Free-Thinking Republicans

Who does Bush fear the most?

On Redeemable Republican Friday it's appropriate to celebrate those of the GOP whom the war-mongers fear think for themselves.

Here are half a dozen or so...

I would also encourage my reader(s) to contact all of the Representatives below. These are some of the Republican Representatives who have spoken against the troop surge, and in favor of ending the occupation of Iraq.

Representative Walter Jones
Phone: 202-225-3415
Fax: 202-225-3286
Web Email

Representative Wayne Gilchrest
Phone: 202-225-5311
Fax: 202-225-0254
Web Email

Representative Michael Castle
Phone: 202-225-4165
Fax: 202-225-2291
Web Email

Representative Richard (Ric) Keller
Phone: 202-225-2176
Fax: 202-225-0999
Web Email

Representative James T. Walsh
Phone: 202-225-3701
Fax: 202-225-4042
Web Email

Representative Philip Sheridan English
Phone: 202-225-5406
Fax: 202-225-3103
Web Email

Representative Ronald Ernest Paul
Phone: 202-225-2831
Web Email

Representative Frederick Stephen Upton
Phone: 202-225-3761
Fax: 202-225-4986
Web Email

Call them; fax them; email them, and congratulate them in their discovery that patriotism means preference of country over party and national interest over the personal legacy of an undeserving president.

And finally, as a special tribute to a real Republican patriot,
Ron Paul wishes all of us to count down to November 5th:

Why Won't Nancy Pelosi Just Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way?

Maybe she's not getting enough???
Because she's obviously sleeping with the enemy.

What kind of a leader would toss Pete Stark under the Bush bus?

Pete Stark, in a rare rant of speaking truth to power last week, gave Bush the lie. All of what was said was the unvarnished and long overdue truth.

And yet Democrat-In-Name-Only (DINO) Nancy publicly rebuked Stark and then allowed a motion of censure to come to the House floor. In part the motion said,

Mr. Stark, by his despicable conduct, has dishonored himself and brought discredit to the House and merits the censure of the House for the same. Resolved, that the member from California, Mr. Stark, is hereby so censured.

The censure motion failed 196-173 (with five Democrats supporting it). After the vote, Stark came to the podium to offer certainly the most contrite, sniveling and pathetic apology ever heard in Congress:

I want to apologize first of all to my colleagues, many of whom I have offended, to the president. his family, to the troops that may have found (offense) in my remarks as were suggested in the motion that we just voted on, and I do apologize. ... With this apology I will become as insignificant as I should be and we can return to the issues that do divide us but that we can resolve.

Stark is assured the insignificance he thinks he desires. A gloating Fox News report said that,

After his mea culpa, Stark walked off the floor to the Democratic side of the chamber and for at least five minutes stood sobbing while fellow Democrats gathered around him.

Entirely believable, based on the clip I saw. I will neither post it or link it because it's too grotesque, profane and obscene for my reader(s). It can be found on all reich-wing sites. They love it!

But all of this is Nancy's fault. She disgusts me. I am shucking my membership in the Democraptic party tomorrow. Furthermore, all my political contributions this year and next will go to Cindy Sheehan who can certainly unseat this DINO bitch.

Dick Cheney's Diktat

Crying Wolf

I resent my current status in life (forced labor) which restricts the time and energy to write my own stuff everyday. There is so much that comes my way, that that would be 'hard work', but rewarding. I am confronted at every turn with the temptation to take the written and spoken words of others and bend them in the direction of objective historical truth. My circumstances encourage me to yield to this temptation since it also saves a ton of time in proofing. It really is a cheap way out, but why re-invent the wheel?

And speaking of wheels. . .

Dick Cheney, our current de facto president who has never stood on his own feet and run in his own presidential primary campaign, yesterday blatantly reprised Bush's doctrine of preventive war. The same ingredients which filled Bush's rationale for the use of force against Iraq announced five years ago (plus a few weeks) were the headliners in Shooter's speech before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. These three paragraphs contained the fighting words heard and read this morning around the world:

The Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power is a matter of record. And now, of course, we have the inescapable reality of Iran's nuclear program; a program they claim is strictly for energy purposes, but which they have worked hard to conceal; a program carried out in complete defiance of the international community and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. The world knows this. The Security Council has twice imposed sanctions on Iran and called on the regime to cease enriching uranium. Yet the regime continues to do so, and continues to practice delay and deception in an obvious attempt to buy time.

Given the nature of Iran's rulers, the declarations of the Iranian President, and the trouble the regime is causing throughout the region -- including direct involvement in the killing of Americans -- our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions. (Applause.)

The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences. The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)

As luck would have it, minutes ago I encountered a real deal response to this unilateral and unconstitutional decree of Cheney's. Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, Middle East editor of Foreign Policy In Focus, and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. Writing weeks ago, Zunes anticipates Cheney's diktat:

Indeed, the United States is obsessed with Iran’s nuclear program – still many years away from producing an atomic bomb – while we support the neighboring states of Pakistan, India, and Israel, which have already developed nuclear weapons and which are also in violation of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their nuclear programs. We blame Iran for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq yet 95% of U.S. casualties are from anti-Iranian Sunni insurgents. We focus on Iranian human rights abuses while we continue to support the even more oppressive and theocratic Islamic regime in Saudi Arabia. We attack the Iranian president’s denial of the genocide of European Jews while remaining silent in the face of Turkish leaders’ denial of the genocide of Armenians. One of the most important principles of most faith traditions is moral consistency. Few receive greater wrath in most holy texts than hypocrites.

