Jack Kelly Sunday

In this week's Post-Gazette, there's another column by Jack Kelly that clearly shows, yet again, that no one over there on the Boulevard of the Allies adequately fact-checks Jack Kelly.

But then again, we've known this for years.

It's made all the more delicious when the smaller headline below the main headline (I'd love to thus call it a "neckline" but I've been told it's called a subhead) reads:

They’re lying about GOP foreign policy

Yea but Jack's got some credulity issues of his own in this column.  For example, his first paragraph:

Rand Paul, who will likely run for president as a stay-at-home Republican, went to Guatemala recently and performed eye surgeries as a means of displaying his foreign-policy bona fides,” wrote New Yorker editor and Barack Obama hagiographer David Remnick. “Was Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s ophthalmologist-in-chief, impressed?”

Now about that term, "hagiographer" - what does Jack mean by saying that David Remnick is an "Obama hagiographer"?  Merriam Webster defines hagiography as:

a book about someone's life that makes it seem better than it really is or was : a biography that praises someone too much

If that's the case, then I suppose Jack hasn't actually read the Remnick piece he so dutifully quotes. It begins with this:

Even the most forgiving judge of Barack Obama, one willing to overlook his preference for chipping onto the sunlit greens of Martha’s Vineyard rather than brooding in the fluorescent glare of the Situation Room, must admit that the President has sometimes been a thick-tongued steward of his own foreign policy.

Yea, that's hagiography, alright.

But once you dig deeper into Jack's main complaint in this section of his column, you'll see the extent of his awkward relationship with the truth.  Jack's complaint:

It’s kosher to criticize Sen. Paul’s foreign policy views, to suspect expediency motivated the recent shift in them and to consider his inexperience in foreign affairs a handicap. (I have, I do and I do.) But to attack him for his charitable work is vile.

I'm not exactly sure that Remnick is attacking Paul simply for his charitable work.  Looks more like he's pointing out Paul's use of the charitable eye-surgeries as some sort of political photo-op (in this case, to bolster some sort of foreign policy credibility).  And that is something to at the very least be cynical about.

But if the trip wasn't about politics then why did Senator Paul travel to Guatemala with a political entourage?  From the Washington Post:

The doctor and his patients greeted each other beneath the gaze of three television cameras, three photographers, six reporters, a political aide, two press secretaries, conservative activist David Bossie...

And:

...Bossie’s presence cast aside any doubt that the trip was merely an opportunity for the senator to reconnect with his medical roots. Bossie is the founder of Citizens United, the group whose lawsuit led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that corporations and labor unions can spend unlimited funds on direct advocacy for or against political candidates. A documentary filmmaker who has shadowed Paul before, he traveled here with his daughter and a film crew equipped with lights, cameras and an unmanned aerial drone for overhead shots. Bossie said little about his plans, other than that his footage would appear in a film either about Paul or an issue of importance to him.

Paul’s entourage included family members and friends; his top political aide, Doug Stafford; and political ad makers Rex Elsass and Rick Tyler, the latter a former close aide to Newt Gingrich. The ad team was joined by a Spanish-speaking colleague who was responsible for trailing behind another film crew with legal release forms that needed to be signed by anyone interviewed or appearing in their footage. It wasn't clear whether Guatemalans presented with the release forms understood what they were signing.

So it wasn't a purely charitable trip then, was it?  Now go back and look at how Jack Kelly characterized Remnick's description of the trip.  Wouldn't it have been much better to know more of the details before reading that it was "vile"?  That's the set of facts that Jack left out - the stuff he doesn't think you need to know about before reading his opinion.

Then there's this:

Mr. Remnick also mocked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for saying Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t push him around the way he has President Obama and snarked at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s prediction that the invasion of Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” [Emphasis added.]

Mr. Remnick’s snark is sustained only by his ignorance of or disregard for facts.

And:

The invasion of Iraq was a cakewalk. Saddam Hussein’s regime was ousted 21 days after the U.S. coalition attacked. Just 172 coalition soldiers were killed. The Six Day War between Israel and Arab states in 1967 probably was the only victory in the history of warfare won more swiftly or easily.

The troubles came during the occupation afterward, which Mr. Rumsfeld — who wanted the United States to set up a coalition government and then leave — had opposed.

So Jack is saying that Rumsfeld wasn't wrong to say that the invasion would be "a cakewalk" right? Jack then foils that with Rumsfeld's opposition to the Iraq occupation.  So Remnick must be wrong, right?

