History

There is a secret history of the Vietnam War that has been under lock and key for the last three years. The information has been carefully researched and compiled by an official historian working in the archives of the National Security Agency (NSA). Word has leaked out because the historian, Robert Hanyok, knows that truth is vital to democracy. Or maybe he just wants to see his name in the New York Times.

Before we go on, I'll get this out of the way: the secret is that mid-level NSA analysts screwed up the intel around the reported attacks on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, and deliberately fixed the intel to cover what was most likely an honest mistake. The attacks led to an escalation of the war and the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" which congress passed soon after. The Resolution gave Johnson a blank check to do whatever he wanted to fight the North Vietnamese commies.

And he ran with it, to the tune of 500,000 troops, billions of dollars, and eventually 58,000 American dead and more than a million Vietnamese.

Would all this have happened without this bad intel? Probably yes. LBJ had his blood up, and there are indications that the White House doubted the reports about the attacked destroyers to begin with. But then again- who knows? Maybe without these reports, Johnson would have had more limits to his conduct of the war. Maybe Nixon and Kissinger would have been more restrained in their bloody bombing campaigns.

Okay, there's the secret. But why is it secret? What national security interests are harmed by these revelations?

Well, no legitimate security interests, but lots of political interests. See, the modern White House had this research squelched because it might remind people of how they cooked up their Iraq war.

There are several layers of irony here. You might think that a backward conservative administration would want to kick dirt on the legacy of a progressive Democratic president. Why would Bush protect Johnson?

Perhaps because Bush sees himself as the champion of executive privilege. Perhaps he'll cover LBJ and Jimmy Carter and yes, even Bubba, because he needs that favour returned in spades. If some zealous historian starts digging the Bush dirt in a few years, it's going to mean really big trouble - even decades from now.

Of course, he needn't worry about that. As soon as American retake their government, the investigations will start and the filth will be brought to laundry.

Motives

Vietnam was a tragically misguided adventure in the projection of American military and political power. Kennedy, LBJ, and Nixon were each increasingly drawn into the fight until Nixon cut and ran in 1973. Actually, I'm not sure whether he really cut, but he definitely ran.

The vital distinction to make between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War is this: while misguided, the architects of the Vietnam War thought they were battling communism in a world struggle for dominance. They thought they were fighting for democracy and Western freedom against a communist ideology that was oppressive and denied basic freedoms to millions of people.

North Vietnam was a real bad guy. As was China and the USSR. With the fall of the Soviet Union, we're more used to communism lite,' with their cheap exports and limited use of free enterprise zones to make money and revitalize their economy.

The communism of the 50's and 60's that LBJ and Nixon fought was the communism that said, as Khrushchev bellowed at the UN: "we will bury you." It was an ideology that caused millions of deaths. A million Ukrainians were starved to death, quite on purpose. Soviet leaders regularly purged any opposition. It was extreme and it was brutal - and in China and Vietnam, it still is, It's just better at public relations now.

The new report concludes that the decision to fight in Vietnam was not political in a domestic sense; the intel was not cooked to convince others to go to war. And it wasn't approved at a high level - LBJ, McNamara and the other primaries were not aware that they had bad intel. Nor did they ever ask for bad or 'cherry picked' intel.

But Bush did. His ideologues weren't fighting a real menace like Soviet communism. They were fighting their own personal demons. The cooked intel was presented for a domestic audience, and was purposefully misleading. These were not earnest Cold Warriors trying to defeat an implacable global foe.

These were representatives from big defense and energy industries trying to drum up business.

They knew just what they were doing. When they told a lie, they knew they were lying. Why do you think their terms were all so carefully couched? They knew - from Georgie to Chicanery to Rummy and on down - that they were cooking up a bad war.

More proof is in the hiding of this new history. Just the act or refusing its release is proof that the traitors know their treason.

"This material is relevant to debates we as Americans are having about the war in Iraq and intelligence reform," said Mr. Aid, who is writing a history of the N.S.A. "To keep it classified simply because it might embarrass the agency is wrong."

