Bush is over. If we want it. Give this one a listen/viewing. Not just for John Lennon fans, either. Be inspired...
A job very well done by my fellow VelvetRevolution.us co-founders, Justice Through Music. More details on the video at RAW STORY.
  w/ Brad & Desi
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  w/ Brad & Desi
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  w/ Brad & Desi
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BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
BMDs pose a new threat to democracy in all 50 states...
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VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
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'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...
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MORE BRAD BLOG 'SPECIAL COVERAGE' PAGES... |
Bush is over. If we want it. Give this one a listen/viewing. Not just for John Lennon fans, either. Be inspired...
A job very well done by my fellow VelvetRevolution.us co-founders, Justice Through Music. More details on the video at RAW STORY.
In an open letter calling on former CIA Director, George Tenet to return his Medal of Freedom and donate royalties from his new book, six former intelligence officers excoriate the former Director of Central Intelligence for his complicity in overseeing the Bush Administration's misuse of intelligence to send America into an unnecessary war where more than 3,300 troops have so far been killed.
The complete letter, which pulls no punches is posted at Larry Johnson's website. Johnson is a former CIA agent and one of the letter's signatories. A PDF version of the 4-page letter is here.
Just a very few excerpts follow...
Dear Mr. Tenet:
We write to you on the occasion of the release of your book, At the Center of the Storm. You are on the record complaining about the “damage to your reputation”. In our view the damage to your reputation is inconsequential compared to the harm your actions have caused for the U.S. soldiers engaged in combat in Iraq and the national security of the United States. We believe you have a moral obligation to return the Medal of Freedom you received from President George Bush. We also call for you to dedicate a significant percentage of the royalties from your book to the U.S. soldiers and their families who have been killed and wounded in Iraq.
...
[Y]our lament that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is self-serving, misleading and, as head of the intelligence community, an admission of failed leadership. You were not a victim. You were a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war and you share culpability with Dick Cheney and George Bush for the debacle in Iraq.
...
It now turns out that you were the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community--a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality. Decisions were made, you were in charge, but you have no idea how decisions were made even though you were in charge.
...
Most importantly and tragically, you failed to meet your obligations to the people of the United States. Instead of resigning in protest, when it could have made a difference in the public debate, you remained silent and allowed the Bush Administration to cite your participation in these deliberations to justify their decision to go to war. Your silence contributed to the willingness of the public to support the disastrous war in Iraq, which has killed more than 3300 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
...
Mr. Tenet, you cannot undo what has been done. It is doubly sad that you seem still to lack an adequate appreciation of the enormous amount of death and carnage you have facilitated. If reflection on these matters serves to prick your conscience we encourage you to donate at least half of the royalties from your book sales to the veterans and their families, who have paid and are paying the price for your failure to speak up when you could have made a difference. That would be the decent and honorable thing to do.
Sincerely yours,
Phil Giraldi
Ray McGovern
Larry Johnson
Jim Marcinkowski
Vince Cannistraro
David MacMichael
One of the newspapers often attacked by Bill O'Reilly as an example of the "liberal" media is the Los Angeles Times, currently owned by the Rightwing Chicago Tribune.
On Saturday, LA Times ran a story by Chris Kraul on the reaction of Iraqi citizens to the Iraq War spending bill battle. But no need to click on the link. Here's the summary of the "fair and balanced" story as kindly provided on the inside page of the paper edition:
With Congress passing spending bills with timelines for U.S. troop withdrawal, some Iraqis fear further chaos if American soldiers leave Iraq. Others hope President Bush, who has threatened a veto, will prevail and the U.S. will stay, if only for its own strategic interests. Page A5
So...if the bill is signed into law, some Iraqis fear it will make things worse. While on the other hand, some of them hope Bush vetoes it so US troops will stay.
That would be the "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose" school of journalism, I guess.
