Donle’s Daily Dispatches

Volume 1 Issue 130                  Today’s News and Views         Sunday, May 7, 2006

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Update of US Casualties in Afghanistan: 294

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RM: "You said you knew where they were."

DR: "I did not. I said I knew where suspect sites were."

Comment: This was the first portion of the video that was edited. This is the portion that was removed:

RM: :You said you knew where they were Tikrit, Baghdad, northeast, south, west of there. Those are your words."

DR: "My words.... my words were that .... no, no, no wait a minute, wait a minute. Let him stay one second. Just a second."

RM: "This is America, Huh."

DR: "You’re getting plenty of play, sir."

RM: "I’d just like an honest answer."

DR: "I’m giving it to you."

The disgusting propaganda continued,

RM: "(inaudible) there was bullet proof evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Was that a lie, or were you misled?"

DR: "Zaraqawi was in Baghdad during the pre-war period. That is a fact."

RM: "Zaraqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That's where he was."

DR: "He was also in Baghdad."

RM: "Yeah, when he needed to go to the hospital. Come on, these people aren't idiots, they know the story."

DR: "Let me give you an example. It's easy for you to make a charge, but why do you think that the men and women in uniform everyday when they came out of Kuwait and went into Iraq, put on chemical weapon protective suits? Because they liked the style? They honestly believed that there were chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons on his own people previously, he had used them on his neighbor the Iranians, and they believed he had those weapons. We believed he had those weapons."

Comment: This portion of the video was altered as well, to leave out McGovern's final comments:

RM: "That's what we call a non-sequitur, it doesn't matter what the troops believe, it matters what you believe."

The (unedited) video of what really took place, can be viewed here.

You can also read Rumsfeld's statements from the "Today Show" where he most certainly did claim (therefore the definition of a lie) that he knew where the WMDs were located.

The segment ended with Rumsfeld's spin, and Hume quickly sent the show to commercial break. This was simply propaganda through and through, in order to prop up the Bush Administration and Rumsfeld. Fox could not bear to show Rumsfeld lying, and therefore chose to edit history, just as the Soviets and Pravda did. Welcome to fascist America ladies and gentleman.

Bush calls terror fight WWIII
From correspondents in Washington
06may06

US President George W. Bush has said the September 11 revolt of passengers against their hijackers on board Flight 93 had struck the first blow of "World War III".

In an interview with the financial news network CNBC, Mr Bush said he had yet to see the recently released film of the uprising, a dramatic portrayal of events on the United Airlines plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

But he said he agreed with the description of David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, who in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month called it "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war, World War III".

Mr Bush said: "I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III.

"It was, it was unbelievably heroic of those folks on the airplane to recognize the danger and save lives," he said.

Flight 93 crashed on the morning of September 11, 2001, killing the 33 passengers, seven crew members and four hijackers, after passengers stormed the cockpit and battled the hijackers for control of the aircraft.

The president has repeatedly praised the heroism of the passengers in fighting back and so launching the first blow of what he usually calls the "war on terror".

In 2002, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explicitly declined to call the hunt for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group and its followers "World War III".

© Herald and Weekly Times

May 6, 2006

Hawks Looking for New and Bigger Enemies?
by Jim Lobe

As if rallying fading public support for keeping more than 100,000 U.S. troops in a disintegrating Iraq and preparing the ground for a possible military attack on Iran were not enough, some influential hawks are now promoting a more confrontational stance against Russia and China, as well.

Their eagerness to take on new and bigger enemies, signaled by Vice Pres. Dick Cheney's blistering verbal assault on Russia Thursday, could be a calculated effort to intimidate the two Eurasian giants at a moment when the US and the European Union (EU) appear to have forged greater unity on key foreign policy issues than at any time since Washington invaded Iraq three years ago.

Russia and China, which were initially treated as allies in the "global war on terror," are now seen as the two biggest obstacles to Washington's drive to impose U.N. Security sanctions against Iran, the administration's current top foreign policy priority. Hardliners may believe that putting them on the defensive at this moment could persuade them to show greater flexibility, at least with respect to Iran.

At the same time, however, a more aggressive stance toward the two powers risks driving them further together in opposition to US geo-strategic designs, particularly isolating Iran and asserting more control over the flow of oil and gas out of Central Asia and the Caucasus.

It could also revive trans-Atlantic tensions despite the convergence between the major western European powers and the United States at the Security Council over Iran. That unity could turn out to be fleeting, particularly if Washington fails to heed increasingly urgent pleas by its allies to offer the Islamic Republic security guarantees in exchange for a verifiable freeze on its nuclear program.

"I don't see how antagonizing (Russian President Vladimir) Putin at this particular moment will make it any easier for him to support you on Iran," said one Congressional foreign policy aide. "And I can't imagine that the Europeans think this is such a good idea at this moment either."

The administration's position toward both Russia and China has gradually hardened over the past year for a number of reasons, including what appears to be their joint strategy of pushing the US military out of bases in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia; their relations with what the administration considers hostile or rogue states, such as Sudan and Belarus; their failure to "deliver" Iran and North Korea in negotiations over their nuclear programs; and their refusal to respond to US bilateral concerns, from human rights to trade.

While Beijing had come to expect hawkish statements from the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, Chinese leaders – as well as her hosts in Australia – were taken aback when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sounded alarms about Beijing's becoming a "negative force" in Asia during a swing through Southeast Asia in March.

The administration's ongoing and increasingly ardent courtship of both Japan and India as strategic allies against Beijing in what it calls its "hedge" strategy has also done little to promote greater trust.

