2007: the last year in Iraq

I will crush the Mahdi Army

Joe Lieberman has an op-ed in The Washington Post which is so filled with lies and errors that it is impossible to correct.

What he calls extremists led by Iran are the people who met with Bush this month, they're known as the Badr Organization. There are no moderates in power, no democrats. Just Hakim, Sadr and Sunni guerrillas.

But in the end, this is our last year in Iraq.

What needs to be understood is that Iraq is in a civil war and the Sadrists are winning. Any US attempt to attack them not only could undermine any effort against Al Qaeda in Iraq, but place our supply lines in peril, starving and isolating our troops.

The Bush Administration has no plan for anything but doing the same. The idea of sending US troops into Sadr City should be called negligent homicide at it's best. People like Lieberman believe that if we just get to work, we can crush the bad guys. Well, the "bad guys" aren't just an army but a social movement and they have the loyalty of millions.

The inept recent attempt to isolate Sadr, kind of like trying to work past the IRA in 1919, failed before it started. Sistani said no dice. He may not like Sadr, but he likes the Americans even less, and Hakim showed his true colors sucking up to Bush. Which means he's for sale. He may have his Army formations, but I would bet when push comes to shove most of his guys would be loyal to Sayyid Sadr. Why? Because when the Sunni death squads came, it was the Mahdi Army who showed up to save their families.

Lieberman thinks we can win this war by relying on "moderates". You mean people who live in London? Because the people running things in Iraq are pretty firm on their views of the world. The fact is that this is our last year in Iraq, and Bush would do well to be in the Oval Office a year from now.

The US Army is close to collapse. Four tours borders on being assigned to punishment battalions. How many times can you send a man to die and expect him to come home alive? What happens to his family, his life? Not much except a divorce and years of counselling. Recruiters are now telling the most ridiculous lies to teenagers to get them to the Sandbox.

The 109th Congress may be the worst Congress in American history. And that would take some doing. They failed their reposnibilties as a legislative body to find out the truth of our war in Iraq. They chose party over duty at every turn.

The 110th Congress will do no such thing. Just asking basic questions about the conduct of the war will expose it's failure.

While Lieberman thinks our army is made up of automations, the reality is that it is crumbling before our eyes. How many men have gone UA? How many are in Canada now? We don't know and the Army doesn't want to find out. How many men have been chaptered out after a combat tour or two?

The destruction of the Army is slow, but visible. Death penalty murder trials, declining enlistment rates, divorce rates climbing. Reporters are just now asking these questions. What happens next. When is some happy talk colonel embarassed because his grunts have to gun down Iraqi soldiers drawing down on them or refuse one more pointless patrol.

We're coming fast towards 1970 and the Army which stopped fighting. Humans can only take so much. The people who have enlisted have gone above and beyond what is expected of them. But that cannot continue. Bush's war will come to an end. When is no longer the issue. The only question is how.

New Orleans officers indicted for murder

Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

New Orleans police officers face charges
The Danziger Bridge shooting incident, six days after Hurricane Katrina, left 2 dead and 4 seriously wounded.
By Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writer
December 29, 2006

HOUSTON � A grand jury on Thursday indicted seven New Orleans police officers on murder and attempted murder charges for their role in a chaotic post-Katrina shooting that left two dead, including a mentally disabled man.

The criminal charges against the officers, who had been cleared of any wrongdoing by the New Orleans Police Department, come after widespread public criticism of what has become known as the Danziger Bridge incident. The police shootings have, for many in the city, come to symbolize the lawlessness and disorder that marked the days after the hurricane.

"We cannot allow our police officers to shoot and kill our citizens without justification like rabid dogs," Orleans Parish Dist. Atty. Eddie J. Jordan Jr. said in a statement Thursday. "The rules governing the use of lethal force are not suspended during a state of emergency. Everyone, including police officers, must abide by the law of the land."

Six days after Katrina hit New Orleans, police on Sept. 4, 2005, commandeered a truck and responded to what they initially reported as two officers down during an armed attack on the Danziger Bridge linking the Gentilly and New Orleans East neighborhoods.

