US have a very large gun; but, in this instance, firing it might do more damage to their long term interests in the region than to their opponents.

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Republican memory loss

Hamas cabinet ministers seized by Israel troops

Mahmoud Abbas has been running around like a man demented attempting to negotiate a ceasefire between Hamas and Fatah forces and to stop the "absurd" rocket attacks from Palestinian militants on to Israel.

Perhaps, the Israelis are trying to help unite the Palestinians by arresting a Palestinian cabinet minister and 32 other Hamas officials, because that is certainly what they have achieved with even non-Hamas politicians objecting to members of their rivals being subjected to this treatment.

Troops moved into Nablus during the night and took the Palestinian Education minister Naser al-Shaer, three Hamas members of parliament, the pro-Hamas mayor and deputy mayor of the city and other Hamas officials in neighbouring towns and villages.

Mr Shaer's wife, Huda, said soldiers knocked on the door of their home and took him away. The mayors of Qalqiliya and Beita, and the head of the main Islamic charity in Nablus, Fayad al-Arba, were also detained. Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian Information minister and an independent, condemned the seizures as a "very serious escalation and an attack on Palestinian democratic institutions". He called on the international community to protest at what he said was an attack on the Palestinian Authority in breach of the Oslo agreements.

This is exactly what the Israelis did last year after the kidnap of Gilad Shalit and it is, again, being criticised by the international community.

The problem is not the arrest of Palestinian parliamentarians as no-one is arguing that parliamentarians are above the law; the problem is that last year parliamentarians were arrested and, to the best of my knowledge, there were not even any charges brought, let alone trials. This is a form of judicial kidnap, Israel seizing people important to the running of the Palestinian Authority's day to day affairs simply because she can.

The reasons for the arrests given by the Israelis would not stand up in any court of law, which is why they probably never send those arrested before one.

The Israeli military declared: "The Hamas terror organisation is currently involved in enhancing the terror infrastructure in the [West Bank] region, based on the model used in the Gaza Strip. The organisation exploits governmental institutions to encourage and support terrorist activity."

Amir Peretz, the Defence minister, by contrast linked the arrests directly to the continued rocket fire, which killed an Israeli woman in the southern border town of Sderot this week, declaring on Army Radio: "Arrests are better than shooting. The arrest of these Hamas leaders sends a message to the armed organisations that we demand that this firing [of rockets] stop."

You will notice that Peretz actually admits to kidnapping. He doesn't describe any crime that these men are supposed to have committed, but rather admits that they have been arrested because it "sends a message to the armed organisations".

I can't think of any other democracy - apart from Britain and the UK with their bizarre non-democratic reactions to terrorism - where people could be arrested with no charges being brought against them, nor any trial looming. They are arrested simply in the hope that their arrest might send a signal to others.

It's the sort of thing that one might imagine Mugabe doing. Certainly it is the kind of reasoning he might use to justify his actions.

However, even in the US and Britain, the people detained are at least suspected of possible involvement in terrorism, or at least some vague connection to it. I find the British practice of house arrest and the American habit of locking people in Guantanamo deplorable enough, but the Israelis are actually going much further.

They are not even pretending that these men have committed any crime, they are arresting them simply to warn others.

Bush and Blair have often stated that terrorists want to destroy our way of life. But what's really interesting is how quickly - certainly with regard to law and due process - that we, in the west, have abandoned our commitments to certain tenets that we have, until now, used to define ourselves as civilised.

Now Israel leads the way showing us where we might go next. Arrest people who have committed no crimes, because it might send a signal to others.

The people leading us are looking less and less like governments, and more and more like gangs.

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Olbermann on the Democratic sell out

Olbermann takes the Dems to task over their failure to stop the Iraq war and the recent deal they did with the White House regarding the funding of this war.

Tags: Olbermann, Democrats, Republicans, Iraq war funding

Ex-Justice Aide Admits Politics Affected Hiring

Monica Goodling has admitted that she "crossed the line" when she took into consideration applicants political beliefs in what is the clearest indication yet that, under the Bush administration, the Justice Department is becoming politicised, caring more about party advantage than the writ of law.