But this is what Remnick actually wrote:

Chris Christie insists on the efficacy of big men and tough talk—the Great Jersey Guy theory of history. Recently, he suggested that Vladimir Putin would not dare sponsor the bloody destabilization of Ukraine were Christie in charge. “I don’t believe, given who I am, that he would make the same judgment,” Christie said at a meeting of Republican activists. “Let’s leave it at that.” Christie is trying to bone up on world affairs by reading Kenneth Adelman’s book on Ronald Reagan. Adelman was the cheerful adviser to Donald Rumsfeld who insisted that the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003, would be a “cakewalk.” [Emphasis added.]

But let's be sure.  Was it Rumsfeld or Adelman who said the invasion would be "a cakewalk"?

Guess.  From The New Yorker:

More than a year ago, Kenneth Adelman, a prominent national-security official in the Reagan Administration who now serves part time, with Richard Perle, on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, wrote a piece for the Washington Post. Its title was “Cakewalk in Iraq,” and its payoff went like this: “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they’ve become much weaker; (3) we’ve become much stronger; and (4) now we’re playing for keeps.” [Emphasis added.]

So whose "ignorance of or disregard for facts" are we talking about when Jack said (incorrectly) that Rumsfeld said the invasion of Iraq was (and Jack even used the quotation marks) "a cakewalk"?

Doesn't anyone at the Post-Gazette fact-check Jack Kelly? Evidently not.

10 Years Later - Who Was Right, Who Was Wrong

Local edition.

First, we'll start with one guy who was right - Tony Norman:

Last week was the 10th anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq. With few exceptions, most of the media commentary about its own credulousness was self-serving when it wasn't simply dishonest.

After all, nothing guarantees a trip down the collective memory hole faster than an unambiguous failure like Iraq and the stinging memory of one's own complicity in that failure.

Still, print journalists are compelled to look back on what we've written, if only to figure out how to move forward with some integrity. During the lead-up to the war, those of us who argued that invading Iraq would be a treasury-emptying disaster were vilified as unpatriotic. The letters page of this newspaper was dominated by those who took the Bush administration's word as gospel.

He then goes on to quote large chunks of this column from March, 2003.  It was stuff that turned out to be completely correct.  Stuff like this:

This weekend, an army of peacemakers will converge in Pittsburgh to protest the Bush administration's plan to vanquish the exaggerated threat of Saddam Hussein's fourth-rate military. Such a lopsided war will decimate much more of the country than the Gulf War did, leading to the kind of political and military destabilization in the region that terrifies Iraq's neighbors. Who knows? Perhaps a Greater Kurdistan will be a shining beacon of democracy in the tribal cauldron that is the Near East, but somehow I doubt it.

And so on.  Tony's always worth a good read.

But I want to take a look at who got it wrong ten years ago.

Fellas like Jack Kelly - here he is from December 2002:

Few besides Iraqi functionaries maintain that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction. U.N. weapons inspectors found thousands of tons of chemical and biological weapons and their precursors, and a well-funded nuclear development program. At the time they were kicked out in 1998, all the inspectors were convinced that there was more to find. Presumably, Saddam would not have run the risk of war by expelling them if he didn't have something to hide.

Except that in September 2002, the Guardian published this:

[Scott Ritter]: Iraq manufactured three nerve agents: sarin, tabun, and VX. Some people who want war with Iraq describe 20,000 munitions filled with sarin and tabun nerve agents that could be used against Americans. The facts, however, don't support this. Sarin and tabun have a shelf-life of five years. Even if Iraq had somehow managed to hide this vast number of weapons from inspectors, what they are now storing is nothing more than useless, harmless goo.

Chemical weapons were produced in the Muthanna state establishment: a massive chemical weapons factory. It was bombed during the Gulf war, and then weapons inspectors came and completed the task of eliminating the facility. That means Iraq lost its sarin and tabun manufacturing base.

We destroyed thousands of tons of chemical agent. It is not as though we said, "Oh we destroyed a factory, now we are going to wait for everything else to expire." We had an incineration plant operating full-time for years, burning tons of the stuff every day. We went out and blew up bombs, missiles and warheads filled with this agent. We emptied Scud missile warheads filled with this agent. We hunted down this stuff and destroyed it.

[William Rivers Pitt]: Couldn't the Iraqis have hidden some?

