Remember, fear is a Republican's Forte. "Our Politics May Be All in Our Head" NY Times and that column as much as said Republicans are "girly men" Not sure what to call their women other than rude, crude and unattractive.  MC

"But the more senior official, David Margolis, decided that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee only had shown “poor judgment” and should not be disciplined. Mr. Margolis did not dispute that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee mangled legal reasoning and produced work that ultimately was repudiated by the Bush administration itself. He criticized the professional responsibility office’s investigation on procedural grounds and excused Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee by noting that everyone was frightened after Sept. 11, 2001, and that they were in a hurry."

"Americans were indeed frightened after Sept. 11, and the Bush administration was in a great rush to torture prisoners. Responsible lawyers would have responded with extra vigilance, especially if, like Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee, they worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. When that office renders an opinion, it has the force of law within the executive branch. Poor judgment is an absurdly dismissive way to describe giving the green light to policies that have badly soiled America’s reputation and made it less safe."

NY Times

...............Before We Can Listen to the Dixie Chicks Again?  Civilian deaths from air strikes are considered cowardly by the Afghans, I do as well.  It is also the most effective recruiting tool in the Muslim world, every religion has a boogie man.  We are playing that part very well.  What are "just a few rag heads" to the yellow ribbon crowd is major to the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world.  MC

NY Times

February 23, 2010

NATO Airstrike Is Said to Have Killed Afghan Civilians

By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — A NATO airstrike on Sunday against what international troops believed to be a group of insurgents ended up killing 27 civilians in the worst episode involving noncombatant deaths in six months, Afghan officials said on Monday.

“The repeated killing of civilians by NATO forces is unjustifiable,” President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet said in a statement. “We strongly condemn it.”

The airstrike took place in an area under Dutch military control, and if Dutch forces were involved in the incident it could have serious political repercussions in the Netherlands, where the government collapsed Saturday over an effort to extend the mandate of 2,000 Dutch troops in Afghanistan.

But a Dutch defense ministry spokesman in The Hague said Dutch forces were not involved in calling the airstrike. The spokesman, who spoke in return for customary anonymity, did not say who had called for air support.

NATO officials did not immediately identify the nationality of the forces involved in the incident.

Continued at the NY Times:

NY Times

The head of US Central Command has said the current offensive around the southern Afghan town of Marjah is the initial operation of a long campaign.

Gen David Petraeus told NBC that the offensive was part of a revised strategy for combating insurgents that would probably last "12 to 18 months".

He said Taliban resistance to Operation Moshtarak, which is in its second week, had been "formidable" but "disjointed".

Nato commanders have said it may take another month to fully secure Marjah.

Afghan police have already been deployed in areas recaptured from the Taliban, as part of a plan to put the area under the control of the local authorities.

So far, 12 Nato personnel have been killed in the offensive, which involves 15,000 Nato and Afghan troops and is the biggest operation against insurgents in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion.

Another three personnel were reported dead on Sunday in unrelated incidents in eastern and southern Afghanistan. Their nationalities were not given.

'Initial salvo'

Gen Petraeus said the US public should expect further losses, much like there were following the so-called troop surge in Iraq.

By LEONARD PITTS
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com

I hear you're pondering a run for the White House in 2012. Last week, you told Fox news it would be ``absurd'' to rule it out.

I'm writing to ask that you rule it in. I very badly want you to run for -- and win -- the Republican nomination for the presidency.

I know you're waiting for the punch line. Maybe you figure I think you'd be a weak candidate who would pave the way for President Obama's easy re-election.

That's not it. No, I want you to run because I believe a Palin candidacy would force upon this country a desperately needed moment of truth. It would require us to finally decide what kind of America we want to be.

Continued:

Miami Herald

With back and 1.5 lbs. of C-4 removed exposing 700 ball bearings

When 7.5 pounds of C-4 goes off and propels 4900 ball bearing across a trail or road, every thing is dead within 50 meters. MC

                     Fading Photographs- By Michael D. McCombs

               The crackle of ancient paper rustles through my mind,

Like parchment over handled, frayed breaking of age.