More's the pity that my countrymen have fallen behind the timeline posted in the upper righthand corner of these pages: a timely impeachment of our two home-grown arch-war criminals would have, by now, provided us with credible national leadership. As it is, we are left with a couple of chickenhawks, crying 'wolf'.

Pete Stark - A Member of the Democratic Wing

...of the Democraptic Party has stood up and said - FINALLY - what had to be said.

Faux News is angry that Rep. Pete Stark interrupted a Thursday debate on the floor of the House of Representatives and launched 'a shocking one-man assault on the Bush administration'. In fact, all Congressman Stark did was to tell the truth, and in so doing,
give Bush the lie.At long last the Harry Truman wing is waking up.

At rallies in the '48 campaign, people would yell, "Give'em Hell, Harry!" Truman would yell back, "All I do is to tell the truth, and they think it's hell."

The truth has escaped out of the 'truth paste tube' onto the Floor of the House of Representatives:

BUSH IS A LIAR.

It's the Stark Truth.

How Do We Measure Progress in Iraq?

'Bench marks'? 'Quantitative metrics'? 'Key indicators'? 'Body-counts'? 'Kill ratios'? Passage of 'hydrocarbons bill'? Elections?

Friedman Units?
Reconstruction of infrastructure?

Head of Reconstruction Teams in Iraq Reports Little Progress Throughout Country (NYT 19-Oct-07):

BAGHDAD, Oct. 18 — Attempts by American-led reconstruction teams to forge political reconciliation, foster economic growth and build an effective police force and court system in Iraq have failed to show significant progress in nearly every one of the nation’s provincial regions and in the capital, a federal oversight agency reported on Thursday.

Body Counts?

iCasualties.org:

Feisal Units?

On 8-Mar-04, Feisal Istrabadi, was just back from Iraq where he was one of the principal drafters of the Iraq the interim constitution:

I think the significance is that the people of Iraq are taking charge of their future. This is the first step towards the assertion, reassertion of the sovereignty of the people of Iraq, which has been usurped for at least 35 years by a tyrannical and brutal regime.

It is the first step that Iraq takes in over a dozen years to attempt to reintegrate itself into the family of nations. And it is, I think, a day which the first steps towards ending at least the formal occupation of Iraq by the coalition forces begins. It's a significant day, I believe, in Iraq's history.

But this week, Istrabadi, deputy ambassador of the Shiite government of Iraq to the United Nations, resigned in disgust and began speaking out about the corruption, incompetence, and inefficiency of the Iraqi government:

You’ve got patently incompetent men appointed to important positions.

I think the question was: ‘Should elections have been held?’ And I think that there is only one answer to that question, and that’s absolutely not. . . . .You’ve got patently incompetent men appointed to important positions.

. . . . What did we accomplish, exactly, [with] this push towards an appearance of institutions . . . merely an appearance? Except that an American politician can stand up and say, ‘Look what we accomplished in Iraq.’ When, in fact, what we accomplished in Iraq over the last three years has been chaos and instability. . . . there is no Iraqi government.

The Calendar?

This illegitimate occupation is not progressing. It's just aging. We have 454 days - at the very least - to go.

GOP Friday Has Been Cancelled (Again)

My weekly search for a redeemable Republican has come up empty.









I was going to say something snarky, but all rancor has been sucked out of me by events in Karachi and Johannesburg.

In spite of all that has happened in the beginning of this miserable century, I am rocked back on my heels that I can still be shocked and appalled. Needless, pointless death and destruction occurs everyday. It's just that some days it all becomes barely bearable. 133 in Benazir Bhutto's reception in Karachi are killed? Scores, I am sure, terribly injured. Lucky Dube shot dead in Johannesburg? In a car-jacking? What is the point? The world is dead to me today.I'll just turn up my speakers. . .

On Blackwater, Specifically...

And on armed mercenaries in general....

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.”

--Nietzsche

My excerpts from The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal by Norman Solomon:

. . . . A real hazard of the preoccupation with Blackwater is that it will become a scapegoat for what is profoundly and fundamentally wrong with the U.S. effort and mission. Condemnation of Blackwater, however justified, can easily be siphoned into a political whirlpool that demands a cleanup of the U.S. war occupation effort – as though a relentless war of occupation based on lies could be redeemed by better management – as if the occupying troops in Army and Marine uniforms are incarnations of restraint and accountability.

. . . . One of the most unusual aspects of the current Blackwater scandal is that it places recent killings of Iraqi civilians front-and-center even though the killers were Americans. This angle is outside the customary media frame that focuses on what Iraqis are doing to each other and presents Americans – whether in military uniform or in contractor mode – as well-meaning heroes who sometimes become victims of dire circumstances.

. . . . The current Blackwater scandal should help us to understand the dynamics that routinely set in when occupiers – whether privatized mercenaries or uniformed soldiers – rely on massive violence against the population they claim to be helping.

Terrible as Blackwater has been and continues to be, that profiteering corporation should not be made a lightning rod for opposition to the war occupation. New legislation that demands accountability from private security forces can't make a war an occupation that's wrong any more right. Finding better poster boys who can be touted as humanitarians rather than mercenaries won't change the basic roles of gun-toting Americans in a country that they have no right to occupy.