Of course, she was only being so candid because she has been granted immunity from prosecution which means, unlike her boss when he took the stand and a bout of amnesia, she can actually tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

When she says she "crossed the line", she is actually admitting to crossing the line between what was legal and illegal.

She did eventually, after much probing, admit that she had broken the law:

Goodling stumbled several times before admitting, "The best I can say is that I know I took political considerations into account."

"Do you believe they were illegal or legal?" asked Scott.

"I don't believe I intended to commit a crime," she answered, confirming that Regent University graduates are indeed trained to speak in a lawyerly manner.

Scott pressed: "Did you break the law? Is it against the law to take those considerations into account?"

"I believe I crossed the lines," Goodling replied, "but I didn't mean to."

By "crossed the lines," Scott asked, did she mean that she had violated federal civil service laws?

Goodling responded: "I crossed the line of the civil service rules."

Scott clarified that those "rules" are, in fact, "laws."

And the lengths she went to in order to find out applicants political leanings was quite extraordinary.

She said she had done Google or Nexis searches on job candidates or searched their names on campaign-finance databases to see if they might have given money to Republican or Democratic candidates. She also pressed applicants’ references, at times, to ferret out the political background of the job candidates they were endorsing.

Civil service rules prohibit such questions when federal agencies are hiring or promoting staff members for career positions. Violations could be unlawful, although probably not a crime, Justice Department officials have said. Two internal investigative units have begun an inquiry into Ms. Goodling’s screening practices.

However, it was worth granting her the immunity as what she had to say was fairly important:

Goodling went on to:

• confirm that former DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson had compiled a list of US Attorneys who would be fired -- apparently for being insufficiently partisan in their inquiries and prosecutions -- and that Gonzales had been aware of the list and involved in meetings about it,

• place White House political czar Karl Rove in a room where the firings were discussed,

• acknowledge that, as early as 2OO5, there was talk about forcing US Attorneys out to make way for White House favorites and

• explain how US Attorneys were "rewarded" for helping to promote and defend the Patriot Act, at a time when that law was under attack as an assault on basic liberties.

There was plenty to make one think that Gonzales had been less than frank when he was questioned by the Committee. He stated that he had not spoken to any of his aides since the firings "to protect the integrity of this investigation".

However, that was not the story that Goodling told:

During a meeting in March before she resigned, Ms. Goodling said, Mr. Gonzales asked her questions that left her uncomfortable. She thought he might be trying to compare recollections, so their stories would be consistent if they were questioned about their actions, she said. “I just thought maybe we shouldn’t have that conversation,” she said.

Brian J. Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement that Mr. Gonzales “has never attempted to influence or shape the testimony or public statements of any witness in this matter, including Ms. Goodling. The statements made by the attorney general during this meeting were intended only to comfort her in a very difficult period.”

Nevertheless, it does appear that Gonzales was having the very conversations that he previously claimed not to have had.

Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott concluded by stating that in Alberto Gonzales' Department of Justice "the culture of loyalty to the administration was more important than loyalty to the rule of law."

There was very little that Monica Goodling had testified which contradicted that statement.

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Tags: Monica Goodling, Gonzales, fired US Attorneys

Most Palestinians killed in Israeli raids were civilians, Amnesty says

During last years military bombardment of Gaza, Israeli Security Forces killed more than 320 Palestinian civilians, a threefold increase on the previous year according to Amnesty International. During this same year 21 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinian militants, the lowest annual figure since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000.

The human rights group's 2007 report says that over half of the more than 650 Palestinians killed in 2006 were civilians, 120 of them children and young people under 18. Amnesty defines civilians, "as people that are reasonably supposed never to have been involved in armed operations".

While Amnesty said that dozens of Palestinians were killed in the West Bank it pointed out that most of the increase resulted from aerial and artillery bombardments in Gaza after the abduction of the Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit in late June and in response to increased Qassam rocket fire on Israel. These included, for example, the shelling of a house in the northern town of Beit Hanoun which killed 17 members of the Athamneh family.

The Israeli assault on Gaza was a war crime as it was an act of collective punishment against a group of people who had nothing to do with the kidnap of Gilad Shalit.

