7.18.05 Word for today: Hypocracy: a system of government that publicly characterises its policies or actions in a manner contradictory to the actual purposes and/or effects of those policies or actions. (from Gr. hypo-: to pretend, put on a show + Gr. -cracy: strength, to govern)

7.31.05 Arthur Silber

I have said repeatedly for a couple of years now that the reason we never had an "exit strategy" for Iraq is a very simple one: we aren't leaving.

An FBI agent warned superiors in a memo three years ago that U.S. officials who discussed plans to ship terror suspects to foreign nations that practice torture could be prosecuted for conspiring to violate U.S. law, according to a copy of the memo obtained by NEWSWEEK.
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"In as much as the intent of this category is to utilize, outside the U.S., interrogation techniques which would violate [U.S. law] if committed in the U.S., it is a per se violation of the U.S. Torture Statute," the agent wrote. "Discussing any plan which includes this category could be seen as a con-spiracy to violate [the Torture Statute]" and "would inculpate" everyone involved.
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Intel officials estimate that more than 100 terror suspects have been rendered to foreign countries by the CIA under a classified directive signed by President George W. Bush after 9/11.

This is much deeper, and much worse, than mere hypocrisy, which is almost clean in intellectual terms by comparison. When someone is hypocritical, there is at least the hope of reaching him if we are able to make him see and acknowledge how his words are contradicted by his actions (and/or by other words). If someone alters his behavior after understanding his error, it is because he acknowledges at least to some extent the connection between words and particulars.

But if someone uses words and concepts in a manner which consistently reveals that those words mean absolutely nothing to him, it is not possible to reach him at all. There is nothing to reach- in the sense that there is no mind there capable of understanding what you are saying. On the most basic level, such people do not know how to think. When someone functions in this way-that is, when he is not capable of thinking in the most rudimentary manner-there is one method of survival that tends to overshadow all the others: membership in a group, or tribe, which he hopes will protect him.
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I have no idea where people who don't pay much attention to the political scene would come down on this. It may be that they think the government should have a branch that does illegal dirty work. But I suspect they would also think that the president should not be allowed to run a secret foreign policy or stage wars for inscrutable reasons. Indeed, I think most people would find it repugnant if they knew that there are people in government who think the president of the United States has a right to lie to them in order to commit their blood and treasure to a cause or plan that has nothing to do with the one that is stated.

A Congressional candidate who wants to impeach President Bush insists he can win the Republican primary.

Dennis Morrisseau, 62, of West Pawlet, plans to seek the Republican nomination to run for U.S. House of Representatives. The seat is being vacated by Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., who plans a run for the U.S. Senate.

A central part of his platform, Morrisseau said, will be bringing articles of impeachment against Bush.
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"Down in southern Vermont, the man (Bush) is reviled among Republicans."

7.28.05 "Military's Opposition to Harsh Interrogation Is Outlined" By NEIL A. LEWIS, The New York TimesCenk Uygur who says:

George W. Bush's legacy will be a disastrous ship wreck, but when historians are looking through the rummage, they will find what caused the most amount of damage was that we sacrificed what it meant to be an American in an effort to sink to the level of our enemies. They will see that our military officers warned against this, said it wasn't necessary, and in fact, was counterproductive. But the civilian leadership, almost all of whom had never been to war, ignored their advice.

But the cells cannot be obtained without destroying human embryos, which opponents of the research say is tantamount to murder. "An embryo is nascent human life," Mr. Frist says in his speech, adding: "This position is consistent with my faith. But, to me, it isn't just a matter of faith. It's a fact of science."
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In his speech, Mr. Frist seems to adopt that line of reasoning, harking back to a set of principles he articulated in July 2001, before the president made his announcement, in which he proposed restricting the number of stem cell lines without a specific cutoff date. At the time, he said the government should pay for research only on those embryos "that would otherwise be discarded."

U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour said the successful prosecution of Ahmed Ressam should serve not only as a warning to terrorists, but as a statement to the Bush administration about its terrorism-fighting tactics.

"We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel," he said Wednesday. "The message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart."

He added that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have made Americans realize they are vulnerable to terrorism and that some believe "this threat renders our Constitution obsolete ... If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won."

