Hahahaha...he rated Huckabee ahead of McCain and, given that Ron Paul raised 5 times as much as the old Huckster in Q3 and has almost 10 times more in the bank, I think it's safe to say that Dr. Paul is a solid 4. If you consider that Romney would have NO money if he wasn't bankrolling himself I'd say Dr. Paul is really in 2nd or third. Of course, the MSM can't mention Ron because he's not part of the system.

At every opportunity, I feel compelled to talk up Senator Biden on this blog. To my way of thinking, he will be the alternative to Hillary Clinton, if there is one. He has performed well in every debate and was downright crisp in his responses in the last debate on TW. I don't get it, the so-low no rating. I haven't made a decision yet between Hillary and Biden, but I may have to start making my little contributions to Joe to keep him in the race, and hope that others will do the same. Hillary continues to beat my already high expectations. I think she is charming, absolutely charming. She is a fighter and I think she can win. I think she can match the Reps. attack for attack. When they attack you, you deck them (paraphrasing). Discount that and it will be at the Democrats peril.

"the left's anger comes from years of frustration dealing with the right's attempt to control the national debate with vitriolic babble."

The Right's hate is in their genetic makeup, the Left's hate is learned after dealing with the Right for too long.

The first rule of The Fix is we do not talk about Ron Paul.

The second rule of The Fix is we do not talk about Ron Paul.

The third rule of The Fix, if its your first time, you have to post.

In case you've forgotten Chris, Ron Paul has more money in the bank than John McCain does. More than Mike Huckabee too.

You and your other political writers and bloggers can carry Mike Huckabee all you want but at some point he has to walk wouldn't you agree?

NevadaAndy: I sure hope you understand what I have been saying for these many months. Another thing that may help you understand is a quote of mine that goes something like "Accuse your opponent of doing what you are doing and in that way you will know what you are doing.". This is something I learned early in my interest in politics, that covers nearly sixty [60] years. Obama has ZERO chance of being elected as POTUS in 08 and the repubs know this. The "Fear" factor I mention is what the repubs are trying to get you, and others, to buy into. The "FACT" that Hillary is the most likely dem to be elected in 08 is why the repubs are so desperately trying to keep her from getting the nomination. Another little bit is "Listen for what they don't say.". Look at every recent poll and you will find the negative factor for Hillary is declining by what some may claim is nothing to talk about, yet even a .2% or .4% is quite significant when you consider how hard the repubs are trying to drive her negaives up. I can only hope, as I've stated before, you and others, don't fall for this trap the repubs are trying to promote. Get with us and help Hillary in bringing The White House back to the dems.

Mark in Austin, it's my own speculation that F. Thompson may opt out of the race. But the rest of them are facts and rumors I have gathered from this blog, DC political Report and Fox news.

First off, it's fact that he didn't raise 3/4 the money he predicted. He predicted $5 million and raised what, a little less than $3 million. His marriage to Jerri is advertised by most news agencies as a hoax, and there are suggesstions that she wears the pants. If he can't run his household, how can he run the nation? People have been leaving his staff, not joining him. There is talk that that too, is because his wife is too hard to get along with. He has no CEO experience, as I know of. Thompson's past works for lobbyists, especially for Planned Parenthood, is being shunned by conservatives. His record as a senator contribute's to his laziness. He often skipped out early, even when votes were taking place and missed a good % of them. I'm uncertain as to his actualy % of votes missed, but compared to his peers, it's pretty low. I'm sure you can find that out by looking going to yahoo and looking up www.ussenate.com and find his record of missed votes. There was a story in some paper in Tenn. about him being lazy, even back in high school. In that story, it was told that he wrote in his high school yearbook "the lazier a man is, the more he intends to get done tommorrow." If that's true, that explains why he hasn't joined the race. Plus, I have yet to hear any type of policy specific's from Thompson. All of these things are at least partially factual.

Now, the story goes that when he skipped out on votes to leave the senate early, he was kind of a playboy. He went out looking for women and also went with men. As far as I know, that is unconfirmed and is a rumor. Although, it is a rumor alot of people are yacking about. I get the feeling if he get's into the race, we will learn more about it. Dave Vitter is having a hard time getting forgiveness from Conservative's b/c he had an affair with a woman, think of Thompson's chances of getting forgiveness for working for a pro-abortion group and for having homosexual relationships! This could also be a reason he hasn't entered the race.

Lylepink,

Hillary's unfavorability rating is too high. We don't need another president with a high unfavorability rating. She isn't the right candidate, she is too divisive. We don't need someone who will perpetuate divisions within our country. We need someone who can unify the nation and that person is Obama.

I thought that the references to torture and Heart of Darkness were more like references to Abu Graib. Not that we were, but that these things had happened before and the could happen again. Even if the young ones don't receive any "questioning" who knows what they might see? How that will affect them?

I sincerely hope that children are in different facilities than adults.

As to privacy, doesn't your grabage actually have to be on the street before your REOP is invalidated. If it's in your drive way or your backyard you still retain your privacy rights. That's what I remember from Constitutional Law, but that class was a long time ago for me.

I think the Dems are going to tout Gonzales' resignation as another victory for them and for the US. Some flowery sound-bites about pressure from the Dem majority "cleaning up the White House." We'll have to wait and see whether there are any substantive changes in the administrations attitude, though. Regardless, I think it will reinforce the Dem's claim to be change agents in Washington. Their occasional success may encourage more I's to swing their way in '08

bhoomes: "to call the Rs angry and hateful after the postings you place here is just another piece of evidence of your utter disconnection from reality. Everyone but you knows that the haters originate on the left."
Wow! Struck a nerve, I guess. But, really, the left's anger comes from years of frustration dealing with the right's attempt to control the national debate with vitriolic babble. What's the matter? Tough getting beat with your own hammer?

We all know that this administration has no qualms about torturing people, Blarg. Did you not think Abu Ghraib was utter moral depravity?

And if children are in custody, they are vulnerable to abuse. That's just the way it is. Children have been sexually abused here, in the detention camps some states use. How can we not worry and have some expectation that the same thing might be happening over there?

Nor did I ever say a single thing about any 'evil act' by any 'depraved' soldiers.

You seem to be searching for a reason to get your knickers in a knot.

Okay, I'll amend my statement. You should read the article before pronouncing that it makes you "physically ill", stating that we're torturing children, and that we're being dragged down into "utter moral depravity". You didn't link to the article to inform people that we have children in custody, you liked to it to tell everyone about the latest evil act by those depraved US soldiers. Despite the fact that the article doesn't imply any misconduct at all. I consider that irresponsible.