Those quoted in the story were among the "20 Iraqis interviewed Friday in several cities after both houses of Congress passed measures that set timelines for a withdrawal of U.S. troops as a condition of funding for the war effort."
Kraul failed to quote any Iraqis who are in favor of withdrawal of U.S. troops, despite polls of Iraqis in 2004, 2005 and 2006 all showing a majority of Iraqis want the U.S. to leave. That last one found "70% of Iraqis favor setting a timeline for the withdrawal of US forces."
On the other hand, a story on George Tenet's new criticism of the Administration for ignoring pre-9/11 terrorism warnings and failing to plan for postwar Iraq is featured...on Page 18.
Darn those America/Bush hating "liberals" at the Los Angeles Times!
RAW STORY reports that for the first time, the Iraqi government has withheld data on civilian deaths from a UN Human Rights program which has been tracking such information. The UN is suggesting that it's been done at the behest of the Bush Administration hoping to sell the idea that the "surge" is working.
But what caught my eye was this part of RAW's report, referring to a McClatchy news service article out yesterday revealing that the Bush Administration is now excluding deaths from car bombs in their figures to tout a drop of violence in Iraq since the surge.
Yes, you read that correctly. More mind-blowing, however, was this response from Bush when asked about the issue yesterday on PBS' Charlie Rose:
I've read those quotes now about six times, and still can't figure out what the hell he is saying. So I'll just say, I don't even know what to say.
In related news... The LA Times reported on Saturday that nearly 100 Iraqis have been hanged since the government re-instituted their death penalty. In one reported case, a trial for an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen accused of kidnapping three journalists lasted "about an hour," with no witnesses testifying, before the man was sentenced to hang.
Great news! George W. Bush's American Values are on the march around the world!
NPR's Morning Edition reported yesterday that Douglas Feith, the Bush Administration's former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, has a new job since leaving the Pentagon. Apparently he's busy rewriting history as a professor at Georgetown University.
In apparent and extreme denial, one of the main Neocon architects for Bush's failed war had the following extraordinary exchange with host Steve Inskeep (who, unfortunately, didn't correct the record, so we guess we'll have to) concerning the rationale for going to War in Iraq. Feith turned downright indignant when Inskeep suggested that there were analysts who didn't see Saddam Hussein as a threat before the war...
DOUGLAS FEITH: He had demonstrated that he was interested in WMD and the danger was that he could take action in the future that would get him in a major fight with us. At which point he might use the WMD capabilities and connections to terrorists to hurt us.
NPR: Is there any point in that that you ended up assuming too much?
FEITH: I think that...I think that was a reasonable assumption under the circumstances...
NPR: Still...
FEITH: ...Do you not?
NPR: It sounds reasonable the way that you put it.
FEITH: Well that's what we were worried about (laughs)...I don't think that there's anything unreasonable in in...
NPR: ...But of course there were analysts making an entirely different...
FEITH: No, there weren't. No, there weren't....I mean that's just false. I, I, I hope you can do something to clarify this point. I mean, this notion that there were analysts who were saying that Saddam Hussein was not a threat?! There was nobody saying that.
"Nobody saying that"?! Really? Here's just two of them for a start. Names that Mr. Feith might be familiar with:
"[F]rankly, [the sanctions on Iraq] have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
- Colin Powell, February 24, 2001"But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
- Condoleeza Rice, July 29, 2001
What planet do these Bush dead-enders live on, anyway?! Amazing.
Look, I hate to keep banging this same drum, but someone needs to.
While the American media continue their infatuation with the horrible shootings at VTech on Monday where 33 students were killed, the carnage continues, several times over, every single day in Iraq. Never mind all that "signs say that the surge is working" bullshit you've been hearing from wingnuts and repeated in the Mainstream Media. It doesn't seem to be doing anything of the kind.
233 were killed or found dead across Iraq today (Wednesday) in a country of 27.5 million.
183 of them were killed in a single car combing incident in the exact same marketplace where 137 were killed at once in a February bombing the month before last.