SCOOTER'S DONE

Scooter Libby resigned in disgrace. Rove is still a target of the investigation. The Grand Jury term is extended.

Beware convenient terror crises over the next few weeks!

Again

What's good for Georgie has been, over the five years of his presidency, uniformly bad for America. But having stolen not only the seat of power but also the unwavering loyalty of the other two branches of government, he's pretty much used to ruling by decree. The whims that control him and the deeply anti-American beliefs of those who pull his strings have left the nation more battered and small than it's been since the War of 1812.

Yes - I made a War of 1812 reference. I believe it's my first, and I would also contend that you can read every news outlet on the planet today and not find any other reference to that conflict. Did you know that the first USS Enterprise beat the HMS Boxer off the coast of Maine in 1813? Hmm? What you get on this site is unique, my friends. Yessereee.

But we come here no to speak in generalities but specifics. The Junta is showing not its age but its mileage; you can't be that venal and debauched over that many years without getting arrested or thrown into rehab. Right now, Dear Leader's loyalists are facing both.

On the 'thrown into prison' side, there is the Affaire de Plame. Darth Rove and Scooter Libby (you can't re-nickname a guy named "Scooter") are staring down the barrel of the Sheriff's peacemaker as we speak. Scooter is expected to be indicted today, and Darth Rove is expected to go under soon after. It's being widely reported that Rove and his law team are trying desperately to convince Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald that the Dark Prince didn't really mislead the Grand Jury when he kind of lied to them. Hey - isn't that a million-dollar bill behind your ear? Just kidding! No, really.

It will be interesting to see what bodies Rove will throw at Fitz to stay out of the hoosegow. A reptile like Rove would hand his own kids to John Wayne Gacy if he thought it would save his outsized posterior. "Nice clown suit Mr. Gacy. You kids behave, now. Well, bye!"

So no doubt there are some staffers getting their papers together in anticipation of being thrown to the prosecutor by the boss. When you run a government that is this mean and stupid, your staff gets the message: they will be sacrificed - gladly. The place is all about revenge. It's run by people who talk Christ and behave Lucifer.

Meanwhile, the rest of the government is going to rehab, like it or not. Harriet hit rock bottom yesterday, with the help of an Intervention from the Senate. Unqualified lawyers can't be put on the Supreme Court just because they have an unrequited passion for the prez. It's not 2002 anymore. Georgie can't rule by imperial fiat. Makes you wonder what 'Plan B' will look like.

The loss of totalitarian control really is the good news story. Enough people are dead now. Their blood has started to seep into red state brains, to the extent that although they still think Georgie's swell, they're pretty sure he's also a serious bumbling idiot.

Having taken these hits, there is only one way to go for the Junta: down fighting. In order to save face with his base, Georgie needs to find a truly stunned and backward hillbilly conservative judge to nominate. Really pick a fight with Democrats.

I mean, he'll lose. Democrats can filibuster a Scalia or a Thomas, and we have seen what happens when Georgie picks a complete mystery candidate. The Republican Senators could go nuclear on a filibuster - but that would mean crossing a line - passing an official lie to radically change Senate rules so that Georgie can get his way.

And when was the last time these guys had the sack to stand and fight? Next time will be the first time.

But there's no longer a constituency to lie and cheat and steal for him. His congressional soldiers are deserting. And if you need Dick Cheney to run down to the Senate to break a tie vote, you'll have to push past all the Special Prosecuting attorneys to get to him.

These are hard times for the Junta. Perhaps if the hard times lead to imprisonment, financial ruin, and (eventually) and painful and humiliating death, they will have tasted a small corner of what they've inflicted on others during their dictatorship.

Treason

Just a quick thought in anticipation of the indictments coming out tomorrow in the Affaire de Plame. Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald is known as being quite dogged in his pursuit of evildoers and quite brilliant as well. He has the permission he needs to broaden his scope, to include perjury as well as underlying wrongdoing for example.

My question is this: will he indict for treason? Because he's been going after the Iraq Working Group - the White House cabal that cooked up the lies that led to the Iraq invasion. Surely, fabricating falsehoods that send America into an unjust aggressive invasion is treasonous.

