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In Congress, Dem and GOPer Working Together to Change the NDAA | Mother Jones

"Smith and Amash's effort comes amid a bipartisan backlash against indefinite detention that has already produced legislation on the state level. Republican-dominated legislatures in Arizona, Maine, and Virginia have passed anti-NDAA legislation. Proponents of indefinite detention argue that Congress' 2001 authorization of the use of military force against Al Qaeda and the Taliban permits the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens, even those apprehended in the United States. But the Supreme Court has not definitively ruled on the issue. Opponents counter that indefinite detention of American citizens in the United States is unconstitutional."

Review & Outlook: The Tea Party's Inner ACLU - WSJ.com

The Wall Street Journal has a conniption fit about conservative opposition to the NDAA: "The ACLU tea partiers may be well-intentioned but they are woefully uninformed about the war on the terror. Their efforts would undermine executive war-fighting authority and the legitimacy of a terrorist detention and military tribunal system that has been established over many Congresses, endorsed by two Presidents and confirmed by the Supreme Court. They should stick to shrinking the entitlement state."

Arizona Joins Virginia in the NDAA Exodus. Is Nullification the Next New Thing? (Cutting the Gordian Knot)

"In less than a week’s time a second state has put a foot down making it clear that it will not cooperate with Federal Law which is blatantly unconstitutional. Yesterday Arizona became the second state to pass a nullification of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)."

How Obama Became a Civil Libertarian's Nightmare | | AlterNet

“The major defining feature of the Obama administration on this issue is the eagerness with which it embraced the stunning evisceration of civil rights and liberties that was a hallmark of the Bush administration, and then deepened those outrageous programs,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, who is an attorney representing many Occupy protesters swept up in last fall’s mass arrests. “He has successfully counted on the acquiescent silence of the liberals.”

‘I withdraw’: A talk with climate defeatist Paul Kingsnorth (Stephenson, Grist)

I don’t think any “climate movement” is going to reverse the tide of history, for one reason: We are all climate change. It is not the evil “1%” destroying the planet. We are all of us part of that destruction. This is the great, conflicted, complex situation we find ourselves in. I am climate change. You are climate change. Our culture is climate change. And climate change itself is just the tip of a much bigger iceberg, if you’ll pardon the terrible but appropriate pun. If we were to wake up tomorrow to the news that climate change were a hoax or a huge mistake, we would still be living in a world in which extinction rates were between 100 and 1000 times natural levels and in which we have managed to destroy 25 percent of the world’s wildlife in the last four decades alone.

Chris Hedges: Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

“You are unable to say that [such a book] consisting of political speech could not be captured under [NDAA section] 1021?” the judge asked. “We can’t say that,” Torrance answered. “Are you telling me that no U.S. citizen can be detained under 1021?” Forest asked. “That’s not a reasonable fear,” the government lawyer said. Advertisement “Say it’s reasonable to fear you will be unlucky [and face] detention, trial. What does ‘directly supported’ mean?” she asked. “We have not said anything about that …” Torrance answered. “What do you think it means?” the judge asked. “Give me an example that distinguishes between direct and indirect support. Give me a single example.” “We have not come to a position on that,” he said. “So assume you are a U.S. citizen trying not to run afoul of this law. What does it [the phrase] mean to you?” the judge said. “I couldn’t offer any specific language,” Torrance answered. “I don’t have a specific example.”

America brings the ‘war on terror’ home (Wolf, Daily Star)

"(Judge) Forrest also repeatedly asked for assurances – at least five times – that the NDAA would not sweep up people like the plaintiffs: journalists engaged in journalism and citizens engaged in peaceful protest. Again, every time, the lawyers for Obama and Panetta said that they could not give her such assurances. [...] We now have it from the U.S. government lawyers’ own mouths: This law may put journalists at risk, or at least the lawyers explicitly refused to rule out that option for their client – and, as Forrest put it, they have “one very big client.”"

Obama’s evolution: Behind the failed ‘grand bargain’ on the debt (Wallsten/Montgomery/Wilson, WaPo)

"That night, Obama prepared his party’s congressional leaders. He warned Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that he might return to the position under discussion the previous Sunday — that is, cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in exchange for just $800 billion in tax increases. [...] White House officials said this week that the offer is still on the table."

Not All Labor Leaders Happy With AFL-CIO’s Obama Endorsement (Elk, In These Times)

“There's not a lot of choice here, that’s the sad part of this,” says Matt McKinnon, political and legislative director of the Machinists union (IAM), which is affiliated with AFL-CIO and endorsed the president earlier this year. “He’s been a disappointment in several areas, but he came through with some decent appointees.” The expected endorsement represents the reality that organized labor leaders still feel trapped in a two-party system, with a not-always labor-friendly Democratic Party on one side and a downright hostile Republican Party on the other.