7.25.05 "The faith of John Roberts" By Jonathan Turley, Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University.

Judge John G. Roberts Jr. has been called the stealth nominee for the Supreme Court - a nominee specifically selected because he has few public positions on controversial issues such as abortion. However, in a meeting last week, Roberts briefly lifted the carefully maintained curtain over his personal views. In so doing, he raised a question that could not only undermine the White House strategy for confirmation but could raise a question of his fitness to serve as the 109th Supreme Court justice.
The exchange occurred during one of Roberts' informal discussions with senators last week. According to two people who attended the meeting, Roberts was asked by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) what he would do if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral. Roberts is a devout Catholic and is married to an ardent pro-life activist. The Catholic Church considers abortion to be a sin, and various church leaders have stated that government officials supporting abortion should be denied religious rites such as communion. (Pope Benedict XVI is often cited as holding this strict view of the merging of a person's faith and public duties).
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Renowned for his unflappable style in oral argument, Roberts appeared nonplused and, according to sources in the meeting, answered after a long pause that he would probably have to recuse himself.
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Roberts may insist that he was merely discussing the subject theoretically in an informal setting, and that he doesn't anticipate recusing himself on a regular basis. But it's not a subject that can be ignored; if he were to recuse himself on such issues as abortion and the death penalty, it would raise the specter of an evenly split Supreme Court on some of the nation's most important cases. See this article about Sen. Durbin's claim that this story is untrue.

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. has repeatedly said that he has no memory of belonging to the Federalist Society, but his name appears in the influential, conservative legal organization's 1997-1998 leadership directory.

7.23.05 "Government Defies an Order to Release Iraq Abuse Photos"

7.23.05 White House Aims to Block Legislation on Detainees

The Bush administration in recent days has been lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual.
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One McCain amendment would set uniform standards for interrogating anyone detained by the Defense Department and would limit interrogation techniques to those listed in the Army field manual on interrogation, now being revised. Any changes to procedures would require the defense secretary to appear before Congress.
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Another McCain amendment prohibits the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in the custody of the U.S. government. This provision, modeled after wording in the U.N. Convention Against Torture -- which the United States has already ratified -- is meant to overturn an administration position that the convention does not apply to foreigners outside the United States.
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One group, led by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), has proposed an amendment calling for an independent commission -- similar to the Sept. 11 commission -- to look into administration policies on interrogation and detainee abuse.

This investigation shouldn't be primarily about Karl Rove. It's about President Bush and his administration's single-minded drive to launch a war.

7.23.05 Jim Marcinkowski:

"What has suffered irreversible damage is the credibility of our case officers when they try to convince an overseas contact that their safety is of primary importance to us," Jim Marcinkowski, a former CIA case officer, said.

He also criticized Republican efforts to minimize the damage caused by the leak.

"Each time the political machine made up of prime-time patriots and partisan ninnies display their ignorance by deriding Valerie Plame as a mere paper pusher or belittling the varying degrees of cover used to protect our officers or continuing to play partisan politics with our national security, it's a disservice to this country," he added.

7.22.05 Guardian:

The New York Times yesterday reported that at the time of the leak, Mr Rove and Mr Libby had been collaborating on the administration's response to Mr Wilson's central allegation that President George Bush had misled the American public in his January 2003 State of the Union address.

In that speech, laying out the case for war, the president cited evidence of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Niger, west Africa. The claim was found to have been based on forged documents.

George Tenet, the director of the CIA at the time, took responsibility for the false claim, helping to draw fire away from the White House, but yesterday's report suggests that Mr Rove and Mr Libby had a role in drafting his public admission.

The news that the two senior officials were intimately involved in the issue added to scepticism about their claims to have initially heard about Ms Plame from journalists, rather than the other way round.
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Meanwhile, a parallel investigation is under way into who forged the Niger documents. They are known to have been passed to an Italian journalist by a former Italian defence intelligence officer, Rocco Martino, in October 2002, but their origins have remained a mystery. Mr Martino has insisted to the Italian press that he was "a tool used by someone for games much bigger than me", but has not specified who that might be.

