I wonder how many times Ed Gillespie will pull this one out?
See any familiar faces behind baby Jane Fonda?
(Clue: Look north-west.)

Rubber Hose blog points us to an interview with Howard Zinn at American Amnesia.

Anonymoses leads us to Daily Kos, where there's more on the Iowa peace activist subpoenas.

Ready for this one? Deep breath...Pen-Elayne points to MadKane..who leads us to the hilarious Bush Unmasked!

Josh Marshall tells us how soon we can expect President Bush's military records to be released. ;)

See Cup o' Joe's response to the recent NY times editorial titled "Come Back Little Deaniacs". (My own is HERE).
This is a public coment made from an M.D. on a petition addressed to Terry McAuliffe:

I am 48 years old and have been a registered democrat since I was old enough to vote. I belong to "Dr's for Dean" and feel blessed that I am living in a time when he is politically active. I can see that if either Kerry or Edwards runs agains Bush every thing that they complained to him about they will be countered with "well you voted for it". That is very true and I consider them both 'Bushlights'. Since the stolen election and the failure of the party to stand up against Bush I lost total respect for the party. I have special interest in Dr. Dean. I view him as the last hope for the survival of this country. Please stop choosing a candidate for us. If Kerry is the candidate I cannot vote for him because he voted for a war that he knew was wrong.. If I knew there were no weapons or mass destruction and knew the plans of the PNAC he had to know too. I live in California and deserve the right to vote for Dean in the scheduled primary. If Kerry is the candidate I will leave the party.

N.Y. Times
David Brooks--just another frustrated intelligent soul stuffing his own words in Bush's incapable mouth
After the Russert interview, David Brooks supplies what he imagines President Bush meant...what he wishes President Bush meant...as so many of us are trying to do as we scratch our heads in numbed astonishment at Bush's never-improving dogmatic fact-vacant simplicity.
I can just see David Brooks in front of his television...saying "Come on, President Bush....come ON...!"
It must be very frustrating. I am lately finding I am desensitized to my prior frustration. I have given up on the man saying anything novel or hopeful as to my way of wishing to see the world. That is not to say I've tuned him out..I am always listening. My hope now lies in November, 2004. And I don't think I'll have to put words in the Democrat's mouth. *Sorry, David..I couldn't resist! ;)*

JWR/Inspirational Words
You Are Unique-
Make a difference

Reading these inspirational words this morning, I thought it would be a kindness to pass some of them along and share them with my readers:

"Every kind person is unique. You have unique talents, skills, knowledge, and resources. Utilize them to help others in ways that are uniquely yours. Learn from other kind people, but don't compare yourself with anyone else. Others will be able to do things that you cannot. And you will be able to do things that others cannot.

One who sings well can utilize this talent to cheer up the despondent, the ill, and those who need an emotional lift. One who has been blessed with financial wealth can help those who lack the means to meet their needs. One with time and energy can volunteer to help the elderly and those who require physical assistance. One with life experience can share the expertise amassed over time with those who will benefit...

Don't let the feeling that others are doing more than you, discourage you from doing good. First of all, you can never tell how much a seemingly small act of yours has accomplished.

Furthermore, you might have an opportunity to do a major act of kindness for an individual or an entire group of people. Opportunities for kindness can present themselves in unexpected ways. And it is because you will be the right person at the right place at the right time that will make a major difference. So keep your focus on what you can do rather than on what anyone else has done, is doing, or will do. Your life task is to do what you can do, and this is totally up to you."

--Rabbi Zelig Pliskin

New York Review of Books/Michael Massing
Now They Tell Us

The contrast between the press's feistiness since the end of the war and its meekness before it highlights one of the most entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism: its pack mentality. Editors and reporters don't like to diverge too sharply from what everyone else is writing. When a president is popular and a consensus prevails, journalists shrink from challenging him. Even now, papers like the Times and the Post seem loath to give prominent play to stories that make the administration look too bad. Thus, stories about the increasing numbers of dead and wounded in Iraq —both American and Iraqi—are usually consigned to page 10 or 12, where they won't cause readers too much discomfort. [New York Review of Books 1-29-04]

Please read this article.
See some of my prior entires on reporter Judith Miller here and here.