In the fusillade that followed, Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man who had refused to leave his dogs during the storm, and James Brissette, 19, were killed. Four others were seriously wounded.

From the outset, the shooting's survivors have said that they were simply crossing the bridge and ran in panic only after a pack of men they thought were criminals opened fire for no apparent reason.

Follow-up media reports found that no officers had been wounded prior to the gunfire that killed Madison and Brissette, casting doubt on the officers' version of events, which was backed by the department. An autopsy found that Madison was shot in the back several times, contradicting a sergeant's claims that the man, who had no prior criminal record, had come toward the officers and reached into his waistband before being shot.

In response to public criticism, Jordan convened a special grand jury to examine evidence in the case. On Thursday, it indicted two sergeants, Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius, and two officers, Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon, on first-degree murder charges in Brissette's death. Faulcon also was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Madison. The charges carry a potential death sentence.

Will the Queens DA have the ability to make a similar decision?

The Winners of 2006

Ok, in no particular order

You Tube Not only did they sell out to Google before the lawsuits, it became a clever subversive tool to send video around the world. You could track campaigns because they could upload their ads.

Sasha Baron Cohen-Borat was probably the slickest auteur act since Kevin Smith made Clerks. Not only is the movie incredibly funny, but he made his movie, his way and made fans along the way. It also is a brutal expose of racism in America without the preaching of American filmmakers.

Morgan Spurlock- 30 Days was in some ways much better than Super Size Me, it proved that he was more than a one trick pony. Seeing people trying to live on minimum wage is compelling TV.

Ned Lamont-No, he didn't win, but he proved you could run and run hard, and people tend to forget thatls possible

Jon Stewart-At some point, maybe when he was interviewing Ted Koppel, the Daily Show crossed the last line between parody and news. Yeah, they still write jokes and we still laugh, but it has, in effect replaced Nightline for informed commentary. Stewart is my kind of guy, a no-bullshit, straight up questioner. He will not be subtle if he dislikes you or think you an idiot. Tucker Carlson and Bob Novak are still shocked that he really holds them in contempt, no bullshit, actual contempt.

Stephen Colbert-When he got on the stage at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, they thought he was going to do one of those house nigger comedy routines comics like to do for the famous. Instead, he came out like a ninja, subtle, deadly and by the time he was finished, it was the verbal equivilent of the end of Kill Bill pt 1, blood and bodies everywhere. And at the end, Colbert walked off as if he had gone for a drink.

The two men are a very effective team. Stewart comes out swinging, when he finishes, you know you've had your ass kicked. With Colbert, he's standing on you before you realize what happened. But the result is the same. You got beat

Keith Olbermann-He was famous before Stewart had a regular job. Aaron Sorkin had based a character on him on his show Sportsnite. He was renowned for being a pain in the ass around the industry. Most of his employers were glad to see the back of him at some point.

But his real problem is that he's smart, maybe too smart. He can smell the bullshit and then calls it. And that does not make you a hero with bosses. His last boss, Rick Kaplan, freaked when he went on his anti-smoking jihad after the death of Peter Jennings. If he could have, he would have consigned him to ESPN radio with Dan Patrick, his long time partner in crime. Replacing him with Dan Abrams gave Olbermann needed support while consigning Rita Crosby into the outer pits of hell.

But, you can say two things about him, he is loyal to his crew, and he has balls. Maybe when he realized he wasn't going to be a network anchor, or maybe when he got the freedom to do what he wanted, something in him clicked. He stopped playing the game and invented his own.

Which mean he had the freedom to go after that pompous asshole Bill O'Reilly. At every turn, he fucks with him and does it for real. And unlike Terry Gross, he can't be bullied. At well over 6 feet, if O'Reilly had the balls to step to him, he would get his ass kicked. Instead, he runs like the bitch he is.

It wasn't that he did commentaries, but that he was informed. He mixed anger and information with outrage. There's always a risk of staging them, doing them for effect, feeling forced, but the one he did on 9/11 meant the most to me, because it was something only a New Yorker could say and could understand. Those buildings and the people in them were real, as real as grass and rain. Not too many people got that. He did.