R: That's a very real possibility. The problem is that whatever they diverted would have had to have been produced in the Muthanna state establishment, which means that once we blew it up, the Iraqis no longer had the ability to produce new agent, and in five years the sarin and tabun would have degraded and become useless sludge. All this talk about Iraq having chemical weapons is no longer valid.

The discussion of nuclear and biological weapons is the same: eliminated programs with no evidence (and the  evidence would be easily detectable) of any restart.

Also, it turns out after the war that there were no weapons of mass destruction.  (It also turns out that Scott Ritter ran into his own rather disgusting mess - but that doesn't mean he was wrong about the WMD)

Jack Kelly was wrong about that.

Then there's Jack's claim about the linking of Iraq and al-Qaida:

So debunking evidence of ties between Iraq and al-Qaida has become an urgent task for anti-warriors. The New York Times has three times published stories casting doubt on a report that Sept. 11 hijack leader Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague last year, each time to have its debunking debunked by the head of the Czech intelligence service, the Czech interior minister, and the Czech prime minister at the time. All maintain to this day that the meeting took place.

The task of the debunkers is getting more difficult. In the current issue of Vanity Fair, David Rose reports that a special intelligence unit in the Pentagon has found nearly 100 separate examples of Iraq/al-Qaida cooperation going back to 1992.

Jack was wrong about this, too.  There was no meeting between Iraqi Intelligence and Mohammad Atta.  From the Washington Post May 1, 2002 (a few months before Jack published his column, by the way):

There is no evidence that the alleged leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta, met in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague, a finding that eliminates a once-suggested link between the terrorist attacks and the government of President Saddam Hussein, according to a senior administration official.

And:

But after months of investigation, the Czechs said they were no longer certain that Atta was the person who met al-Ani, saying "he may be different from Atta," the administration official said. More recently, FBI and CIA analysts who went over thousands of travel records concluded that "there was no evidence Atta left or returned to the U.S." at the time he was supposed to be in Prague, the official said.

That determination was first disclosed in Newsweek magazine this week.

"We ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on, from flight reservations to car rentals to bank accounts," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said in a speech in San Francisco last month, setting out for the first time the extent of the investigation and its results.

Huh. FBI Director Robert Mueller said that?

Jack was wrong.

Turns out we were right and Jack Kelly and those cheering for invasion in 2003 were wrong.  There were no WMD and there was no operational connection between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaeda.  And all of the death and suffering that happened because they insisted they were right and we were wrong was all completely necessary.

Yea, that's not really something to be celebrated, of course.

But it still nice to know that George W Bush has a pleasant hobby.

On The 10th Anniversary of the Beginning of The Iraq War

A Letter From A Wounded Soldier To George W. Bush.

Some highlights:

I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

Go read the rest of it.  It'll break your heart.

The Aristocrats

Digby has a truly obscene version of that old joke here.

But Ginny, He IS A War Criminal

My friend Ginny wrote yesterday:

The very day I outed myself as Virginia Montanez instead of PittGirl, Chad Hermann at the Radical Middle latched on to this letter to the editor I wrote when George Bush was re-elected, wondering how my readers were going to like me knowing I was a Republican. This resulted in some uproar from readers who were shocked I ever voted for a “war criminal.” Yes. WAR CRIMINAL. I voted for him because as you already know ME LOVE KILLING! GRRRRR.

But Ginny, why the use of the ironic quotation marks? Bush IS a war criminal and he was when you voted for him in 2004. He approved the waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and KSM (as he's known in intelligence circles) was waterboarded in 2003 - well before the 2004 election.

I don't think I need to spell out (again) how waterboarding is torture and how torture is against international and US law and how torture is a war crime, do I?

Even without the Bush-approved torture, the case could be made for war criminal by the invasion of Iraq itself and the dishonesty he used to support it - where were the connections to al-Qaeda? the sale of uranium in Niger? the WMD? They were no where to be found. The foundations for the war were fraudulent even if the war resulted in halting Saddam Hussein's murderous regime. Bottom line is that all that blood (American, Iraqi, British, etc) IS on Dubya's hands.

Whatever else belongs in your otherwise thoughtful and nuanced blog post, the irony quotes don't.

Perhaps I misunderstood (and if I did, then I apologize in advance) and you DO think that Bush is a war criminal and you were merely quoting one or more readers with your use of the quotation marks.

If that's the case, then why the vote for the war criminal?

