November 2007 archive

This is an Open Thread: There are no fees for speaking

Todays Headlines, Broken Supply Channel Sent Weapons for Iraq Astray, Vietnam Memorial Turns 25, Southern California’s new homes lining up in fires’ path, Pakistan Nuclear Security Questioned

USA

Broken Supply Channel Sent Weapons for Iraq Astray

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 – As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence.

By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand – Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors.

If only the NYTimes Editorial Board could have had Major Danby explain to them how HAAAARD it is on poor Harry Reid. They never would have written this:

Abdicate and Capitulate

It is extraordinary how President Bush has streamlined the Senate confirmation process. As we have seen most recently with the vote to confirm Michael Mukasey as attorney general, about all that is left of “advice and consent” is the “consent” part.

. . . In less than seven years, Mr. Bush has managed to boil that list down to its least common denominator: the president should get his choices. At first, Mr. Bush was abetted by a slavish Republican majority that balked at only one major appointment – Harriet Miers for Supreme Court justice, and then only because of doubts that she was far enough to the right.

The Democrats, however, also deserve a large measure of blame. They did almost nothing while they were in the minority to demand better nominees than Mr. Bush was sending up. And now that they have attained the majority, they are not doing any better.

On Thursday, the Senate voted by 53 to 40 to confirm Mr. Mukasey even though he would not answer a simple question: does he think waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning used to extract information from a prisoner, is torture and therefore illegal?

Democrats offer excuses for their sorry record, starting with their razor-thin majority. But it is often said that any vote in the Senate requires more than 60 votes – enough to overcome a filibuster. So why did Mr. Mukasey get by with only 53 votes? Given the success the Republicans have had in blocking action when the Democrats cannot muster 60 votes, the main culprit appears to be the Democratic leadership, which seems uninterested in or incapable of standing up to Mr. Bush.

Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who turned the tide for this nomination, said that if the Senate did not approve Mr. Mukasey, the president would get by with an interim appointment who would be under the sway of “the extreme ideology of Vice President Dick Cheney.” He argued that Mr. Mukasey could be counted on to reverse the politicization of the Justice Department that occurred under Alberto Gonzales, and that Mr. Mukasey’s reticence about calling waterboarding illegal might well become moot, because the Senate was considering a law making clear that it is illegal.

That is precisely the sort of cozy rationalization that Mr. Schumer and his colleagues have used so many times to back down from a confrontation with Mr. Bush. The truth is, Mr. Mukasey is already in the grip of that “extreme ideology.” If he were not, he could have answered the question about waterboarding.

. . . The rationales that accompanied the vote in favor of Mr. Mukasey were not reassuring. The promise of a law banning waterboarding is no comfort. It is unnecessary, and even if it passes, Mr. Bush seems certain to veto it. In fact, it would play into the administration’s hands by allowing it to argue that torture is not currently illegal.

The claim that Mr. Mukasey will depoliticize the Justice Department loses its allure when you consider that he would not commit himself to enforcing Congressional subpoenas in the United States attorneys scandal.

All of this leaves us wondering whether Mr. Schumer and other Democratic leaders were more focused on the 2008 elections than on doing their constitutional duty. Certainly, being made to look weak on terrorism might make it harder for them to expand their majority.

. . .

Shame on the NYTimes for not understanding the tribulations of our Dem leadership. If only Danby were there to explain it.

Dedicated to our soldiers, past and present, and all those currently fleeing Dick Cheney’s weekend hunting spree in New York.

The Google “Quote of the Day” add-in for today as shown on my “Personalized Start Page” is from Bertrand Russell:

A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
   – Bertrand Russell

I think that holds a lot of meaning when considering the levels of propaganda being catapulted toward the masses by the miscreants currently occupying our highest levels of office. With this in mind, I’d like to take a moment before launching into our musical interlude to remind everyone of the biggest offender — the one who, in my estimation, best embodies the meaning of the opening quote: George W. Bush.

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(last weeks episode)

The Center had gotten the tip about the train 16 hours ago. The techs downloaded the Sat imagery along the full length of the tracks selected the best locations for intercept, they narrowed it down to a canyon in Arizona and selected the premium approach. He and his partner had studied both the computer simulations and the polymer topographical 3D model of the site as they prepped and on the plane. They knew the territory as well as was possible without having been there. He had selected the fucking bush he would sit in from the photos while they were still three hundred miles away. They had HALO’d in 9 hours before the train was due. In case the opposition had scouts coming or were laying sensors before hand. The latest Sat imagery had shown nothing that could possibly be a sensor in place when they dropped. The Sat techs would tell them if any scouts were in the area as the intercept time approached.