Indeed, it is very hard to think of any other country who would be backed by the US if they launched such a disproportionate response to one of their soldiers being kidnapped. Any other country that launched an aerial and artillery bombardment upon another over the kidnap of a soldier would almost certainly receive America's disapprobation.

Amnesty also accused soldiers and settlers of committing "serious human rights abuses, including unlawful killings against Palestinians mostly with impunity". Although it said settler attacks on farmers in the West Bank had decreased, they were continuing.

It said that, at times, security forces were present at such incidents and did not intervene. It also accused the security forces of often only opening investigations after the cases had been highlighted by journalists and human rights groups.

The Israeli military said yesterday it did its utmost "to avoid harming innocent people... in contrast to terror organisations that do their utmost to harm innocent civilians".

The Israelis often make this claim which is, of course, blatant nonsense. When Olmert strewed cluster bombs over civilian areas in southern Lebanon in the last days of last summers conflict, was he "doing his utmost to avoid harming innocent people"?

Indeed, Israel made a similar claim during the war last summer which was examined by Human Rights Watch and found to be nonsense. Israel claimed that many civilians were killed because Hizbullah were hiding weapons amongst the populace and, whilst there were cases of this happening, in many, many cases of innocent's killed this was found not to be the case.

Human Rights Watch investigated some two dozen bombing incidents in Lebanon involving a third of the civilians who by then had been killed. In none of those cases was Hizbullah anywhere around at the time of the attack.

How do we know? Through the same techniques we use in war zones around the world to cut through people's incentive to lie. We probed and cross-checked multiple eyewitnesses, many of whom talked openly of Hizbullah's presence elsewhere but were adamant that Hizbullah was not at the scene of the attack. We examined bombing sites for evidence of military activity such as trenches, destroyed rocket launchers and military equipment, or dead or wounded fighters. If we were unsure, we gave the IDF the benefit of the doubt.

The case of Kana shows how this works. After two Israeli missiles killed 28 civilians in a house there on July 30, the IDF initially charged that Hizbullah had been firing rockets from the vicinity of the targeted house. But Human Rights Watch investigators who visited Kana found that there had been no Hizbullah presence near the bomb site at the time of the attack. IDF sources later admitted to an Israeli military correspondent that Hizbullah wasn't shooting at all from Kana that day.

In some cases, the IDF trotted out video of Hizbullah firing rockets from a village. But it has yet to show that Hizbullah was in a civilian building or vehicle at the time of an Israeli attack that killed civilians. Blaming Hizbullah is simply not an honest explanation for why so many Lebanese civilians died. And without honest introspection, the IDF can't meet its duty and self-professed goal to do everything possible to spare civilians.

The truth is that "Israeli forces systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon".

One has to remember that the attacks on Gaza were taking place at the exact same time as Israel was bombarding Beirut, and was being conducted with the same reckless abandon. The bombardment of Gaza as a means of rescuing Gilad Shalit was not even what one could reasonably claim was a feasible policy. Indeed, there were many of us who thought the bombardment of Gaza might make it all the more likely that Gilad would be killed. It was an act of revenge upon a civilian population who had done nothing.

When one remembers the wanton destruction of last summer, the destruction of the Beirut's bridges, it's power plants, it's roads, it's buildings, it's airport, it's viaduct; one really has to wonder whether, if that level of damage had been wrought by an East European for the cause of rescuing kidnapped soldiers, if the individual who wrought such damage wouldn't be sitting in the Hague right now.

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Video: "I May Have Taken Inappropriate Considerations Into Account On Some Occasions. And I Regret Those Mistakes"

The Justice Department's former White House liaison testified to Congress today about her role in the firings of US Attorneys last year. In an opening statement, Monica Goodling told the committee, "Nevertheless, I do acknowledge that I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions. And I may have taken inappropriate considerations into account on some occasions. And I regret those mistakes"



Monica Goodling Takes the 5th, But Is Compelled to Testify

A hostage situation

Paul Krugman has an interesting take on the Iraq war funding fight over at the New York Times.

A Hostage Situation, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times:

There are two ways to describe the confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration over funding for the Iraq surge. You can pretend that it’s a normal political dispute. Or you can see it for what it really is: a hostage situation, in which a beleaguered President Bush, barricaded in the White House, is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders — the troops — if his demands aren’t met.