In that context, the many procedural slights and disruptions – from introducing the national anthem of "The Republic of China" to permitting a well-known Falun Gong activist to infiltrate the White House welcoming ceremony – that soured President Hu Jintao's visit here two weeks ago have reportedly been interpreted in Beijing as deliberate efforts by at least some forces in the administration to embarrass the Chinese leader.

Similarly, Cheney's blast against Russia – the harshest US attack on Moscow since the Bush administration took power – delivered right next door at a NATO-EU conference in Vilnius, Lithuania and just two months before Putin plays host to the G-8 Summit in St. Petersburg, strongly suggests that the hawks are once again ascendant.

Among other points, Cheney accused Moscow of using its control over energy supplies as tools of "intimidation or blackmail" against its neighbors, "undermin(ing) (their) territorial integrity," and "interfer(ing) with democratic movements."

"Russia has a choice to make," he declared in terms that reminded some observers of the "Iron Curtain" speech delivered by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Missouri at the outset of the Cold War and prompted others to predict that hardliners around Putin would be strengthened.

"When making these kind of statements, you always have to keep in mind what the reaction from the other side will be, and it's difficult for me to imagine that Russia is simply going to agree with these reproaches." Vyacheslav Nikonov, a Moscow political analyst described as close to the Kremlin, told the Financial Times.

Indeed, it is likely that Washington's growing hawkishness will strengthen hardliners in both Beijing and Moscow and make it harder for the administration to enlist their help with respect to either Iran or the " global war on terror."

But according to a leading neoconservative strategist, Robert Kagan, larger goals may be at stake.

In a Washington Post column published last Sunday, Kagan, whose spouse, Victoria Nuland, worked as Cheney's deputy national security advisor until last year and now serves as US ambassador to NATO, argued that Washington now faces as much of an ideological struggle against the two great powers as a contest for control over resources.

"Until now the liberal West's strategy has been to try to integrate these two powers into the international liberal order, to tame them and make them safe for liberalism," argued Kagan, a cofounder with Weekly Standard editor William Kristol of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

"If, instead, China and Russia are going to be sturdy pillars of autocracy over the coming decades, enduring and perhaps even prospering, then they cannot be expected to embrace the West's vision of humanity's inexorable evolution toward democracy and the end of autocratic rule," he said.

Given their own autocratic nature, the two nations have emerged as the protectors of "an informal league of dictators" – that, according to Kagan, currently includes the leaders of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Burma, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Venezuela, Iran and Angola, among others – around the world who, like the leaders of Russia and China themselves, resist any efforts by the West to interfere in their domestic affairs, either through sanctions or other means.

"The question is what the United States and Europe decide to do in response," wrote Kagan. "Unfortunately, al-Qaeda may not be the only challenge liberalism faces today, or even the greatest."

(Inter Press Service)

Copyright 2006 Antiwar.com

May 5, 2006

Is American Foreign Policy an Infinite Crisis?

George Bush as superhero, the rest of us as sketchy background characters

Brian Doherty

He was the undisputed ruler of one world, convinced that the larger world outside his own immediate control was corrupt, lacking inspiring heroes and proper values. He acted boldly on the belief that through his own genius, combined with force, manipulation, and powerful weapons he had no hand in creating, he could make a difference—a positive difference, one he'd eventually be lauded for, petty carpers be damned.

To actuate his initially well-intentioned scheme, he launched an enormous, convoluted and confusing set of manipulations, tried to rid the world of magic, generated an interplanetary war, and built a giant cosmic tower capable of creating an endless array of alternate earths from scratch, powered by the energy forces of kidnapped Martians, Kryptonians, and random superbeings.

I am speaking, as the astute reader will have guessed, of President George W. Bush.

OK, only at the start there, kind of. Actually, I am speaking of Alexander Luthor of the former Earth-3 (as with many details in this article, honestly, if you have to ask, you don't really wanna know), whose master plan came to a failed end this week in the DC Comic book Infinite Crisis #7. A 20th-anniversary sequel to the 1985 Crisis On Infinite Earths, the Infinite Crisis series was one of the comic book industry's mega-crossover events designed to force fanboys to buy every single title issued all year long, in addition to multiple new one-shots and mini-series—that depth of reading being necessary just to pretend to have some slim hope of understanding what's going on. And for the most part, they succeeded with me, capturing the attention of this reader who had entirely abandoned superhero comics for the past two decades.

The political angles of Infinite Crisis have not gone unexamined in this era when even the pulpiest microcultures are thoroughly inspected for larger meaning. "On the surface, this appears to be a straightforward Superman story," says Booklist in its review, "but the underlying treatment of such issues as misplaced deification, human rights, and terrorism give the story depth." But all that herniated analysis sheds some light on how the culture war produces Bizarro bedfellows.

As storytelling, Infinite Crisis could be a confusing and headachy mess even if you knew most of the characters and their backstories, and didn't find phrases like "trapped in the Speed force" or "summon the Green Lantern Corps" or "drag him through the Red Sun" merely confusing, meaningless, or off-putting. Infinite Crisis and all its spinoffs are dense with interesting themes, but not necessarily with interesting and complete developments of those themes. Like superhero comics at their best and worst, it was all about universe-spanning gosh-wow spectacle and constant references to events in past comics (which were usually left unexplained for neophytes and added ballast to the gradual sinking ship of comic book sales).

But it is of enduring interest to anyone sniffing around for signals about politics that two of the biggest fan-geek epics of the 21st century, this and the second Star Wars trilogy, can be read, or even demand to be read, as sly, dark takedowns on George Bush and his imperial and world-saving visions. The zeitgeist of the fantastic is by no means behind our president's essentially superheroic vision of the U.S. government's role. It might be all right to lose the United Nations, international opinion, the opposition party, and more than half of the population—but when the naysayers are joined in their uneasiness by everyone from the Jedi Council to the Justice League, you are in political trouble.