7.22.05 Lawrence O'Donnell:

After getting a lot of embarrassing attention for trying to deny to the Washington Post that Rove was the person who finally gave Cooper a specific release to testify, Luskin has gone undercover and now rarely attaches his name to the defense briefs he dictates to reporters, all of whom would love to use a source other than Luskin but no one in the prosecutor's office is leaking, so they're stuck with Luskin. The Washington Post usually identifies him as a source familiar with Rove's grand jury testimony, but Luskin has managed to negotiate a more indirect label with the Times where he appears as a source who has "been briefed on the case."

Rove is obviously in charge of the day-to-day strategy of what Luskin leaks to the press. Rove is stealing a page from the Clinton scandal management playbook. He is trying to set the stage for the day the prosecutor turns over his cards. Rove-Luskin will then call it all "old news."

7.18.05 JOHN FUND, COLUMNIST, “THE WALL STREET JOURNAL”: On Hardball

This has been a political firestorm. And the White House has mishandled it on several occasions.
But I have to tell you, the facts are going to come out and I think, ultimately, this is going to be viewed as a tempest in a teapot dome
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FUND: Campbell, here is the mistake the Bush administration made. There is hypocrisy. They say to all of their lower-level people, don‘t leak. We‘ll fire you if you leak.

BROWN: Right.

FUND: But at the top, they all leak. So, ultimately, it is hoisted by their own hypocrisy.

7.18.05 Bill Scher:

It has been 738 days since Karl Rove violated his obligations under Standard Form 312 without the White House taking “corrective action.”
SF-312 is also known as the "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," which White House officials with national security clearances have to sign. You can read more about SF-312 in this fact sheet PDF from Rep. Henry Waxman.
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If Rove was simply being careless with classified info, he should have his clearance revoked. If he was using classified info for political payback, he should be fired.

Liberal Oasis If that nondisclosure agreement is violated, as Rep. Henry Waxman’s PDF fact sheet explains, “Under [Executive Order 12958] the White House has an affirmative obligation to investigate and take remedial action separate and apart from any ongoing criminal investigation.”

He also notes, “There is no evidence that the White House complied with these requirements.

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history.
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Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

Who requested that the memo be written? Who actually wrote it? Why does it contain the inaccuracies the CIA claims it does? Who were the administration officials who continued to circulate the classified document to conservative news outlets even after Plame's identity was initially revealed? And how did it get into the hands of Jeff Gannon?

7.16.05 "State Dept. Memo Gets Scrutiny in Leak Inquiry on C.I.A. Officer" By RICHARD STEVENSON, The New York Times

The memorandum was prepared at the State Department, relying on notes by an analyst who was involved in meetings in early 2002 to discuss whether to send someone to Africa to investigate allegations that Iraq was pursuing uranium purchases. The C.I.A. was asked by Mr. Cheney's office and the State and Defense Departments to look into the reports.

MR. RUSSERT: Now, Ambassador Joe Wilson, a year before that, was sent over by the CIA because you raised the question about uranium from Africa. He says he came back from Niger and said that, in fact, he could not find any documentation that, in fact, Niger had sent uranium to Iraq or engaged in that activity and reported it back to the proper channels. Were you briefed on his findings in February, March of 2002?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I don't know Joe Wilson. I've never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I'd heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular. I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel. And I ask lots of question. One of the questions I asked at that particular time about this, I said, "What do we know about this?" They take the question. He came back within a day or two and said, "This is all we know. There's a lot we don't know," end of statement. And Joe Wilson-I don't who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back.

"White House leak in 2004 helped London bombers stay free" Tyoma at Kos

ABC News just reported that the British authorities say they have evidence that the London attacks last week were an operation planned by Al Qaeda for the last two years. This was an operation the Brits thought they caught and stopped in time, but they were wrong. The piece of the puzzle ABC missed is that this is an operation the Bush administration helped botch last year.

1. The London bombers, per ABC, are connected to an Al Qaeda plot planned two years ago in Lahore, Pakistan.

2. Pakistani authorities recovered the laptop of a captured Al Qaeda leader, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, on July 13, 2004. On that laptop, they found plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway. According to an expert interviewed by ABC, "there is absolutely no doubt that Khan was part of a worldwide Al Qaeda operation, not just in the United States but also in Great Britain and throughout the west."