Elections: What Are They Good For? (Swanson, War Is A Crime.org)

Voting isn't everything. "I think Emma Goldman had a point in saying that if voting changed anything they would ban it. I think Howard Zinn had a point in saying that it doesn't matter who is sitting in the White House so much as who is doing the sitting in. The relentless ubiquitous question of how you can change the world if you refuse to engage in electoral politics strikes me as crazy. Women didn't vote themselves the right to vote. Workers didn't elect the eight hour day. India didn't vote the British out."

Part II Infiltration of Political Movements is the Norm, Not the Exception in the United States (Zeese, Occupy Washington, DC)

"When the long history of political infiltration is reviewed, the Occupy Movement should be surprised if it is not infiltrated. Almost every movement in modern history has been infiltrated by police and others using many of the same tactics we are now seeing in Occupy. "

Critiques Of Libertarianism: A Non-Libertarian FAQ (Huben)

"The purpose of this FAQ is not to attack libertarianism, but some of the more fallacious arguments within it. That done, libertarians can then reformulate or reject these arguments. This is also needed to help people place libertarianism and its arguments in context. It is very hard to find any literature about libertarianism that was NOT written by its advocates. This isolation from normal political discourse makes it difficult to evaluate libertarian claims without much more research or analysis than most of us have time for. Compare this to (for example) the extensive literature of socialism and communism written by ideologues, scholars, pundits, etc. on all sides. Libertarianism is scantily analyzed outside its own movement. Let's fix that."

UPDATED: Limbaugh's Misogynistic Attack On Georgetown Law Student Continues With Increased Vitriol (Media Matters for America)

Always good to have a reference, this is it. "Rush Limbaugh is not backing down after widespread condemnation over his misogynistic attack on Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University Law School student who testified before Congress recently about the problems caused when women lack access to contraception. " Multiple clips for future show and tells.

America's Death Squads (Davies, PDA Community/ZCommunications)

"Barack Obama has halted the macabre parade of hooded, shackled suspects in orange jumpsuits stumbling off American planes into the tropical sunshine at Guantanamo, but he has not done so by restoring the rule of law. Instead, to a great extent, he has replaced Bush’s policy with a global campaign to simply kill a wide range of people in cold blood: terrorism suspects, resistance fighters, and anyone else added to secret lists for secret reasons. From a uniquely American “exceptionalist” point of view, killing suspects instead of capturing them is a convenient way to avoid the embarrassment of sweeping up hundreds of mostly innocent people in an indiscriminate global dragnet and then not knowing what to do with them. The dead tell no tales. Public outrage is contained within the faraway countries where the killings take place and does not cause domestic political problems."

Corruption in Iraq: 'Your son is being tortured. He will die if you don't pay' (Abdul-Ahad, Guardian)

Iraq ten years after: instead of one Saddam, many little ones. "Yassir was detained in 2007. For three years she heard nothing of him and assumed he was dead like his brothers. Then one day she took a phone call from an officer who said she could go to visit him if she paid a bribe. She borrowed the money from her neighbour and set off for the prison. "We waited until they brought him," she said. "His hands and legs were tied in metal chains like a criminal. I didn't know him from the torture. He wasn't my son, he was someone else.""

The wheels off the bus go round and round…

Posted by Thomas Nephew on March 1st, 2006

round and round….

Mr. Bush’s overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job the president is doing.

For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn’t care, compared to 47 percent last fall.

Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.

By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq.

Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he’s handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.

round and round…

An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.

The poll, conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College’s Center for Peace and Global Studies, showed that 29% of the respondents, serving in various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave Iraq “immediately,” while another 22% said they should leave in the next six months. Another 21% said troops should be out between six and 12 months, while 23% said they should stay “as long as they are needed.

the wheels off the bus go round and round…

Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week’s bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad’s main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.

Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday — blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound — and many of them had wound up at the morgue after what their families said was their abduction by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

…all through the world.

The Defense Intelligence Agency today presented a relatively gloomy assessment of the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, reporting that recent Iraqi elections appear to have contributed to rising sectarian violence and that Afghan insurgents have sharply escalated their attacks. [...]

More broadly “Iraq appears to be emerging as an al-Qaeda platform for launching transnational terrorist attacks,” he said, citing hotel bombings in neighboring Jordan in November and a rocket attack last August that targeted U.S. Navy ships visiting that country.

Problem is, it’s my bus too.