Kirsten Gillibrand- Few candidates deserved to win more than she did. John Sweeney was an arrogant clown who thought he could bully newspapers. Instead, a candidate who might actually work for her district and not drink with frat boys will now serve them

Joe Sestak- Well, he was the candidate who deserved to win even more. Curt Weldon was scum and may well be a crook. He attacked Sestak's sick five year old daughter. He deserved to lose. Badly. And he did.

Bob Menendez- They called him a crook when he wasn't. Even some inside the Democratic party wanted the seat held by someone different (white). But he ran hard and ran that prick Kean down like the dog he was.

Matt Stoller-Most of you don't know Matt, or have heard of him obliquely or through the mail list which does not exist, but let me tell you something, while the media calls Atrios and Kos, it's Matt Stoller doing the day in, day out work which makes a lot of what happens online possible. Matt's blog, MyDD, is the center of a lot of what happens online without people noticing it.

Juan Melli and CT Blogger-They do the dirty work of local and state poliitcs, which will never lead to glory or riches, but is needed because if you think federal government has problems.....these guys are heroes to me

Amanda Marcotte-There are a lot of female bloggers, there are a lot of good writers, but Amanda doesn't get credit for walking into Pandagon when Jesse Taylor went off to work for Ted Strickland. It's hard to take over someone else's idea and make it your own. She's got that forthright, honest, funny voice which needs to be heard more often and given more credit.

Mike Stark-I know his antics embarassed some of you. Y'all need a cup of shut the fuck up. Because he did what needed to be done, and what the Webb campaign hadn't the balls to do. He exposed a sitting US senator as a loon and put everything he had in it. And will get no reward, little praise. But he's the kind of citizen we need when facing someone as nuts as George Allen. He's a hero to me, because he decided to challenge a US senator with questions and words.
And that takes balls.

Howard Dean-Karl Rove would still be bossing around Denny Hastert if it wasn't for Dean. He went to 50 states and got people elected.

What was his reward? Jim Carville's insane rant calling for his firing. Something no one else thought made sense, but he spewed it out.

Howard Dean is bringing back the Democratic party to the people who elected it. And some people in Washington don't like that.

For helping return both Houses of Congress to the Democratic Party,

You sir, are the winner of the year.

What Black Men Think PSA

This is a PSA for an upcoming film. I find it rather interesting

A proper sendoff

(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
James Brown going home to the Apoll0

A Loud, Proud Send-Off for an Icon of Soul

By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: December 29, 2006

James Brown gave one last show in Harlem yesterday, three days after his death, in a golden coffin lined with white velvet, on the flower-bedecked stage of the famed Apollo Theater, before a crowd of thousands who had lined up for blocks to see him.

Thousands of fans and mourners � some singing and dancing, some crying and praying � gathered at the Apollo Theater in Harlem to pay respects to James Brown.

A white carriage drawn by two white Percheron horses carried the Brown's coffin to the Apollo Theater.

Mr. Brown�s body arrived beneath the Apollo�s red-neon sign just before 1 p.m. in a white-painted carriage pulled by two white horses with feathery plumes atop their heads. The carriage was small, with tall windows and white curtains with silver fringe. Two solemn men sat atop it, guiding the horses, and Mr. Brown�s friends and associates and Harlem dignitaries walked alongside and behind it.

Hundreds who lined 125th Street outside the theater on a chilly, overcast afternoon cheered and applauded. Helicopters hovered. Photographers aimed their cameras from the surrounding rooftops. A guy hawked commemorative T-shirts for $10. Mr. Brown�s cries and exultations filled the street, blaring from one of his concert videos playing on a beat-up television mounted above a sign for Uptown Tattoos. A chant rose up: �James Brown! James Brown! James Brown!�

When the theater�s doors finally opened, people began streaming in for a public viewing. They walked up a few stairs and stepped onto the red-carpeted stage, where Mr. Brown�s body lay in an open coffin, washed in white and gold stage lights. The coffin was made of 16-gauge steel with a gold paint finish. Mr. Brown was wearing a cobalt, sequined satin suit with white gloves and pointed silvery shoes. Loudspeakers played his breakthrough album, �Live at the Apollo,� recorded Oct. 24, 1962.

