They Would Rather Sell Shoes

The evidence for impeachment of a president continues to pile up, and weak kneed members of Congress continue to run away from their duty. Converted war hawk Senator Chuck Hagel told those colleagues blocking a debate on Iraq that if they wanted a safe job, they should "sell shoes". The debate, if it occurs, is actually a proxy debate on the malfeasance in office of the Charlatan and his cohorts. The regime went beyond mere selective use of intelligence to justify an invasion. They deliberately crafted an inaccurate picture of the security threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Another piece of the collage was provided yesterday by the Pentagon Inspector General's office. It criticized the operations of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith. His group inappropriately "developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence estimates....that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community to senior decision makers." Senator Rockefeller IV says his Intelligence Committee will now investigate whether the Pentagon under Rumsfeld violated the 1947 Security Act by failing to inform Congress about Feith's intelligence activities that were conducted at the direction of then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz.

Part of that "development" was no doubt the forged Niger yellowcake documents which allegedly showed Hussein seeking a source of enriched uranium ore in Africa for a reconstituted weapons program. (See my previous posts on the Italian Job). Senator Carl Levin, now chair of the Armed Services Committee, released a critical minority report in 2004 on the alleged Al Qaeda connection to Iraq and asked for an investigation of the Policy Counterterroism Evaluation Group and the Policy Support Group in 2005. His comment on the investigation results was that the regime got the kind of connections they wanted, "no matter how skimpy". That's right, Senator, and when they found no connections, they created them.

Theatre of the Absurd

Between murderous Astronuts driving all night in diapers and the US loosing $12 billion in shrink rapped bills in the Iraqi den of thieves, it's hard to know where to start. People are so numbed to the incompetence, mendacity and corruption, they simply shrug their shoulders and move on. Still, it would be a folksy concession if our politicians at least appeared to be doing the people's business instead of their own. Now they don't even bother to fly commercial flights like the rest of you frightened plebes. Ms. Pelosi wants a Pentagon jet to fly home to see her grandkids and a non-stop 757-200 to boot, thank you very much.

The money story epitomizes the catastrophe wrought by the current US regime in the Middle East. Congressmen Henry Waxman's committee on Government Oversight started doing some belated overseeing and confirmed the reports of plastic wrapped cash floating around Iraq.
363 tons of money were shipped to Iraq with precious little accountability involved. Money was handed out from the back of pickups, stashed in bags in the basement, and $2 million contract payments made Mafia style by a duffel bag stuffed with wads of cash. The supposed auditor of for the Coalition Provisional Authority's giveaway was a contractor cryptically named North Star Consultants, Inc that operated out of a San Diego living room. Seems mind boggling to me and Representative Waxman. But outrage is worn out on Capitol Hill, and irony is dead as we have already established. What was important to the Admiral in charge is that it was not appropriated money--it was the Iraqi people's money being held for redevelopment. I wonder how many Iraqi civil servants that did not get paid because of the rampant plundering grabbed their Kalashnikov and started shooting at Americans? Yeah, Rummy, stuff happens in a democracy.

Road to Weimar--The Numbers Game

Everyone with a policy.org is crunching budget numbers and they all claim to be more ACCURATE. You can't see the forest for the numbers. The salient facts are: the US spends more than all other countries combined on war and the military, if you count the money spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why you would not count those costs is irrational when discussing where national priorities lie. According to the Swedes, the amount spent on defense world wide is about $1 trillion. The Charlatan's latest budget request is $640 billion including the Department of Energy defense related programs. He plans to pay for this outlandish expenditure by cutting civilian programs.

The US spends large amounts of its defense dollars on expensive, high tech weapons systems that are not suited to fighting the kind of low intensity conflicts it gets involved in. How many terrorists toting IEDs can you kill with a new Navy destroyer costing $3 billion each? The Navy wants 12 of those, along with 30 new submarines each costing $2.6 billion each.
The Air Force is no slouch in the fight at the public trough with the most expensive weapon program in history, the Joint Strike Fighter. It will cost $276 billion for 2400 planes. Its new F-22 fleet of 179 planes cost more than $350 million each. The Pentagon said last year 36 of its weapons procurement programs were over budget. The GAO estimates that overruns on some of those programs exceeded $23 billion. Go figure.