Mark in A: I certainly find no fault with Chertoff's qualifications, it's his independence I question. Given that Justice is hemorrhaging credibility so fast it is moving toward banana republic status ("indicted by Justice" = baselessly targeted by the WH) they need to find someone to take it in the opposite direction and fast. Comey seems like a much better choice if they are sincere about doing that. Not that I think they are.

I think it was important enough to link to, even if I had read only the first paragraph. I think people should know that we have 800 or however many children in custody over there, don't you?

Maybe in the future you should actually read the article before posting a link to it.

Blarg/Mark -- you're right, I hadn't read the article yet, I was just freaked out over the whole idea of imprisoning kids that young. I mean, I have a 16 year-old daughter and even she barely has any idea what death really means. 11 year-olds -- children, just children.

But of course you can't just let them go if they are planting bombs. And perhaps they are being treated well--and perhaps they are not. How would we know? It's not like this administration has never lied to us. I'm not outraged over nothing. I am outraged that we are in this situation at all--it should never have happened.

It all gets down to what this sort of long term occupaton always leads to--'we had to blow up the village to save the village.'

I remember a friend who came back from Vietnam, weeping, completely broken, telling me about how he was on patrol and heard a noise behind him, and jumpy, whirled and fired -- and it was a little kid, maybe 3. Do you think he will ever get over that? That's where we're headed. Nightmare territory. You start to dehumanize, rationalize, call them The Enemy. But they are still children.

Hey Boko-- know what you mean. Even Ashcroft looks good now. And what about that Nixon? Not looking so bad now!

Thanks for the analysis on Chertoff, Mark-- glad to hear he's competent, at least. But will he be independent? That's the relevant question. Even so, he sure comes off slimy and slippery. Maybe part of it is that he looks like a villain out of Central Casting.

Judge -- the wireless example is interesting. To me I guess, it seems like If the 'victim' isn't losing anything, it isn't a crime. Or at least, I wouldn't care. If my service doesn't slow down, it just doesn't matter to me whether someone is piggybacking. Some things can be shared.

Of course, I would bet that a republican would feel differently!

Mark, don't worry, I'm careful with my personal info. A friend and his wife were the victims of identity theft a few years ago, so I'm even more careful now.

Drindl, if anyone had told me five years ago that I would ever be nostalgic for the days of John Ashcroft, I would have said they were nuts. Gonzales has succeeded in making that happen, and Chertoff is sure to make it worse. what do you think the odds are that before 2009, Brownie will be doing a heckuva job at Justice?

drindl, having just read the LAT article, I agree with Blarg - we seem to be doing the best we can for them.

Drindl, where does that article say anything about US soldiers torturing and sexually abusing these boys? The article describes how the child fighters are educated and counseled at the detainment facility.

There's one mention of children suffering "improperly harsh" treatment at another facility, but that doesn't justify your conclusion. It's true that adult detainees have been tortured and sexually abused at some prisons, including Abu Ghraib. But that's no reason to assume that it's going on at every facility, especially ones that hold children.

And it's not like these are innocent young boys hauled in off the street. Most of the child fighters took part in roadside bombings, and some were involved in kidnapping and murder. What do you expect the military to do with a 12-year-old accused of murder? Let him go with a stern warning? Educating these boys in prison is a lot better than the alternatives.

I could be wrong, of course. It's entirely possible that these boys are being tortured, and the story about peaceful classrooms is just a front. It's also possible that the boys are innocent and were imprisoned for no reason. But I see nothing in the article to support either of those claims. You're outraged over nothing.

Chertoff was a respected Circuit Judge and is far more competent than Gonzales. I also think that his performance at HLS is mixed and I doubt that anyone could have done better with the beast that was created - a 19+ departmental nightmare and super- bureaucracy. He did not place FEMA in HLS, after all. I also do not think his integrity has ever been suspect.

If he is appointed AG, I think the Judiciary Committee will not have a seriuos problem with him.

drindl, thanks for the LATimes story - last
reading for me before the workday!

Mark in A: based on your wireless example I thought you might be interested in this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6960304.stm

A tough call.

hi drindl - Historically, one has a reasonable expectation of privacy [REOP] within one's residence. The Supremes have said one has an REOP on one's own landline telephone. But suppose I do not WEP encrypt my wifi at home and my neighbor can piggy back on it. Can I ever say I had an REOP?
[Obviously, if I encrypt, it is because I expect privacy. That adds another dimension to the technical discussion.]
Garbage at the curb is by definition no longer yours and is not protected by "curtilege", the fancy Norman word for your residence.

Inbound telcons from overseas are not protected from warrantless search any more than are inbound trucks at the border. It was easy to distinguish inbound telcons from outbound, at one time, only twenty years ago. Now anything that bounces from satellite to satellite is likely to have an "inbound" component. This is instantaneous, as a practical matter. Do you see the dimension of the practical legal problem?

I do not trust this or any government enough to want to give up my real privacy for possible "security". But I think that constitutional lawyers are struggling with this one. It is not surprising that Congress is befuddled, and I do not know what the Supremes will do - not because of who they may be at a given time, but because the issue is SO HARD!

I dunno Drindl, is Chertoff a done deal? The WaPo sez:

"Among the names mentioned by lawmakers and their aides in recent weeks: Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff; former deputy attorney general James Comey and former deputy attorney Larry Thompson."

Comey is a heck of a lot more principled than either Gonzales or Chertoff. Don't know much about Thompson other than he's black.

Of course, competency and the ability to think independently is definitely a black mark in this Administration. So Chertoff is probably inevitable even though both being a Bush toady and the stink of Katrina still cling to him.

I just saw this item and it made me physically ill. So are we torturing and sexually humiliating 11 year-old children now? We have truly entered into Heart of Darkness territory now. How far will this occupation take us into utter moral depravity?

'Boys, some as young as 11, now outnumber foreign fighters at U.S. detention camps in Iraq. Since March, their numbers have risen to 800 from 100, said Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, the commander of detainee operations. The Times reported last month that only 130 non-Iraqi fighters were in U.S. custody in Iraq.'

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-childfighters27aug27,1,7924502.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

JimD, having worked for advertising agencies that routinely buy 'lists' of prospects that have all sorts of personal info -- one's financial transactions, outstanding medical bills, credit history, income, etc. I can tell you not a lot of what we do is private anymore.

Even your supermarket discount card has a recorded history of everything you've bought at that store, which is sold to other vendors.

I can't tell you how many lenders who have called me out of the blue, wanting to refi my mortgage, who know excatly where I live and what I owe.