Women wearing veils approached. A man in a suit dropped to his knees and crossed his heart. One couple broke into a brief dance. �Right now,� Mr. Brown said on the loudspeakers, in a snippet of between-song banter, �I�m going to get up and do my thing.�

Mr. Brown did his thing yesterday: he put on a show. Throughout the day, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, formed two lines on 125th Street outside the Apollo, one to its east and one to its west, each one filling up 125th Street, reaching the corner and then stretching for blocks up Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, forming a giant U. Some had been waiting since midnight Wednesday.

�We�re sending him out in the style he lived,� said Nellie Williams, 58, of Greer, S.C., who stood near the front of one line. �He was a man that had to be seen and heard.� She brought her daughter, and a copy of an oil painting her brother did of Mr. Brown, his pompadour perfectly teased, his shirt open, his smile wide. �I want to show my last respects for his last show in New York,� Ms. Williams added.

Mr. Brown, 73, died of congestive heart failure early Monday in Atlanta. He was remembered, during a private ceremony for family and friends at the Apollo, and amid the lines of fans standing outside for the public viewing, as a singer, dancer, bandleader, funk pioneer, entrepreneur, black-pride icon and entertainer who many said transformed American pop music and African-American culture.

They closed the doors at 9:30 and had to turn people away. Thousands of people viewed the body.

He was beloved, despite his antics, the drugs, the wives. No words meant more to Harlem than James Brown live at the Apollo.

Saddam to be murdered this weekend

U.S. Is Told Hussein Hanging Seems Imminent

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: December 29, 2006

BAGHDAD, Dec. 28 � Preparations for the execution of Saddam Hussein began taking on a sense of urgency late Thursday as American and Iraqi officials suggested that he could be hanged within a span of days rather than weeks.

After upholding the death sentence against Mr. Hussein on Tuesday for the execution of 148 Shiite men and boys in 1982, an Iraqi appeals court ruled that he must be sent to the gallows within 30 days. But Mr. Hussein may not have even that long to live, officials said.

A senior administration official said that the execution would probably not take place in the next 24 hours, but that the timing would be swift. �It may be another day or so,� the official said.

Another senior administration official said later Thursday night that Iraqi officials had told the White House to expect the execution on Saturday, Baghdad time.

In Iraq, where the Constitution requires that the Iraqi president and his two deputies sign all execution orders, officials said it was unlikely that legal formalities would stand in the way. The president, Jalal Talabani, had not received the documents by late Thursday.

But a government official familiar with the process said that little objection would be raised if the execution took place almost immediately. �Even if it happens tonight, no one is going to make an issue out of the procedure,� the official said.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, said there would be no advance notice of the execution because of fears that any announcement could set off violence. When asked who would be invited to attend the hanging, Mr. Rubaie said: �No television. No press. Nothing.�

He said that the execution would be videotaped but that it was unlikely the tape would be released.

Even with the security fears, there was little appetite among Iraqi officialdom to spare Mr. Hussein for much longer. �I hope the decision should be implemented very soon,� said Qasim Daoud, a former national security adviser. �Sooner is better because it sends a message that we are determined � we want to get ahead step by step to building a new Iraq, and these messages will help.�

So, after a flawed legal process, they plan to murder him in secret.

How......night and fogish.

If they're men enough to murder him, murder him before the world. If you think hanging is justice, why hide it?

This is revenge, pure and simple. Saddam may well deserve it, but don't insult us by calling it justice. A trial in the Green Zone is little better than one in Gitmo.

If you want to prove a man evil, you must use justice to do so, not a hanging in the night. This should have been in Europe, without the fear in Iraq, and he should be in UN custody, as befitting his many crimes. With the evidence before the world, in a process which could be trusted by everyone. Where the victims could testify without fear and the documents available to everyone.

Bush may celebrate this, but this is murder, pure and simple.

