Panda Wednesday

We haven't forgotten about you, o noble Centoniacs.

But things are busy.

Sooooon we shall be back up, at full speed.

Here's a cute Panda!

Britain Hearts John Bolton

...


NOT!

The Moustache causes our greatest [and, really, only major] gwot ally to split town:

Britain has rejected a proposal by John Bolton, America's combative ambassador to the United Nations, to block the upcoming UN budget as a tactic to push throughdisputed reforms.

The rare public disagreement between the two close allies comes as the showdown over reforms at the UN's New York headquarters becomes increasingly acrimonious.

Britain has rebuffed a Bolton move to join him in refusing to pass the organisation's 2006 budget until member states approve wide-ranging management reforms.

To the irritation of Mr Bolton, many developing nations are bitterly opposed to changes that they claim are driven by American political pressure. He suggested last week that talks on the 2006 and 2007 budgets could be postponed as a means to overcome the trenchant resistance from the "G77" bloc of developing countries. He also threatened that the United States could seek an alternative to the UN for solving international problems in future.

Britain strongly supports the reform package, but along with the other 24 EU states it has ruled out a budget delay. "We are not in favour of holding any individual items or the budget hostage to other issues but we do say very clearly that by the end of this year we need clarity and a determination to tackle a better management for the United Nations," said the British ambassador Emyr Jones Parry.

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, said that any delay in approving next year's budget would create a "serious financial crisis". Mr Bolton says a temporary budget could be passed to ensure UN operations did not grind to a halt.

...

"The hostility and conflict in the debate about reforms illustrate the many fault lines in the organisation," said a senior Western envoy. "It is going to be a long hard slog."

Mr Bolton, a long-time and vocal UN critic, arrived in New York four months ago with a reputation as an uncompromising tough talker. Privately, British diplomats express surprise that he has not made greater efforts to cultivate them or build alliances. "You're either with him or against him," said one.

Developing nations against the American interest? Why could that be...?

"Alternatives to the UN" to solving international conflict...? Like... Invasion?

With or Against...? naaah. The guy's a kitten! You Old Europeans don't even give a guy a chance. It's not like he's trying to bankrupt the UN. Just, you know... cripple it beyond use.

[Because, remember, to Mr. Bolton the UN's only actionable function seems to be "getting in the way of America," and Papa-Stache don't like that.]

Vietnam Refilmed

Early on the rapid decline into the cesspool that this war has become, many people began comparing it to America's part in the Vietnam war. Those on the right quickly mocked this similarity, with some actual reasoned argument as to why this war was unlike Vietnam. For many of us, though, it was quickly reduced to a war more closely related to Vietnam than, say, the second World War. The domino theory replayed in reverse [in Vietnam, we were stopping "all the little countries" from toppling under the weight of the falling dominos of Communism around them; here we were instead tipping the first dominoes of Democracy]; the War in our homes on Television; the recent use of white phosphorus and potentially versions of napalm. One war is not any other in history, but they may share many similarities.

And now, in a very sad twist of fate this war is being filmed with a lot of similarity to that one.

In Apocolypse Now, and many other Vietnam films there were scenes of random, gleeful shootings by Americans into civilians; with a bumping soundtrack, we watched young kids laughing as they strafed whole towns. We were watching, then, filmed recreations of what we feared, and somehow knew, was happening. In the above link, we see something we couldn't have even concieved as happening- and it's the same fucking scene. It's the same thing.

Remove the helicopter, replace with a moving car. Remove the seventies soundtrack, and replace with a hipsterish Elvis song. Remove the faces of the Americans, but replace with the knowledge that the guys pulling the trigger are American defense contractors. Remove the Vietnamese actors; replace with actual, real, living breathing Iraqis- citizens.

The video I've linked to above through Crooks and Liars is as horrifying as anything else we've seen in the war. The video itself is not as shocking as what is contained within it- random and astounding violence. It's creepy, to be sure. But it is also simply sad.

I can't purport to claim knowledge of what the war in Iraq looks like on the ground. There's a blogger at Spittle & Ink who is on his way to Iraq to do just that- so he'll give us the insights. But while I can't claim anything, what I see is terrifying definition and focus of the war- it is random, victimizing, ferocious, gleeful, ideologically fun, and completely unaccountable.