NevadaAndy: You are proving my point that I have been trying to get out for many months. The repubs "Fear" Hillary for one reason, they know they can't beat her and just as you say they are forming opposition to her by their support for Obama. This is an old trick used to get the lesser vote getter as your opponent. The dem party left Ned Lamont and that is what will happen should the repubs be successful in theit support for Obama. Make no mistake, Hillary is a winner, in fact I think she is the only dem that can win in 08, because if the dems are stupid enough not to choose her as our nominee, then we will indeed deserve to lose.

Whoa, thanks for that tidbit, Judge. Had been out in the garden, lovely morning here, summer waning.

At first, I felt hopeful. Then I saw gonzo was being replaced by Michael Chertoff... the iron-clad rule of the Bush Administration -- replace everyone who's absolutely, horribly incompetent with someone who's worse.

How better to destroy the faith of people in government and make them think that 'business' could do it so much better?

To add to Mark's good advice about shredding sensitive items, do not ever put checks or bills with credit card info in your personal mail box to be mailed. Thieves have been known to steal people's mail in order to get identity theft material.

We have had several attempts at fraud against our payroll account. (Like many businesses, we use a separate bank account for payrolls), Since paychecks get wide distribution depending on where your employees cash them, they are generally easier for crooks to get their hands on one. The first fraud attempt we saw was fairly crude and the idiot tried to cash it at a branch of our bank. When the teller said she needed to check with the company issuing the check, the fellow ran away. We now have a service with our bank in which the company processing our payroll sends the bank a data file containing all pay checks for each payroll. The bank will not clear checks that do not match.

There are fraud rings out there who have gotten very sophisticated. An employee at a bank check clearing operation sold cancelled pay checks to some crooks (like many businesses we do not deal with paper cancelled checks, we get image files instead). The crooks created fake pay checks with a mix of company names, signatures and account numbers. The checks were all below $400 and they were cashed at Wal-Marts and supermarkets for the most part. In about 10 days this ring cashed over $7,500 in fraudulent checks citing my account. We had no liability but the stores who cashed the checks were the losers. I called the police when I saw these fraudulent checks in on-line bank reports. The officer who finally responded told me that since we did not suffer a loss over this, I could not file a police report and they would basically do nothing until a true victim filed.

Gonzales is gone. What impact, if any, will that have on the 2008 elections? I'm not interested in discussing Bush's legacy/place in the history books, BTW.

This does refocus negative attention on Darth Cheney. Higher up the food chain, actually in the WH (not that Gonzales was actually out of it), his black mark on this Administration will have more lasting impacts on the R's chances. Not that Bush will ever get rid of him. Perhaps he'll resign "for health reasons" or to enter Lynne in a 12-step program.

Mark in Austin-- How is sifting through your Internet communication and your emails and google searches different than listening to your phone conversations or physically searching your house while you're away? What about your mail, your financial and medical records? Should we just then surrender all expectation of privacy and the 4th amendment without even a whimper? Certainly it's reasonable to expect searches if some evidence connects you to a potential crime, but does that mean we all have to live in such a way that we just expect that every aspect of our lives is under surveillance all the time?

We're not talking about temporarily. And do I trust this government? Are you joking? As to whether I trust ANY government, well, not so much. Mine or any other...I don't frankly trust ANY organization...certainly not any composed of strangers to me, who have no personal interest in my well-being. I've been around too long. People, even the well-meaning--perhaps especially the well-meaning, can too easily be used by demogogues or rogues. And as Boko says, of course, all this personal data will be used politically too.

As for Zbig, anyone associated with Carter has pretty much been demonized... I doubt if it has any effect with the public.. theydon't seem to remember much. Clarke has been smeared a lot too, although I respect him.

It's sad, but evil lunatics with a corporate agenda like Rush Limbaugh have more influence over the general public than thoughful foreign policy wonks.

Bokonon - I hope you saw my 11P post to you and are shredding your sensitive receipts from now on.

reason - where did you get the FT rumors? MSM? R blogs? D blogs? What you wrote is interesting, but may be gossip or political gaming, of course.

Does anyone else wonder if Fred Thompson was just a tease? It looks like he couldn't raise half the money he projected, his past ties to lobby groups is coming back to haunt him, his marriage is becoming more and more of an issue, there are rumors that he's a closeted homosexual and his past laziness is already coming into play. Combine all of that with the fact that he's got no organization in key states, no money to gain that organization and no following at all outside of the south, it's not looking good for Freddie. Besides that, he's had no real policy specifics.

It looks like it really could be Huckabee's time to capitalize on this. He has social conservative bona-fides and a CEO's record of running Arkansas. I'm wondering if after Labor Day, Thompson will say he's decided against running.

hi Boko - stealing your credit card info and using it is illegal, but anyone can sort through your curbside trash! So you must shred your trash if you do not want to be victimized. Urban police routinely search trash of suspects. No warrant has ever been required to garbage pick at the street trash can.

I think Zbig was one of the heavy hitters of diplomacy. Clarke does know as much as any civilian about anti-terrorism. Their apparent approval of Obama was certainly noticed by me. As I said earlier, Zbig was not a fan of Bill Clinton's foreign policy. In fact, he was approving of Bush 41, Baker, and Scowcroft, as a foreign policy team. You can see Zbig talking to Charlie Rose about this online, for an hour, I think.

The Republicans are hoping the Dems will nominate Hillary because it enhances their chances of keeping the White House. If Obama is the nominee, they will be hard pressed to come up with something against him.

I don't understand how Hillary can be leading in the polls when her unfavorability ratings are just as high.

Democrats must seriously ask themselves what is more important, winning back the White House or nominating the first female for President? Democrats should not nominate someone with such a high unfavorablity rating if they expect to take back the White House. Any democratic candidate will need Republican cross over and independent votes to win. Hillary can't deliver on this, but Obama can. He already has people crossing over from the Republican party to support his campaign for the Democratic nomination. There are Republicans for Obama organizations that are moblilizing. I don't see any Republicans for Clinton organizations.

also, not addressed to me, but what impact if any do you think Brzezinski's endorsement of Obama will have on the race? What do you think of him - sharp on contemporary stuff? or still a cold warrior? I know he was connected with Carter's rescue mission in Iran that failed, but I don't know whether or not the plan was his... I would like to think that his blessing would give Obama some legitimacy in foreign policy that he (obama) has so far not been credited with - although he has also been OK'd by Richard Clarke of 09.11 fame.