If Fitzy got into that committee, if he got a whiff of what they cooked, couldn't he go after them for the whole thing?

After all, the Plame thing happened because the Junta wanted Joe Wilson punished. Wilson needed to go down because he was exposing their falsehoods very publicly. It was those falsehoods - especially the uranium lie - that brought us to this terrible conflict.

How far did he follow that road?

Wait and see.

Harriet

Harriet's out. She withdrew her name from consideration for Justice of the Supreme Court. Just when I was starting to like her. Ostensibly, she didn't want to make Georgie give up any of the executive privilege he's hoarded over the years. Senators were insisting that they'd have to see some paperwork on her before approving the nomination. And she'd have to testify about the constitutional advise she gave Georgie on things like "waterboarding" and sexually humiliating prisoners.

But in the end, it wasn't the American patriots who oppose torture who finished her: it was the conservatives. Red-state conservatives don't give the first flying rat's intestinal blockage about torture. They'd just as soon torture Iraqis themselves. But they did insist on a pay-off for their unquestioning and unwavering support over the past five years. They want a Bork.

Now, Bork was the lesson in confirmations that allowed Scalia and Thomas to be confirmed. Bork was (and is) an intelligent reptile who would gut American freedoms and aid big government and big corporations in squishing the little guy like a bug hitting the windshield of a 747. Bork would aid the Tom DeLay prison revival in making America a Protestant Evangelical Christian nation. Bork doesn't believe in a right to privacy. Bork doesn't believe in relief for individuals from racial discrimination or unfair labour practices.

And Bork's not on the Supreme Court.

Since Bork got bounced (and yes, I do like typing "Bork" repeatedly) because he is a proto-human Neocon-Taliban who has a record, conservatives decided to stop sending nominees who had any record at all. Thus, John Roberts gets the Chief Justice post after only two years' judging and several (private secret) years as a Republican legal operative for Poppy and Ronny. No paper trail, but high expectations that he'll bring back the halcyon days of the mid-eighteenth century when you could be burned for witchcraft and were legally required to attend the approved church.

That's not to mention Clarence "Uncle" Thomas and Antonin "the Godfather" Scalia, who both had less than clear records but the moral fortitude to deny the rights of working people. These are the perfect conservative candidates because their beliefs can be hidden from the American people - who they will rule for life. Clearly, conservatives understand that their beliefs are repugnant and cannot be exposed to public scrutiny.

Which brings us back to Harriet. Poor Harriet. She was supposed to be another in the chain of stealth candidates, but turned out to be too stealthy. The Bible conservatives didn't like her. They didn't trust Georgie to have vetted her beliefs. Was she really against privacy rights? Was she ready to fight for the installation of an American theocracy?

Too many times, they'd watched Georgie choose Cash Conservatives over them. The Cash guys got the tax cut payoff. The Warmonger Conservatives got, well, their own war. Georgie even committed repeated acts of treason to give it to them.

And now this. Harriet - whose last coffin nail was a bunch of speeches where she said people should make choices about their lives - wasn't sufficiently on record about the devolution of the US. Georgie didn't pay off - and they weren't taking the nod and wink anymore.

Plus, she stumbled with the Senators. She was supposed to be a super-detail shrew, but her answers to the Senate questionnaire were sloppy and incomplete. She denied taking a position on privacy that Sen. Spectre said she did after they spoke.

It was all too clear that she was just Georgie's loving soldier. Georgie is the smartest guy she ever met (!), and if he wanted her to go and constitute on the bench, than he must know something she doesn't know - and he's always right! Off she goes!

So Harriet has had her 15 minutes and been found wanting. Cheer up though, dear: you'll be needed to defend Georgie against all those indictments once real Americans take back the government.

After all, keeping him out of jail would be the best way to show your love.

Eat That Cake!


Interesting party, the Republicans; when they're not torturing people they're starving them. While spending lavishly on people who would not notice another $10,000 more or less in their bank accounts, they've determined to cut spending on those who would suffer from the loss of a single dollar. Tell me again - what part of the Bible is that?

