Launch Monday

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President Obama launches his re-election campaign today.
Laura Bush is Todaying her book tour.
Tim Pawlenty is pushing his inner Mad Men.

So I've got a couple questions.

How much delay in the Mideast democracy movement was because of Bush's willful invasion and botched strategy for after in Iraq? The intelligence was not wrong. The intelligence-manipulators were.

When will the old media start looking at the botched economy Pawlenty left behind in Minnesota?

Must we wait for the historians?

crossposted at firedoglake/MyFDL

Judgement at Concordia

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Last night I attended a National Book Award event at a local college, featuring John Dower, a Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author who has written Cultures of War, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq. He discussed the parallels in "shock and awe" tactics and the strategic imbecility of having no backup plan...after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, after America invaded Iraq.

Dower commented that one of the greatest tragedies of the failure to hold hearings or any kind of "conversation" much less trials about Iraq is that the complete record is likely lost to history. Unlike the record we have from Nuremberg and Tokyo.

Instead we have Rumsfeldian revisionism that will only get worse, I'm thinking. No wonder Dubya mocked the historians. Although, even with the limited record of leakers and piecing together what was on the record yet willfully ignored by the groupthink of the men who made these decisions with Mad Mary hovering over them [I will never get that iconic picture scrubbed from my brain!], judgements are being made. And Dubya's not dead yet.

Invading Iraq -- one of the most colossal failures in strategic thinking in global and military history.

The pullers of the levers of power may want to deny it, to cover it up, to leave it in the dustbin, to not contemplate their own culpability. The media may go along because their own colossal failure to do their jobs, instead, to enable, to steno the run-up to war would be revealed, as well. The incestuous little village may want to keep its tidy little salons free of such petty annoyances as accountability. Starting with looking at their own bare faces in the mirror. And thus, the lesson of history could be lost to future generations

Heckuva job, Bushie.

Unless.

Unless there are men and women of honor and courage and a sense of history as well as right and wrong who will one by one come forward and place their testimony, their documents, on the record.

Failing that, this truly will be a failure of "intelligence."
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crossposted at firedoglake/MyFDL

The Choice Not Taken

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Maybe it comes of having someone near and dear to me living with chronic leukemia and never being quite certain what the next week, the next month, the next year may hold...

Three disparate news items have caught my eye lately. This article from the Minnesota Independent about the University of Minnesota's ground-breaking research trials using embryonic stem cells. The success rate against cancer tumors? 100%. Admittedly a small study. All the more reason to push for more, soonest. Because a comparable trial using umbilical cord cells produced only 38%.

Don't know about you, but 100% odds sound a lot more appealing for my loved one than 38%.

And then, over dinner, we listened to Richard Haass on Hardball, author of War of Necessity, War of Choice, A Memoir of Two Wars in Iraq. Distilling Haass, Dubya mis-led us into war in Iraq without ever hearing any contrary discussions, only that which supported his agenda. And that agenda could be summed up thusly: Afghanistan wasn't grand enough, we didn't put on a big enough show, we didn't get Osama bin Laden, so we shifted ground and went for the ol' Shock and Awe.

Bushie needed to prove...what, exactly? That he was a real man because he could deciderate to cause enough carnage and damage and destruction that the whole world—well, the whole Middle Eastern world—would bow down and shower us in rose petals and candy and dancing children and.... ?

There is something so consummately monstrous in the whole mindset that led us into Iraq that it's almost beyond comprehension. The arrested adolescent President who took on the trappings of a demi-god.

How Napoleonic. Complete with the costume..."mission accomplished."

What mission, though?

And at what price?

Just imagine, if George W. Bush, who had the moment, had cast himself on the side of the angels, pushed for embryonic stem cell research, for example. Instead of joining the demons in a lust for empire and dictatorial power and the torture tactics that sank him and his ilk to the same level as those he professed to...hmmmmm.... I don't have a problem with dictatorships, as long as I get to be dictator. Don't ever say he didn't warn us.

Maybe, if the man of the "gentlemanly C" (methinks the "gentleman" doth profess too much, that's grade inflation if I've ever seen it) had focused on building a better world instead of his destructive path, then we wouldn't have circumstances like those that took Andy Rounds.