Still, Bush stays the course. Does this make him more a Winston Churchill, as he imagines, or a Sith Lord or Darkseid?

The echoes of influence and connection between serious, grim military adventures and fershlugginer pop artifacts are everywhere. Post-9/11 American military operations in Afghanistan were originally called "Infinite Justice," then abruptly changed to "Enduring Freedom." By mixing in this DC comics' tribute/attack on Bush foreign policy, we can create the most accurate name yet for this century's American military operations: How about "Operation Enduring Crisis"?

The whole Infinite Crisis brouhaha began with another political metaphor, a moral dilemma touching on vital differences between libertarian and modern liberal viewpoints on the nature of the self and the proper way to treat anti-social actions. Batman grows to mistrust and hate his fellow superheroes when he learns they have magically mindwarped some villains into forgetting the heroes' secret indentities—and then mindwiped him to make him forget they had done it, violating Batman's C.S. Lewis/Anthony Burgess sense of traditional morality. It's OK to beat the shit out of villains and punish them, because this involves respecting them as autonomous moral beings; but it is always wrong to "rehabilitate" them through force, because this does violence to their very being and identity, by removing the most important choice of all—to be good or evil.

Series author Geoff Johns ends escaping this complicated and promising beginning with a very modern comic meta-gesture, in which the complaint motivating the villains of the piece—that the world of DC Comics has become unremittingly dark, vicious, and unheroic—makes them world-destroying stand-ins for a significant cadre of DC's own shrinking fan base. It's every author's dream—telling a story in which his own critics are the hideous supervillains—and it made for a fun undercurrent for the cognoscenti, but it ended up blunting the seriousness of some of the other moral issues. Batman never has to decide if what his friends did really was unforgivable, and his own reaction to their violation of the villain's moral autonomy gets so out of control that he merely has to clean up his own mess rather than decide who was right or wrong in the first place. Similarly, the Iraqi people's own responsibility for rescuing themselves from tyranny and developmenting their own institutions is elided by our superheroic efforts, ongoing if failing, to take care of all that for them.

Stories of men in tights, flying through the universe, shooting undifferenatiated force beams willy-nilly and occasionally tearing each others' arms off, are perhaps crude vehicles for sophisticated political and moral analysis. Still, the mental world of politics inevitably colonizes our reactions to everything in our lives. In the end of Infinite Crisis—SPOILER WARNING, folks—Luthor's plan to create a perfect world out of the chaotic, living jumble of the existing universe (and the many more he creates) comes a-cropper, He is brutally and shockingly murdered by the Joker, representation of the DC universe's pure villainy, an unhinged id for whom political and ethical logic of any sort is meaningless.

Such will not be George W. Bush's fate. There is no way to map political meaning from worlds in which creating and destroying multiverses are the par to our world (where heroes must be content with merely creating and destroying nations). As the madness of Bush's plan becomes more apparent to more people, none of us have the power or guts or assumed authority to swing at him on a rope and kick him off his pedestal, as per Nightwing in Infinite Crisis. If we have a long post-Bush future, he'll live in it, and no matter how hated he is by how many in 2009, past experience with ex-presidents shows he'll be warmly embraced and meet an eventual demise followed by heaps of honors, some sincere, some not.

But the comic book analogy does hold up in another way. To Bush, we are all just those sort of barely delineated characters, small, in foreground or background, evading (barely) projecting force beams and falling chunks of masonry from destroyed buildings. Some of us are dead in the end, sure, even some third-banana superheroes get shredded by deadly eye-beams. But most of the victims of the superpower struggles are unnamed, or with names that will not be long remembered.

In that sense, Infinite Crisis does remind us of the ways in which the U.S. and the people in charge of its might are superhero manqués. As well-meaning as they might be—even the ones not as clearly bullgoose loony as Earth-3 Luthor and his partner Earth-Prime Superboy (again: don't ask)—their exertions of force in the name of goodness cause plenty of collatoral damage and often seem driven by a sense that their choices and actions are above the considerations of mortal men and their petty problems.

The disasters might be forgotten by the next issue—or the next election (though Bush and the GOP shouldn't count on it). But there will always be some fanboy to keep alive the memory of what things used to be like. Let's hope it's not too late for some fan of America after 2008 to retcon the Bush era and make the era of constant Middle East war a distant memory for only the geekiest old fans of foreign policy to argue over.

Brian Doherty is a senior editor of Reason and author of This Is Burning Man (Little, Brown).

Copyright © 2005 Reason Foundation

Zahn: There was a point where it appeared as though you were going to get kicked out ... Donald Rumsfeld encouraged whoever I think had their hands on you at the time to let you stay there. Does he get any credit for that today?

MCGOVERN: At first, I thought, well, that was rather gracious.  But, then I got to thinking, I was not abusing the privilege. I was simply asking pointed questions. And for the national TV audience to see me carted away for asking Rumsfeld to explain what any objective observer would call a lie, that wouldn't have been good P.R. So, yes, I'm glad he let me stay. But I think it was for self- interested reasons.

read the full transcript

© 2006

© 2006

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www.commondreams.org

Where are all the leaders of faith?

- Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers
Thursday, May 4, 2006

WHERE ARE the activist priests and ministers who took strong stands during the Vietnam War and hit the streets with their protests?

Three years into the war against Iraq, the silence of the clergy is deafening, despite U.S. abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and a reported American policy of shipping detainees to secret prisons abroad where, presumably, they can be tortured.

There are U.S. chaplains of many faiths serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, ministering to the men and women in uniform and reaching out to local religious leaders in both countries.

But here at home, the clergy seems to be in the same boat as the news media and most members of Congress: They are victims of the post-Sept. 11 syndrome that equates any criticism of U.S. policy with lack of patriotism.