Um, Wrong. TWICE

From the Chicago Tribune:

In a rare public appearance, former President George W. Bush reflected on his presidency and his life out of the spotlight, poked fun at himself, and plugged his upcoming book while speaking at a conference for a finance trade association in Chicago on Thursday.

And then at the end:

"In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amid a real danger," he said.

The former president said his greatest failure in office was not passing Social Security reform.

Just two sentences and he got 'em both wrong.

Did he keep the country safe?

No. Not on 9/11, he didn't. The greatest terror attack on the nation's soil occurred on his watch and he was warned that something was going to happen. His administration dropped the ball and three thousand people died in New York City, The Pentagon, and in Somerset County, PA.

Was his greatest failure not passing Social Security reform?

No. His greatest failure (if it wasn't this failure to protect the nation on 9/11) would probably have to be causing the deaths of 4500 American servicemen and women (by lying about Iraq, about the WMD, about al-Qaeda). And then there's the domestic surveillance (an impeachable offense), and the torture (a war crime).

Compare and Contrast

Sometimes, when the stars are situated just right (...when the Moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars...) the Trib and the P-G both editorialize on the same subject.

Such as it is today, though it's surprising to see what the Trib say that the P-G don't. The subject this time, The President's recent Oval Office speech.

First the P-G:

President Barack Obama delivered an important speech Tuesday night, from the Oval Office as befitting the occasion. His address to the nation closed the door on the Iraq war, praised the U.S. forces who waged it and stated that the "central mission" of the American people, and he as president, is now to restore the health and vigor of the American economy.

Oddly, while the comments the P-G editorial board has about the war itself are remarkably middle of the road:

Now at least the Iraq part is on the way to going away, as Mr. Obama promised during his campaign. He pointed out that the two wars have cost the United States at least a trillion dollars and left tragic numbers of dead and severely damaged veterans.

He paid tribute to the men and women who paid the price for the partly politically motivated, unwise Iraq war, and he pledged that the country would do its best to do right by them with a GI education bill and postwar care. [emphasis added]

The Trib's editorial's comments (well some of them) warm this balding lib'rul's heart:

President Barack Obama on Tuesday officially declared the United States' combat mission in Iraq over. He didn't so much prosecute the war that this nation never should have started as he did manage the American withdrawal. He gave a left-handed tip of the hat to former President George W. Bush, who, forced to confront the enormity of his administration's miscalculations, had to mount a "surge" to quell all those greeting us as "liberators." [emphases added]

Look at that. While the P-G rightly calls the war "politically motivated" and "unwise," the Trib goes further and says that it's a war "this nation should never have started" (so we DID start it! so it WASN'T a retaliation!) and that there were "enormous" miscalculations by the former President.

Not only that, but did you catch the whiff of sarcasm in the description of the surge (note the use of ironic quotation marks around the word liberators - that explains everything).

To be fair (and I am nothing if not fair) this particular line is nothing new from the Trib. Take a look at this piece of treason from 2007:

Perhaps Jack Murtha put it best: The Pennsylvania congressman, among the first to make the cogent argument that staying the course in Iraq was the exercise in futility that indeed the war has become, says President Bush is delusional.

Based on the president's recent performance, we could not agree more. "Staying the course" is not simply futile -- it is a prescription for American suicide.

We've urged for months to bring our troops home. Now is the time.[italics in original]

The Trib said that Bush was delusional in 2007? Wait wait, it gets better:

And quite frankly, during last Thursday's news conference, when George Bush started blathering about "sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don't enable you to be loved," we had to question his mental stability.

I am not making this up. The Tribune-Review questioned George W Bush' mental stability in 2007.

So next time someone posts a rhetorical question on their facebook page (Hey, Dimitri - how's it going?) asking whether the War in Iraq was worth it, we can now all give a hearty hell no and then happily add that the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review agrees.

Has so for a long long time.

Iraq War = Horrible Mistake.

So says Republican Member of Congress Dana Rohrabacher (via the Cato Institute):

In a Thursday panel at Cato on conservatism and war, U.S. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and John Duncan (R-Tenn.) revealed that the vast majority of GOP members of Congress now think it was wrong for the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003.

Rohrabacher (who voted for Authorization to use Military Force in 2002) is even quoted as saying:

I will say that the decision to go in, in retrospect, almost all of us think that was a horrible mistake.