Because it's the Bible that's at the heart of the matter. No matter what their particular indulgence, conservatives rally around the Bible like a single can of beer at an AA meeting.

For the 'realist' non-ideologies, it's a convenient fall-back position to cover the tracks of their greed. Every time they get caught dumping the poor box into their 'business deposit' bag, they can start speaking in tongues and everything will be okay. It's even better for the ideologues, because they don't ever have to wonder what's in the book. They have a received perception experience that tells them, without ever having to even learn to read, what the Bible teaches them about screwing the unscrewed and making lots of non-whites either poor or dead.

Remember: Georgie never goes to church. The Junta uses religion as a club to beat down any opposition. There is not a shred of evidence to support the notion that they actually have read or hold any morally serious belief in the contents of the Bible. The actual Bible talks about understanding, peace, and doing nice things for those who might need break (like the poor, who are a major focus of the book). Sure there's some smiting of sinners and whatnot, but that's mostly done by the Big Fella with a strong "don't try this at home" caveat ("judge not or thou shalt be judged...").

Take, for example, their response to Katrina (you don't even have to say "hurricane Katrina" anymore - makes you feel sorry for all the people names 'Katrina' out there in the Steppes). While the tax cuts have given trillions to the wealthy under cover of dubious "Voodoo economics" concepts that have never been proven (and never will be proven) to do anyone any good - other than the direct recipients of government largesse - poor and working-class hurricane victims will have to suffer deep spending cuts to get any help in rebuilding their lives.

"They are now proposing policies that will cut child-support payments to
single mothers who are struggling to provide for their children," said Rep.
Charles B.Rangel (N.Y.), the Ways and Means Committee's ranking Democrat.
Foster-care cuts of nearly $600 million would cease payments to children taken
from the home of impoverished grandparents or other relatives who are not their
parents, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Equally controversial will be cuts to the growth of Medicaid under
consideration in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee's plan,
to be formally drafted tomorrow, would slice $3 billion over five years from
Medicaid prescription-drug payments and more than $6 billion from other parts of
the program. Committee aides framed the cuts as marginal -- even with them,
Medicaid spending will grow 7 percent through the end of the decade, rather than
the 7.3 percent currently expected. "I would submit to you that Medicaid in its
current form is already hurting the poor," said Energy and Commerce Committee
Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.). "This committee will not stand by and do nothing
while Medicaid slowly collapses."

In exchange for taking this crust of bread from the hungry (and foster kids and food stamp recipient and child health care, et al), we get "permanent" tax cuts for the very rich. Huh? The people who would like to force everyone to live by their interpretation of a religious tract they've not read usually ask this chestnut as well: "what would Jesus do?"

And with no offense intended for Christians, what would Jesus do? Would Jesus cut food and shelter programs for the poor? How about for the poor who've lost everything to a flood? Would Jesus want wealthy people to take all that money from the government and leave it too broke to help the needy?

Doesn't sound like that to me.

But that's just business as usual. Really, that sort of commentary is beneath even me. The base hypocrisy of this government is so enormous and obvious a problem that anyone who can't see it is being deliberately obtuse. And what can you tell someone who's deliberately obtuse?

More business as usual: Georgie nominated a guy for the top public affairs post at the Pentagon who thinks all the news media - comically including Fox - are in cahoots with al Qaeda and are losing the Iraq war.

Mr. Smith, a former ABC News producer who has worked as an adviser in both
Bush administrations, said in an article in The Wall Street Journal on April 25
that the Arab satellite news channel Al Jazeera operated on behalf of terrorists
and that American networks aided them by televising Al Jazeera's videotape.

"Osama
bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Al Qaeda have a partner in Al Jazeera
and, by extension, most networks in the U.S.," Mr. Smith wrote. "This
partnership is a powerful tool for the terrorists in the war in Iraq."
"Al Jazeera," he added, "has very strong partners in the U.S. - ABC, NBC, CBS,
Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Video aired by Al Jazeera ends up on these networks,
sometimes within minutes."