Mark, good question. I mean, I would hate it, and would think it represented another step down the road to tyranny in this country... but given the way technology is today, I could understand at least the argument that because of the ways in which people communicate nowadays, older methods of surveillance would be inadequate.

so my answer is that I really don't know, especially because any answer to that question must have as at least an implicit part of it "I trust the government exactly this much," and while I know that at least a certain degree of trust or at least wishful thinking is implicit in being a citizen of any country, I truly don't know how much I trust the government. I will say that it's substantially less than it was fifteen or even ten years ago, but then I also knew much less about what was going on at that time.

However, to go with your analogy of discarded trash - as far as i know it's STILL illegal to get someone's credit information from the trash, or bank acct #s, or... (i hope - isn't it?) Or did you just mean "no expectation of privacy from the GOVERNMENT" - ?? And if so, how would that work in criminal cases? would the standards of what can and can't be used as evidence be relaxed? or would new standards have to be developed? or maybe they already exist? and would the person being investigated be allowed to defend him/herself?

in saying this, I'm imagining an innocent American, not a terrorist necessarily but maybe someone who worked at the national HQ of one party being "investigated" by the other party? maybe with the investigators pretending to be, i don't know, "plumbers" or sth like that - ?

drindl,

As Mark said, the Civil War corruption dwarfs anything in Iraq when you correct for inflation. Hundreds of Army suppliers sold shoddy goods at highly inflated prices with the connivance of War Department employees. Things improved somewhat after Edwin Stanton was appointed Secretary of War in early 1892. However, the first man he appointed to investigate corruption was arrested only those profiteers who did not pay him off.

There was a draft but you could buy your way out of it, the most notable example was future president Grover Cleveland who hired another man to take his draft spot.

A good DVD to get is "The Bush Connection" about the "JFK Conspiracy". This is about the best I have seen and I am sure a couple of posters here will be in seventh heaven when they see it.

So it was analogous, in a way, to the statewide Public Health Service run out of a building on the UNC-CH campus, Jim. Chapel Hill is actually a very good university town to live in, of course.

drindl, the Civil War was a massive undertaking that dwarfed this occupation. Both armies had more than a million men in uniform but I think that no single nation had ever had a million men in uniform before [my recollection is that Napoleon had 600k in his army]. In current dollars, the cost of that war was staggering. As Jim says, the corruption was staggering, too. Lincoln abolished double entry bookkeeping in the Army in order to hide the enormous cost of the War.

|, I saw Zbig's endorsement of Obama, too. Zbig is certainly no shrinking violet. He was not a big fan of Bill Clinton's foreign policy - graded him a C+ in his book - that high entirely based on the world markets understanding of first, Lloyd Bentsen, and then Bob Rubin. He thought Bill was comfortable with international market whizzes, and that was the better part of his foreign policy understanding. Zbig thought that Clinton believed he could talk anyone into anything, and that Clinton was completely ill-equipped to deal with Arafat. He thinks that Bill Clinton, like GWB, sees Israel's needs as central to his own focus on the Middle East.

Boko, I will play devil's advocate with you and say that
most of the 40+ Al Qaeda attacks that have been thwarted in Europe since 9-11-01 were broken by police surveillance that included wiretap. The internet and the cell phone are technologies that must be addressed within the framework of the Constitution.

However, if you think the current Admin, and the compliant Congress, are playing fast and loose with
the notion of what is a reasonable search and seizure, I would agree. On the other hand, we may be headed for a time when the Supremes decide there is no more expectation of privacy on the internet than there is in one's discarded trash. Then no internet communication would be free from Govt. surveillance.

What would you think of that?

femalenick, FDR was fairly radical for him time. So for that matter was Reagan, albeit from the other side of the spectrum. It's all about how they are perceived - for example, as you remember, Dean was perceived to be nuts. It turned out that he was right on a lot of the points so easily dismissed by both the GOP and the establishment Democrats... unfortunately, we learned that too late. The whole Hillary "inevitablility" thing is all about perception - a perception that has been carefully planted and encouraged in voters' minds. For that matter, the idea that she is an "experienced" candidate is spin too. Another example - her attempt to spin Obama's foreign policy positions as "naive." Apparently, Zbigniew Brzezinsku disagrees - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082402127.html?nav=rss_print/asection - and he has even more foreign policy experience than even Hillary!

Mark

The UNC public TV station was actually a state-wide network. There were a number of stations involved with the HQ at Chapel Hill.

drindl,

I was a Navy Supply Officer, and did serve a three year tour in a major weapsons system procurement program as a financial manager. I had other positions that touched on contracting but not the very big dollar value ones.

Mark and Jim-- --
Thanks to you both for your answers. Interesting to know about the Civil War -- didn't know that. But it c an't have been on this scale. There were litrally tons of hundred dollar bills flown into Iraq -- which just disappeared.

Obviously what we need is a Senate Committee to oversee contracts. That's really the problem, that Congress has abdicated it's oversight duty for several years now. We may get a grip on it eventually, but billions or trillions will be gone for good by then.

Yes, I remember the suppression of dissent during Vietnam, Mark. I went to anti-war rally as a 16 year old girl and got hit with a billy club for not getting out of the way fast enough. The good old days.. :]

Thought you'd appreciate this I found today:

'The ad, by the conservative group Club For Growth, sharply criticizes Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, for raising taxes on gas, groceries and nursing home beds while increasing spending. "Who is that tax-and-spend liberal Arkansas governor? Bill Clinton? No, it's Mike Huckabee," says a narrator in the 30 second spot.'

So if the evil Grover Norquist Club hates Huckabee, he must have some integrity.

Unless there is fundamental change in our country, our republic as we have known it will continue to deteriorate until it fully dies. The American people are asleep and like the frog in the pot, they do not know that the water is heating up. Because people are too lazy and expect the government and the politicians to fix everything for them, there is no hope unless there is DEEP change NOW. RON PAUL is the ONLY person running for president who offers ANY change from normal Wasington "business".

drindl

For what it is worth, the profiteering during the Civil war was far worse and had direct bad results for the Union forces. Some War Department employees were incredibly corrupt and deeply involved in the scams. Edwin Stanton finally was able to get a grip on it.

During WWII, there was a Senate committee overseeing war contracting that did a very credible job. It brought an obscure Missouri Senator by the name of Truman to national attention.

Mark, I read the article in RS too... and had much the same reaction that you did. I agree, better to give a link than to post the whole damn thing bit by bit. That said, it is worth reading. and btw, Rolling Stone I think actually has good political writers and writing. It's left-ish, but usually sourced and well-reported, and I don't think without credibility in the publishing world. (William Greider (?) and some other names you may know are/have been contributors/staff writers, and guests have included RFK Jr, among others.) That's not to say that you or anyone else are required to agree, just that - I think - it's a reputable source.)
also - in light of Bush's recent comparisons of Iraq and Vietnam, I wonder what it says that Johnson and Nixon used wiretapping during Vietnam, and it didn't win the war... yet Bush accuses those who oppose his eavesdropping of seeking to undermine US victory.