Their party is still filled with birther/tenther crazies, but at least some of them now recognize that the war in Iraq was a. horrible. mistake.

Will they be apologizing anytime soon to the 4300+ families of the servicemen and women who died for their horrible mistake?

Will dubya?

Of course not.

Meanwhile, Across The Pond...

Things are getting rather heated for Gordon Brown's predecessor. From the Guardian:

Tony Blair used "deceit" to persuade parliament and the British people to support war in Iraq, Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, said today.

In an article in the Times, Macdonald attacked Blair for engaging in "alarming subterfuge", for displaying "sycophancy" towards George Bush and for refusing to accept that his decisions were wrong.

I don't think The Guardian even got close to describing the fire in Macdonald's article. Here's how it begins:

The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible. Who is any longer naive enough to accept that the then Prime Minister’s mind remained innocently open after his visit to Crawford, Texas?

Macdonald's article comes in light of this interview from the sycophant:

Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.

And that's stirred up a whole mess o' trouble over there. From The Herald:

Tony Blair’s confession that he would have taken Britain to war in Iraq even if he had known Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction leaves him more vulnerable to legal action, a leading international lawyer warned yesterday.

Professor Philippe Sands QC, director of the Centre of International Courts and Tribunals at University College London, and a member of Cherie Blair’s Matrix law chambers, said the former prime minister’s admission that he would have deployed “different arguments” besides the weapons to justify the war and the removal of Saddam, means “he fixed on the policy first and then found the justification”.

Prof Sands, who claims Mr Blair and the former US president George Bush violated international law in the 2003 invasion, said: “The fact that the policy was fixed by Tony Blair irrespective of the facts on the ground, and irrespective of the legality, will now expose him more rather than less to legal difficulties.”

And the reason we can't even ask similar questions here is...?

If Tony Blair is guilty of war crimes George W Bush certainly is.

News From The UK

Woven into an article in the Times describing former Prime Minister Tony Blair's efforts for a private inquiry into Britain's role in Bush's Iraq war is this enticing tidbit - one that only reinforces what we already knew:

This news comes amid new evidence to suggest that Mr Blair knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

A memo dated January 31, 2003, by Sir David Manning, then Mr Blair’s policy adviser, outlines how President Bush told Mr Blair he had decided on a start date for the war — almost two months before the invasion.

Paraphrasing the President’s comments at the meeting, Sir David noted: “The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled (sic) in for March 10. This was when the bombing would begin.”

A few paragraphs later:

In public at this time, Mr Blair was justifying plans for an invasion on the grounds that Iraq might have weapons of mass destruction.

Not unlike George W. Bush. The UK's got the beginnings of an public inquiry into the war. Why can't we?

Anyway, the Guardian has this:

A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising (sic) military action.

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours (sic) over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.

Just look at Bush's logic: Faking a UN aircraft (and does the UN even have any U2 planes?? Maybe someone should ask Bono.) in order to entrap Saddam into firing at it, just to pin a UN violation on him for doing so. It boggles the mind.

All this reiterates what's already known: they knew they they didn't know Iraq had WMD and yet they invaded anyway.

How many died for these lies?

Fact-Checking Cheney's Speech

McClatchy does the honors and it's no surprise what they find:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.

They're being way too diplomatic. Usually these are called lies.

Here's more:

In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."

He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."

In a statement April 21, however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.

Another omission/exaggeration/misstatement/whatever by Cheney:

_ Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.

A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.

Yea, these guys know intelligence.

More On Cheney's Iraq/al-Qaeda Claims

It was something I missed last Friday.

Cheney has been caught in another lie. McClatchy begins:

Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true.

Chew on that for a moment before going on to the next two paragraphs:

Cheney's 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.

The head of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo from 2002-2005 confirmed to McClatchy that in late 2002 and early 2003, intelligence officials were tasked to find, among other things, Iraq-al Qaida ties, which were a central pillar of the Bush administration's case for its March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Do I need to say that no one's been able to find any credible evidence of any operational link between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda?

The details:

The Rocky Mountain News asked Cheney in a Jan. 9, 2004, interview if he stood by his claims that Saddam's regime had maintained a "relationship" with al Qaida, raising the danger that Iraq might give the group chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to attack the U.S.

"Absolutely. Absolutely," Cheney replied.

A Cheney spokeswoman said a response to an e-mail requesting clarification of the former vice president's remarks would be forthcoming next week.