3. ABC reports that names in the computer matched a suspected cell of Britain's of Pakistani decent, many of who lived near the town of Luton, England. According to ABC, authorities thought they had stopped the subway plot with the arrest of more than a dozen people last year. Obviously, they hadn't.

4. Those arrests were the arrests that the Bush administration botched by announcing a heightened security alert the week of the Democratic Convention. Because the US let the cat out of the bag, the media got a hold of Khan's name, his Al Qaeda contacts found out he was co-opted, and they fled. The Brits had to have a high speed chase to catch some of them as they fled, and, according to press reports, the Brits and Pakistanis both fear that some slipped away.

Notice how broad the original exception was. It legalized torture anywhere for any POWs - not just enemy combatants - if the president so ordered. And we now have a precedent that would permit even legitimate U.S. POWs to be tortured in retaliation. We had a president declaring himself above the law, and he got his legal lackey, Alberto Gonzales, to rubber-stamp it. Does any sane person really believe that president Bush's personal suspension of the law against torture had nothing to do with the abuses that followed in every single theater of the war on terror? Or that his decision hasn't put U.S. soldiers now and in the future at greater risk even in conventional combat? Notice also how the military's legal representatives opposed it. The secretary of state opposed it. This was Bush's choice. The line from Abu Ghraib and Gitmo to the White House is perfectly straight. And people are fixating on Karl Rove?

Mehlman:

A leak is when you ask a reporter to write a story. He was discouraging a reporter from writing a false story.

7.15.05 Chuck Gutenson: "Truth Telling, the Moral High Ground, and a Modest Proposal"

7.15.05 "Getting Worried at the White House" By Dan Froomkin, Special to washingtonpost.com Many links to current issues.

7.10.05 David Corn:

If what I am told is true, this is proof that the Bush White House was using any information it could gather on Joseph Wilson -- even classified information related to national security -- to pursue a vendetta against Wilson, a White House critic. Even if it turns out Rove did not break the law regarding the naming of intelligence officials, this new disclosure could prove Rove guilty of leaking a national security secret to a reporter for political ends.

The simple, unavoidable truth is that Karl Rove orchestrated the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. No one who knows this man and has watched him work has any doubt that Rove came up with the idea of the leak and then set the plan in motion. Having watched him as he leaked, lied, obfuscated, and denied for political goals over the past 25 years, my own conviction of Rove's involvement is unwavering. He has a history of seeking revenge and the Texas landscape is cluttered with political cadavers he left behind before departing for the big show. In every campaign Rove has managed, there have been questionable tactics and unethical attacks. None of them has happened by accident because nothing that happens in Rove's world is accidental. And neither was the eposure of Ms. Plame. It was no more spontaneous, independent, or random than the campaign run by the Swift Boat Veterans.

Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did—and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify.
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Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip."
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it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared;

Now the story may be about to take another turn. The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove,
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In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Novak's column appeared in July, Rove called MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson's wife was "fair game." But White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had played a role in outing Plame was "totally ridiculous." On Oct. 10, McClellan was asked directly if Rove and two other White House aides had ever discussed Valerie Plame with any reporters. McClellan said he had spoken with all three, and "those individuals assured me they were not involved in this."

I agree that the principle of a free press is more important than any one journalist or source, but I do not agree that this principle applies to Judith Miller, who unconscionably helped lie a country into war and in doing so relinquished any right or privilege she had as a journalist.

In an extraordinary move, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee privately demanded last month that the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago change its decision in a narcotics case because he didn't believe a drug courier got a harsh enough prison term.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), in a five-page letter dated June 23 to Chief Judge Joel Flaum, asserted that a June 16 decision by a three-judge appeals court panel was wrong.

He demanded "a prompt response" as to what steps Flaum would take "to rectify the panel's actions" in a case where a drug courier in a Chicago police corruption case received a 97-month prison sentence instead of the at least 120 months required by a drug-conspiracy statute
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But some legal experts believe the action by the Judiciary Committee chairman, who is an attorney, is a violation of House ethics rules, which prohibit communicating privately with judges on legal matters, as well as court rules that bar such contact with judges without contacting all parties.