The clergy are not alone. There is a disquieting public acceptance of the status quo. Although the Iraq war has a role in President Bush's declining standing in public opinion polls, rising gas prices may be having a bigger impact on his popularity.

During the Vietnam War, the clergy were vocal leaders of the peace movement and they picked up and marched.

I was reminded of that bygone era -- a time when everyone got involved -- with the passing last month of Rev. William Sloane Coffin, a Presbyterian minister who served as chaplain at Yale University and pastor at Riverside Church in New York.

He was a follower of civil rights leader, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and a liberal, to put it mildly.

Coffin went on the dangerous Freedom rides in the South in the 1960s and worked for human rights of African Americans. He became famous for his protests against the Vietnam War and later espoused the causes of gay rights and anti-nuclear proliferation. He hailed from a wealthy family, attended Ivy League schools and served in World War II. Before attending a theological seminary, he worked for the CIA.

But he will be most remembered for his moral courage.

The Nation magazine -- which counted Coffin as a contributor -- quoted Coffin as saying he had the "sense of fulfillment from being in the right fight."

Writer and artist Robert Shetterly, Coffin's good friend, wrote on CommonDreams.org a eulogy of Coffin based on his long association with the minister, dating back to an anti-Vietnam War rally at Yale in 1968.

He recalled that Coffin had written in his latest book "Credo," a 2004 collection of his writings, that "the war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history. Our military men and women were not called to defend America, but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for America, but rather to kill for their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters?"

Shetterly's perception of Coffin was that he was not self-righteous and that he had doubts about his own convictions at times. He also wrote that Coffin made mistakes but learned from them.

Shetterly said Coffin "spent his life trying to atone for having followed military orders in 1945, putting 3,000 white Russians who fought against the Stalin communist regime, on a train from Germany to Moscow "and sure execution."

Some of Coffin's quotes are memorable.

After Sept. 11, he said the U.S. government should have vowed "to see justice done, but by force of law only, not by the law of force." He also said that "the world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love."

Lest I have selected Coffin's only intellectual qualities, Shetterly also describes his human side and said that he liked "a good drink. A good joke. A good song. A moral act. A worthy laugh."

©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

Republicans say Democratic leaders run the risk of looking overconfident -- if not foolish -- in predicting they will win the 15 net seats necessary to take the House.

"If they fall short [of control], she's going to be severely damaged," Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said of Pelosi.

But Democratic planning parallels similar efforts 12 years ago, when GOP leaders were plotting a return to control after 42 years. By May 1994, Republicans had the outlines of a legislative agenda that would become their "Contract With America," said Richard K. Armey, who was the chairman of the House Republican Conference at that time.

Republicans then needed to pick up 40 seats, something most analysts considered virtually impossible six months before the election.

Democrats need to pick up 15, a task that many analysts still believe is a long shot. Democratic leaders do not.

"We are more and more confident that we are going to have the responsibility of leading the House, so we have to prepare," said House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (Md.).

Despite waves of redistricting that have solidified the positions of incumbents from both parties, Pelosi said 50 Republican seats are in play, while fewer than 10 Democratic seats face strong challenges. That figure of GOP seats is disputed by independent analysts, but even the most cautious estimates put more than 15 Republican seats in jeopardy.

Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, said his most expansive estimate classifies 52 seats as "unsafe," 40 of them Republican, 12 of them Democratic. But, he said, only a tidal wave would dislodge the incumbent party from many of those seats, and more realistically, 30 Republican seats and five Democratic districts are vulnerable.

To seize control in 1994, Armey said, Republicans needed three key ingredients: scandal, which was provided by House members' abuse of the House bank and postal system; a policy fiasco, provided by the Clinton administration's failed national health-care plan; and a coherent plan of action, which came with the "Contract With America."

This year, the House is engulfed in bribery and influence-peddling scandals that have forced the resignation of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), sent former representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) to jail, and yielded guilty pleas from two former DeLay aides and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

But those scandals are also linked to a Democrat, Rep. William J. Jefferson (La.), leading some Republicans to conclude they have been inoculated.

The war in Iraq has provided a policy debacle at least on par with the health-care issue, Armey said. But Democrats cannot offer policy alternatives because, he said, Americans remain leery of their prescriptions for an activist government and higher taxes.

To counter that perception, House Democrats have formulated a plan of action for their first week in control. Their leaders said a Democratic House would quickly vote to raise the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. It would roll back a provision in the Republicans' Medicare prescription drug benefit that prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices for drugs offered under the program.

It would vote to fully implement the recommendations of the bipartisan panel convened to shore up homeland security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Democratic leaders said.

And it would reinstate lapsed rules that say any tax cuts or spending increases have to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases to prevent the federal deficit from growing.

Armey dismissed the substance of the Democratic proposals as demagoguery but said that the politics "really, frankly, are not too bad."

Pelosi also vowed "to use the power to investigate" the administration on multiple fronts, starting with the task force convened in secret by Vice President Cheney to devise the administration's energy policy. The administration has successfully fought lawsuits since 2001 that sought to reveal the names of energy company executives tapped to advise the task force.

"Certainly the conduct of the war" in Iraq would be the subject of hearings, if not a full-fledged House investigation, Pelosi said. Another subject for investigation could be the use of intelligence on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction to make the case for the 2003 invasion.

Hoyer added that he would like to see investigations into the extent of domestic wiretapping by the National Security Agency, and the billions of dollars wasted by contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Campaign chiefs for Republican Senate and House candidates have already begun using the threat of such investigations to raise money and rile core Republican voters. A recent mailing by Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, warned that Democrats "will call for endless congressional investigations and possibly call for the impeachment of President Bush!"