See Demagogue for comments on Miller last June.

See Pen Elayne for more comments about this article.
~~~~~~~~~

Also in New York Review of Books:
Paul Krugman on the new Kevin Phillips and Ron Suskind books

On the Phillips book:

In any previous administration—at least any administration of the past seventy years—this sort of incestuous relationship among foreign governments, private businesses, and the personal fortunes of people in or close to the US government would have been considered unusual and prima facie scandalous. What we learn from Kevin Phillips's new book, however, is that this kind of intertwining of public policy and personal self-interest has been standard operating procedure not just for George W. Bush, but for his entire family.

On the Suskind book:

What emerges from Suskind's book is a picture of an entirely cynical administration—much more cynical than Nixon's, in which the corruption was localized, and large parts of the policy process continued to be run by serious, even idealistic people. (Old hands at the Environmental Protection Agency describe the Nixon administration as a golden age.) Under Bush, it seems, political rhetoric bears no relation to reality—what officials say has nothing in common with what they do, or what they think. And policy decisions are driven almost entirely by politics, by what the political arm thinks will play well with "the base."

Juan Williams puts the blame on Dean
Dean's scream was played almost 700 times by CNN alone. I guess that qualified Dean as a "terrible candidate" as Williams avers. The media droned on and on about Dean's "anger" every time they spoke about Dean. I guess that made Dean a "terrible candidate".
Dean raised more money from the public (many of them first-time contributors) than any prevous Democratic candidate. I guess that's why his "whiny" supporters are doing the "pesky" excuse-making and finger-pointing at (suddenly) fickle folks like Juan Williams. Up to the Sunday before Iowa, Juan was pretty convinced in the power of the Dean candidacy. He predicted a Dean win in Iowa himself.
I'm not making excuses for Dean...but Williams is making excuses for the media by now sitting in his power-seat and looking back on it all as if no one ever had real confidence in the Dean candidacy. Now he says Dean is too intense and overly-combative. It sounds like Juan has fallen into the "angry-Dean" myth along with the rest of the media.
I think he's been working at FOX a little too long.
Williams says:

First, Dean's combative attitude toward President Bush played well with people angry at the results of the 2000 election as well as those upset over the decision to go to war in Iraq. That base of voters saw in Dean a man willing to take on the president. But that willingness to take on the president did not translate into voter trust that Dean had a good grasp on protecting the nation from terrorism. Exit polls show voters want an experienced candidate and someone who cares about them.

Dean intuitively pulled on a common string in most of us....someone was finally singing "our tune". I do not accept that there was a loss of voter-trust because of anything Dean directly did or failed to do. It was all about perception cast upon Dean by pundits and opinion-makers. If Williams truly believes the media had nothing to do with the perpetuation of misgivings about Dean's stability, I think he's got to be blind..or perhaps he's just lashing out defensively.
I would refer Juan Williams to what I see as a more intellectually honest appraisal of the Dean candidacy and the question "What happened?" In his February 6th column, Jon Carroll has simply said "I dunno."
Quote:

So now we've had 2.5 rounds of primaries (Iowa is its own thing, a quasi-democratic photo op of limited significance), and Howard Dean seems to be pretty much out of it. I do not pretend to understand the reasons; it is my guess that people who say they understand the reasons probably don't either.
Was it the Scream? The Wife? The Warmth Issue? The Impatience Problem? I dunno. Maybe it's just hard for a truly obscure and inexperienced candidate to endure the ritual bear-baiting we call an election.

Note: Mr. Carroll did not sink to saying that it was because of a "terrible" perormance. I think it's fair to say "obscurity" played a part in media's ability to play with Dean as they saw fit.

Juan Williams has stated:

His tongue-lashing of the Iowa man who asked him to tone down his attacks on Bush became a staple of conservative talk radio.

And?
A couple weeks later, another rabid Freeper-type person in a Dean crowd had to be physically subdued by venue management.
Dean raised passions. I don't believe a passionate candidate is necessarily a terrible candidate just because the media is concerned about their automaton version of "decorum". Does anyone believe our Founding Fathers were not men of great passion?
I usually find much in Juan Williams' commenary with which I agree.
He laid a bomb with this one. He comes off sounding very defensive of the fact that his initial instincts about Dean being a winner turned out wrong once the careless chatterering class (to which he belongs) got their sharp teeth into him. Join the club, Juan. Join the club.

Greg Palast
'Kahn-job':
Bush/NSA stymied investigation of Dr. A.Q. Khan, seller of Pakistani atomic secrets in order to protect Saudi Arabian interests

You may never have heard of Khan Laboratories, but if this planet blows to pieces this year, it will likely be thanks to Kahn Labs' creating nuclear warheads for Pakistan's military. Because investigators had been tracking the funding for this so-called "Islamic Bomb" back to Saudi Arabia, under Bush security restrictions, the inquiry was stymied. (The restrictions were lifted, the agent told me without a hint of dark humor, on September 11.)...
.....intelligence agencies under Clinton, based on many other leads as well, were following up on the Saudi connection until the Bush team interfered....[GregPalast.com]

San Jose Mercury
Iraq Intelligence-Public vs. Private
Viva la difference?
In this artice are excerpts from the public and classified versions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons capabilities. The first set of quotes under each topic is from the public version, "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs," which was released by the CIA in October 2002. The second set is from the classified version of the NIE, portions of which were declassified and released by the White House in July 2003.