Or at least we'd be closer to a cure.
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crossposted at firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette

Andrea Concern Troll

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Back from a daytrip, I was winding down and watching the repeat edition of Hardball this evening.

Andrea Mitchell was giving her best imitation of a concern troll, going on at great length lamenting the fact that "the press" were not allowed to take part in Obama's meetings with the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead, they and we must rely on DOD video...of the conversations, of the great basketball shot, of the helicopter boarding...

How dare they, asserts Andrea. Sputter, sputter. Why, no other presidential candidate has ever done that....

Yeah, as I recall, John McCain went over to Baghdad on exactly the same kind of trip with his sidekicks, Sparky and Deppity Dawg. And they got great $5 deals on rugs and they got to walk thru a bazaar and look all kinda, you know, shoppy.

And John, I calls him John, told us how wonderful and safe and successful and super-duper everything was over there.

But he didn't mention the helicopters and the heavily armed security team surrounding them and....

what's this? The press didn't mention it either.

So maybe before Andrea Concern Troll keeps "lamenting" any further, she ought to just be grateful the military saved her and the rest of the lapdog bbq-sauce-whiskered BFFs of John from embarrassing themselves again.....
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UPDATE: Seems I'm not the only one taking note of Lady Andrea's "performance" earlier tonight on Hardball. John over at C&L offers his take.

Obama in Fargo

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Senator Barack Obama spoke to a group of veterans, military and their families, and the general public in a town hall event in Fargo today. You can view the speech and the Q&A session here. He talked with reporters, too.

Earlier I noted that Conventional Wisdom in the Village shouldn't assume North Dakota is a lock to continue as a red state. Clearly, Obama has found a warm reception in the state both times he's visited, today and back in April for the Dem state convention in Grand Forks, when he spoke to a crowd of 18,000 and nearly that number were turned away.

If I were the McCain campaign, I wouldn't be posturing for joint town hall appearances either...Obama does just as well in the give & take of small groups of a thousand as he does speaking to dome-sized crowds.

UPDATE: Nor should they underestimate the rapid-response of the Obama team, demonstrated by Obama's comments live on CNN even as I update, on the issue of Iraq. Obama reiterating: we must be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in.

UPDATE II: Josh promising video over at Talking Points Memo--we post this link because you know how the BBQ media loves to slice'n'dice video to suit their own narratives.
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Big Oiiillll. Big Bad Oil.

Derrick Jackson in The Boston Globe on Big Oil. A reality check.

No, Virginia, it wasn't about showcasing the establishment of Democracy in the Middle East.

And it wasn't about fighting the terr'rists.

Long before there was a 9/11, there was a mission...and a malleable, messianic megalomanic Deciderer who could be easily manipulated.

And it was about the Cheney Energy Task Force...and Halliburton profits...and getting back those nationalized Iraqi oil contracts.

Just remember, next time you gas up the Big Guzzler. Next time you buy anything in plastic. Next time you watch the nightly news...oh, wait, guess not... Corporate infotainment media doesn't like to talk about the war no more 'cause it's, you know, messy.

How's that little Spears baby comin' along?

How Many?

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As the Democratic primary season drags on, enabled by the media lovin' the horserace ratings ad bucks narcissistic gasbaggery. As the presumptive Republican nominee McCain tries to distance himself from the fanatic fundamentalist Hagee. As the Current Occupant and his Rethuglican cronies try to stymie Jim Webb's 21st Century G.I. bill....

I have just one question.

To Hillary Clinton, John McCain, each and every one of their campaign surrogates, supporters and spokesmen. To Tim Russert, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the rest of Faux News, George Stephanopoulus, Charles Gibson, Brian Williams, Katie Couric, Bob Shieffer, each and all of the print media who allowed themselves to be co-opted, embedded, spun, propagandized, b-b-Qued. To Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, the rest of your ilk.

How many of the lives sacrificed for Bush's Iraq bamboozlement do you take responsibility for? How many deaths in action? How many maimed? How many permanently PTSD-ed? How many suicides? How many who've been made monsters of torture?

How many? One? Ten? A thousand?