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Hillary Clinton: Too Much of a Clinton Democrat?

By Markos Moulitsas
Sunday, May 7, 2006; B01

Hillary Clinton has a few problems if she wants to secure the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. She is a leader who fails to lead. She does not appear "electable." But most of all, Hillary has a Bill Clinton problem. (And no, it's not about that. )

Moving into 2008, Republicans will be fighting to shake off the legacy of the Bush years: the jobless recovery, the foreign misadventures, the nightmarish fiscal mismanagement, the Katrina mess, unimaginable corruption and an imperial presidency with little regard for the Constitution or the rule of law. Every Democratic contender will be offering change, but activists will be demanding the sort of change that can come only from outside the Beltway.

Hillary Clinton leads her Democratic rivals in the polls and in fundraising. Unfortunately, however, the New York senator is part of a failed Democratic Party establishment -- led by her husband -- that enabled the George W. Bush presidency and the Republican majorities, and all the havoc they have wreaked at home and abroad.

Of course, it's still early. At this point in the last presidential cycle, the first hints of Howard Dean's tr ansformational campaign were barely emerging. In 2002, the Democrats had no clear front-runner, but the conventional wisdom was betting on a handful of insider candidates with money and connections: Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman and John F. Kerry, and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt. These three were supposed to contend. The early polls gave them (especially Lieberman) the inside track to the nomination, and the media gave the rest of the field no more than its usual dismissive coverage.

But the netroots -- the far-flung collection of grassroots political activists organizing online -- proved to be a different world, one unencumbered by Washington's conventional wisdom. Even as the establishment mocked Dean and his supporters ("like a scene out of the 'Star Wars' cantina," laughed a rival campaign aide), his army of hyper-motivated supporters organized across all 50 states. This movement exploded onto the national scene when Dean began reporting dramatically higher fundraising numbers than his opponents. Had Kerry not lent himself millions to reach the Iowa caucuses, and had Dean not been so green a candidate, Dean probably would have been the nominee.

Dean lost, but the point was made. No longer would D.C. insiders impose their candidates on us without our input; those of us in the netroots could demand a say in our political fortunes. Today, however, Hillary Clinton seems unable to recognize this new reality. She seems ill-equipped to tap into the Net-energized wing of her party (or perhaps is simply uninterested in doing so) and incapable of appealing to this newly mobilized swath of voters. She may be the establishment's choice, but real power in the party has shifted.

Our crashing of Washington's gates wasn't about ideology, it was about pragmatism. Democrats haven't won more than 50 percent of the vote in a presidential election since 1976. Heck, we haven't won more than 50.1 percent since 1964. And complicit in that failure was the only Democrat to occupy the White House since 1980: Bill Clinton.

Despite all his successes -- and eight years of peace and prosperity is nothing to sneeze at -- he never broke the 50-percent mark in his two elections. Regardless of the president's personal popularity, Democrats held fewer congressional seats at the end of his presidency than before it. The Democratic Party atrophied during his two terms, partly because of his fealty to his "third way" of politics, which neglected key parts of the progressive movement and reserved its outreach efforts for corporate and moneyed interests.

While Republicans spent the past four decades building a vast network of small-dollar donors to fund their operations, Democrats tossed aside their base and fed off million-dollar-plus donations. The disconnect was stark, and ultimately destructive. Clinton's third way failed miserably. It killed off the Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic Party and, despite its undivided control of the party apparatus, delivered nothing. Nothing, that is, except the loss of Congress, the perpetuation of the muddled Democratic "message," a demoralized and moribund party base, and electoral defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2004.

Those failures led the netroots to support Dean in the last presidential race. We didn't back him because he was the most "liberal" candidate. In fact, we supported him despite his moderate, pro-gun, pro-balanced-budget record, because he offered the two things we craved most: outsider credentials and leadership.

And therein lie Hillary Clinton's biggest problems. She epitomizes the "insider" label of the early crowd of 2008 Democratic contenders. She's part of the Clinton machine that decimated the national Democratic Party. And she remains surrounded by many of the old consultants who counsel meekness and caution. James Carville, the famed longtime adviser to the Clintons, told Newsweek last week, "The American people are going to be ready for an era of realism. They've seen the consequences of having too many 'big ideas.' "

Meanwhile, pollster Mark Penn, a brilliant numbers guy, has counseled the Hillary team to ignore the party's netroots activists as "irrelevant." (After all, didn't Dean lose?) Little surprise that in late March, the Daily Kos's bimonthly presidential straw poll delivered bleak results for Clinton, with just 2 percent of respondents making her their top choice for 2008.

At a time when rank-and-file Democrats are using technology to become increasingly engaged and active in their party, when they are demanding that their leaders stand for something and develop big ideas, Clinton's closest advisers are headed in the opposite direction. But big ideas aren't Bush's problem -- bad ideas are.

Yet staying away from big ideas seems to come naturally to Hillary Clinton. Perhaps first lady Clinton was so scarred by her failed health-care reform in the early 1990s that now Sen. Clinton shows no proclivity for real leadership as a lawmaker.

Afraid to offend, she has limited her policy proposals to minor, symbolic issues -- such as co-sponsoring legislation to ban flag burning. She doesn't have a single memorable policy or legislative accomplishment to her name. Meanwhile, she remains behind the curve or downright incoherent on pressing issues such as the war in Iraq.

On the war, Clinton's recent "I disagree with those who believe we should pull out, and I disagree with those who believe we should stay without end" seems little different from Kerry's famous "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it" line. The last thing we need is yet another Democrat afraid to stand on principle.