~~~~

Companion article/San Jose Mercury
Doubts, dissent stripped from public Iraq assessment

The public version of the U.S. intelligence community's key prewar assessment of Iraq's illicit arms programs was stripped of dissenting opinions, warnings of insufficient information and doubts about deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's intentions, a review of the document and its once-classified version shows.
As a result, the public was given a far more definitive assessment of Iraq's plans and capabilities than President Bush and other U.S. decision-makers received from their intelligence agencies...
.....The public version contained the alarming warning that Iraq was capable of quickly developing biological warfare agents that could be delivered by "bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives, including potentially against the US Homeland." No such warning that Iraq's biological weapons could be delivered to United States appeared in the classified version....
...In a section on chemical weapons, the top-secret findings said the intelligence community had "little specific information on Iraq's CW (chemical weapons) stockpile." That caveat was deleted from the public version....
....Deleted from the public version was a line in the classified report that cast doubt on whether Saddam was prepared to support terrorist attacks on the United States, a danger that Bush and his top aides raised repeatedly in making their case for war...

The Jamaican Observer/Wayne Brown
Government by lying

...In an editorial on Thursday entitled 'Baghdad Is Bush's Blue Dress'*, the Los Angeles Times accused the Bush administration of complicity in 'arguably the greatest scandal in US history' and raised the spectre of impeachment....

*Robert Scheer was the author of the LA Times column..I've used the link from "Working for Change" so you won't have to register/sign in.

Home News Tribune/ 2/05/04
A sorrowful father writes to the president

Dear President Bush,

With heavy heart, tears in my eyes and a home full of sorrow, I pick up my pen to write you about a brave soldier, 2nd Lt. Seth J. Dvorin, U.S. Army. My son was killed in Iraq on Feb. 3, 2004 fighting in a war.
Seth was a good boy, well-mannered, smart, kind and understanding.
He joined the Army in an effort to serve his country. And serve his country he did. Seth made the ultimate sacrifice.

Burying a child will no doubt be the hardest task that his mother and I shall ever have to do. The one question I have, and the one question I would like you to answer, is, "Why did my son and every other soldier that was killed, maimed and wounded have to suffer settling your vendetta?"
My son is gone just when he was laying a strong foundation to build upon for the rest of his life.

Now, President Bush, his life has been snuffed out in a meaningless war.
Where are all the weapons of mass destruction, where are the stock piles of chemical and biological weapons?