The Dominos Fall

What more evidence of corruption in the Republican party do you need than person after person being indicted, investigated, arrested, and pleading guilty to various forms of corruption? Today's Corruption comes in the form of California Representative Randy Duke Cunningham, who admits to taking huge bribes and various fraud charges. The Duke currently sits on the House Appropriations Committee. Anybody see a problem with that? Nah. Politics as usual.

Al Zarqawi Update: The Betrayal

Juan Cole says that various rebel groups in Iraq are willing and ready to turn over Iraq Qaeda leader Al Zarqawi upon certain conditions. Notably: that American forces vacate the country, and that Al Zarqawi is turned over to the Iraqi leadership.

In Other News: The US has been secretly meeting with Insurgent groups.

Again.

Buffalo Status Updates Pending...

Bruce Willis

I agree with Atrios on this one, which probably won't surprise many: Who, indeed, does care, really? Conservative blogger tBogg is all up in presumptive arms about a potential Bruce Willis film that takes place in the current Iraq War, and about how liberals will want it to just die in "development hell." Atrios first, [to taint your perspective] then tBogg [then the General]:

Unlike conservatives who appear to see every Hollywood movie as an affirmation or challenge to their entire belief system I don't actually care if Bruce Willis gets to make his war movie or if it dies in "development hell."

Still, one has to wonder why they're so excited to see fiction about the war that they're mostly not willing to go see in person (it's still going on guys, in case you didn't notice) and about which they stamp their feet and shriek every time the dreaded MSM shows any kind of footage of.

Well, no, one doesn't really.

Atrios' point that conservatives seem to be most threatened by the cultural affirmation in media is really fascinating. He's dead on, here. They either accept a piece of literature or film as underscoring their moral principles or undermining it, and they accept or reject, vehemently, based on that code. But film is complex, and often they omit, misread, or at least culturally mispercept, the various interplays of meanings and values in the work. [Shocking, isn't it? because it's not like they don't have this same habit with the Good Book or anything...]

tBogg:

Citing the success of pro-war film The Passion of the Christ, the Hollywood editors of Open Robe Media are engorged with warlust and, since they have their finger on the pulse of the American heartland after flying over it two weeks ago to get sloppy drunk in New York, they think the time is right for a rah-rah all-American Mission Accomplished movie:

Die Hard star Bruce Willis is taking on two Hollywood traditions in his attempt, reported by the Timesonline Sunday, to make a pro-war feature film about United States involvement in Iraq. Willis is bucking a nearly unbroken skein of Tinseltown anti-war films that goes back to such Vietnam era favorites as Coming Home and Platoon. And the actor is doing it not with mainstream media source material, but basing his movie on the reporting of a blogger - former Green Beret Michael Yon. Chosen by Willis for his story is Yon's on the scene reporting of the heroics of the Deuce Four unit in Mosul, Iraq.

As Hollywood insiders would tell you, however, despite the participation of a bankable star, the film is still far from making it to the silver screen. Nevetheless, blogs are weighing in heavily in support of Willis, and of Yon, as if the movie were already a fait accompli. Betsy's Page has praise for Yon and wishes Willis luck. Captain's Quarters sees the potential movie as an antidote to the "idiotic Constant Gardner." The Bernoulli Effect wonders if its the next The Passion of the Christ. PJMedia's RogerLSimon also sees box office gold, if the film is made, and relates its potential to a poll in the Washington Post. And The Minefield is just plain "excited!"

Little word so far from liberal blogs that are probably hoping the project dies in what is known in Hollywood as "Development Hell."

Well it would be unkind of us to wish that it dies in "development hell" since it already comes with a deathwish of it's own in the name of Bruce Willis who is a decade past his action hero days...unless you're one of the few, the proud, the couldn't get into the movie you really wanted to see, and saw Hart's War or Tears of the Sun.

And Jeebus knows that the American public is just clamoring for flag-waving war movies like The Great Raid which pulled down a whopping $10 million at the American box office; not that the folks who green-light movies take such things into account. But Captain Cubicle gives it a thumbs-up because it's not like non-war movie The Constant Gardener and Roger "Scenes From A Mall" Simon sees "box-office gold" which kind of speaks for itself, so if the movie doesn't make it to the screen it's because Hollywood is objectively pro-terrorist and hates it when movies make lots of money like Saving Private Ryan

On the other hand, they could get Jason Apuzzo to direct and that guy who wrote Scooby Doo to write the screenplay.