If this were a normal political dispute, Democrats in Congress would clearly hold the upper hand: by a huge margin, Americans say they want a timetable for withdrawal, and by a large margin they also say they trust Congress, not Mr. Bush, to do a better job...

But this isn’t a normal political dispute. Mr. Bush isn’t really trying to win the argument on the merits. He’s just betting that the people outside the barricade care more than he does about the fate of those innocent bystanders.

What’s at stake ... is the latest Iraq “supplemental.” Since the beginning, the administration has refused to put funding for the war in its regular budgets. Instead, it keeps saying, in effect: “Whoops! Whaddya know, we’re running out of money. Give us another $87 billion.” ...

What I haven’t seen sufficiently emphasized, however, is the disdain this practice shows for the welfare of the troops, whom the administration puts in harm’s way without first ensuring that they’ll have the necessary resources.

As long as a G.O.P.-controlled Congress could be counted on to rubber-stamp the administration’s requests, you could say that this wasn’t a real problem, ... just part of its usual reliance on fiscal smoke and mirrors. But this time Mr. Bush decided to surge additional troops into Iraq after an election in which the public overwhelmingly rejected his war — and then dared Congress to deny him the necessary funds. As I said, it’s an act of hostage-taking.

Actually, it’s even worse than that. According to reports, the final version of the funding bill ... won’t even set a hard deadline for withdrawal..., only an “advisory,” nonbinding date. Yet Mr. Bush plans to veto the bill all the same — and will then accuse Congress of failing to support the troops.

The whole situation brings to mind what Abraham Lincoln said ... in 1860, about secessionists who blamed the critics of slavery for the looming civil war: “A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!’ ”

So how should Congress respond to Mr. Bush’s threats? ... Confronting Mr. Bush on Iraq has become a patriotic duty.

The fact is that Mr. Bush’s refusal to face up to the failure of his Iraq adventure, his apparent determination to spend the rest of his term in denial, has become a clear and present danger to national security. Thanks to the demands of the Iraq war, we’re already a superpower without a strategic reserve, unable to respond to crises that might erupt elsewhere in the world. And more and more military experts warn that repeated deployments in Iraq — now extended to 15 months — are breaking the back of our volunteer military.

If nothing is done to wind down this war during the 21 months — 21 months! — Mr. Bush has left, the damage may be irreparable.

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Tags: Paul Krugman, Iraq war funding bill, Republicans, Democrats, Bush, Pelosi, Reid

Democrats Pull Troop Deadline From Iraq Bill

The Democrats have backed down in their battle with Bush over the funding of the Iraq war and have agreed, in what is a devastating U-turn, to allow a bill to go forward for a vote on war financing without a timetable for troop withdrawal being attached.

However, certain high profile Democrats have said that when the bill comes before the House that they will not vote for it.

But even so, many Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, indicated that they would not support the war money, meaning that a significant number of Republicans would have to sign on to ensure the plan’s approval.

Ms. Pelosi made clear that if money for the war was going to be provided without a timeline for withdrawal, it would be without her personal support. “I would never vote for such a thing,” Ms. Pelosi said as she entered the office of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, to put the final touches on the $120 billion proposal.

The Democrats appear to be bowing to the inevitable here as they simply do not have enough votes to overcome Bush's veto. However, the Democrats were elected to bring this war to a close and this strikes me as right up there with the most useless of gestures.

Pelosi won't vote for it but the chances are that, whatever version of the bill is finally passed, the war will slide on.

There are many anti-war groups who will be, rightly, very disappointed with this stance.

It was summed up best by Feingold:

“There has been a lot of tough talk from members of Congress about wanting to end this war, but it looks like the desire for political comfort won out over real action,” said Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, who was unsuccessful last week in his push for a withdrawal of combat troops by spring. “Congress should have stood strong, acknowledged the will of the American people, and insisted on a bill requiring a real change of course in Iraq.”