Because it's on all of you. Just as it's on me, and enabling, or blowing it off, or saying well, after November... just doesn't cut it. Cut the lies. Stop lying to us. Tell us the truth. So that we may clean and bind up our wounds as a nation, healed, but never unscarred.

And let us never forget. Never.
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UPDATE: Was just steered to an interview on Democracy Now with Mary Tillman, mother of Pat Tillman. During that, a clip of Jessica Lynch was played, and she had this to say:

I’m still confused as to why they chose to lie and try to make me a legend, when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were legendary: people like Lori Piestewa and First Sergeant Dowdy, who picked up fellow soldiers in harm’s way, or people like Patrick Miller or Sergeant Donald Walters, who actually did fight until the very end.

The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don’t need to be told elaborate lies. I had the good fortune and opportunity to come home and to tell the truth. Many soldiers, like Pat Tillman, they did not have that opportunity. The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype.

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h/t to commenter LS at emptywheel

How Many More Years?

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Minutes ago, I posted this as a comment to a blog post by looseheadprop over at firedoglake. I hope you'll stop by FDL and read LHP's posting that prompted me to write:

...today on local radio they are marking the return of the remains of an 18-year-old soldier from Wahpeton, to the south of Fargo. The Patriot Guard motorcycle group will accompany him from the Fargo airport 60 miles or so down the highway, past the grade school and high school sites he left behind long ago.

He was 18. He was MIA. He died in Korea.

How long must this war’s families of soldiers bear such burdens? When is enough enough?

This war grinds on, and wears us down. I remember another soldier's return with such an escort for this war early on. We lament, we blog, we comment, we rail, we weep.

And still the war goes on.

And those in positions of leadership and power seem caught in some kind of stasis that keeps them from bringing our men and women home. Groundhog Day. Twightlight Zone. Mission Accomplished writ large this 5th anniversary--a shocking word to describe the passage of time and this event, for there is no celebration in such an occasion.

Just posturing and pontificating and pointing fingers. And slip-slidin' away from "The Buck Stops Here...."

And still the war goes on.

Last Sunday I heard Barack Obama respond to Chris Wallace how much he misses hugging his little girls. And I thought of the troops, so many parents among them, serving tours of duty, long and multiplied. And how much they must miss hugging their little boys and girls.

And as much of a grind as it is...this campaign season, it seems to me, must have one outcome. Because I see only one candidate who understands what it means to be away so long and wanting to be home to hug his little girls.


UPDATE: The good folks at FDL helped me track back to this comment about another soldier coming home. April 3, 2007, Christy at FDL blogged A Requiem at Twilight:

Prairie Sunshine left a comment a couple of nights ago that I want to elevate today, so that everyone will have a chance to read it. It is a poignant reminder that in the small towns, and rural farms, and urban landscapes -- wherever it is that we each live, there is a high probability that someone near you has been touched by the cost of conflict. And once in a while, something brings that very personal, very difficult cost home for the rest of us:

Had a really poignant drive into town. Turned on the Fargo radio for weather and road reports. Right at the freeze mark and rainy dismal white-knuckle driving all the way back. Then the radio mentioned a motorcade for the Frazee soldier’s remains which were arriving in Fargo and asked people to come out to honor him. Just west of Hawley we started seeing pickups and SUVs at the ends of driveways. Flags flying in front yards. By Dilworth, the fire dept trucks were all out along the road. As we drove into Moorhead, the police escort led the way for their group. My God, I had tears running down my cheeks. Flashing our lights seemed such a small gesture. All those fatheads on the Sunday shows and cable news with their strolls and photo-ops and posturing. And it’s all about this. One 28-year-old kid coming home for the last time.

And still the war goes on....

100 More Years

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...Of this:

(from Editor & Publisher)

Obit Reveals: Ex-Commander in Iraq Dies -- Suffering from 'Depression'

By Greg Mitchell

Published: April 29, 2008
NEW YORK10:55 AM ET Even after so many tragic final chapters in the lives of so many U.S. military personnel in Iraq or veterans back home, the brutally frank opening line in a newspaper obituary from five days ago seemed particularly haunting: "Donald P. Christy, Lt. Col, USAF, passed away April 21, 2008 in Colorado Springs after an extended bout of anxiety and depression."