Tired and worn from the passage of years.

They were fresh once, in another place, in another time.

They carried the images of loved ones, of I once knew, caught forever;

or so I dreamed.  The colors were bright and the focus just so.

Sharp for the things and soft for persons I had chosen to cast

Into the forever world in the cloister of my skull.

Little things mostly like a leaf in the spring or a flower in the snow.

They held the peal of the laughter and the thunder alike, safe for

tomorrow's thinking. There were some big things too, that counted for

more to me than all the springs that had passed behind me.  Soft eyed

children, a grandmother's smile, the final passing of a friend.

The ones that seem most faded are of yet a third kind.

The ones that tell the story of a younger man, in an alien land,

fighting a war without end and not knowing why he does.

The sharpness is gone from the friends by the wire or on the berm;

the mountains beyond and the stars that shone in that foreign land

beyond a graying ocean. Good friends, too.  Friends to die for and

with, or to die for you.  Nametags faded beyond recall.  The sound of

their voices covered by monsoon rains or incoming rounds.

 Even the places are going: Kontum, Nha Trang, Pleiku, are simple blurs

on the paper that used to hold so much more.  Even the tank has no

corners and the napalm burns only gray; tracers leaving lines without color.

And what of Weet, and Sarge, and all those who gave this strange place

a reason, however cryptic, for being at all?  Pain and love and hate

and fear are all but gone.  Only the strongest have survived the years

intact, or I think they are.  The rawest hate and fear, unmitigated by

the lesser, the gentler things that made even these less horrible.

So I reach out, with my feeble hands and softly grab,

trying to save all of these that I want to keep so badly.

The fading photographs from my mind's own album.

Notice they don't mention the wounded, there are certainly situations worse than death. (Read, "Johnny Got His Gun") We know there were three million civilian deaths in SE Asia, assuming the same ratios for American military casualties, 5 to 1 (Wounded vs. KIA 304,000 vs. 58,000) and 75,000 amputees, one amputee for every four wounded.  Using that data for SE Asian civilians, results in 15 million wounded, 3.75 million amputees.  If 12 Afghans were killed today, there is a very good chance that 60 were wounded.  Tommy Franks (An artillery officer) "We don't do body counts" Actually general that is an obscene understatement.  Of course if all 6 rockets were fired and hit the same target, there is a good chance that some of the casualties vaporized. 

Lockheed has a $68 million cost plus contract to build the HIMARS.  Here is the low down on the rockets:"The Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) consists of two variants of rockets fired from the M270A1 or High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers. The GMLRS Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) variant carries 404 bomblets, while the GMLRS Unitary rocket will have a single, 200-pound class, high-explosive, Unitary warhead. Both variants use an inertial measurement unit guidance system that is aided by the Global Positioning System."  200 pounds of High Explosives (HE) is a shit load.  A 1500 pound Exocet sank a British destroyer in the Falklands, a bit more stout than mud walls.  MC

NY Times

February 15, 2010

Afghan Civilians Killed in Offensive on Taliban

By C. J. CHIVERS and ROD NORDLAND

MARJA, Afghanistan — An errant American rocket strike on Sunday hit a compound crowded with Afghan civilians in the last Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province, killing at least 10, including 5 children, military officials said.

Avoiding such civilian deaths, which came on the second day of a major allied offensive around Marja, has been a cornerstone of the war strategy by the top American commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. He apologized to President Hamid Karzai, saying, “We deeply regret this tragic loss of life.”

The strike came after American Marines and Afghan soldiers had been taking intense small-arms fire from a mud-walled compound in the area, American officers said. The answering artillery barrage instead hit a building a few hundred yards way, striking with a roar and sending a huge cloud of dust and smoke into the air. As the wind pushed the plume away, a group of children rushed outside.

 Continued at the NY Times:

NY Times

"That foreign threat might make conservatives sweat so much that maybe, just maybe, they’d consider revisiting the issue."  hahahahahaha

We all know that liberals and conservatives are far apart on health care. But in the way their brains work? Even in automatic reflexes, like blinking? Or the way their glands secrete moisture?