Further, the letter may be an intrusion on the Constitution's separation-of-powers doctrine, or, at least, the latest encroachment by Congress upon the judiciary, analysts said.

`Completely inappropriate'

David Zlotnick, a law professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island and an expert on federal sentencing law, said, "I think it's completely inappropriate for a congressman to send a letter to a court telling them to change a ruling."
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Sensenbrenner's letter is the latest example of a threat leveled by congressmen unhappy with court decisions, particularly controversial ones such as those in the Terri Schiavo case. Some Republicans in Congress sharply criticized judges for not acting to save the brain-damaged Florida woman, whose parents sought in court to have her feeding tube reinserted despite her husband's wish to let her die.

"This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said after Schiavo died March 31. "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/4141.html 7.9.05 "Cleveland's Plain Dealer: We're Holding Big Stories Because of Miller Jailing" By Mark Fitzgerald via Memorandum

7.9.05 Josh Marshall: "Duke Cunningham 'Livin' Large Free of Charge'"

7.9.05 Jeanne d'Arc:

Ideas intended to help Americans resist abuse spread to Americans who used them to perpetrate abuse.

On Bush's first day in office in 2001, he reinstated the "Mexico City policy," which prohibits private, foreign groups that receive federal family planning money from advising or even discussing the possibility of abortions for clients.
The policy, called the "global gag rule" by critics, originated during President Reagan's era but was dropped during President Clinton's.
Besides the pledge, the new rules require AIDS groups to inform clients of condom failure rates. Another requirement is that the federal government must now give equal opportunity to funding applicants that have "a religious or moral objection" to a particular AIDS prevention method or treatment program, such as condoms or needle exchanges.

7.8.05 Greg Saunders via Kos:

Under a little-noticed provision of the defense spending bill passed by Congress in May, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld has until July 11 to send Capitol Hill a "comprehensive set of performance indicators and measures of stability and security" two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
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It should be reiterated that the failure to provide this information is a federal crime. That is, assuming that the Congress is serious about ensuring that the Bush Administration keeps their promise to provide metrics by which we can judge their performance.

A copy of the letter was provided to The New York Times by the office of Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who is a member of the Resources Committee and who has led efforts in Congress to try to improve labor conditions in the Northern Marianas.
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"I wouldn't be comfortable if I were him," Mr. Miller said of Mr. DeLay. "Clearly we're talking about a close relationship with Abramoff." He said Mr. DeLay had been instrumental in blocking Congressional efforts to end labor abuses in the islands.

Tom Tomorrow:

Astonishingly, I agree with Tierney this morning.

The increased bill parallels ballooning overall costs in Iraq. President Bush said in March 2003 that combat in Iraq would cost about $60 billion. But the cost for military operations alone had hit $135.3 billion as of March 2005, according to the Office of Management and Budget. The price tag would be far higher if the costs to fund the Coalition Provisional Authority, reconstruction projects and intelligence operations were included.
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Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a vocal critic of Halliburton, said the Army should not be giving the company orders for more work at the same time it is citing the company for unreasonable bills. "The accountability vacuum at the Defense Department is costing the taxpayer dearly," Waxman said in a statement.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in March, 2003, President Bush unlocked frozen Iraqi assets. Greenberg Traurig was paid $5 million, which was shared by Platt, Kleinman, and about a dozen other employees. Shiffman got the biggest cut. Shiffman says his earnings, though large, were "appropriate for what I did and what I accomplished. I am very proud of what I did for those victims of terrorism."
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To date, the former Japanese POWs haven't collected a dime.

British and American aid intended for Iraq's hard-pressed police service is being diverted to paramilitary commando units accused of widespread human rights abuses, including torture and extra-judicial killings, The Observer can reveal.

Bake Sales for Body Armor

I hope you are planning Bake Sale for Body Armor events for your local community summer-time celebrations. I've found a place to send your donations.

... (guest host Andrea Mitchell was very concerned that the rhetoric would get “heated up”).