In person, Clinton is one of the warmest politicians I've ever met, but her advisers have stripped what personality she has, hiding it from the public. Some of that may be a product of her team's legendary paranoia, somewhat understandable given the knives out for her. But what remains is a heartless, passionless machine, surrounded by the very people who ground down the activist base in the 1990s and have continued to hold the party's grassroots in utter contempt. The operation is rudderless, without any sign of significant leadership. And to top it off, a sizable number of Democrats don't think she could win a general election, anyway.

Can Hillary Clinton overcome those impediments? Money and star power go a long way, but the netroots is now many times larger than it was only three years ago, and we have attractive alternatives to back (and fund), such as former governor Mark W. Warner and Sen. Russell Feingold.

Just as we crazy political junkies glimpsed the viability of the candidacy of an obscure governor from a small New England state three years ago, today we regard Hillary Clinton's candidacy as anything but inevitable. Her obstacles are big, and from this vantage point, possibly insurmountable.

Markos Moulitsas is founder of the political blog Daily Kos and coauthor of "Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics" (Chelsea Green Publishing).

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

An Excellent Reason Not to Join the Military

By Aimee Allison, AlterNet
Posted on May 5, 2006, Printed on May 7, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/35792/

The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military to be published on May 18, 2006 by The New Press.

Aimee Allison served as a medic in the Army Reserves and received an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector during the Persian Gulf War.

I desperately wanted out of my small-minded hometown of Antioch, California, and the military recruiter on my high school campus promised me an escape hatch. The family that my white mother and African American father created was based on the belief that the hard work and democratic values of 1960s activists made equality my birthright.

But my day-to-day experience was full of evidence that racism was alive and well. High school classmates would chant the n-word when our team played its biggest rival the next town over. Slurs against gay people were so accepted that teachers used them without thought. And after winning a local Junior Miss competition, a first for a black contestant, I was excluded from the local news and town parade. When I brought my Ivy League college acceptance letter into the career center, a counselor suggested that I got in because of my race.

So I rushed to sign up for the Army Reserves, in part because it was the only place I knew of that promised I wouldn't be judged or limited by my race or gender. We women, people of color, and immigrants are especially attracted by the idea that we could live our lives on equal footing with other Americans. But the military isn't the egalitarian nirvana that its multi-billion dollar advertising blitz -- with a budget of almost $4 billion in 2003 -- claims.

Like most female soldiers, I learned the hard way that men dominate military culture. We are stuck in a system that makes it difficult to report abuse because of fear of reprisal. Even the military itself admitted in a June 2005 report by the Defense Task Force on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Military Service Academies, "harassment is the more prevalent and corrosive problem, creating an environment in which sexual assault is more likely to occur."

Just ask any woman in uniform -- sexual harassment is a common experience on base. I remember on the day of boot camp graduation, the same drill sergeant who had threatened to "rip off my head and shit in my neck" for a minor infraction during training grabbed my arm in the on-base store and pressured me for a date. This was a man that had exercised incredible power over me and my unit for twelve weeks, and through my fear I mumbled, "Drill sergeant, no" three times before he let me go. I didn't know at the time that about 60 percent of women who have served in the National Guard and reserves said they were sexually harassed or assaulted, but less than one-quarter reported it. Many who did complain were encouraged to drop their complaints.

When I first joined the military at age seventeen, a military doctor administered a demeaning and uncomfortable pelvic exam during my induction physical. He didn't wear gloves. It turns out that my experience wasn't unusual.

At last year's National Summit of Women Veterans Issues in Washington, D.C., former Air Force officer Dorothy Mackey told of several instances of abuse during OB-GYN exams. "He sodomized me," she said. "I started looking into what happens in a normal OB-GYN examination, and that is definitely not supposed to be part of it."

Nine out of ten women under fifty who had served in the U.S. military and had responded to a survey reported being sexually harassed while in the service. In an episode of "60 Minutes," New Jersey National Guard Lieutenant Jennifer Dyer revealed that she was treated like a criminal after accusing a fellow officer of rape in early 2004. She reported the rape immediately to the military criminal investigation division (CID), who took her to a civilian hospital for a rape kit -- then held her in seclusion for the next three days with no counseling and no medical treatment. The CID agent advised her of her Miranda rights and threatened to prosecute her for filing a false report. Her command announced her rape and accusation to the entire unit. By the time she returned to her unit after a two-week leave, she was "fearful for [her] health, safety, and sanity." Her assailant was roaming free on base and was later acquitted of any crime.

All the bad press about rape in the military has led to congressional demands for reform. For the eighteenth time in sixteen years, the Pentagon has studied the problem and proposed changes, including designated victim advocates in every command and a promise of confidentiality, according to "60 Minutes."

It's too bad that fully funding this need isn't a high priority. A Department of Veterans Affairs report released in September 2005 found that the annual cost for health care, including mental health for National Guard members like Lieutenant Jennifer Dyer who experience sexual trauma, is about $20 million. Only $13 million is budgeted for the 2006 fiscal year.

Reports of sexual assaults have skyrocketed recently, especially in hostile environments like Iraq and Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported, "In many U.S. military camps in Iraq, for example, signs are posted in female showers and other locations requiring U.S. servicewomen to be in the company of a 'battle buddy,' especially at night, for their safety."

The military has rules and structures to direct every aspect of a person's conduct. Why does abuse still occur? One answer is that a male commander most often decides when to prosecute for abuse or misconduct. In 2002, the number of female active Army officers was about 20 percent. This means that the vast majority of officers in the military are men.

In addition, military training itself is responsible for further desensitizing men to sexual violence. In January 2003, the Village Voice reported that military training has included efforts to get young soldiers used to the sounds of women being raped so that, if captured, hearing fellow soldiers assaulted would not cause them to crack.