There's no such thing as inevitability when it comes to politics. And Howard Dean and Ross Perot proved that no amount of cash can win an election. And while the candidate sounding "different" can sound good for a while, people on the whole are resistant to dramatic change.

And when it comes to politics, those who sound too radical will not win national elections. The biggest reason that HRC will win the nomination is because she is a centrist. It's why Republican pundits fear her and why Democrats further left on the spectrum hate her. They know that the public will see this during the debates.

Hi - UNC-CH is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the first public university [179?]. My sister is a PhD in the Public Health Sevice which is integrated in NC with the UNC-CH School of Public Health, so she is an employee of UNC-CH. JimD, there have been faction wars in the Public Heath School over the years that I have often heard about at length over the phone, but who would have thought that WUNC was even a big enough fiefdom to have a faction war!

Of course ten lawyer or ten accountant firms often split into factions: I guess it's human nature.

drindl, at 5:48P last evening I posted addressed to you, just in case you did not notice in the RS flurry.

There was terrible suppression of dissent during the LBJ and Nixon Administrations. They both used the IRS as a political weapon and they both engaged in widespread wiretapping - Nixon was worse, about that. The FISA rules we are fighting over today were a Congressional response to LBJ and then Nixon, three years after Nixon left office.

These alleged contractor crimes probably will be addressed; but if history is our guide, they will only be addressed after the firestorm dies down and after this Administration is gone.

The wheels of justice turn, but they grind exceeding slow.

JimD--What is UNC-CH. Did you say you were in military procurememt? Did you read that article?

Hi Mark and Jim.

My, Mystery Poster so outraged today... must be a feminist :]

What a reasonable guy you are Mark, to be so nice to someone who is being inconsiderate.

Because you said you read the article in RS, I did too. I must admit I was stunned. I had hear bits and pieces of this scandal, but I just had no idea how bad it was, how endemic.

But I wonder if Congress has any power any more. I'm serious. Things have gotten very strange here. The fact that these contractors simply sneer at Congress because they know the adminstration will protect them is very scary.

I was particularly interested in the fact that the Bush adminstration appears to be blocking the prosecution of contractors guilty of fraud and abuse. I also read yesterday of two contractor-employees who were held in a military prison and tortured --for reporting fraud and illegal activity.

Tell me, as a lawyer, have you ever heard of anything like this happening in the US before?

And don't you find it a sad state of things that the best investigative journalism in America is coming out of place like Rolling Stone?

Mark,

I came very close to being an employee of UNC-CH upon my retirement from the Navy 10 years ago. I interviewed for the position of business manager for the public TV system which was affiliated with UNC-CH in some manner which I have forgotten. The divisions in that organization were extreme. I was one of two finalists and the favorite of one faction. The other faction favored the other finalist. They could not come to an agreement and decided to re-open the search. After what I saw there, I accepted a job offer from a Big Five consulting firm and never looked back.

I have another friendly suggestion for you, |.

If either of your Sens or your Rep sit on a key committee with potential oversight over these contracts, write to him/her/them.

I am thinking that I may, although I would need something more persuasive than an unsigned article in RS, the chronicle of rock n' roll. Yes, the specifics seemed compelling, but perhaps there are alternative sources for all of them...like the IG's Report, which along with Frontline, has documented the fecies ridden Police Academy.

I know that many citizens feel powerless to do anything but vent, but a good Congressperson actually will pay attention to a constituent. Not trying, in that context, is like giving up on the entire system of American government.

Back in the water.

Thank you for replying, my outraged |.

I read the entire RS unsigned article when you posted it. I am a fast reader. I read it before you posted two more excerpts.

The report is so inflammatory that an honorable AG might order an FBI investigation. It is so inflammatory that the contract oversight subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee should employ investigators to report back. Sen. Feinstein's husband may be one of the contractors, but she could recuse herself.

It did not require you to post the entire article, however. Unfortunately, I do believe that I am talking past you.

I think that you would have caught more attention to the unsigned article without reprinting it. I think that your style is inconsiderate.

It is near 100 degrees in Austin today and our air conditioning went out last night, so I am delighted to be sitting under the shade structure by my pool writing to you on my laptop. Now I am going back into the pool. I can do this and think that our current Administration encourages waste, with its cronies, and of the lives of our soldiers, at the same time.

I do not enjoy martinis or hard liquor, myself. Later, I will go to my office to work.

healthy? is it 'healthy' to ignore outrages perpetrated against your country? is it 'healthy' to ignore crimes against humanity?

what these contractors are doing is costing US lives -- period. i guess that's ok with you.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle

do you care what's happening to your country? do you want to know? look at the article in rolling stone -- i dare you to read it. if you aren't outraged, then you are not a patriot. you do not love your country. perhaps you are ot even human.

yes, do go out to the pool. and don't think about how thousands of young americans are dying in a distant desert so certain well-connected contractors can make a few hundred billion off we middle-class taxpayers who work our as*es off, but can't afford a pool, can't afford medical insurance for our children, but still have to pay through the nose for this debacle in iraq.

have a martini too, while you're ou there, and don't think about what it's like to have your kid come home in a box so dick cheney can make $90 million dollars from KBR stock.

Such excuses speak to a monstrous vacuum of patriotism; it would be hard to imagine contractors being so blithely disinterested in results during World War II, where every wasted dollar might mean another American boy dead from gangrene in the Ardennes. But the rampant waste of money and resources also suggests a widespread contempt for the ostensible "purpose" of our presence in Iraq. Asked to cast a vote for the war effort, contractors responded by swiping everything they could get their hands on -- and the administration's acquiescence in their thievery suggests that it, too, saw making a buck as the true mission of the war. Two witnesses scheduled to testify before Congress against Custer Battles ultimately declined not only because they had received death threats but because they, too, were contractors and feared that they would be shut out of future government deals. To repeat: Witnesses were afraid to testify in an effort to ­recover government funds because they feared reprisal from the government.

The Bush administration's lack of interest in recovering stolen funds is one of the great scandals of the war. The White House has failed to litigate a single case against a contractor under the False Claims Act and has not sued anybody for breach of contract. It even declined to join in a lawsuit filed by whistle-blowers who are accusing KBR of improper invoicing in Fallujah.