"The (al Qaida-Iraq) links go back," he said. "We know for example from interrogating detainees in Guantanamo that al Qaida sent individuals to Baghdad to be trained in C.W. and B.W. technology, chemical and biological weapons technology. These are all matters that are there for anybody who wants to look at it."

Except it wasn't true.

They were waterboarding to establish the link anyway - to cover their collective asses. No "ticking time-bomb" scenario here. No thwarting another attack by "the terrrists, the evil-doers." Torture to make the political case for the illegal immoral invasion of Iraq.

Prosecute the torture.

How The Bush Administration Supported The Troops

If you look around, you can still see some of those colorful "Support Our Troops" magnets that some put on their cars.

Too bad the Bush Administration didn't support the troops like they expected the rest of us to.

Case in point: Water.

The CBS reported:

Stories of short supplies for American forces in Iraq, such as inadequate body armor or unshielded Hummers, have been around since the war began. CBS affiliate KHOU-TV in Houston has discovered that some soldiers were forced to ration water, perhaps as little as 2-3 liters per day, because there was never enough.

According to the report, the Army recommended 15 liters of water per day could be lost in the desert heat and these guys got as little as 2, maybe three liters.

Good thing was that it wasn't widespread:

While many soldiers have said they had adequate access to water, and even Gatorade, KHOU found that the differing experiences seemed to have a great deal to do with when and where a soldier was deployed in Iraq, and their assignment.

Here's KHOU's report.

So early in the war, some of the boots on the ground had some harsh choices:

Army Staff Sgt. Dustin Robey told KHOU correspondent Jeremy Rogalski that soldiers would throw up or pass out from dehydration.

Chronic dehydration can lead to such problems as kidney stones, urinary infection, rectal afflictions and skin problems, and can have long-term health problems, including kidney injury.

Robey said in 2003 his company would run out of water on missions, forcing them to improvise, like drinking water from whatever taps they found.

Unfortunately, the often-untreated Iraqi water can cause intestinal illnesses. Robey said 50 to 60 members of his company got dysentery.

Hmm...dysentery or dehydration.

Any idea who was in charge of water over there in Bush's war? That's right:

The water was supposed to be processed by Houston-based company KBR.

Ah...the one-time Halliburton subsidiary, KBR. The same KBR responsible for all the dirty water and bad electrical work.

But:

KBR told KHOU that a Department of Defense Inspector General's report has concluded "KBR has (since) satisfied applicable water standards," adding that "the DoD has not found any illness which it attributes to water in Iraq."

Looks like they've fixed things. Tell that to Robey:

He says he's passed hundreds of kidney stones since returning form Iraq, and because of his condition the Army forced him to retire. His family is now facing foreclosure.

Another great moment for the Bush legacy.

No Apologies from Bill Kristol

A few days ago Bill Kristol, former NYTimes Columnist, current big-league neoconservative and one of the main cheerleaders for Bush's War in Iraq, was asked a simple yes-or-no question on C-SPAN:

CALLER: Question for you, Mr. Kristol and I'd like for you to answer it with a simple yes or no. Due to the fact that we was led into the Iraq War with the fact that there were weapons of mass destruction, there were nuclear weapons there, there was all kind of weapons there, it's proved to be false - absolutely false. And your magazine, Fox network and and AEI, all of y’all hyped that to a degree that was just unimaginable. Even President Bush admitted there were no weapons of mass destruction there. In lieu of that fact — being the fact that there's 4,500 American lives lost there — will you personally apologize to those folks right now? Simple yes or no. Thank you.

KRISTOL: No.

I think the war was right, and I think we’ve succeeded in the war. And I think those lives — we should honor those soldiers who gave their lives and who fought so hard, and also were wounded for what they did.

And also in Afghanistan, incidentally, it’s President Obama who’s announcing the increase in troops today. It’s not something he was forced into by the Weekly Standard or anyone else.

You'll note, of course, that after his one word answer, Kristol immediately changes the subject away from his support for the now-debunked idea that there were WMD in Iraq to what he sees as the outcome of the war and the troops.

But Bill Kristol has never had that close of a relationship with the facts. David Corn has a run-down on some of his more famous bad predictions. Here's a few:

On September 11, 2002, as the Bush administration began its sales campaign for the coming war, Kristol suggested that Saddam Hussein could do more harm to the United States than al Qaeda had: "we cannot afford to let Saddam Hussein inflict a worse 9/11 on us in the future."