That’s the suggestion of some recent research. It hints that the roots of political judgments may lie partly in fundamental personality types and even in the hard-wiring of our brains.

Researchers have found, for example, that some humans are particularly alert to threats, particularly primed to feel vulnerable and perceive danger. Those people are more likely to be conservatives.

One experiment used electrodes to measure the startle blink reflex, the way we flinch and blink when startled by a possible danger. A flash of noise was unexpectedly broadcast into the research subjects’ earphones, and the response was measured.

Continued at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/opinion/14kristof.html 

As for Thune, Franken made the extremely rookie mistake of pointing out when one of his colleagues was making stuff up as he went along. ”We are entitled to our own opinions. We’re not entitled to our own facts,” said the irrational polemic.

This kind of stuff is called a “double standard.” When a Republican displays this level of enthusiasm for their ideologies, it’s called moxie, or “being a maverick.” When John McCain screams “Fuck you!” at Sen. Cornyn (a breach of protocol far beyond anything Franken is being accused of,) the media laughs, shakes their heads, and says, “Well, that’s just McCain being McCain.” Republicans are manly men, and manly men sometimes get hot under the collar during moments of spirited debate.

Democrats, on the other hands, are not permitted that level of passion. Or perhaps, it’s so unusual to witness a fiery display from Democrats that the event truly shocks the media, and they reflexively label it “an unruly outburst.” Afterall, these are Democrats, for God’s sake. What else could it possibly be?

Grayson is another good example of this. Back in September, the Congressman landed in hot water for saying the Republican health care plan is “don’t get sick,” and if you do get sick, “die quickly.” When demands for an apology disseminated from the Village, Grayson teabagged (the old-fashion definition) his opponents and responded, “I would like to apologize. I would like to apologize to the dead.”  Fun facts: Grayson also called Cheney a “vampire” and Fox News the “enemy of America.”

Unsurprisingly, no one (the Republicans and the media included) seems to know what to do with Grayson. He doesn’t speak the poll-tested “looking forward, not backward” lingo of the president. He talks like a liberal. Franken talks like a liberal. What’s worse, they seem proud to be liberals – an alien concept to Democrats, who built their careers acting like Republicans, and mainstream media, which is largely owned by the corporations that enjoy Democrats acting like Republicans.

It behooves most Democrats, Republicans, and media to portray politicians like Franken and Grayson as hysterical, fringe lunatics lest this liberalism thing spread like the plague it is.

Continued

True Slant

Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene."

The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.'

This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings,...........................

.............The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.'

This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, *chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'., biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'.  (*You need filling equipment to load US 155 mm artillery projectiles)

TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

“Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.

 NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html?hpw

A lot to chew on below, but as we all know, having a "D" by your name is mostly superficial, as in DINO. Looking at the campaign finances of Shumer, for example, shows him to be the biggest Wall Street whore in the universe. I and others see the real party, one of entitlement, nepotism and cronyism. Look at Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, similar credentials to Salazar and Ritter, neither hot nor cold, just party hacks (a political party member who serves the party uncritically and in a routine capacity). The times call for LEADERSHIP, nothing less will do, leaders attract great public servents and put the "act" in activism. MC

"Progressives clearly see the ruling primarily as some kind of corporate-empowerment initiative. But you can’t really take on Big Agra or Wall Street unless you can organize to speak out against the Chuck Grassleys and Chuck Schumers when it really counts."

NY Times

January 22, 2010, 7:41 pm

Put Your Money Where Your Politics Are

By TOBIN HARSHAW The Thread is an in-depth look at how major news and controversies are being debated across the online spectrum.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/put-your-money-where-your-politics-are/?hp

Because we are the good guys, "It depends on what the meaning of is is." Is we torturing or is we not?  If it looks, sounds, smells like a rat, it probably is.

"a senior officer assembled the guards and told them that the three men had committed suicide by stuffing rags down their throats..........."

"......Harper's says that when the bodies of the three men were repatriated, pathologists who conducted postmortem examinations found that each man's larynx, hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage – which could have helped determine cause of death – had been removed and retained by US authorities......"