The Basra Children's Hospital was a state-of-the-art medical facility set to be built in a town without safe drinking water. "Why build a hospital for kids, when the kids have no clean water?" said Rep. Jim Kolbe, a Republican from Arizona.

Bechtel was given $50 million to build the hospital -- but a year later, with the price tag soaring to $169 million, the company was pulled off the project without a single bed being ready for use. The government was unfazed: Bechtel, explained USAID spokesman David Snider, was "under a 'term contract,' which means their job is over when their money ends."

Their job is over when their money ends. When I call Snider to clarify this amazing statement, he declines to discuss the matter further. But if you look over the history of the Iraqi reconstruction effort, you will find versions of this excuse every where. When Custer Battles was caught delivering broken trucks to the Army, a military official says the company told him, "We were only told we had to deliver the trucks. The contract doesn't say they had to work."

Well, |, I see that even where you post the source you seem unable to "stifle yourself, Edith", as Archie Bunker would have said. If "proud" copied-and-pasted her "National Review" cites in full, I suspect that you would consider her inconsiderate.

What do you think is your motivation? In your view, are you disclosing important information? Are you merely trying to disrupt? Do you want to spark dialogue or discussion? Do you think of yourself as a healthy person?

Perhaps you and "che" and "zouk" and "rufus" could have your own blog and whistle past each other with
long quotes from wingtip and hindu sources.

I'm going back out to the pool now.

In perhaps the ultimate example of military capitalism, KBR ran convoys of empty trucks back and forth across the insurgent-laden desert, pointlessly risking the lives of soldiers and drivers so the company could charge the taxpayer for its phantom deliveries. Truckers for KBR, knowing full well that the trips were bullsh*t, derisively referred to their cargo as "sailboat fuel."

There isn't a brazen, two-bit, purse-snatching money caper you can think of that didn't happen at least 10,000 times with your tax dollars in Iraq. At the very outset of the occupation, when L. Paul Bremer was installed as head of the CPA, one of his first brilliant ideas for managing the country was to have $12 billion in cash flown into Baghdad on huge wooden pallets and stored in palaces and government buildings. To pay contractors, he'd have agents go to the various stashes -- a pile of $200 million in one of Saddam's former palaces was watched by a single soldier, who left the key to the vault in a backpack on his desk when he went out to lunch -- withdraw the money, then crisscross the country to pay the bills. When desperate auditors later tried to trace the paths of the money, one agent could account for only $6,306,836 of some $23 million he'd withdrawn. Bremer's office "acknowledged not having any supporting documentation" for $25 million given to a different agent. A ministry that claimed to have paid 8,206 guards was able to document payouts to only 602.

But even being the clumsiest war profit eers of all time was not enough to bring swift justice upon the heads of Mr. Custer and Mr. Battles -- and this is where the story of America's reconstruction effort gets really interesting. The Bush administration not only refused to prosecute the pair -- it actually tried to stop a lawsuit filed against the contractors by whistle-blowers hoping to recover the stolen money. The administration argued that Custer Battles could not be found guilty of defrauding the U.S. government because the CPA was not part of the U.S. government. When the lawsuit went forward despite the administration's objections, Custer and Battles mounted a defense that recalled Nuremberg and Lt. Calley, arguing that they could not be guilty of theft since it was done with the government's approval.

The jury disagreed, finding Custer Battles guilty of ripping off taxpayers. But the verdict was set aside by T.S. Ellis III, a federal judge who cited the administration's "the CPA is not us" argument. The very fact that private contractors, aided by the government itself, could evade conviction for what even Ellis, a Reagan-appointed judge, called "significant" evidence of fraud, says everything you need to know about the true nature of the war we are fighting in Iraq. Is it really possible to bilk American taxpayers for repainted forklifts stolen from Iraqi Airways and claim that you were just following orders? It is, when your commander in chief is George W. Bush.

The system not only had the advantage of eliminating red tape in a war zone, it also encouraged the "entrepreneurship" of patriots like Custer and Battles, who went from bumming cab fare to doing $100 million in government contracts practically overnight. And what business they did! The bid that Custer claimed to have spent "three sleepless nights" putting together was later described by Col. Richard Ballard, then the inspector general of the Army, as looking "like something that you and I would write over a bottle of vodka, complete with all the spelling and syntax errors and annexes to be filled in later." The two simply "presented it the next day and then got awarded about a $15 million contract."

The deal charged Custer Battles with the responsibility to perform airport security for civilian flights. But there were never any civilian flights into Baghdad's airport during the life of their contract, so the CPA gave them a job managing an airport checkpoint, which they failed miserably. They were also given scads of money to buy expensive X-ray equipment and set up an advanced canine bomb-sniffing system, but they never bought the equipment. As for the dog, Ballard reported, "I eventually saw one dog. The dog did not appear to be a certified, trained dog." When the dog was brought to the checkpoint, he added, it would lie down and "refuse to sniff the vehicles" -- as outstanding a metaphor for U.S. contractor performance in Iraq as has yet been produced.

To travel to Iraq, would-be contractors needed permission from the Bush administration, which was far from blind in its appraisal of applicants. In a much-ballyhooed example of favoritism, the White House originally installed a clown named Jim O'Beirne at the relevant evaluation desk in the Department of Defense. O'Beirne proved to be a classic Bush villain, a moron's moron who judged applicants not on their Arabic skills or their relevant expertise but on their Republican bona fides; he sent a twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance to manage the reopening of the Iraqi stock exchange, and appointed a recent graduate of an evangelical university for home-schooled kids who had no accounting experience to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget.

If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where's the incentive to deliver success? There's no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don't pay the bills.

And here's where this story turns into something perfectly symbolic of everything that the war in Iraq stands for, a window into the soul of for-profit contractors who not only left behind a breathtaking legacy of fraud, waste and corruption but, through their calculating, greed-fueled hijacking of this generation's broadest and most far-reaching foreign-policy initiative, pushed America into previously unknown realms of moral insanity. When I contact Mark Atwood and ask him to explain how he could watch one of his best employees get blown up and crippled for life, and then cut him loose with debts totaling well over half a million dollars, Atwood, safe in his office in Kuwait City and contentedly suckling at the taxpayer teat, decides that answering this one question is just too much to ask of poor old him.

"Right now," Atwood says, "I just want some peace."