From the District of Bizzaro III

Ever notice how the Republicans name things? Their nomenclature reveals a lot about their psychology. Making the best of a bad situation by strategically redeploying limited combat forces is called "cutting and running". Unprecedented increases in global temperatures on land in the sea that threaten to raise sea levels twenty feet is benignly referred to as "climate change". And stalling for time in the Senate at the expense of American soldiers is not called a "filibuster" but insisting on the minority's procedural rights. They can do no wrong, and will do anything to prevent their president from being conclusively labeled by history a failure.

Yes, we get it, Joe. The Republicans don't want Senator Warner's nonbinding resolution, they want Senator's Gregg's nonbinding resolution. They want it because it does not say Congress disagrees with the urge to surge. Both nonbinding resolutions say Congress should not cut funding for the war. Only in the District of Bizzaro can you be against a measure and still pay for it. Talk about intellectual dishonesty! Wake me up when the Senators begin voting on a binding resolution.

From the District of Bizzaro II

How large is $750 billion? Its huge. More than was spent on the entire Vietnam War in inflation adjusted dollars. Enough to fund a universal health care trust. Ms. Pelosi thinks its huge too, but that is how much the Charlatan wants to spend on war and the military. His military spending budget includes $245 billion for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other pieces of the bottomless money pit known as GWOT (Global War on Terror). Congress will have some bleak data to parse while considering this absurd request because the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq was released Friday. Four distinct struggles are taking place simultaneously and its unlikely the weak central government will be able to control the country before the US has another election.

The Charlatan has absolutely no motivation to do anything about ending the US military occupation before leaving office. His chance to leave a positive presidential "legacy" was gone with the wind of Katrina. His urge to surge is a token effort to control Baghdad at the cost of about $5 billion more according to the Pentagon. More US soldiers will certainly die in the futile effort. He is simply trying to kick the can of blame for his utter failure in Iraq down the road. If Congress is ever to regain some credibility, its moment is now. It must say "enough" and stop pouring money and lives into a lost cause. The American people know this, now its time for their representatives to admit it.

An Undeniable Fact

The lights of Paris went out last night only for a few minutes and the nation of France cut its electricity consumption by 1%. The demonstration was to herald the release of the fourth IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report on global warming. As expected, the news is not good. Global warming, despite what the oil companies are paying people to say, is a scientific fact, although the details surrounding the complexities of climate change are subject to refinement. Study of ice cores samples from the polar regions show that the amount of CO2 is greater now than in the last 650,000 years. The only possible cause for that change has been the burning of fossil fuels which releases CO2 to the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide undergoes chemical reactions in the atmosphere which trap heat. The process is referred to as the "greenhouse effect". The scientists say that 11 of the warmest 12 years since 1850 have occurred since 1995.

Tony 'the Poodle' in Dog House

Tony Blair, the Charlatan's most loyal head of state, is in trouble and his government is in disarray. He achieved the dubious distinction of being the first sitting prime minister ever to be interviewed in a criminal investigation last December. He was interviewed again by police last Friday to clear up emerging details of the investigation into the "honors for cash" scandal rocking the ruling Labour Party. The police investigation has been proceeding since March, 2006 after Scotland Yard received complaints from the Scottish National Party that wealthy individuals who lent money for Labour's 2005 election campaign were honored.

Lord Levy (no pun intended), chief Labour Party fundraiser and envoy to the Middle East, was arrested last Friday for an alleged cover up by Downing Street of violating the 1925 Act of Parliament prohibiting the sale of honors. Blair's appointments aide, Ruth Turner, was arrested on January 19th. John McTernan, Blair's director of public relations, has been interviewed a second time after being advised of his rights. Last night during Question Time, Blair was taunted with the spectre of Watergate and asked to resign for the good of the nation by opposition MPs. The Labour backbench is reportedly in turmoil as it sees it electoral image crash in slow motion.