That follows 85 killed or found dead on Tuesday, 51 killed on Monday, and 65 killed on Sunday (when 20 police officers were also taken captive).
None of that takes away from the tragedy of the 33 killed on Monday at Virginia Tech. But in the United States, a country of more than 300 million, where such mass killings are exceedingly rare --- versus horrifically daily occurrences, year after year after bloody year on end in a country less than one-tenth the size of the U.S. --- one might think the American Mainstream Media would finally pause to take a serious review of the way in which they cover news events.
In case you feel, as one emailer suggested to me, that Americans seem to view the lives of non-American citizens as somewhat less valuable than those of American citizens, I'll also remind you that the killings in Iraq --- though you wouldn't necessarily know it based on American news coverage --- also result in dead Americans.
Some 3,312 American troops have now been killed in Iraq.
3,312.
To date, George W. Bush has failed to attend even one funeral, or ordered flags lowered to half-staff for a single one of them.
Leading me to ask again...At what point does the entire debacle become a criminal action? I suspect that point occurs just as soon as the Mainstream Media realizes that it is, and begins to regard the murders of U.S. Troops and Iraqi Civilians in the same light they view the VTech murders.
Perhaps Nancy Grace can make an honorable woman of herself yet. But I seriously doubt she will.
Apropos of our earlier post today...
Not sure why everyone is so upset about the VTech shootings. After all, many parts of America are stable now. But, of course, what we see on television is this one shooting and everybody gets discouraged.
We're not alone in this school of thought, of course...
BTW, Laura's numbers may be somewhat off. Brookings Institute's latest data, as of Nov. 2006, puts the number of insurgent and militia attacks at 185 a day, instead of just one...
...Still, turn that frown upside-down, Negative Nellies!
UPDATE: 85 killed or found dead in Iraq on Tuesday...
UPDATE 4/18/07: 233 killed of found dead in Iraq on Wednesday...
Larry Johnson put the whole thing in perspective rather quickly and to the point yesterday when the body count in the VTech shooting was still at 22.
Even with the latest numbers of those murdered in Monday's shooting now at 33, it's dwarfed by Sunday's numbers in Iraq, where 65 lives were lost and 20 policemen were taken hostage.
And yet, that has been happening virtually every day for years now in Iraq, where jerks like Cheney and McCain and Bush continue to tell us that "things are getting better" and it's the media who are failing to report the "good news."
Take a look at the wall-to-wall media coverage ever since the 33 tragic fatalities on Monday in America, and imagine what would be going on here if a VTech-sized tragedy or two or three happened every single day in this country for years on end. Imagine if it happened just two or three days in a row! (Not to mention the population of Iraq is less than 10% the size of the United States.)
Would we blame the media for not reporting the "good news" each day? Or would we demand that something be done --- now --- to stop the carnage?
As usual, Johnson's take, documented with AP's reports on killings in Iraq on Sunday, is worth reading and noting.
In a follow-up today, Johnson notes the failures of the cable news channels, in their continuous, wall-to-wall coverage, to point out the following:
Lest we be criticized for not taking the VTech shootings seriously, make no mistake, they are an indescribable tragedy. But so are the number of human beings killed every single day in Iraq, day after day after nightmarish day, since the United States needlessly invaded their country.
And yet, the number one story reported by the media last week was Don Imus, followed by Anna Nicole, followed by the number one under-reported story: the death of our national conscience...
UPDATE 9:21pm PT: 85 killed or found dead in Iraq on Tuesday...
UPDATE 4/18/07: 233 killed of found dead in Iraq on Wednesday...
Following up Arlen Parsa's BRAD BLOG article from yesterday detailing how the size of Bush's troop surge continues to balloon --- in both troop and budget size --- above and beyond what American's were told originally, today Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO), the House Armed Service Committee chairman, sends a letter to DefSec Gates asking "Where does this end?" on the heels of yesterday's news that yet another 17,000 troops will be added to the "surged" forces.