I'm with Feingold on this one. Talk is cheap, and it really is time that the Democrats grew some balls. They have, however, prepared a fall back position aimed at easing the pain:

In an effort to appease antiwar Democrats, the party’s leaders plan to allow two votes in the House. One would provide the war money, and seems likely to be opposed by large numbers of Democrats. The other, separated out to allow more Democrats to vote in favor, would include popular measures that are also part of the package, including a minimum wage increase and $17 billion in added domestic and military spending.

The bills would then be combined into one and sent to the Senate, with the idea of getting the measure to the president by the weekend.

And if Bush vetoes that, demanding that a clean bill be sent to him without any additions, will they cave in at that point?

This is far from a total victory for Bush though, as the new legislation will insist that the Iraqi government show progress on improving security and forging political unity.

Bush has always maintained that there was no room for Congressional intervention in the day to day running of Iraq and has always resisted benchmarks. The new bill not only has such benchmarks, but it has strong support from a number of Republicans.

“We don’t have a veto-proof Congress,” Mr. Reid said. “But no one can say with any degree of veracity that we haven’t made great progress, and this bill is further proof of that.”

The increase in the minimum wage is a significant victory for the Democrats, but it's a victory that comes at the cost of continuing a war that they were elected to end.

In these circumstances it's hard to get very excited about it at all.

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Tags: Democrats, Republicans, Iraq war funding, troop withdrawal, Iraq war, Pelosi, Reid, Bush

Bush may turn to UN in search for Iraq solution

The man who ignored the UN before invading Iraq, stating that he didn't need "a permission slip" to defend the United States of America, has performed a rather dramatic U-turn and now says that - if the surge fails - he plans to internationalise the Iraq dispute and find an expanded role for UN forces.

I'm sure other country's all over the world simply can't wait to send their youngsters into this American quagmire and help take the heat off the Republicans before the 2008 elections.

It's about as insane an idea as I have ever heard and the greatest admission of failure one could ever expect to hear from a man and an administration that have not only treated the UN with contempt but, by insisting that the UN must rubber stamp their wars, they have often acted as if they don't even understand what the UN was set up to do.

The move comes amid rising concern in Washington that President George Bush's controversial Baghdad security surge, led by the US commander, General David Petraeus, is not working and that Iran is winning the clandestine battle for control of Iraq.

"Petraeus is brilliant. But he is the captain of a sinking ship," said a former senior administration official who questioned whether Iraq's divided political leadership could prevent a descent into chaos. "Iraq's government is a mobile phone number that doesn't answer. Iraq probably can't be fixed."

Having said that he would know if the surge was working after three months, Bush increased the time needed to six months and there are now reports that, when Petraeus presents his "progress" report in September that Bush may ask for another six months.

While insisting that no decision had yet been taken on an extension, the Pentagon announced last week that 35,000 soldiers from 10 army brigades had been told they could expect to be deployed to Iraq by the end of the year. That would enable the US to maintain heightened troop levels of about 160,000 soldiers through to next spring.

According to an analysis published by Hearst Newspapers yesterday, the number of combat troops could almost double - to 98,000 - by the end of the year if arriving and departing combat brigades overlap. By the same calculation, the overall total including support troops could top 200,000 - an increase the report said amounted to a "second surge".

It seems obvious that, no matter what happens, Bush is not going to admit defeat here, and is simply piling more and more troops towards a problem that he is not fixing.

And to sweeten that bitter pill he plans to announce that he's inviting other nations to take over responsibilities that currently belong to the US. This would allow him to placate public and congressional opinion by talking of a drawdown of US forces.

There's only one problem with this plan. Why would any other nation wish to send troops into Iraq? Why should other nations take over a mess that is not theirs, which they did not vote for at the UN, and which the whole world can see is a disaster?

Why should the UN bail out Bush?

"The administration's plan calls for moving on several fronts," the former official said. "Firstly, there is the international plan to win political, economic and military support for the Iraqi government and state, not least by going to the UN and asking for a UN command and flag to supplant the US coalition command.

"Regionally, there is diplomacy aimed at mobilising more Arab neighbours to understand that there is no Sunni leader coming back to Baghdad and that countries like Saudi Arabia should support Maliki [Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's Shia prime minister] before he has no choice but to fully align with Iran," the official said.