=====
SOURCES: 1) CBS News, Poll: Bush Ratings at All-Time Low, which notes sympathetically, “In a bright spot for the administration, most Americans appeared to have heard enough about Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident.”
2) Zogby International poll of 994 military respondents polled 1/18-2/14/06, MOE +/- 3.3%.
3) Ellen Knickmeyer, Bassam Sebti, Washington Post, 2/28: Toll in Iraq’s Deadly Surge: 1,300 )
4) William Branigin, Washington Post, 2/28: Report Offers Gloomy View of Insurgencies

Category: Post. Tags: iraq. Thread RSS, Comment, Trackback. Print This

8 Responses to “The wheels off the bus go round and round…”

Sgt. Gehlen Says:
March 1st, 2006 at 3:14 pm
My name is Sgt. Gehlen and I work for the USCENTCOM public affairs office. To find out what is really happening in the CENTCOM area of responsibility, visit our website at:
http://www.centcom.mil
Thomas Nephew Says:
March 1st, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Interesting site, thank you.
Your implication is that one or the other of the last 3 items linked in this post is somehow misrepresenting what’s really happening in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Which one? And how?
In particular, what do you make of the Zogby soldiers’ poll? They would seem to be even closer to the facts on the ground than (I’m guessing) you are. Please know I respect the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and appreciate their service; I believe the vast majority are serving honorably and doing the very best job they can. I’ve simply come to doubt whether their CinC has given them a sensible or feasible mission, or at least one that has ongoing value — doubts many of them appear to share.
And I also think that some of the Pentagon top brass and civilian leadership have all but sold out some of your fellow soldiers, giving them immoral and confusing directions and leadership, and then not assuming command responsibility for that in the Abu Ghraib and related scandals.
Thanks for your comment. I am curious, though: is it part of your job to leave comments in blogs?
=====
EDIT, 3/4: link back to “The wheels off the bus go round and round” post
Karen Says:
March 1st, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Yep, this is an interesting comment - but will Sgt. Gehlen provide replies?
Or is the CentCom website his only rejoinder?
Be curious to see if he returns.
Paul Says:
March 2nd, 2006 at 1:33 am
“I work for…public affairs. To find out what is really happening”
Those two statements are mutually exclusive. It’s like saying that corporate press releases tell you “what’s really happening” inside the company. For the real deal, you read their annual filings to the SEC.
The military classifies its real information, though GAO findings are usually interesting.
By the way, how many “terrorists” have we killed this week in Iraq, since everyone we kill in Iraq is considered a “terrorist” by PA?
Paul Says:
March 4th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Check it out, Thomas, you’ve been the recipient of what we like to call PSYOPS: CENTCOM team engages bloggers.
Thomas Nephew Says:
March 4th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
I am curious, though: is it part of your job to leave comments in blogs?
Looks like the answer is “yes.”
The team engages bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information. They extend a friendly invitation to all bloggers to visit the command’s Web site.
Thanks a lot for catching this, Paul. At least they don’t conceal who they are here, which would be more classic psyops I think. I guess CENTCOM is trying to get back on track with Rummie’s information war — he was kvetching about losing to Al Qaeda’s blackberries and whatnot the other week, right?
This is kind of “hit and run,” obviously, and more like mass marketing than “engagement.” I can’t quite make up my mind about this kind of thing. On the whole, I don’t like it; why my government — let alone my country’s armed forces — should spend my money trying to influence my opinions is not clear to me. Were I really misrepresenting something, I could see this, but I don’t think I was. Of course, I wouldn’t, so who else is to say, I suppose.
“CENTCOMwatch” might be a good thing. I see you’ve been watching their body count reclassification, too.
Paul Says:
March 4th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
“why my government — let alone my country’s armed forces — should spend my money trying to influence my opinions is not clear to me.”
That’s actually the whole point of Public Affairs. It’s main mission is to inform (but it’s obviously degraded into corporate Press Release territory), but it’s secondary mission is to present a positive image of the Armed Forces to the citizenry so they have continued confidence in the Armed Forces ability to do its job.
If you’ve ever been to an Air Show at a military base, that’s a Public Affairs and recruiting tool. It’s not explicitly trying to influence your opinion, but it’s trying to present an overall image that implicitly tries to influence your opinion.
I think the only main problem with the first comment is that he used the phrase “what’s really happening”, which means that CENTCOM is releasing the real truth of what’s happening over there, which is patently false. That’s leaving “here’s our information resource” territory and entering the world of advocacy and spin, which makes it look more like a press organ of the militant wing of the Republican Party, rather than a professional and subservient armed force loyal to the entire Federal Government, not just the Commander-in-Chief.
Thomas Nephew Says:
March 5th, 2006 at 12:03 am
“what’s really happening” [is] leaving “here’s our information resource” territory and entering the world of advocacy and spin…
I think those are good distinctions, and get at what’s OK and what’s not with these kinds of things. The thing is, though, a CENTCOM site is almost by definition going to be spin of a sort — schools painted-, chocolates for the kids-, soldiers being professional-type stories. They’re all true, but I suspect CENTCOM Public Affairs just isn’t going to cover Abu Ghraib or Bagram detainee issues. Haven’t looked hard yet, though; maybe later this evening.

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The wheels off the bus go round and round…

8 Responses to “The wheels off the bus go round and round…”

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