Please President, pray for all our fallen heroes and as a tribute to these heroes get our boys and girls out of Iraq now, before too much more blood is shed.
Since you waged this unnecessary war on Saddam Hussein the world has become a horrible place to live in.

I know my boy is safe now, in a new world free of hate and prejudices where GOD is his president, but you tell me President Bush why he had to go so soon and in such a violent way.

Respectfully yours,
Richard M. Dvorin

I hope Mr. Dvorin and his family do not mind me reprinting his heartfelt letter here on the blog. I would like to think he'd like as many to read it as possible. I feel it is the least we can do for him, other than to pray and offer sincere condolences. The same questions have haunted me, but I know I do not suffer as he now suffers. My heart is with him and all the troops and their families who loyally serve this country.

MSNBC: Russert interviews Bush
TRANSCRIPT HERE

"I don't think America can stand by and hope for the best from a madman."



"In other words, you can't rely upon a madman, and he was a madman. You can't rely upon him making rational decisions when it comes to war and peace.."

"I’m not gonna leave him in power and trust a madman. He's a dangerous man.."

*I know what he means. He's gotta go in November 2004.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the most shaky/flimsy answers by Bush could be found here:

Russert: In light of not finding the weapons of mass destruction, do you believe the war in Iraq is a war of choice or a war of necessity?

President Bush: I think that's an interesting question. Please elaborate on that a little bit. A war of choice or a war of necessity? It's a war of necessity. We-- in my judgment, we had no choice when we look at the intelligence I looked at.. that says the man was a threat. And you know, we will find out about the weapons of mass destruction that we all thought were there. That's part of the Iraqi survey group and the group I put together to look at.
But again, I repeat to you, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but David Kay, who is the man who led the Iraqi survey group, who has now returned with an interim report, clearly said that the place was a dangerous place. When asked if President Bush had done had made the right decision, he said yes. In other words, the evidence we have uncovered thus far says we had no choice.

To which I could only think to say:
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?????!??

* Bush is doing his simpleton-best to screw with American minds by using these stupid semantic tricks. U.S. soldiers continue to die each day. These idiotic word games can't hide the truth anymore. I think most people in this nation are finally "on" to this incredibly ignorant leader. The Iraq war was unnecessary, unjust, and costly. It's not too late to turn it around..to "hold Bush to his lie"... and make this a worldwide effort to bring true justice and humane, non-market-concern-based support to the people of Iraq. It's not too late to find a way to win hearts and minds. Bush cannot do it, though..and in this very interview he promised he would not change for anyone..for any poll..for anything. Along with his tax cuts, he has nearly bankrupted the nation and stripped us of our jobs....blaming Clinton, bin Laden, and Hussein instead of taking personal responsibility. We are left with no choice..he must go in 2004. *

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ATRIOS noticed some interesting reviews from NRO. *c/o Calpundit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BushWatch
How Russert Gave Bush A Pass On The AWOL Question

Looking For Your Own Face


Your face is neither infinite nor ephemeral.
You can never see your own face,
only a reflection, not the face itself.

So you sigh in front of mirrors
and cloud the surface.



It's better to keep your breath cold.
Hold it, like a diver does in the ocean.
One slight movement, the mirror-image goes.

Don't be dead or asleep or awake.
Don't be anything.

What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you'll be that.

--Attar
Persian Sufi poet, 12th Century
as translated by Coleman Barks

Village Voice/Suitcases from an insane asylum tell of lives long lost
What They Left Behind

Craig Williams, a curator at the New York State Museum, drove four hours to visit Willard Psychiatric Center in the spring of 1995. The complex, located 65 miles southwest of Syracuse, was about to shut down after more than 100 years. Williams figured he would be able to pick up some artifacts—maybe some antique furniture or a few nurses' uniforms. A staffer suggested he check out the attic of an abandoned building, and that's when he found 400 suitcases covered by decades of dust and pigeon droppings.