"Internally, the plan is for US forces to help isolate takfirists (fundamentalist Salafi jihadis), peel off Sunnis from the insurgency, contain hardcore elements of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, and halt Iranian and trans-Syrian infiltration of troops and materiel."

This whole plan is typical of this regime in that it simply ignores reality and acts as if reality is something that the US can fashion as it likes on the ground. Maliki's government is already aligned with Iran and no amount of American wishful thinking is going to change that fact.

I also notice that, even when staring defeat in the face, Bush has still not found a realistic role for Syria and Iran in restoring order in Iraq as requested by the Baker Report. This is the policy of lunatics, the finest example of which is reported as Dick Cheney's "deep fall back option".

If all else failed, the US might seek an arrangement with Mr Sadr, if only to secure an orderly transition, the official claimed. "Cutting a deal with the Mahdi army is [vice-president] Dick Cheney's deep fallback option."

Good luck with that Dick, the last time Mr Sadr attended peace talks the US Army attempted to kill him, so I'm sure he'll be falling over himself to accept your invitation.

The US are said to be putting their hopes on the fact that Kofi Annan - one of the wars harshest critics - has been replaced by Ban Ki-moon at the UN. However, for this plan to work the other nations of the world would still have to vote to send their troops there to take the place of US forces and there are surely few nations who would be willing to do that.

Indeed, with the forthcoming election of Gordon Brown there must now be questions over how committed Britain is going to remain to the Iraq war as Brown has already given large hints that he intends to review Britain's involvement.

While it was uncertain whether the new "internationalised" approach to Iraq would get off the ground, the political stakes as the 2008 presidential and congressional elections approached could hardly be higher, the former administration official said.

"The blame game has already begun. The Democrats want to run against a 'chaos in Iraq' scenario. The Republicans will want to keep extending it [the surge] past next February. The White House may offer a schedule for a drawdown - but what does that really mean?... The only policy Republicans have is a policy of delaying the inevitable."

In a sign that personal as well as governmental damage limitation is under way, key Bush administration figures appear to be distancing themselves from current policy. National security adviser Stephen Hadley is expected to hand over many Iraq-related duties to Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, who some in Washington are already describing as a fall guy.

Similar senior-level role changes involving officials dealing with Iraq at the state department and Pentagon has fed speculation that people who helped launch Gen Petraeus's "sinking ship" are now abandoning it.

The Republicans can try as hard as they like to distance themselves from this conflict, but they will not succeed. For four years these people ignored international law and treated the UN as if it was an irrelevance, and there is a certain schadenfreude in watching these arrogant arseholes re-approaching the UN on their knees, although I am convinced that they have left it far too late for the UN to be able to help them.

The Republicans are hoping to avoid being punished for the disastrous policy that they forged ahead with against all world opinion, but there would be no justice if they were allowed to escape the consequences of their arrogant foolishness. Thousands of innocent people are dead because Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle and Wolfowitz wanted Saddam toppled at any cost. In order to facilitate this they "fixed the facts" around the policy.

Crimes on that scale deserve to be punished. And no amount of dancing around at the UN will ever make any of us forget whose war this really was.

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Majority in poll want Bush impeached.

There's fascinating vote taking place over at MSNBC asking whether or not President Bush should be impeached. So far there have been 446,358 responses and the overwhelming majority - 88% - favour impeachment.

Go over and cast your vote by clicking here.

I find it fascinating that, whenever the public are asked this question, they have a clarity of purpose that the Democrats seem to lack.

Here's how the figures stood for Clinton at the height of the Monika Lewinsky affair. That adds a bit of perspective doesn't it?

Click title to impeach.

Tags: Bush, impeachment, MSNBC

PEOPLE CHEER ON RON PAUL AT FUNDRAISER

This is the reaction he gets in Austin, Texas of all places. He gets applauded when he say that US Foreign policy is f@cked.

Tags: Ron Paul, Republican leadership contest

Godfather IV

Tags: Gonzales, Bush, wiretapping

Lebanese Army and Islamists Battle for 2nd Day

Once again death walks the streets of Lebanon. We had the horrors of the Israeli invasion last summer with it's brutal bombing of Beirut, we had the nightmare of children being killed by Olmert's hastily strewn cluster bombs after the war was over, and now we have internal violence reminding us all of the brutal civil war that for fifteen years gripped Lebanon.

