Murtha!

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who's been killing the Bush administration on Iraq issues for the past couple weeks, gave a speech today in response to Bush's continuing "Victory" speeches. This man is really the new king of tearing down the dominant politixxx. Rather than simply attacking Bush's claims of "progress" in Iraq, Murtha talks about how to quantitatively measure progress and how the War in Iraq just isn't cutting it. Specifically, he cites the fact that oil production (what was originally supposed to be financing our actions in Iraq), water infrastructure, and electricity are all significantly below pre-war levels, while combat incidents are up 500% from a year ago. All this despite the fact that we have now thrown $450 billion into this mess. Where's the money going? Not to additional troops or armor, as Murtha cites a critical lack of specialists in fields like explosives and Arabic translation, even though Bush was told in May of 2003 that he would be short in these areas, and even though the Army is lowering standards for enlistment.
This man is unimpeachable in his reasoning. He doesn't even fuck around in his speeches, instead laying the facts out plainly for everyone. And yet, you can bet Ken Mehlman and Scott McClellan (and Coulter and O'Reilly and the rest) will be jumping all over him.

propaganda machine not running smoothly

Donald Rumsfeld was whining yesterday about the lack of good news coming out of Iraq. Hmm...2,100 American troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, escalating insurgent attacks, ongoing corruption in the Iraqi government, increasing sectarian tension. Yeah, I guess a story about how Muhammad Doe now only has to drive through four checkpoints on his way to work instead of five would make for good human interest. Maybe the Pentagon just isn't paying the media enough.

the war on the war on terror

To Republicans fighting the war on terror: you're doing a heckuva job. The 9/11 Public Discourse Project, made up of the disbanded 9/11 Commission, released a report card yesterday evaluating the federal government's progress on its 41 recommendations made a year and a half ago. So, Bush and his cronies in the Republican Party have had 17 months to act on solutions to their self-avowed highest priority, and here's what they've done well on: stemming funding for terrorist organizations. That's it. No improvements on treatment of detainees, no improvements on airline passenger screening, no improvements on communications during an attack (cf. Katrina). The report singles out Congress for special failures, citing overly policitized allocation of antiterrorism funds. That's why villages in Alaska get far more War on Terror pork per capita than New York City and Los Angeles. If I had students who were still getting F's after a year and a half of "work," they would no longer be in my class. So why is Bush still here?

lies for birth defects

The independent Congressional Research Service found that the EPA manipulated findings in a report on Bush's "Clear Skies Act" to make it seem cheaper and more effective than a competing air pollution bills from Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE) and the always hot shit Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-VT). Basically, "Clear Skies" will reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfure dioxide, and everybody's favorite neurotoxin mercury, 70% by 2018. The Carper-Jeffords bills would cut them by 90% by about 2012. So, the EPA lied and said "Clear Skies" would be cheaper for industry and offer more health benefits. Cool, so when your kids are born in 10 years with mutated genitalia from mercury emissions seeping in the water supply, you will know exactly who to thank.

happy fuckin' xmas

Here's the epitome of circle jerk politixxx. A bunch of wanks were on Fox News Watch debating the "war on Christmas." You know who cares about this issue? Fox News: Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, etc. They're urging people to boycott stores and such that say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." Thankfully, Neal Gabler brought up the point that we are at war, there's an AIDS crisis, and so on, and this is the thing to get most outraged by. They also showed a graphic that 95% of Americans celebrate Christmas, so obviously people are going ahead and do it whether you tell them "Merry Christmas" or not. This argument makes as much sense as the people who are afraid that gays getting married will threaten their own marriage. Watch the video.

more Syriana action

So the CIA fucks over Clooney after he can't keep his mouth shut about what really goes on in the Middle East. Well, this isn't the CIA, but the FBI does the same for whistle-blowers. See what I mean? You expect the government to be trustworthy and do the right thing (that's certainly why I pay taxes), and they go out and fuck around playing politics.

mercenaries

This is some scary shit. If you didn't know, the American government, the Iraqi "government," and foreign businesses in Iraq contract out much of their security needs to private, US-based companies, groups like Blackwell and Triple Canopy. These companies are run by former Marines and CIA agents, and, as foreign contractors, operate essentially unregulated, especially if they are doing business for entities besides the US government. All in all, a recipe for corruption and general mayhem. The Los Angeles Times has an excellent overview of this ongoing issue.

doubletalking points

NSA chief Stephen Hadley was on Fox News Sunday this morning. Remember what Cheney's always been saying about the insurgency being in its "last throes?" Hadley apparently disagrees, or he's high:

The violence is continuing, as I said in my answer to the prior question. We have made clear we thought the violence was probably going to go up in this period.

Have you made that clear? Because to me, "last throes" means it's on the decline. And indeed, Chris Wallace stuck him on this, pointedly asking three times if Cheney was wrong, considering that 462 Americans have died in Iraq since he made that statement on May 30. Hadley, for his part, babbled about the distinction between the "terrorists," "Saddamists," and "rejectionists." I'll tell you what they have in common: none of them want us in Iraq.
Watch the video here.

our most favored trading partner

So we import their cheap goods for Wal-Mart and apparently their prison standards too:

The police and prison guards are pushed to extract admissions of guilt and are rarely punished for using electric shock, sleep deprivation and submersion in water or sewage, among other techniques the Commission on Human Rights considers torture, to obtain them, he said.

Syriana

This is not a movie review of Syriana, though I'll continue saying that Clooney's beard, bushy as it was, could have been bushier. Instead, I want to address Steven Gaghan's "responsibility," or lack thereof, in presenting such a topical piece of cinema. If you didn't realize yet that the big oil companies collude with our government and Middle Eastern governments of dubious merit to set global policies, this movie will present a fairly accurate picture for you. I already knew all of the ideas that Gaghan depicts, and if you want to argue that he has a responsibility to his viewers, as a self-styled political commentator, to be accurate and truthful, he does as best a job as can be expected in not exaggerating what really happens between Houston, Washington, and the Persian Gulf. For instance:

• Originally, the ExxonMobil stand-in ConnexKilleen is upset about losing lucrative oil field claims to the Chinese. Yep. Recently released documents from 2001 show that oil execs met, looking aggravatedly at a map of Iraq thick with Chinese claims, to figure out how to get a piece of the sweet Iraqi crude action.
• In the movie, ConnexKilleen plots with the government to have a more American-friendly emir take the throne in an unnamed Persian Gulf country. Meanwhile, as we should all already know, executives from BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, and ConocoPhillips met with Dick Cheney in 2001. Allegedly, they talked about "energy policies," but those policies could certainly include just how to access all that oil locked up in Iraq, since we know they can't just "wave a magic wand" and make pump prices go down. What else would they talk about?
  
• Now that Saddam and his pesky national oil production is out of the way, Big Oil is free to rewrite Iraq's constitution to allow oil development by American and British companies. Oh, shit, I meant IRAQIS are free to rewrite their own constititution...yeah, that's it. Because we certainly wouldn't pay off their politicians. And, in the movie, the new pro-US emir allows US oil development, courtesy of (as Clooney points out to the Condi Rice look alike) straight cash payouts.

Anything I'm missing? Probably a lot of stuff, but I need to go eat dinner.