Rumsfeld and the American Way of War

by Gabriel Kolko
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Rumsfeld: "Shock and Awe"

Rumsfeld is one of the most articulate advocates of the two major wars the U.S. has embarked upon since 2000, and he had earlier made it plain to George Bush when he took office as Secretary of Defense that he would be "forward-leaning." September 11 was an opportunity to realize dreams of heroism and success. He and Vice-president Dick Cheney are soul mates, their careers have been intertwined, but Cheney seeks to keep out of the limelight and Rumsfeld adored the publicity that his cleverness attracted. He is best known for his desire to make the military both meaner and leaner, relying on high tech rather than manpower, and "shock and awe" became his slogan. But to do so, national defense spending, which had been stable in the 1990s, increased from $294 billion in 2000 to $536 billion in 2006, and as a percentage of the GNP it grew 37 percent from 2000 to 2006. All kinds of weapons, many the futuristic products of junk science concocted by well-placed manufacturers, were funded for eventual production � a dozen years being a short delivery time for many of them.

Rumsfeld's military dream was technology-intensive, even more now than 40 years ago, and it failed abysmally in Iraq. Army manpower, however, was reduced and it was left unprepared in countless domains, under-funded and overstretched even before the Iraq war began. Since then its "readiness" in terms of available troops and equipment has only fallen precipitously. And while Rumsfeld made the Army his enemy, even the Air Force now has to cut manpower to raise funds for new equipment.

He always premised his ambition, which various defense secretaries had attempted before him and failed, on the notion that the secret of military success was better and more weapons � "more bang for the buck" as an illustrious predecessor phrased it. More bucks also made the Pentagon requests that much more palatable to a pork-hungry Congress eager to increase spending in their districts. Politics and complex diplomacy never interested people like Rumsfeld, even after the abysmal failure of the Vietnam War. Delivering bad news, which meant serious assessments, was the best way not to advance in the hierarchy, and careerism was crucial to what people said. The name of the game was the game.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq he learned that realities were far more complex and he managed to shock and awe himself and the neoconservatives who shared his na�ve assumptions. Reliance on high tech did not prevent warfare from becoming protracted, and it guaranteed that it would become far more costly. Both wars produced stalemates that have become the preludes to American defeats now staring the Bush administration in the face.

Rumsfeld showed at various times that in certain ways he was a person of superior intelligence notwithstanding the basically erroneous premises of the military system he led and the imperatives of ambition that demanded he share them. But like his peers, he learned far too slowly. He suffered from the typical contradiction between intelligence and ambition, and the latter requires an ideology and assumptions which most men-of-power come to believe. He admitted in a confidential memo in October 2003 that "we lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror"; even then key members of the Bush Administration were far less confident of what they are doing.

His November 6, 2006 memo on the Iraq war admitted that "what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough." There are some anodynes he advocated too, but it was rightly interpreted as his concession to the Baker-Hamilton panel view, which is the voice of the traditional foreign policy Establishment, that the Iraq war was going disastrously � in effect, was being lost. Since then, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has declared there is a civil war raging in Iraq and there should be a drawdown of American troops, to begin by the middle of next year � a step that even Rumsfeld favored with modest withdrawals that would compel the Iraqis "to pull up their socks."

Rumsfeld and his peers know the American military cannot win the war in Iraq. Just as during the Vietnam war, they have the quixotic hope that a solution for the profound and bloody turmoil that reigns there can be found politically � at first the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds were to have parliamentary elections and then make a political deal. They did not. Then they were to write a constitution, which they eventually managed to do but it changed nothing. Now they are hoping that the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, can miraculously cobble together some kind of consensus that will produce peace, but Bush's closest advisers think it is very likely he will fail. They have no one else to turn to. Politics, like military power, will not prevent the United States from losing control over events in Iraq � thereby losing the war. A "surge" in American troops in Iraq, as even the Joint Chiefs of Staff now argues, is only a recipe for greater disasters. Attacks against U.S. coalition forces, their Iraqi dependents, and civilians have now reached a peak and are over twice that two years ago. The Bush Administration today confronts disaster in Iraq, and probably the worst foreign policy failure in American history. Futility is the hallmark of all its efforts

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