Guest Blogged by Arlen Parsa
When George W. Bush announced he would execute a "troop surge" to send more American soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan in January 2007, it was billed as an increase of slightly over 20,000 soldiers that would cost less than six billion dollars.
"America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad," Bush announced in a prime-time televised address. "This will require increasing American force levels. So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq."
The "surge," recognized as an escalation by many, was immediately controversial for several reasons --- not the least of which was a concern that the increase of 20,000 American soldiers might turn into a much larger US presence in Iraq, and a much more expensive one, than promised.
Three months after Bush's announcement, those fears have come to fruition.
Let's take a look at the numbers, in both troops and dollars...
*** Blogged by BRAD BLOG D.C. Correspondent Margie Burns
On Tuesday, April 3, 2007 the Washington Post finally got around to publishing a front-page article, “How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War,” on the bogus Niger/uranium/Iraq story underlying those infamous “16 words” in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech.
The Post subtitle is “Intelligence Failures Surrounded Inquiry on Iraq-Niger Uranium Claim.” A more accurate subtitle would have read, “Intelligence Community Caved to Bush-Cheney Pressure.”
{Ed Note: We might suggest "Mainstream Media Failure to do Job, Scrutinize Admin's Iraq-Niger Claim, Led to Endless War" - BF}
I, among others, am familiar with the chronology because I wrote about it almost a full three years ago...
Since Brit Hume of Fox "News" has never quoted us (rather, me, Brad Friedman) by name as far as I know, I thought it would be worth elevating the following update from our piece over the weekend which was critical of Obama, to note the once-credible Hume having done so today, in order to smash up a Democrat, of course. Oh, the irony never stops.
The original BRAD BLOG article from which Hume quotes us (me) was critical of Obama for reportedly telling AP over the weekend that Senate Dems would cave by sending an Iraq spending bill to the White House without troop withdrawal timelines, if Bush vetoes the current one as promised.
Hume failed to mention, of course, that we also noted the dubious provenance of the report: The Associated Press. Neither did he mention the ensuing updates and discussions about whether AP had the story right or not. Though, in fact, Obama has not gone out of his way to correct the record, or call out AP for being inaccurate, save for this middling response in the Union Leader today. Markos at DailyKos --- who is infamously singled out along with us (happy to tarnish his reputation) in Hume's piece --- has thoughts on Obama's response with which we will also associate ourselves in a rare meeting of minds.
So for infamy's sake, the video of former newsman Hume using us to slime Obama ("Liberal Bloggers Turn on Barack Obama") is at left. We'll presume he means "turns back on" versus the sexual connotation. Either way, we're happy to serve. Video courtesy of the indispensable NewsHounds.us and the indefatigable Alan Breslauer.
Please note: Unlike the Fox "News" website print version of Hume's "Political Grapevine" (see the update from the original article below), Hume referred to us as "popular" in the video version. We shall add it to our CV right away...
Monday, April 02, 2007
By Brit Hume
FOX NEWS
Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:
Bloggers Furious
Left-wing bloggers, who are a potent force in the Democratic party, are furious with Barack Obama for saying over the weekend that Congress will vote to fund the troops without a timeline for withdrawal if President Bush vetoes the current version of the bill. Obama said that no lawmaker, "wants to play chicken with our troops."
Markos Moulitsas of the influential Daily Kos Web log writes: "What a ridiculous thing to say. Not only is it bad policy, not only is it bad politics, it's also a terrible negotiating approach. Instead of threatening Bush with even more restrictions and daring him to veto funding for the troops out of pique, Barack just surrendered to him."
And Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog says: "If we ever need to negotiate for anything, remind us to not call on Obama to represent us."
Setting aside whether we're "Liberal" or "Left-wing" as Fox "News" would like to have it, can one "turn their back" on someone that they never actually turned their front to in the first place? Just curious.