These revelations are not surprising to former Marine Corps Lance Corporal Stephen Funk. During his training in 2002, Stephen told me that his drill instructor gave a rousing speech at the end of Marine combat training: "This is the reality of war. We Marines like war. We like killing. We like raping females. This is what we do." If there was a touch of irony in his voice, it sure wasn't clear to the young, impressionable group eager to prove they were men, Stephen said.

Basic training also reinforces racism. Boot camp systematically breaks a recruit down physically and emotionally. Military discipline depends on eliminating individuality. Anything that makes you different from the "standard" (read: straight white male) makes you a target for abuse. But submissiveness and conformity are not the only goals of training. Soldiers are taught to follow orders in war without question. When the training taps into a person's own racist views, it's easier to convince them to kill people who are different.

Iraq war veteran Aidan Delgado, who served as a mechanic in the 320th Military Police Company in Abu Ghraib, described how his training led to racism against Muslims and Arabs.

"'Hajji' is the new slur, the new ethnic slur for Arabs and Muslims. It is used extensively in the military," he told a reporter. "The Arabic word refers to one who has gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca. But it is used in the military with the same kind of connotation as 'gook,' 'Charlie,' or the n-word."

Stephen, the former Marine corporal, said that his training on operating machine guns included a tip to avoid overheating the machinery: Squeeze the trigger for as long as it takes to chant, "Die, fucking raghead, die." When riling up the troops to take part in a nighttime simulation, the squad leader would yell, Stephen recalled, "Let's go burn some turbans!"

But racism in the military doesn't stop at Arabs. Basic training -- a nightmare for most -- is even more difficult if you happen to be a person of color or gay. If you are in these groups, I don't have to tell you that many times it's seemingly small insults that create a feeling of oppression.

When I was at Army boot camp at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, standing in line for chow, I overheard the white drill sergeant tell a dark-skinned recruit with a smile, "You look like Kunta Kinte [a slave from the TV miniseries Roots]."

"Doesn't she? Doesn't she?" he asked everyone within earshot. She moved on silently in the wake of laughter.

It was common for my drill sergeant to ask, "Where are my Chinese at?" when assigning laundry duty. "For some reason, they do it the best," he'd say with a smirk.

I went to training with many new immigrants, since recruiters often falsely promised them citizenship. One Sudanese immigrant was the butt of many of the drill sergeant's jokes. The sergeant would hand him a dark-colored rifle and then loudly comment that they couldn't tell where the rifle ended and the hands began.

In preparation for a night-ops simulation, the drill sergeant announced that recruits were to blow a whistle if they got lost. "Except you," he said, pointing at the Sudanese recruit. "You just smile and we'll see you in the dark."

Then the drill instructor made him stand up in front of the others.

"Give me a pimp walk," the instructor ordered. English wasn't his native language and he hadn't been in the United States long, so he didn't understand what the sergeant meant. Then the sergeant pulled up another black recruit and said, "Give me a pimp walk." The man answered that he didn't know how because he wasn't a pimp. Finally, a white recruit volunteered to show the group. Pretty soon, many others were doing the "black" pimp walk as well.

In the early morning hours during the second week of boot camp, I was forced to leave my barracks with an unfamiliar drill sergeant who decided to punish me for turning my head while standing at attention. I was afraid to go with a strange man to another part of the base, but was just as scared to refuse. He made me stand at attention and gathered his unit around to watch the show. He called me stupid, ugly, dumb.

"Where are you from, private?" he screamed. "You look like a gang member. Are you a gang member?"

I started crying -- he looked at my dark skin and didn't know or care that I was an excellent student on my way to the university.

"Get down into front position!" he yelled at me in front of his own unit of women. "Get up. Get down. Get up."

The thirty minutes of humiliation seemed to last an eternity.

Although the military doesn't officially condone racism and sexism, it explicitly discriminates against gays who are open about their identity, both in legal practice and in day-to-day life. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group for gay and lesbian soldiers, claims that more than 65,000 lesbian and gay Americans are on active duty and serving in the National Guard and reserves.

Thanks to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, put in place under the Clinton administration in 1993, as long as gay people stay deep in the closet, the military won't kick them out. In other words, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" actually authorizes the federal government to fire someone for being gay. According to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, soldiers may be investigated and administratively discharged if they:

• make a statement that they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual;
• engage in physical contact with someone of the same sex for the purposes of sexual gratification; or
• marry, or attempt to marry, someone of the same sex.

Several soldiers have been discharged for posting online profiles that indicated they were gay or looking to date someone of the same gender.

The other part of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy attempts to limit harassment and the scope of investigations into a soldier's sexual orientation. Yet, as Stephen Funk's experience shows, the services continue to violate these basic rules. Stephen, a gay man, told me what it's like to live with a constant barrage of antigay slurs. No one dares speak up against it because they fear facing suspicion and investigation for being gay. Stephen's sergeant secretly investigated his homosexuality for more than a month by pulling other members of his unit into his office and grilling them about his suspicions. A soldier in his squad finally told Stephen about the interview: the sergeant had asked him, "Did you notice anything 'funny'? Did he touch you or use 'gay' words? Do you agree that his feminine gestures and soft voice make him seem like a 'fag'?"

After learning about the investigation, Stephen was forever shaken and self-conscious about his interactions with other soldiers.

The military may try to sell itself as a level playing field, but as long as abuse is tolerated and discrimination helps recruits pull the trigger, they will always be part of the soldiers' experience.

© 2006 by The New Press. This article originally appears in the forthcoming book 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military to be published on May 18, 2006 by The New Press. To buy this book, please visit Books We Like.