For nearly a year, Skoug did the job, trying at each stop to overcome the hostility that many troops felt for civilian contractors who surfed the Internet and played pool and watched movies all day for big dollars while soldiers carrying seventy-pound packs of gear labored in huts with broken air conditioning the civilian techs couldn't be bothered to repair. "They'd have the easiest thing to fix, and they wouldn't do it," Skoug says. "They'd write that they'd fixed it or that they just needed a part and then just leave it." At Haditha Dam, Skoug witnessed a near-brawl after some Marines, trying to get some sleep after returning from patrol, couldn't get a group of "KBR dudes" to turn down the television in a common area late at night.

An Air Force vet, Skoug had come to Iraq as a civilian to repair refrigeration units and air conditioners for a KBR subcontractor called LSI. But when he arrived, he discovered that LSI had hired him to fix Humvees. "I didn't know jack-squat about Humvees," he says. "I could maybe change the oil, that was it." (Asked about Skoug's additional assignment, KBR boasted: "Part of the reason for our success is our ability to employ individuals with multiple capabilities.")

Working with him on his crew were two other refrigeration technicians, neither of whom knew anything about fixing Humvees. Since Skoug and most of his co-workers had worked for KBR in Afghanistan, they were familiar with cost-plus contracting. The buzz around the base was that cost-plus was the reason LSI was hiring air-conditioning guys to work on unfamiliar military equipment at a cost to the taxpayer of $80,000 a year. "They was doing the same thing as KBR: just filling the body count," says Skoug.

Thanks to low troop levels, all the military repair guys had been pressed into service to fight the war, so Skoug was forced to sit in the military storeroom on the base and study vehicle manuals that, as a civilian, he wasn't allowed to check out of the building. That was how America fought terrorism in Iraq: It hired civilian air-conditioning techs to fix Humvees using the instruction manual while the real Humvee repairmen, earning a third of what the helpless civilians were paid, drove around in circles outside the wire waiting to get blown up by insurgents.

"Yeah, I don't know what I expected him to say," Representative Van Hollen says now about the way the contractor responded to being asked to give the money back. "It just shows the contempt they have for us, for the taxpayer, for everything."

Next thing you know, the congressman is asking you about your company's compensation. Touchy subject -- you've got a "cost-plus" contract, which means you're guaranteed a base-line profit of three percent of your total costs on the deal. The more you spend, the more you make -- and you certainly spent a hell of a lot. But before this milk-faced congressman can even think about suggesting that you give these millions back, you've got to cut him off. "So you won't voluntarily look at this," Van Hollen is mumbling, "and say, given what has happened in this project . . . "

"No, sir, I will not," you snap.

". . . 'We will return the profits.' . . ."

"No, sir, I will not," you repeat.

A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that's supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering clusterf*cks of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in feces and urine, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.

You've done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of the Saw movies: "We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate," they write, adding that "the urine was so pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles" and that "during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an assessment team member's shirt." The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle

According to the most reliable estimates, we have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America's contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming garbage piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches.

For the most part, nobody at home cared, because war on some level is always a waste. But what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future.

Perfect. "Mission Accomplished," indeed. The 'conservative movement' has never been anything more than an effort to undermine and abolish the whole idea of government and turn every function over to privateers and profiteers. And Iraq is the insane, evil, malfunctioning fulfillment of that dream.

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they f*ck things up.

And just maybe, reviewing this appalling history of invoicing orgies and million-dollar boondoggles, it's not so far-fetched to think that this is the way someone up there would like things run all over -- not just in Iraq but in Iowa, too, with the state police working for Corrections Corporation of America, and DHL with the contract to deliver every Christmas card. And why not? What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc racy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profiteering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- and American men and women dying by the thousands.

I have long believed that the invasion and occupation of Iraq represented, not the signal failure of the BushCheney administration, but rather the successful realization of the right wing corporatocracy's greatest fantasy: The redirection of a huge portion of the United States treasury to the pockets of Big Business, conducted with the active support and full power of the federal government and almost completely unfettered by oversight of any kind whatsoever.

And don't let any rightwinger try to tell you that Iraq is an experiment in "pure laissez-faire capitalism"; it is far from that. Iraq is, purely and simply, the theft of billions and billions of tax dollars, aided and abetted by the BushCheney administration at nearly every level. In contrast to pure laissez-faire capitalism, which eschews the involvement of government, the thievery in Iraq - and its concomitant Croesus-like enrichment of scores of big corporations - would not be possible without the direct and illegal participation of the BushCheney administration.

Apparently, there is no truth to the rumor that calls for withdrawing troops from Iraq is demoralizing the troops.

In fact, calls for withdrawal have the troops standing and cheering, as this story demonstrates:.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- A call by Puerto Rico's governor for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq earned a standing ovation Saturday from a conference of more than 4,000 National Guardsmen.

Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila said the U.S. administration has "no new strategy and no signs of success" and that prolonging the war would needlessly put guardsmen in harm's way.

quaoar's diary :: ::
This happened at the opening of the 129th National Guard Association general conference. There are about 1,800 Guardsmen from Puerto Rico currently in Iraq.

"The daily death toll of Americans and their allies has caused irreparable anguish here in Puerto Rico, and throughout the country. The same could be said for the people of Iraq," Acevedo said.

Here's the thing, though -- this story was moved by the Associated Press and it has gotten almost zero coverage. Try to find it in your local paper. It's even difficult finding it with a Google search.

On the other hand, if 4,000 Guardsmen stood and cheered for a call to stay the course you can bet it would be 24/7 on cable TV news.

DNC strips Florida of delegates (they have 30 days to reset date to after Feb 5 and regain delegates), and Michigan GOP votes to uphold January 15 date if Michigan legislature votes that way.... and it appears it may.

The question is, will Dem candidates uphold the party rules and not campaign in "censured" state(s), or will they go for the national attention to try to win what amounts to a state straw poll.

Will Hillary calculate she has all the delegates she needs and campaign hard in FL and MI looking toward November 2008?

http://whathappenedtomycountry.blogspot.com

Since home-price tracking began in 1950, there has never been a nationwide year-to-year decline in the price of homes. In fact, many economists considered a national drop in housing prices impossible. But it's happening: When the government index of the cost of a home is released next week, the cost is expected to be 1 percent to 2 percent lower than last year. Some experts think prices could dip as low as 10 percent (adjusted for inflation) by 2009. It could take up to a decade for the price of homes to rebound.

Back in June, Motor City Madman Ted Nugent said he admires a lot of the 2008 Republican presidential candidates, and especially would-be candidate Fred Thompson.

"I really like Mike Huckabee and Tommy Thompson," Nugent told Dennis Miller. "I admire Mitt Romney. I admire John McCain. But to whittle it down right now I really have the Nugent spotlight, and I've been scrutinizing Mr. Fred Thompson. I think he glows a little bit more than those other great gentlemen."

