The pathetic part is all Bush is doing is stalling for time, not changing
course. He wants to be able to say "the war was lost by *whoever is elected
in 2008*; if you'd have done what I said, we'd have won."

It's why he will go down in history as the most reviled President ever.

There is no Justification for Delay in Stopping the War and Starting
Impeachment Hearings

By Dave Lindorff
Created Jan 10 2007 - 9:26am

One of the most common criticisms I get when I discuss the impeachment issue
among Democrats and progressives is that I'm impatient and that I'm asking
too much of the new Congress--that Democrats need time to get settled into
their new role as majority party.

As one person wrote in a comment to my latest essay in Daily Kos, calling
for immediate action to end the war and to initiate impeachment proceedings,
".let the subpoenas do their work, the committees get the dirt..These
hearings will shatter the Republican Party for years to come. Let the
process work."

The problem with this go-slow line of thinking is two-fold.

First of all, it assumes that the Congressional Democrats and especially the
party leaders want the process to work. And that is taking a lot for
granted.

Clearly, Congress has the power to force a halt to the war in Iraq. The
Democrats in Congress claim that they heard the voters in November and that
they want the war wound down and the troops brought home...

Saddam's Well-Timed Execution

By Robert Parry
Created Jan 10 2007 - 9:09am

President George W. Bush and his supporters are sure to cite the tape
recording as further evidence of Hussein's guilt and thus vindication of
Bush's decision to press ahead with Hussein's controversial hanging on Dec.
30.

But the troubling reality - virtually ignored in the major U.S. news media -
is that Bush also silenced a particularly dangerous witness who could have
implicated prominent U.S. officials from both his father's and his own
administrations.

The hasty execution prevented the Iraqi judges from turning to Hussein after
the tape was played on Jan. 8 to question him about its authenticity and its
context. Another obvious follow-up would have been how had Hussein obtained
the dangerous chemicals that he allegedly deployed to kill tens of thousands
of Iraqi Kurds.

In that sense, Hussein's silence was golden for the international arms
dealers who supplied his regime and for government officials who facilitated
the shipments.

Apology As Policy In Iraq

By Stephen Elliott
Created Jan 10 2007 - 9:03am

Yesterday I hosted a fundraiser [1] for the family of Walid Hassan, the
Iraqi comedian gunned down last November. We put together $1,700 for his
family through a fund set up by Reporters Without Borders. Somebody said,
"That goes a long way in Iraq." But nobody really knew.

I asked myself what this is really about.

It was about saying we were sorry. 170 people packed a bar in San Francisco
and gave $10 each to say they were sorry to Iraq. We are sorry we destroyed
your country. And we're sorry for every day we make it worse.

Surging Towards Bethlehem: How to Stop the Madness

By Bernard Weiner
Created Jan 10 2007 - 8:51am

By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

...Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-- W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

In the Vietnam-War era, which was the crucible of activism for my
generation, we had a devil of a time trying to get the Democratic Party to
recognize the necessity for withdrawing our troops from that ill-advised,
unwinnable war. With regard to Bush's misadventure in Iraq, it turns out not
all that much has changed.

Partially funded by conservative foundations, legal advocacy group fights
for re-segregation of America

By Bill Berkowitz
Created Jan 10 2007 - 8:30am

Pacific Legal Foundation on the wrong side of history

In early December several hundred pro-affirmative action demonstrators
carrying signs reading "Fight for Equality" gathered outside the U.S.
Supreme Court to witness to an historic occasion. For the first time since
the ground breaking 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, when the Supreme Court
ruled against separate but equal in America's public schools, the justices
were hearing a case that could test that landmark ruling.

According to the Associated Press, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two
cases testing when race may be used as a basis for assigning students to
public schools. "The school policies in contention...are designed to keep
schools from segregating along the same lines as neighborhoods," the AP
reported. In Seattle, Washington, "only high school students are affected,"
while the Louisville, Kentucky "plan applies system-wide."

Is the CIA counterfeiting dollars and blaming it on North Korea?

By Joshua Holland
Created Jan 10 2007 - 8:27am

"Super notes" -- forged U.S. dollars of such high quality that even experts
have trouble detecting them -- have taken on an almost mythic status among
national security watchers. Supposedly, they're part of a plot to undermine
confidence in the U.S. economy, and at times they've been called an act of
war.

Their origins have tended to shift with the political winds; it was said
that they originate in Iran, some have speculated that they come from the
Beqaa Valley in Lebanon (where they were supposedly produced by Syria) and
lately the consensus has been that they're part of a sinister North Korean
plan. Others have accused Israel of printing them.

But according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine [1], a respected German paper,
their source may in fact be far closer to home than most people suspected
[Translation by Watching America [2]] .

Don't Question; Obey!

By Bob Patterson
Created Jan 10 2007 - 12:04am

Back in the Sixties the advice: "Question Authority!" was ubiquitous. It was
a subtle way of suggesting that citizens should not blindly submit when
their country's leader wanted to invade another country, be it Poland,
Vietnam, Iraq, or Liechtenstein. The idea was that if the citizens of any
country exercise their freedom of speech and raise some points that the
journalists may have inadvertently missed, then the leader of that country
won't go off half cocked (so to speak as it were)and do some macho military
commander routine and start wars for no good reason.

As the new year begins, some old questions linger and, since we couldn't get
enough of the Sixties when they were happening, asking some impertinent
questions and trying to win our "Insolence" merit badge, while we still can,
seems appropriate, so we'll take this opportunity to clear our blogger's "in
box" and bring up some items that make us wonder about how things will go in
2007.

Bush's Address: Blood For Face!

By Dave Lindorff
Created Jan 11 2007 - 8:58am

This isn't blood for oil; it's blood for face.

President Bush's "new and improved" plan for "prevailing" in the Iraq War he
started almost four years ago--to send an additional 21,500 US troops into
the chaos of Baghdad and Anbar Province--turns out to be nothing more than a
coward's way of trying to avoid having to say the war has been lost.

Over 3000 Americans and several hundred thousand innocent Iraqis have died
because Bush and his handlers decided early in his first disastrous
administration that they needed a bully little war to solidify his position,
win the Congress, and grab dictatorial powers by setting him up as a "war
president."

The scheme worked at first. Bush got his war, he won control of Congress in
2002, and squeaked back into office in 2004, all by running as a commander
in chief in time of war. He also managed to usurp powers from Congress and
undermine the Constitution, again by playing commander in chief.

But his war didn't go as planned.