These suitcases bore the names of former patients. Inside were their long-forgotten possessions: snapshots, diaries, postcards, books, letters, news clippings. For Williams, finding these suitcases was the equivalent of stumbling upon a buried chest of gold. "You'd open these suitcases, and you could so clearly sense and feel a personality and a humanity," he recalls. He didn't know it at the time, but these dusty trunks would change the course of his life, sparking a mission that would stretch on for the next nine years—first to uncover the stories of the suitcases' owners, and then to present them to the public....

See the article for the biographies of some of the former Willard patients. They are adapted from materials featured in an exhibit titled "Lost Cases, Recovered Lives: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic". It will be on display at the New York State Museum in Albany, N.Y. until September 19.

ABC News Online
Michigan and Washington Democratic Primary Results
Maine Caucus Results

Michigan:
1.Kerry
2. Dean
With 88 per cent of precincts reporting in Michigan tonight, Senator Kerry had a commanding 50 per cent of the vote.
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean was next with 17 per cent.

Washington:
1. Kerry
2. Dean
In the north-western state of Washington, with 76 per cent of precincts reporting, Senator Kerry was on top with 48.5 per cent of the vote, followed by Mr Dean with 30.5 per cent.

Maine Caucus
1.Kerry
2.Dean
John Kerry won 25 of 56 state convention delegate slots in Augusta, besting Dean, who captured 18.

Next stops: Tuesday's primaries in Virginia and Tennessee.

Observer/Peter Beaumont
How spies chose the intelligence that justified war
A little-known book by an-ex CIA officer gives an extraordinary insight into the way politicians are fed data they want to hear.

Under pressure from the politicians who would shift blame on to the spooks, the spooks themselves are looking for someone else to blame.
In Tenet's Georgetown speech he revealed for the first time that two crucial pieces of intelligence, which heavily influenced his thinking in assembling the National Intelligence Estimate in 2002 that made the case for war against Iraq, were generated not by the CIA but by friendly foreign intelligence services, almost certainly based on information from defectors.

Daily News Gossip: More lying liars
Al Franken accuses NYPost writer of lying about heckler at Dean rally

Franken has launched a full-scale war against the New York Post, accusing the money-losing tabloid - and Post political reporter Vincent Morris - of lying about his role in subduing a heckler at a Howard Dean rally in Manchester, N.H., two weeks ago...
...."I didn't body-slam anyone to the floor. The Post's story makes me look like a nut, and it has been circulated all over the world by the right-wing echo chamber."Franken said that Dean aides and security staffers accepted his offer to help subdue the screaming protester after nearly 10 minutes of disruption.
"Three of us grabbed the man's shoulders to restrain him," Franken said. "We tried to pull him back, but he grabbed onto a railing. I then drew on my experience as a mediocre high-school wrestler to suggest we lift the man's legs off the floor [so that he] could be safely taken away. ... There was no danger that he would fall to the floor."
Palace Theater manager Peter Ramsey supported Franken's account. "He's my hero," Ramsey told me.

The Sun
Six British troops killed, 'lacked ammo' in Iraq;
families call on Hoon to Resign

Six British military police officers killed by a mob in Iraq has as few as 20 bullets each to defend themselves with, according to a leaked report.
The Royal Military Police men should each have been issued with 600 rounds, investigators have found.
Days before they died last June, the Red Caps were told to return vital ammunition and medical supplies.
They were supplied with faulty radios and also lacked heavy machine guns, The Sun's sister paper The News of the World reported.
The families of the six men who died have called on Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon to resign.

Globe and Mail/Rick Salutin
The Media hustles Howard Dean outside the building

Why did they have to get him out of there? Because he was being disruptive. Not wrong exactly, but too loud, spoke out of turn, the sorts of things one doesn't say in mainstream politics. The equivalent of belching or farting in public. The media are the ushers and security guards of politics. They maintain decorum.