Further on, the obit mentioned that in 2004 "Don served a tour of duty as the Deputy Commander at Baghdad Airport in Iraq"

Maybe it was this, from the ending of the article, that added poignance...

"Don, It seems like yesterday that you and I were young lieutenants in Grand Forks. Back then your greatest worry was which video game you could borrow from me. I'm sorry that I lost touch over the years. I'm also sorry to hear that your life was in turmoil. My prayers are with you and your family. RIP my friend. I hope you have found peace and may your family find solace in this difficult time.

For he was, albeit for a short time "like yesterday" a neighbor, up north in Grand Forks. RIP, Don Christy, and peace, to you and your loved ones.

Moore 4 Obama

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He brings a whole lotta reasons why to the table—Michael Moore sends an open letter to Pennsylvania asking 'em to vote for Obama.

Hey, I'm good with that. Need more reasons than Moore offers? How about Condoleezza Rice going over to the Baghdad Green Zone to taunt al Sadr? And to catapault Bush-Chee-knee's propaganda a step closer to bomb-bomb-bombing Iran with the same ol' conflate and lie tactics that bogged us down in Iraq. Not so exercised about that? Think what does it matter if it's the same ol' same ol?

Then consider last night's 60 Minutes report by Lara Logan about Green Berets under attack in Afghanistan.

The Republican civilian leaders treat our troops like cannon fodder and can't make the effort to take care of our bravest except with strategerially timed award ceremonies. Where's the Tough But Fair questioning of McCain about the veterans' benefits bill he steadfastly stands against?

And one of the candidates tactics are right out of the Rovian Republican playbook of race-baiting fearmongering. The candidate who voted for the Iraq war, who in recent days showed herself ready to meddle in the middle of further war. She who claims the feminists of a certain age base as her due has lost more than just moi.

One quibble I have with Moore's letter, which he closes with: On Tuesday, the good people of Pennsylvania have a chance for redemption.

Seems to me we all have a chance for redemption—and restoration and renewal and just plain being able to hold our heads high with honor again—as we vote this year.

H/T's to reader Melody and Sammie's Mommy for the heads-ups to Paglia and Moore links.

Gasbaggery by the Numbers

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What's it to be this Sunday morning?

1. Barack's bitter orange juice
2. President admits he was in the loop of his senior officials playing "pull the wings off the baby butterfly" in the White House, thus channeling the corrupt president on "24"
3. 13 at current count killed this week while Petraus plays the war forward
4. Trent Lott says he paid for lunch while a Republican Senator/leader zero times
5. McCain confuses, conflates, and/or screws up Sunni and Shia for the bazillionth time, revises housing bailout for the mazillionth time; media reports flip-floppery....zero times
6. $109 million dollar sniper fire dodgin' Hillary says the guy who just finished paying off his student loans is an elitist

Whaddya think?

UPDATE:
Jane Smiley has a great post up at HuffPo, where I added this comment:

We can anticipate Hillary's poll numbers will drop again, just like they did when she attacked Obama about Rev. Wright. She cannot break thru the 46% marker.

Audacity of Truth... Obama tells it while Hillary offers more "sniper fire" via the Politics of Screed.

Thanks, Jane, and the commenter who provided the women over 50 for Obama link.

To Our Troops, Our Vets and their Families...

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During questioning this morning before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Petraeus said the troops just want to know the American people appreciate their sacrifice.

To Our Troops, Our Vets and their Families who serve in this war....

We appreciate you, the value of your life, the value of your service, more than we can express. That is why those of us who oppose this current occupation of Iraq are doing everything in our power by raising our voices, by supporting particular candidates, to hold to account for their policies, their decisions, their actions those leaders who hold your lives and well-being in their hands.

We each have just one voice, just one vote. But the value of your life weighs heavily on us, just as the value of the lives in the country we now occupy weigh heavily upon us. And there will be much dissection and deconstruction and parsing and partisan posturing and pontificating about these hearings over the next few days.

But our goal is clear: To bring you home...safe, alive, and whole.

Milestone

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We mark the sad milestone today...4000 American dead in Iraq.