Continued at the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/18/guantanamo-investigation-harpers-interrogation

And illegal is NOT a sick bird and is there anything wrong with justice and liberty for all?  The NY Times editorial makes me mindful of an old Johnny Cash song, "The Long Black Veil" When it comes to justice in America, executing or imprisoning the wrong man seems to slake the thirst for revenge. MC

The Long Black Veil

Ten years ago on a cold dark night,
someone was killed 'neath the town hall lights.
There were few at the scene, but they all agreed,
that the slayer who ran looked a lot like me.

Chorus ~ She walks these hills, in a long black veil.
She visits my grave, when the night winds wail.
Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows, but me

The Judge said son, what is your alibi,
if you were somewhere else, then you won't have to die.
I spoke not a word, though it meant my life,
for i'd been in the arms of my best friends wife.

Chorus*

Now the scaffold is high, and eternity's near.
She stood in the crowd, and shed not a tear.
But some times at night, when the cold wind moans
In a long black veil, she cries over my bones

Chorus ~ She walks these hills, in a long black veil.
When the cold winds blow, and the night winds wail.
No body knows, no body sees.
No body knows, but me.
"Anyone who doubts the degree of  (Obama) executive branch pliability in this realm needs to consider this: The party that urged the Supreme Court not to grant the victims’ appeal because the illegality of torture was not “clearly established” was the Obama Justice Department.".

NY Times

January 4, 2010

Editorial

Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal

Bush administration officials came up with all kinds of ridiculously offensive rationalizations for torturing prisoners. It’s not torture if you don’t mean it to be. It’s not torture if you don’t nearly kill the victim. It’s not torture if the president says it’s not torture.

It was deeply distressing to watch the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sink to that standard in April when it dismissed a civil case brought by four former Guantánamo detainees never charged with any offense. The court said former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the senior military officers charged in the complaint could not be held responsible for violating the plaintiffs’ rights because at the time of their detention, between 2002 and 2004, it was not “clearly established” that torture was illegal.

Continued:

NY Times

Finally, as promised, a Special Comment on the latest version of H-R 35-90, the Senate Health Care Reform bill. To again quote Churchill after Munich, as I did six nights ago on this program: "I will begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing: that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, without a war."

Last night on this program Howard Dean said that with the appeasement of Mr. Lieberman of Connecticut by the abandonment of the Medicare Buy-in, he could no longer support H-R 35-90. Dr. Dean's argument is informed, cogent, heart breaking, and unanswerable.   

Seeking the least common denominator, Sen. Reid has found it, especially the "least" part. This is not health, this is not care, this is certainly not reform. I bless the Sherrod Browns and Ron Wydens and Jay Rockefellers and Sheldon Whitehouses and Anthony Weiners and all the others who have fought for real reform and I bleed for the pain inflicted upon them and their hopes. They have done their jobs and served their nation.

Continued:

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34455168/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 16, 2009; A17

The surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of up to 56,000 contractors, vastly expanding the presence of personnel from the U.S. private sector in a war zone, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

Continued:

The Washington Post

Just watched the movie "Invictus" produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, the South African rugby team captain.  I thoroughly enjoyed the film.  I also wanted to read the entire poem, "Invictus" and find out more about Nelson Mandela, his 27 years in prison and what he did to deserve such a severe sentence.  The CIA had a hand in his arrest in 1962 and by my summation of the CIA, the US Senate, corporate, industrial and banking interests and our own proclivity for racism.  ('Welcome to America, now clean our toilets')  I was pretty sure the US was definitely on the wrong side of apartheid.  We have yet to ratify sanctions against apartheid and the reason the US Ambassador gave at the time are as pathetic as our rationalizations regarding torture.  Are we really the good guys?.

"Invictus"

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

"Invictus" is a short poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley.

On 5 August 1962 Mandela was arrested after living on the run for seventeen months, and was imprisoned in the Johannesburg Fort. The arrest was made possible because the U.S. Central intelligence Agency (CIA) tipped off the security police as to Mandela's whereabouts and disguise.