Here's the problem with this big-media "decorum".
'Decorum' is only as good as its accordance with its absolute etymology. At its most basic robotic state, decorum is merely an outward act. The truly important underlying component which makes 'decorum' mean anything at all is the inward elevation of the souls of those who employ the 'decorum'. The big-media doesn't think "elevation" or "wide-scope"..they think "make-money by entertaining". Period. Let's not pretend it gets any loftier than that these days in America.
In 2004, we don't simply need to beat Bush. We need to beat Bushism and Democratic 'Republican-lite'. Howard Dean came through with this message..loud and clear. Anyone who thinks centrist Democrats (which are right of center today) will do anything drastically differently than Bush is living in a bit of a fantasy world. I used to think I was in a minority in thinking this way. Howard Dean showed me and many other Americans that we were thinking alike...that it's perfectly alright to question the status quo. The big-media in this nation was not receptive or prepared to take a serious part to display Howard Dean as a representative of many serious lovers of democracy in this Democratic primary election. Their 'decorum' has shaken out to be sheer circus-quality market-based cheap entertainment. Howard Dean has shown us that, if we don't speak for ourselves, we will simply disappear....no one will speak for us BUT us. We certainly cannot rely upon the big-media for any semblance of truth. They are little more than well-paid fancily-coifed sheep-herders.

Slate/William Saletan
Bush's difficult relationship with reality
Excerpts:

....the Bush syllogism: The evidence says one thing; the conclusion says another; therefore, the evidence is false.

Why did Americans elect a president who thinks this way? Because they wanted a leader different from Bill Clinton...

On Iraq, Bush fulfilled both promises. "What I do want to share with you is my sentiment at the time," he told Russert. "There was no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a danger to America." Note Bush's emphasis on his subjective reality: "my sentiment," "no doubt in my mind." When Russert asked Bush about his unpopularity abroad, Bush answered, "I'm not going to change, see? I'm not trying to accommodate. I won't change my philosophy or my point of view. I believe I owe it to the American people to say what I'm going to do and do it, and to speak as clearly as I can, try to articulate as best I can why I make decisions I make. But I'm not going to change because of polls. That's just not my nature."

No, it isn't. Bush isn't Clinton. He doesn't change his mind for anything, whether it's polls or facts. And he always tells the truth about what's in his mind, whether or not what's in his mind corresponds to what's in the visible world.

What are the consequences of such a Platonic presidency? The immediate risk is the replacement of Saddam with a more dangerous fundamentalist regime.....Bush told Russert, "I said [to Mr. al-Hakim], 'You know, I'm a Methodist. What are my chances of success in your country and your vision?' And he said, 'It's going to be a free society where you can worship freely.' "....
The regime will be pluralistic, because Bush believes it, because nice men came to the Oval Office and told him so.....?

The punch line is that Bush accomplished exactly what he set out to do in this interview: He showed you how his mind works. Republicans used to observe derisively that Clinton had a difficult relationship with the truth. Bush has a difficult relationship with the truth, too. It's just a different—and perhaps more grave—kind of difficulty."

LA Times editorial
Pakistan Owes U.S. Answers

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf loaded his country's nuclear proliferation sins onto the shoulders of the nation's premier nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, last week and then pardoned Khan, who is revered as a national hero. That was a sharp contrast with Musharraf's promise in December to punish "enemies of the state" who passed on nuclear secrets...Musharraf's pardon of Khan may short-circuit complaints from hard-line Muslims and other Musharraf opponents that he has torn down a man whose scientific exploits made Pakistan secure against India and gave an Islamic nation the bomb. Islamic radicals are the prime suspects in two attempts to assassinate Musharraf in December....."

In the case of Pakistan, I don't trust that our national security interests are properly being tended to. There's too much hypocrisy in our having to support Musharraf as he's stalked by his own people as a target for asassination. Too many eggshells. Too many eggshells....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Real reasons for fear:
Will our leaders send us to unnecessary war again?

A crazy, uncertain, dangerous world lurks out there.
Pakistan's nuclear chief sells secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, only to receive a pardon from Pakistan's dictator-cum-president, thereby furthering Pakistan's growing reputation as the world's most dangerous country...

You should be scared either because the Western world's two largest intelligence agencies are incompetent, or their leaders are liars or zealots. You should also be profoundly skeptical the next time, if you weren't the last time, if these leaders ever claim that war is needed because the intelligence requires it.