The Lebanese Army are now spending a second day outside a Palestinian refugee camp battling members of a radical Islamist group and raising concerns for thousands trapped inside.

Government officials said at least 60 people had been killed — 30 soldiers, 15 militants and 15 civilians — in the fighting that began when a police raid on bank robbers early Sunday escalated into one of Lebanon’s most significant security crises since the end of the civil war in 1990.

The militant group, Fatah al Islam, which is thought to have links to Al Qaeda, fired antiaircraft guns and mortars and had night vision goggles and other sophisticated equipment. The Lebanese Army does not have such gear.

Lebanese television stations reported that among the dead militants were men from Bangladesh, Yemen and other Arab countries, although the reports could not be confirmed. Security officials said some of the men wore explosive belts used by suicide bombers.

Around the outskirts of the camp, called Nahr al Bared, the scene was reminiscent of Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s, with tanks and heavy armor rumbling past, occasionally opening fire at buildings in the camp, while snipers on rooftops fired at anything that moved inside.

It's a testament of the tinder box that Lebanon has become that all this fighting has come as the result of an attempt to arrest men accused of bank robbery. This has led to the deadliest internal fighting since the civil war which only ended in 1990.

That, of course, is the story that we are hearing. But there's another side to all of this.

This is being reported as if an attempt to arrest bank robbers has flared into something bordering on civil war. But this is ignoring the undercurrents. It's ignoring the fact that the west are attempting to shore up the government of Sionora, the same Western powers who backed Olmert has he pounded Beirut to dust have now, somehow, cast themselves as Lebanon's saviour. It's a bizarre situation indeed to watch the people who ignored his tears as he begged the world to stop Olmert's blatant collective punishment of the people of Lebanon for a crime they did not commit, now cast themselves as his partner in a war "to save democracy".

The truth is that Siniora's government is now desperately clinging to power, hanging literally by a thread, as Nasrallah and Hizbullah wait in the wings determined to take their reward for their victory over Israel, and that Bush and Co are equally determined to avoid them from obtaining it.

And caught in the middle of this tussle for power are the Palestinians, always the poor bloody Palestinians. Once again in refugee camps, reminding all of us of the horror of Sabra and Chatila, the memory of which might be the only thing that is restraining the Lebanese Army.

Bush, as always, sees the hands of outsiders. He relies on most people's ignorance of what is going on here to push his agenda. Predictably, he lays this scenario at the door of Syria.

"Extremists that are trying to topple that young democracy need to be reined in," President George Bush told the Reuters news agency. But Mr Bush, though deeply distrustful of Syria's role in Lebanon, stopped short of accusing Damascus of involvement. "I'll be guarded on making accusations until I get better information, but I will tell you there's no doubt that Syria was deeply involved in Lebanon. There's no question they're still involved," he said.

But there's another story here. It's the story of the neo-con support for Olmert's attempt to "wipe out" Hizbullah. It's the story of a war which Israel - thanks to goading from Bush and the neo-cons - entered into without a proper plan, and it's the story of a war which Israel lost.

Nasrallah and Hizbullah feel that it is time to pay the piper. Bush and Co are desperately slapping the bottom of the pond, muddying the picture so that it's impossible for anyone to actually tell what is going on here. Seeing al-Qaeda monsters and Syrian agents behind every tree.

And in the middle of this grotesque farce are the poor people of Lebanon. As is so often the case, they are the pawns in other people's chess games. And in the middle of this most recent spat, we have the Palestinian refugees, another group of people who often find themselves in the middle of other people's wars.

And as Bush has - in a rare moment of honesty - admitted, all of this is to prevent the government of Siniora from falling.

Which sort of takes for granted the answer to a larger question. Does Siniora's government deserve to stand?

When the US invaded Iraq they had enough power in the region to order the Syrians to leave Lebanon forthwith. As their power has drained down the Iraq plughole their ability to influence events in Lebanon has lessened, and their backing of Israel's insane attack upon the Lebanese last summer is the main reason that the government of Siniora now hangs over a precipice.

