December 1, 2009 archive

Dec 01 2009

Iraq War Inquiry, Day Six

As we wait to hear President Obama we already know that he will be increasing military troops in Afghanistan. We now need to hear just what the plan is now going to be, i.e. Exit Strategy, once a mainstay meme of the so called Strong on National Defense GOP. Even a certain State Governor called on the meme: “Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is,”  – George W. Bush, Texas Gov., 1999

But that was before they increased the hatreds and thus possible enemies towards us a thousand fold and for the coming decades!  

Dec 01 2009

How Many Roads

Dec 01 2009

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

Now with World and U.S. News.  58 Story Final.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 US to send 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan

by Stephen Collinson, AFP

Tue Dec 1, 11:07 am ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama will on Tuesday announce a swift surge of 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan within six months, but set a limit on the duration of their deployment, a US official said.

Obama will unveil a political and military gamble aimed at reining in the Taliban insurgency and training the Afghan army in a globally awaited televised speech, after an exhaustive months-long policy review.

While announcing he will pitch 30,000 more troops into the eight-year war, Obama will set a “back-end” for their deployment, to signal the US mission will not be a “decade-long” operation, the official told AFP.

Dec 01 2009

What is it good for?

Here we go.

lemmings Pictures, Images and Photos

All together now…

Dec 01 2009

Test Votes Mean Nothing to Afghanis and Americans

One hopes that President Obama will strongly and clearly frame our mission in Afghanistan tonight, including the reason for our continued presence in a country that has known wave after wave of outside invaders fighting to advance their own ends.  We are but the latest army to set up shop and increase troop presence in pursuit of an elusive and often invisible enemy force.  The ultimate result is cloudy at this juncture, as was the previous President’s troop surge in Iraq when it was proposed.  I would hasten to call the latter decision an unequivocal success, but it did largely and surprisingly contain a low-grade Civil War.  It is with this fact in mind that many will choke down the prospect of another round of foreign entanglement, troop deployment, and media saturation coverage of major military skirmishes.      

One could, I suppose, reach for an obscure citation describing a similar conflict to which the United States committed troops.  In this situation, however, there are no easy parallels and no conventional warfare nor wisdom to cite.  The Soviet Union’s disastrous nine years in the country might be the best possible comparison under the circumstances, but the peculiarities of that conflict leave it more akin to Vietnam to our current endeavor.  The Soviet War in Afghanistan was an attempt to bolster the existing Communist party from collapsing against the Mujahideen.  We, of course, allocated weaponry and financial support to the Islamic insurgents as a means of undermining the Soviets.  

What has been forgotten in this day is that for nearly fifteen years, the Communist government ruled effectively and made great strides in developing a civilization rather than a backwards state beholden to constant conflict.  With the collapse of the USSR in 1991 came the decline of the Communist state and the rise of the Taliban, which single-handedly destroyed years of reform and plunged the country back into the Dark Ages.  The country deserves lasting stability if it is ever to move forward in time but until it ceases to be a designated battleground, it never will.

Dec 01 2009

Docudharma Times Tuesday December 1




Tuesday’s Headlines:

In Wake of Dubai, Trying to Predict the Next Blowup

Major cities at risk from rising sea level threat

A test for the blocks needed to rebuild a nation

Mike Huckabee defends freeing convict wanted in Washington police shootings

Gulf share sell-off continues as Dubai World negotiates with creditors

Iran loses clout in Arab world

Wheeled into court to hisses from accusers

Corks pop as Large Hadron Collider goes off with the right kind of bang

Sri Lanka war refugees ‘free to leave’ military camps

Afghan officials fear talk of U.S. exit strategy

Somali pirates hijack $20m supertanker

Mexico City’s Juanito refuses to be a political place-holder

Police fatally shoot cop-slayings suspect

Ex-con wanted in attack is killed while reportedly standing in Seattle street

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

updated 7:34 a.m. ET Dec. 1, 2009

SEATTLE – Seattle police have fatally shot the suspect in the slayings of four police officers, an official said Tuesday.

Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said Maurice Clemmons, 37, was shot early Tuesday in a Seattle neighborhood.

Clemmons had been wanted in connection with the gunning down four police officers at a coffee shop Sunday morning in Lakewood, a suburb about 35 miles south of Seattle.

Dec 01 2009

Obama & Holder Off The Hook & Worthy Of Your Support Now



Just in case you had any cancerous unpatriotic anti democratic poisonous lingering doubts about Holder and Obama’s honesty and integrity and willingness to buck the tide of public opinion and be rule of LAW kind of guys instead of your standard disingenuous political calculators, here’s just what you need to get your head straightened out and get yourself back into GoBama mode again.

AP via TPM Monday…

The Supreme Court has thrown out an appeals court ruling ordering the disclosure of photographs of detainees being abused by their U.S. captors.

In doing so Monday, the high court cited a recent change in federal law that allows the pictures to be withheld.