Heckuva job, Bushie.
Heckuva job, Chee-knee.

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Is Your Preacher Packin’ this Morning?

Just where is the line between civilization and total anarchy and chaos? Thanks to those “good folks” like the testosterone challenged at the National Rifle Association and their zealous Republicronies who need “my big kill” “hunting” stories to supplement their deficient manhood, it’s open season for gun carrying in the Minnesota side of Prairie Country and a whole lot of other places.

And we don’t mean those rifle racks that decorate pickups in hunting season. Or the bozos sittin’ boozed up on the side of the road, guns clutched in their cold, passed-out hands. Yep. Seen that myself. Not surprised it goes on in those fancy-schmancy “hunting” preserves, too.

No, thanks to conceal and carry laws like the one in Minnesota, preachers can go packin’ to their Sunday sermons. But then, so can anyone walking in through the front door. Unless the church proactively says no. Oh, not as “no” as the gun nuts tried to force, thanks to some sensible justice for a change, but still...

And if you think you can stay away from people packin’ by sleepin’ in on Sunday morning, well, has George W. Bush’s Interior Department got a new wrinkle for you:

Park rangers, retirees and conservation groups are protesting a plan by the Interior Department to reconsider regulations restricting loaded guns in national parks.

But then what would we expect from the folks who gave us shootin’ an old guy in the face and feedlot plinking for quail and other game. Like skeet shooting, ’cept they kick up the quail. Might as well hunt your grandkids’ stuffed animals, eh, Grandpa Dick?

Well regulated? That’s for chumps like you and me who believe in sensible gun laws, strictly enforced, with loopholes and nutty exemptions closed.

As for those macho guys, let’s make it sportin’—why don’t you go out on the front lines in Afghanistan or Iraq? Hey, if a fresh-faced young Prince can do it, why not you?

They corrupt everything they touch. Everything.

Bridge over Troubled Waters

We’re looking for a bridge these days—oh, not a bridge to the 21^st Century. That’s been pretty abysmal for most folks so far. And not a tongue kiss or handhold to the family Saud…[you’ll have no trouble finding those pictures on the web, not dragging them into the garden this day.]

Every time we go to the gas pump, we’re at the mercy of that “bridge” between 9/11 terrorists and the black gold that funds them.

We’re looking for another bridge…a bridge buffeted by the fogs of fate, yet still able to stand strong, sure. And we surely need him. Because we have been buffeted, too, these past seven years, caught between Iraq and a hard place that is the American economy.

Our bridges are in sorry shape…real bridges collapsing in rivers, others so ruinous they are shut down.

Campaigns that will need to bridge their differences once the primary season is past are now being sorely tested as well.

This week we have an opportunity for some bridge building… Will we build it strong? It’s up to each one of us. We are the bridge-builders … and we will be the bridge users. So, it’s up to us…Will we use the strong steel of our forefathers to build? Or lay back and say let someone else do it?

The buzz is already building out there on the web, launched by the folks at DailyKos, but a swarm of others of us join in the call cutting through the fog. Won’t you join in? Support the Edwards campaign on Friday, January 18. And today as well can’t hurt….

Someone else is dying for us in Iraq. Or coming back shattered in mind or body. For the foolishness of a President whose Napoleonic ego drives him to fearmonger and false promises.

Someone else is watching their neighborhoods boarded up and ruined…by the waters driven by the winds of selfishness and greed. In New Orleans. In Michigan.. In cities where “subprime” destroys lives so rich men may dance. Dance, Karl. Dance, David. Dance, dance, dance.

Someone else is dying on the sidewalk in front of the Bishop’s house in Fargo Sunday night while the city races to finish up a new shelter…homeless, needy, in despair? Chronic addiction, transient lifestyle, they say. It’s someone else.

Until it’s not.

Time, past time, to take a stand. Build a bridge on solid ground to span the troubled waters and unite again this nation divided. It’s an epic battle…and we are the nuts and bolts that will build the bridge…if we have the will.

UPDATE: You'll find commentary updated on the 1/18 campaign for Edwards at DailyKos ... or just stop by the Edwards site direct and help build this bridge. Now would be good.