And:

On February 20, 2003, he summed up the argument for war against Saddam: "He's got weapons of mass destruction. At some point he will use them or give them to a terrorist group to use...Look, if we free the people of Iraq we will be respected in the Arab world....France and Germany don't have the courage to face up to the situation. That's too bad. Most of Europe is with us. And I think we will be respected around the world for helping the people of Iraq to be liberated."

And:

On March 5, 2003, Kristol said, "I think we'll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction and when we liberate the people of Iraq."

Corn sums it up:

Such vindication never came. Kristol was mistaken about the justification for the war, the costs of the war, the planning for the war, and the consequences of the war. That's a lot for a pundit to miss. In his columns and statements about Iraq, Kristol displayed little judgment or expertise. He was not informing the public; he was whipping it. He turned his wishes into pronouncements and helped move the country to a mismanaged and misguided war that has claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. That's not journalism.

And Kristol said "No." when asked to apologize.

Happy Anniversary, I Guess.

It should not go unnoticed that yesterday was the sixth anniversary of the beginning of theWar in Iraq.

Let's take a look and see what's happened because of Bush's decision to invade. As of today (March 20, 2009):

• 4,260 American troops dead.
• 31,217 American troops wounded
• Between 91,131 and 99,510 Iraqis dead (as documented by Iraq Body Count)

(h/t to Buzzflash)

Then there's the financial cost. As of today Bush's war has cost:

• $606 Billion.

Then there's the loss of American prestige overseas and so on.

Is it any wonder that the few remaining Bush-ites are STILL trying to spin his legacy? From thinkprogress:

On PBS’s Charlie Rose yesterday — six years after the eve of the Iraq invasion — former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice discussed the decision to invade Iraq. Rice said she has had no “second thoughts” about striking the country, and when pressed by Rose on whether Saddam Hussein had connections to 9/11, Rice blankly said that “no one” believed in such a link

However, there's this from Commondreams.org:

On March 18th, George W. Bush wrote to the Speaker of the House (Hastert) and the President of the Senate (Cheney) invoking the powers granted him by Public Law 107-243. Initiating the invasion of Iraq, he wrote:

...I determine that:... [Declaring war on Iraq and] acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

Thus the invasion of Iraq and seizure of its oil fields, was, according to George W. Bush, legally justified by 9/11.

Happy Anniversary, everyone.

Bush In Canada

A group called Lawyers Against The War (or LAW) has sent a letter to the RCMP (or Royal Canadian Mounted Police) requesting an investigation of George W. Bush for war crimes.

The letter they sent can be found here.

They charge that:

- George W. Bush, former President of the United States and Commander is Chief of the Armed Forces, is inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), section 35(1)(a) because of overwhelming evidence that he has ‘committed, outside Canada, torture and other offences referred to in sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act (CAHWC); and,

- the George W. Bush Administration has engaged in “systematic or gross human rights violations, or a war crime or a crime against humanity within the meaning of subsections 6(3) to (5) of the CAHWC.

Here's that section of the IRPA. And this is how the CAHWC subsections 6(3) to (5) defines crimes against humanity:

...means murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, persecution or any other inhumane act or omission that is committed against any civilian population or any identifiable group and that, at the time and in the place of its commission, constitutes a crime against humanity according to customary international law or conventional international law or by virtue of its being criminal according to the general principles of law recognized by the community of nations, whether or not it constitutes a contravention of the law in force at the time and in the place of its commission.

And they ask that the RCMP:

- begin an investigation of George W. Bush for aiding, abetting and counseling torture between November 13, 2001 and November 2008 at Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Bagram prison in Afghanistan and other places; and,

- advise the Prime Minister, Attorney General of Canada and Ministers of Immigration and Public Safety that the George W. Bush administration is a “ government that has engaged in torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity and therefore G.W. Bush, as former President, is also inadmissible under section 35(1)(b) of the IRPA.

Here's the letter they sent to Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper in late February.

The only thing standing in the way of Canadian Justice?

The Canadian government:

Canadian government officials have chosen to ignore a request to bar George W. Bush from entering Canada, but the issue is not going to go away, according to the lawyers’ group that first raised it.

Lawyers Against the War’s (LAW) Gail Davidson said Sunday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Attorney General Rob Nicholson have been formally notified of their legal obligations under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

She told them in a March 11 letter there is “overwhelming evidence that (Bush) has committed, outside Canada, torture and other offences” referred to in Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, and said LAW can provide the evidence.