Shockingly, this guy might not pass. Sen. Levin will stand up and be counted:

Mr. Levin said Tuesday that coming from someone who had been picked to be the
Pentagon's chief liaison with the news media, those comments went too far. "That
you would characterize them as aiders and abettors of the terrorists that attack
us," he told reporters, "as far as I'm concerned that is so far over the top,
it's unacceptable."

That's really not fair; after rewarding the jackass community for spouting foul and brain-deprived poison for years, how can they just turn around one day and say: "hey! That's hateful speech that's unworthy of a mighty nation."

I mean come on. People can't just start being responsible for their words and actions - this is America!

Hurt Me

Dick Cheney has a problem with torture: Congress won't let him do it anymore. He's fighting to stop it, though. Stop Congress, that is, not torture. Because he needs torture. He hasn't ever been tortured, of course. In order for that to happen, he would have had to, at any point in his life, actually risk it all for his country. As a card-carrying neoconservative, he's ideologically against anyone whose parents make more than $500,000 risking anything for anyone. On the flip side of the ideological coin, he's foursquare in favour of anyone who works for a living (or has parents who work) being killed to support his ideals.

John McCain, that quasi-independent troublemaker who never signed the Junta pledge sheet, showed what kind of unreliable scum he is by first serving his country with distinction - bastard! Just like that Kerry fop, he got his hands dirty doing the work of his nation at a time of war. He wasn't at home cramming for midterms with Cheney and Rummy, and he wasn't out dodging National Guard service with a suspiciously white nose like Georgie.

Second, McCain challenged Dear Leader in the 1999 primaries and beat him in places like New Hampshire. Karl Rove had to go all, umm, Karl Rove on him (sorry, there's no other creature that does anything quite as despicable and low-down as Karl Rove - there's no adequate simile) and intimate that he had a bastard black child (because he and his wife had adopted an Ethiopian baby - bastard!). Why did McCain had to push them, make them go Rove on them? Obviously not a man to be trusted.

Now McCain has lined up 90 Senate votes - 90! - to outlaw cruel and unusual punishment by US government people. They have to go along with some sort of guidebook that those pansies at the Army put out.

"But," pleads Cheney, "can't the CIA torture people? At least let the CIA torture? Please?"

No.

"This is the first time they've said explicitly that the intelligence community should be allowed to treat prisoners inhumanely," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "In the past, they've only said that the law does not forbid inhumane treatment." Now, he said, the administration is saying more concretely that it cannot be forbidden.

When did Cheney turn into this sort of reptile life form? He generally gets decent marks as Defense Secretary for Bush 41. He was a complete cro-magnon as a Congressman, but there are plenty of those and they're not walking around with thumbscrews.

Dickie's also the creep who, it now appears, told Scooter Libby about Valerie (Plame) Wilson. The investigation has the Junta locked up in a fist of apprehension, as both Darth Rove and Scooter are on the chopping block. There are already signs that Scooter might be jettisoned to protect Rove, Dickie, and Georgie himself. If they can work it, the Junta will play musical chairs and leave Scooter standing at the end - so the Special Investigator can knock him down. I guess they're pretty sure he won't tell tales on his way to the pokey - in anticipation of a 2008 presidential pardon.

According to a couple of former Junta players, Junta foreign policy has been Dickie plaything for quite a while. Brent Scowcroft - Bush 41's NSA - and Col. Larry Wilkerson - Colin Powell's Chief of Staff - are out of the Junta for good. They've been saying bad things about how badly mismanaged our foreign policy has been.

Foreign policy under President Bush is run by a secretive "cabal" headed by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's dream of spreading democracy around the Middle East is misguided and could backfire badly.

What about Powell himself?

Powell himself has largely stayed quiet, although he broke with the White House earlier this month in backing a Senate ban on U.S. torture of military prisoners.

Yet another old fool - sorry, American war veteran - who doesn't want the American government to join the list of the world's torturing nations. Can't they revoke his citizenship for that?