Both Olmert and Siniora retain office without anything that one could possibly call popular support. We do not yet know what price will be paid for the neo-con backed adventure that was last summer's Israeli-Lebanon war, but we do know that - in the interim - the immediate price will, as always, be paid by the poor people of Lebanon and the Palestinian refugees.

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Hands Held High

This is wonderful.



You can read the lyrics here.

Tags: Linkin Park, Hands Held High video

Congressman Ron Paul on the Late Edition

Ron Paul is the only Republican running for office that has the courage to break from the rhetoric that the rest of them have learned by rote.

Republicans are even said to be attempting to prevent him from taking part in further debates. He argues that peace is a positive message rather than a negative message, which sounds so foreign to anyone who has been listening to Bush for the past six years that it must boggle fellow Republican's minds. Paul's problem is that he is actually talking Republican values to a party that no longer holds such values. It has become the party of Coulter somewhere along the line.

Secret US plot to kill Al-Sadr

The Bush regime attempted to kill Muqtada al-Sadr after luring him into a house for peace negotiations and then attacking it, according to a senior Iraqi government official.

The revelation of this extraordinary plot, which would probably have provoked an uprising by outraged Shia if it had succeeded, has left a legacy of bitter distrust in the mind of Mr Sadr for which the US and its allies in Iraq may still be paying. "I believe that particular incident made Muqtada lose any confidence or trust in the [US-led] coalition and made him really wild," the Iraqi National Security Adviser Dr Mowaffaq Rubai'e told The Independent in an interview.

It is not known who gave the orders for the attempt on Mr Sadr but it is one of a series of ill-considered and politically explosive US actions in Iraq since the invasion. In January this year a US helicopter assault team tried to kidnap two senior Iranian security officials on an official visit to the Iraqi President. Earlier examples of highly provocative actions carried out by the US with little thought for the consequences include the dissolution of the Iraqi army and the Baath party.

This is yet another example of the recklessness with which this administration pursues it's aims.

It goes without saying that any attempts at negotiations between the US and al-Sadr will now prove almost impossible to bring about.

It appears that it 2004, when the US and the Mehdi Army were battling in Najaf, that the meeting was set up in the house in Najaf of Muqtada's father Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr who had been murdered by Saddam's gunmen with two of his sons five years before.

However, US Marines opened fire on the house before al-Sadr had even arrived and he was able to make his escape. It is hard to believe that an order to engage in this kind of treachery and double dealing could have come from anywhere but the very heights of the Bush administration. To allow an enemy to attend peace talks at which you attempt to kill them has got to be the lowest of the low. How could anyone ever again agree to attend any conference or negotiations that these people attempt to set up?

When parties agree to meet to discuss peace, both sides have given their word that they are attending on good faith. The location is known to both. To attack peace talks almost beggars belief. And yet, the news that the US did so is coming from a highly qualified Iraqi source:

Although Dr Rubai'e, as Iraqi National Security Adviser since 2004 and earlier a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, is closely associated with the American authorities in Baghdad, he has no doubt about what happened.

He sees the negotiations as part of a charade to lure Mr Sadr, who is normally very careful about his own security, to a house where he could be eliminated.

"When I came back to Baghdad I was really, really infuriated, I can tell you," Dr Rubai'e said. "I went berserk with both [the US commander General George] Casey and the ambassador [John Negroponte]." They denied that knew of a trap and said they would look into what happened but he never received any explanation from them.

This is also not without precedent as the US also attempted to kidnap Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in a botched raid in Arbil whilst they were on an official visit to meet with Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

As Patrick Cockburn said in the Independent newspaper at the time, the only equivalent action to put this into perspective is to imagine what the US would say if the Iranians swept into Pakistan or Afghanistan and arrested the head of the CIA and MI6 whilst they were on official business.

This is all further proof that the Bush administration are determined to operate out of the accepted norms, although all indications are that this will increase rather than diminish their problems in the region.

It's also a further indication of the Bush regime's contempt for negotiation and their willingness to rely almost exclusively on military solutions to all of their problems.

But to attack peace talks has to be a new low, even for these guys.

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Tags: Bush, Cheney, al-Sadr, Mahdi Army, Iraq, Iraq war.