The justices issued a brief, and expected, order Monday directing the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to take another look at a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to obtain the photos of detainee abuse. President Barack Obama at first didn’t oppose the release, but he changed his mind, saying they could whip up anti-American sentiment overseas and endanger U.S. troops.

The administration appealed the matter to the Supreme Court, but also worked with Congress to give Defense Secretary Robert Gates the power to keep from the public all pictures of foreign detainees being abused.

Gates invoked his new authority in mid-November, saying widespread distribution of the pictures would endanger American soldiers.

The ACLU has said it will continue fighting for the photos’ release.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who served on the 2nd Circuit until August, did not take part in the court’s consideration of the case, Department of Defense v. ACLU, 09-160.

That would be the SC top heavy with Bush appointees, btw. Like Sonia (it wasn’t me) Sotomayor (I didn’t do it and you shouldn’t think about it). Rah. Rah.

Besides that, this follows on the heels of, back in October, the Obama White House “ordering” Congress to amend the FOIA to give SecDef Gates the authority to withhold “protected documents”, so we can clearly see from all of these actions that we have all badly misjudged Obama and that he really is intent, nay, determined at all costs, to uphold and follow the rule of law, even if he has to do Congress’s job and make the law he intends to follow.

And that’s the way it is.

Even if you feel a little tortured about it.

Dec 01 2009

Late Night Karaoke

Open Thread

Dec 01 2009

Obama will maintain secrecy on millions of docs scheduled to be released

This will be short and sweet, and nobody’s posted at at Dailykos yet, so someone here might actually respond and find this interesting.

Release of secret reports delayed


WASHINGTON – President Obama will maintain a lid of secrecy on millions of pages of military and intelligence documents that were scheduled to be declassified by the end of the year, according to administration officials.

The missed deadline spells trouble for the White House’s promises to introduce an era of government openness, say advocates, who believe that releasing historical information enforces a key check on government behavior. They cite as an example the abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War, including domestic spying and assassinations of foreign officials, that were publicly outlined in a set of agency documents known as the “family jewels.”

The documents in question – all more than 25 years old – were scheduled to be declassified on Dec. 31 under an order originally signed by President Bill Clinton and amended by President George W. Bush.

But gosh, it’s not Obama’s fault, you see, nothing is ever his fault.  This time it’s the fault of the intelligence agencies who are, well, apparently more powerful than he is.  

It seems EVERYBODY is more powerful than Obama.   At least in “Obama’s World”.

It’s hard work being President, isn’t it Barry?

You fucking liar.

Dec 01 2009

Mama Gaia Rap, Poem with Music!

The part with the poem:

in your hair

everywhere

you despair

oh beware

Mama Gaia everywhere.

Don’t be shy

don’t deny

she’ll espy

as you cry

Mama Gaia says comply.

If you jump

on the land

feel so grand

in her hand

You are just a lump.

Lump of clay

anime

In her hair

play and play

Mama Gaia she just stare

At foolish lumps

getting bumps

from themselves

silly elves

Mama Gaia she so bored

Foolish humans have her floored

Stuff she made as

silly maid

now she’s grown up

so are we

do we see?

Mama Gaia start to roll

tired of the elves gone troll

Knows inside

where we hide

in our hearts

fits and starts

We don’t need this foolish crap

Mama Gaia knows the rap.

What to do?

See it through.

Mama Gaia there with you.

See her in

every shade

Every shadow ever made.

See her in

golden spin

turning flowers, light within.

Dec 01 2009

“I think it will strike a lot of people as being very accurate”

Rep. Maurice Hinchey

Shuster: You think they deliberately let al Qaeda get away right after the 9/11 attacks? You really believe that?

Hinchey: yes I do. There’s really no question about that because the leader of our military operation in the United States called back our military. Called them back from going after the head of al Qaeda because there was a sense…

Shuster: Congressman, you can accuse them of malfeasance, you can accuse them of dropping the ball, of having an awful plan. I think that would be justified. But to suggest that they deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away so that they could justify the war in Iraq, that will strike a lot of people as crazy.

Hinchey: I don’t think it will strike a lot of people as crazy. I think it will strike a lot of people as being very accurate. And all you have to do is look at the facts of that set of circumstances and you can see that’s exactly what happened. When we went in there, when our military went in there, we could have captured them. We could have captured most of the al Qaeda, but we didn’t. And we didn’t because of the need felt by the previous administration and the need of the previous head of the military, that need to attack Iraq which was completely unjustified…

h/t digby

Dec 01 2009

Stuff You Just Feel, Stuff I Accessed from Whatever

I die before my mother.  I mean it’s just karmic comedy. She gets to bury both of her kids. Cousin Brian and all the people at the funeral who wondered how a 6 foot 1 guy was stuffed into a four foot left over “on sale” child’s coffin.  The government people who made an entire movie including drawings I did as a child at my grandmother’s house.  Talk about knowing shit about you, my head spinneth when I saw that even if it as eons ago.  In the end I get to “disappear” from like normal sheeple life and all.  I have to wonder was I a potential MKULTRA.  Obviously I am totally and completely messed up but it’s interesting in these interesting times.

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