But you have to go to the really insane fringe of public life to get the down-low on what's going on. Let's check the gutter:

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said the public criticisms signal a rebirth of the dispute within the Republican Party between "idealists," who favour using U.S. power to remake the world, and "realists," who tend to deal with the world as it is.

"Idealists" are the utter nutbags who cooked up the Iraq war. They are the ones who are working toward a Biblical Rapture by bringing about the "End of Days" with an aggressively hostile and juvenile foreign policy. They are the ones who want John Bolton at the UN destroying that institution from the inside. They want an America that is totally isolated and protected only by force of arms and a missile defense shield that will only ever work to enrich their friends.

"Realists" are the conservatives who just want the money. They want the Iraqi oil and don't care who has to get killed to bring it back. They are the ones who want to walk away from our foreign commitments because they're selfish and greedy, not because they believe in anything.

Idealists hate that because they do believe in something. Dick Cheney, for example, believes in torturing people.

Cash

The thoroughly indispensable Knight-Ridder is reporting that the Defense Department has added a new partner to the project to impoverish America: the middle-man (or person).

In thousands of purchases of food service equipment
items, Knight Ridder found massive mark-ups. The case of a special 7-foot
refrigerator-freezer for airplanes illustrates the problem.

MGR Equipment Co. of Inwood, N.Y., which makes the
unit, charged DLA $17,267 in 2003 for each one. That's the price that MGR
President Gerald Ross said he charges everyone.

In September 2004, prime vendor Lankford Sysco Food
Services Inc. sold the government nine MGR refrigerators for $32,642.50 apiece -
a markup of 89 percent. The government paid $138,445 extra, when all prices were
adjusted for inflation into 2005 dollars.

The mark-ups upset Charles Jones, president of
Commercial Marketing Co., a Columbia, S.C., vendor cut out of the prime vendor
program. He sells kitchen equipment, but because of the prime vendor program,
his sales are limited to just a few bases.

"What value is this prime vendor program adding?
Zero," Jones said. "We think it's a crooked deal."

Another government agency, the General Services
Administration, has its own purchasing system that the military can use. And
it's cheaper.

Jones and Eagle Marketing of Houston, a vendor not in
the prime system, compared the DLA's prime vendor prices with how much the GSA
pays for the same food service equipment. The DLA's prime vendor prices were 39
percent higher.

This is what has become of conservative ideology. Their whole 'rule of the market' worldview has been exposed time and again: they don't believe in small government. They don't believe in managing costs. They don't believe I much of anything, really. They just want to take as much wealth from the government as they can before they get shut down.

They're the kids loose in the candy store, stuffing their pockets with all the chocolate they can before the owner gets back. And the conservatives plan is the same as the kids' plan: bolt out the door, and the one who gets caught burns for the rest. If the GAO or anybody else starts making a case against the war profiteer who overcharged for the refrigerators by 89%, the rest of them will have fair warning to shred their documents and send their cash to Switzerland.

I'm old enough to remember back when Congress used to exercise its oversight responsibility. Yes, committees used to grill department bureaucrats about blowing 20% of their money on politically connected confidence tricksters. Hell, I can remember when the Pentagon tried to save money instead of padding defense contractors retirement income.

It's an odd age of reality when liberals are the fiscally sound people and conservatives are blowing money out the door.

Yes, there really used to be a country where patriotic civil servants and military leaders wanted only to protect and serve the nation, regardless of who gets rich doing it.

Greetings! I've been blogging on LiveJournal for a couple of years, but I think it may be time for a change. As blogging matures as a - what? Media outlet? Spleen-venting venue? Hobby?

Whatever it is or turns out to be, it seems clear that LiveJournal is a place best suited for personal reflection. And when I started blogging, I didn't really know what would come out of my fingertips.

Now I do. My primary career wish has always been to write a political column. For various reasons, that will never happen. But I think over the past couple of years, I've proven to myself that I can write commentary every day of the week, and think of something new to say for each of the posts - something that (to my knowledge) nobody else was saying.

I've been assisted, of course, be the most venal, corrupt, and incapable federal government in American history - a big shout-out to the Junta.

So here I am, finally, at Blogger.