Harper and other government officials were also told that the act states “if there are reasonable grounds to believe a person has been complicit in any of these crimes, entry to Canada must be denied.”

However, neither Harper nor any other Ministers responded to last month’s request from the group.

It's not like they haven't banned other folks from entering Canada. If you're arrested in the US for protesting the war that's killed 4,000 American troops and countless Iraqis, you're banned from Canada.

But if you start that war (and commit war crimes, too boot) you're in.

Taking Chance

On the back cover of this week's Nation, there's an ad for an upcoming HBO movie called "Taking Chance."

From the HBO website:

In April 2004, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, USMC, came across the name of 19-year-old Lance Corporal Chance Phelps, a young Marine who had been killed by hostile fire in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Strobl, a Desert Storm veteran with 17 years of military service, requested that he be assigned for military escort duty to accompany Chance's remains to his family in Dubois, Wyo.

Witnessing the spontaneous outpouring of support and respect for the fallen Marine - from the groundskeepers he passed along the road to the cargo handlers at the airport - Strobl was moved to capture the experience in his personal journal. His first-person account, which began as an official trip report, gives an insight into the military's policy of providing a uniformed escort for all casualties. The story became an Internet phenomenon when it was widely circulated throughout the military community and eventually reached the mainstream media.

'Taking Chance' chronicles one of the silent, virtually unseen journeys that takes place every day across the country, bearing witness to the fallen and all those who, literally and figuratively, carry them home. A uniquely non-political film about the war in Iraq, the film pays tribute to all of the men and women who have given their lives in military service as well as their families.

You can read Lt Col Strobl's original article here.

And here's some early reporting on the NewsHour.

And the trailer:



I read Strobl's article this afternoon. Cried all the way home. Lucky I was on a bus and not driving.

Define "Victory"

Recently our good friend Jack Kelly wrote:

What is essentially a victory in Iraq [...]

And when he wrote that, I wondered what his definition of "victory" was. If you also think that we've been "victorious" in Bush's illegal war, consider what John Tirman writes in The Nation:

We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush's war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards--"stability"--the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it's too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.

We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis--more than half of them refugees--or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school.

The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 "excess deaths" (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths--from health emergencies, for example--or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million "excess deaths" as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.

Yea, that's a "victory."

A Remider of What's Leaving The Oval Office

Did you know that George W Bush proclaimed Sunday National Sanctity of Human Life day?

From his Proclamation:

All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us.

Nice to know.

More from the Proclamation:

The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent.

Good to hear.

Thanks, George. Good to know you care.

VP Cheney. Unrepentant To The Last

Take a look:

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Vice President, getting from there to here, 4500 Americans have died, at least a hundred thousand Iraqis have died. Has it been worth that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I think so.

And his spin:

Because I believed at the time that what Saddam Hussein represented was, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, was a terror-sponsoring state – so designated by the State Department. He was making payments to the families of suicide bombers; he provided a safe haven and sanctuary for Abu Nidal and other terrorist operations. He had produced and used weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological agents. He’d had a nuclear program in the past. He killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and he did have a relationship with al Qaeda. Now, we’ve had this debate, keeps people trying to conflate those arguments. That’s not to say that Saddam was responsible for 9/11; it is to say – as George Tenet, CIA director testified in open session in the Senate – that there was a relationship there that went back 10 years.

So this was a terror-sponsoring state with access to weapons of mass destruction and that’s the greatest threat we faced in the aftermath of 9/11: The next time we found terrorists in the middle of one of our cities, it wouldn’t be 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters, it would be terrorists armed a biological agent or maybe even a nuclear device. So I think, given the track record of Saddam Hussein, I think we did exactly the right thing, I think the country’s better off for it today, I think it’s been part of the effort alongside Afghanistan to liberate 50 million people and establish a vibrant democracy in the heart of the Middle East. I think those are major, major accomplishments.

Thinkprogress did the reality check:

The United States did not invade in Iraq because Saddam “had a nuclear program in the past,” nor did he have a relationship with al Qaeda. We went to war because Bush administration officials made everyone believes that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction at that time and an active relationship with al Qaeda. The Iraq war has decimated the readiness of the U.S. military, radicalized insurgents in the Middle East, and strengthened many of America’s enemies.

How many days left until he's gone?