Aimee Allison is a community activist and organizational consultant. She counsels military members seeking CO discharges, and is a leader in the counter-recruitment movement.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/35792/

Front Page

May 3, 2006

THE ROVING EYE

The axis of gas
By Pepe Escobar

SAO PAULO - Move over the "axis of evil". The time is ripe for the "axis of gas". Meet the Gran Gasoduto del Sur (the Great Gas Pipeline of the South) - the South American entry into Pipelineistan, soon to join networks from Siberia to both Europe and Asia as well as the American-inspired Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. In terms of political will applied by the new axis of Caracas, Brasilia and Buenos Aires, the pipeline is already a done deal.

At a recent summit meeting at a Sao Paulo hotel, presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Nestor Kirchner of Argentina further progressed to consolidate the giant gas pipeline following "strategic lines of cooperation, integration and South American unity", in the words
of Chavez. All remaining South American presidents would be presented in August with definitive viability studies as well as alternatives for financing, he added.

The pipeline - with a daily capacity of 150 billion cubic meters - will snake from Puerto Ordaz in eastern Venezuela to Buenos Aires in Argentina. The main trunk line is estimated to be 6,603 kilometers - and the total length may peak at 9,283 km. The estimated cost is a staggering US$23 billion. The first phase - to Manaus, in the Amazon rain forest - would be ready by 2010. The last phase of the project would be finished by 2017.

Chavez is more than aware that "a global energy crisis is approaching. We in South America, what are we going to do? We can't have nuclear power, otherwise they [the US] will bomb us."

He praised Brazil's biodiesel - green fuel - efforts. But the best answer for now, in his view, is gas; the formation of a South American energy grid - much as Iran, India and China are working for the emergence of an Asian energy grid. "Our energy equilibrium is here. We're not going to be vulnerable any more."

For the controversial Venezuelan president, the project is more than a pipeline; it means "hope for many people" as it also targets the key objective of "the fight against poverty and exclusion". The project could possibly generate more than 1 million jobs.

Chavez bills ambitious projects such as the mega pipeline as "the only way towards our independence". It's the same approach regarding the bilingual, pan-South American TV network Telesur (financed by the governments of Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay and Cuba); the proposed Petrosur (a pan-South American oil company); and the proposed common South American Bank, evidently divorced from International Monetary Fund/World Bank policies enshrined by the dreaded "Washington consensus". He's confident "there will be a flood" of investment in the pipeline, private and international.

Venezuela and Iran
Chavez's stormy relationship with the Bush administration is obvious in much of what he says. For instance, he "never had any doubt" about the Iranian leadership's assurances they only have a civilian nuclear program, he said.

"The US and Europe, they both have nuclear plants," he said. "Brazil does too. Why cannot Iran or any other country? The American government was searching for an excuse, and is now preparing the ground for an intervention. [Venezuela] is in favor of a dialogue of civilizations."

Chavez's take is corroborated by recent revelations by General Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff of former secretary of state Colin Powell. In May 2003, just after President George W Bush had pronounced "mission accomplished" in Iraq, the Iranian leadership asked the Swiss ambassador to Tehran to convey to Washington a request for talks.

Tehran would answer all American questions on its nuclear program; then sanctions could be lifted and normal relations established. According to Wilkerson, his boss was in favor. But Vice President Dick Cheney wasn't. Cheney and the neo-conservatives, said Wilkerson, then forced the State Department to ignore the Swiss ambassador and the Iranian request, and started to build up the demonization of Iran.

Meanwhile, Chavez said, Venezuela was at the heart of the South American mega pipeline from the beginning. "Then came Lula [da Silva]. We started to talk about it, and started to exchange information with Petrobras [the Brazilian oil and gas giant]. We wanted a strategic project of exploration. Not even we Venezuelans knew about our reserves."

Officially, Venezuela holds gas reserves of 151 trillion cubic feet (compared to the US's 189 trillion cubic feet); that means almost 50% of the reserves of the whole continent, 80% of South America's reserves and, the president stressed, "5% of the reserves of the whole world".

The gas will be sold in South America "very cheaply", as Chavez confirms that Petroleos de Venezuela, SA or PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil and gas giant, is part of the pipeline project. "If Venezuela was only moved by an economic-financial interest, I wouldn't be here; I would be in Washington," he said.

He delights in quoting Venezuela's oil reserves - "313 billion barrels" - adding that the days when the country "was an American oil colony" are over. Venezuela, he said, was "currently producing 3 billion cubic feet of gas a day". But it is not exporting anything, at least not yet. "The first exports will be to South America," then to friendly countries like China and India.

China was a preferential client of Venezuela's oil, and the same would apply for gas, he said. "We are going to build a network going to Colombia, Equator and Chile, and a commission will inform Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam and even France," he said. "The project will be sustainable till the end of this century."

The gas may be even sold in the end to the US, but for a much higher price, Chavez said. "[This] does not mean that we have a conflict with the American people. Our conflict is with "El Jefe [the boss, a reference to Bush] who wants to take over the riches of all the world."

The pipeline project is gaining ground amid a complex political context in South America pitting two opposing trade and integration models. Venezuela has just entered Mercosur, the South American trade bloc led by Brazil and Argentina; technical discussions take place next month before full incorporation. This move implied Venezuela's exit from the Andean Community of Nations, another trade bloc including Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru.

After the failure of the American-led Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) summit in Mar del Plata, Argentina, "the US started to strike mini-FTAAs in Central America or the Caribbean", Chavez explained. As far as he's concerned, an Andean community does not exist. He sees Venezuela's exit "as a divorce. The two [Mercosur and the Andean Community] are incompatible. If a country in the Mercosur strikes a free trade agreement with the US, it has to leave. They are like water and oil."

In the end, the pipeline reveals itself in Chavez's mind to be just one among myriad development projects - not only for Venezuela but for the whole of Latin America.

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