Does Thompson think that Nugent glows? And if he does, will he still think so after watching a concert video in which Nugent urges "piece of sh*t" Barack Obama to "suck on" a machine gun and then suggests that "worthless b*tch" Hillary Clinton should ride on one?

What would Thompson --- or, say, Fox News, which hosts Nugent often -- be saying today if Bruce Springsteen or some other left-leaning musician had made similarly vicious and threatening comments about a Republican presidential candidate?

And how about you, Sean Hannity? Hannity had Nugent on his Fox show in July to discuss a blog post in which a writer said he had "dibs" on Rush Limbaugh if it ever became legal to shoot him, and that others would be "welcome to" Nugent if they wanted him. Hannity said he took such threats seriously, and he asked Nugent if people who make them ought to be arrested. Nugent's answer: Yes.

Glenn Greenwald's excellent cover story on the Ayad Allawi offensive talked about the role of Phillip Zelikow, a close associate of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in the right-wing effort to help Allawi topple Nouri al-Maliki. Zelikow staffed the 9/11 Commission and then became "counselor" to Rice on Iraq, but according to CNN and other news reports, he now works for GOP heavyweight lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers, which just signed a $300,000 contract to represent Allawi in the U.S. Yet Zelikow is still holding himself out as an official expert on Iraq, Greenwald noted, without disclosing his ties to the lobbying firm.

On Tuesday night, ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz quoted him saying the administration had a "Plan B" alternative to Maliki. "I can confidently guess that our government is quietly speculating about a lot of different options knowing how much concern Iraqis have about their leadership." But Zelikow was identified only as a "Former Counselor to the State Department," not part of the firm paid to push Allawi.

Today Glenn received this e-mail from ABC News Public Relations:

"When ABC News interviewed Philip Zelikow on August 21, he did not disclose that he was working for Barbour Griffith & Rogers; this information did not become public until several days later. We are deeply disappointed that Mr. Zelikow did not disclose his lobbying relationship to us. As a former advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and now a professor at the University of Virginia, we believe that his statement to us accurately reflects ongoing, internal discussions at the State Department. Nevertheless, his statement is sullied by the fact that he did not disclose his relationship with Barbour Griffith & Rogers."

There are two things the administration does well: stealing from the taxpayers and giving the money to their rich contributors and rolling out new product with PR and propaganda. They do both those things very well. The problem is that over and over again their product is not just defective, it's toxic and deadly. Caveat Emptor.

The head of the Pentagon's 'War Room' -- or propaganda office:

'Dorrance Smith, a former ABC News producer, has been close to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld since the Ford Administration. Which probably explains why the Bush Administration picked him to be assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.

In November 2005, shortly after President Bush nominated him for the post, Smith wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal claiming American television networks--including Fox News--had an "ongoing relationship" with the pan-Arab news network Al-Jazeera. That prompted Senator Carl Levin, then the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to put a hold on Smith's nomination. Smith, Levin said, believed that "Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Al Qaeda have a partner in Al-Jazeera and, by extension, most networks in the U.S." And such a person, Levin reasoned, should not be given a senior Pentagon press-relations job.

But the Bush Administration had other plans, and Smith was named to his job in a recess appointment in February 2006. Recess appointments are the Bush Administration's preferred method for installing hacks into key positions (see John Bolton), and Smith hasn't disappointed: even though he heads an agency that is meant to be the main liaison between the Pentagon, the media, and the American public, he has, we're told, yet to hold a single press briefing.

[...]

The stated mission of the Public Affairs office is to provide accurate information to the media and the public. But Smith's aim seems to be to turn his office into a political spin operation that serves the White House. For example, he posted "Five Myths About the War on Terror" on a Defense Department website, a document greatly lacking in facts. Two of the "myths" he seeks to debunk: that "Secretary Rumsfeld ignored military advice to increase troop levels in Iraq," and that "the administration has been distracted from waging an effective war in Afghanistan by Iraq."

I've also recently learned that Mike O'Hanlon is under contract with the US government's propaganda network, Alhurra

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/08/more-for-the--1.html

And Awad Allawi is represented by the lobbying firm of Haley Barbour. Both are given forums by the WaPo and NYTimes, without mention that they are paid propagandists for the US govrnment.

Is there anything in the MSM anymore that is NOT PROPAGHANDA?

CHICAGO When Rep. Jan Schakowsky made her first trip to Iraq this month, she resolved to keep her opinions to herself. "I would listen and learn," she decided.

At times that proved a challenge, as when Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told her congressional delegation, "There's not going to be political reconciliation by this September; there's not going to be political reconciliation by next September." Schakowsky gulped -- wasn't that the whole idea of President Bush's troop increase, to buy time for that political progress?

But the real test came over a lunch with Gen. David H. Petraeus, who used charts and a laser pointer to show how security conditions were gradually improving -- evidence, he argued, that the troop increase is doing some good.

Still, the U.S. commander cautioned, it could take another decade before real stability is at hand. Schakowsky gasped. "I come from an environment where people talk nine to 10 months," she said, referring to the time frame for withdrawal that many Democrats are advocating. "And there he was, talking nine to 10 years."

The American effort to chase bin Laden into this forbidding realm was hobbled and clumsy from the start. While the terrain required deep local knowledge and small units, career officers in the U.S. military have long been wary of the Special Operations Forces best suited to the task. In the view of the regular military, such "snake eaters" have tended to be troublesome, resistant to spit-and-polish discipline and rulebooks. Rather than send the snake eaters to poke around mountain caves and mud-walled compounds, the U.S. military wanted to fight on a grander stage, where it could show off its mobility and firepower. To the civilian bosses at the Pentagon and the eager-to-please top brass, Iraq was a much better target. By invading Iraq, the United States would give the Islamists--and the wider world--an unforgettable lesson in American power. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was on Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board and, at the time, a close confidant of the SecDef. In November 2001, Gingrich told a NEWSWEEK reporter, "There's a feeling we've got to do something that counts--and bombing caves is not something that counts."

I think we all remember Kerry raising these points about the time he was being swift-boated.

I read your message, JimD, and my sister in NC kept telling me that Edwards was a "highlight reel" Senator.
She voted for him, she generally liked him, and he was a friend of the university system [she is employed by UNC-CH]. But she thought, critically, that he never found a camera he did not like. That's consistent with your suggestion that he started running for Prez as soon as he was elected to the Senate.

proudtobeGOP, have you actually posted the single word "clark" twice, and if you have, why?

clark

Mark,

I think I might have made my case against