But pray tell me, if Bush picks a right-wing zealot, is anyone going to be saying in five years, “Sure, Justice so-and-so has been a disaster for the country, but at least the rhetoric during his nomination wasn’t overheated”? During the civil rights movement, there was a lot of overheated rhetoric -- some of it from those struggling for equal rights and some of it from those fighting to maintain Jim Crow. It wasn’t all the same then, and it’s not all the same now. It turns out one side was right and one side was wrong.

The controversy over the rape of a woman by her father-in-law has raised many pertinent issues. After the horrendous incident, the woman, a mother of five children, was told to consider her husband as her son by the local village council of elders. The initial resistance of this edict by the woman and her husband soon gave way to immense pressure put on them by the fatwa of Dar al Uloom, Deoband, which gave very nearly the same verdict, as that of the village council. It stipulated that the women in question could no longer live with her husband, since she ‘had sex’ with her own father-in-law

The dilemma struck me almost immediately after my arrival, when one of our colleagues stormed into the office after a late-night meeting of the Iraqi Governing Council, uttering: "We have a problem. And no one wants to deal with it. The Governing Council is issuing orders and the ministers are starting to execute them." Several of us burst out laughing. We were fostering a transition to sovereignty and democracy. We had established the Iraqi Governing Council. But God forbid it should actually seek to start governing!
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To achieve lasting peace in Iraq, America will have to make concessions, including an explicit commitment not to seek permanent military bases in Iraq. Perhaps no issue in the coming years will more clearly expose the real purpose of the Bush administration's postwar mission in Iraq: to build democracy or to obtain a new, regional military platform in the heart of the Arab world.

See also Billmon:

Some have argued that the construction of 14 "enduring bases" is proof postitive the neocons have absolutely no intention of disgorging their strategic prize. That may have been true when construction started. But anybody who thinks Uncle Sam wouldn't walk away after pouring all that concrete doesn't know much about government contracting.
As citizen has already pointed out over at Moon of Alabama, pouring concrete is a good in and of itself to the Pentagon -- just as pouring money into Halliburton is a good in and of itself to the Cheney administration. After all, bases abandoned in Iraq mean bases that must be built somewhere else
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No, I don't think the administration would blink twice about abandoning the entire Iraq adventure if sunk costs were the only issue. But the stakes are obviously a lot higher than that. Putting empire ahead of democracy (bases ahead off security and stability) would seem like a recipe for an even bigger disaster down the road. But letting Iraq choose its own destiny could result in chaos -- or, even worse from an Israeli-American point of view, in an Iraq that slides steadily deeper into Iran's orbit.
Which horn of the dilemma will the administration choose to impale itself on? Beats me. I'm way more in the dark than Larry Diamond is. But if and when he figures it out, I hope he'll tell us.

Col. John Boyd, one of the great military thinker of the post World War II era, argued that grand strategy should focus on six key goals:

* Ensuring the nation's fitness, as an organic whole, to shape and cope with an ever-changing environment.

* Strengthening national resolve and increasing internal political solidarity.

* Weakening the resolve of the nation's adversaries and reducing their internal cohesion.

* Reinforcing the commitments of our allies to our cause and making them empathetic to our success.

* Attracting the uncommitted to our cause.

* Ending conflicts on terms that do not sow the seeds for future conflicts.

These, of course, are precisely the areas where the Cheney administration's failures have been most abject.

This American government--what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed upon, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of india-rubber, would never manage to bounce over obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their wa one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievious persons who put obstructions on the railroads.

Among the names most frequently mentioned as likely candidates, besides Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Garza, are Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson III and J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va.; Judge John G. Roberts Jr., who sits on the federal appeals court in Washington; and Judge Michael W. McConnell of the 10th Circuit, which is based in Denver. Should Mr. Bush consider a woman, the most likely candidates are Judges Edith Brown Clement and Edith H. Jones, both of the Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans.

7.1.05 Zogby:

A large majority of Democrats (59%) say they agree that the President should be impeached if he lied about Iraq, while just three-in-ten (30%) disagree. Among President Bush’s fellow Republicans, a full one-in-four (25%) indicate they would favor impeaching the President under these circumstances, while seven-in-ten (70%) do not. Independents are more closely divided, with 43% favoring impeachment and 49% opposed.

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