I smell a hit.

Well, I smell something...

Atrios misses some of the more important cultural analyses from tBogg's perception [and yes, i will continue to cap that 'B' even though he does not]. tBogg's article takes place in a kind of preemptive conservative grouch-cloud- he's lamenting the fact that those terrible liberals have already dashed their plans once again and should be condemned for the cultural oppressors they are- even though absolutely nothing has happened yet, and, really, anyway, who cares? Really. Nobody's going to go out and protest the movie, demand that it should be shut down. Hell, lots of liberals may even go and enjoy it. Contemporary protesting of movies and demanding their immediate withdrawl seems to be owned by the cultural conservatives. [Consider, for instance, the different reactions to Last Temptation of Christ and Passion of the Christ] [links to come!]

But that language couldn't be more telling: films like The Constant Gardner, a haunting film about Africa and the rape of the nation by huge pharmaceuticals, played out in a nice, sparce, mystery story, are useless culturally because they are "non-war" films. The values of corruption in Africa by the West are not part of the cultural conversation to conservatives- this problem should be dismissed by virtue of non-interest [and yet, tBogg dismisses who the real Interests are in Africa]. One wonders what tBogg thought of Jarhead [but I don't care to search], which is itself a non-war film as well, masquerading as a warfilm.

And what is the greatest contemporary war-film success for tBogg?

The Passion of the Christ.

Ahhhh yes. War. It's beautiful when it is reduced to the thousand-lash torture of the Messiah while it removes every meaningful philosophical word the Messiah had said.

Strong Consensus

Anybody out there think there's a certain discrepancy, maybe even a boldfaced absurd attempt at manipulating the country, when The "Stay the Course in Iraq" Administration simultaneously claims that they refuse to leave a country they've left in utter chaos because of their Invasion until we "finish the job we started," AND a "strong consenus" for their as-yet-unannounced Troop Pull out plan?

I think that they're right- they can actually claim a strong consensus, but only because everybody else is quickly beginning to join the consensus against them.

Giving Thanks- Wall Street Style

From ThinkProgress we get the Wall Street Journal's "thanks giving" themed editorial opinion from a few days ago. In it, they list 5 things they want to give thanks for this year, most of them snarky and condescending. They include: Eliot Spitzer, our "friends the Mongolians" who were among the most welcoming hosts to Bush last week, Michael Doran at the NSC, pandas who are successfully expanding their population, and, shockingly, the terrible state of public schooling in New Orleans. I quote:

• Catholic schools in New Orleans. That damaged city's public schools remain closed, but at least eight of its 35 private Catholic schools are already back teaching, less than three months after Katrina. Here's a modest proposal to help that city's poorest kids: Don't reopen any of the old public schools, 102 of 117 of which were performing below the state average in any case. Make the entire city a charter and voucher testing ground, and watch the creative spirit of teachers, entrepreneurs and students start to flow.

There's an insane amount of things wrong with this statement, but firstly, it's this: If anybody's curious as to why certain populations of truly quite reasonable Katrina survivors began, en masse, to adopt the completely illogical and frightening perspective that the burst levees was in fact intentional, and that the government's ignorance of their plight and excrutiatingly slow attempts to assist them were intentional, systematic, and brutal- this is the attitude that actually helps to justify that perception.

Can you believe it? The Wall Street Journal truly thinks that the best way to educate the poor is to destroy all the schools that service the poor. As though vouchers and charters for the poor will be employed equally or reasonably in the chaos of New Orleans' infrastructure.

Rap

Obviously very light blogging thru the holiday weekend...

But until then, consider this: It's not rap's fault that the french youth rioted. As nate has briefly touched upon in earlier comments, the disenfranchisement of French youth, particularly the economically misaligned [read: "immigrant" family history] has closer parallels with hiphop subculture in America than it does with Islamicism.

And, continuing that trend: angry, violent rap lyrical content in both is a reflection of that culture - a symptom - but absolutely not a cause. At least somebody realized it. Want to know why the French immigrant youth rioted? Figure out why they're so angry and disenfranchised- it's quite simple.

Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving, AntiCs.

Enjoy the time with family and friends. There's been a lot of tragedy this year, and it's important not to lose your memories of that. But also, just enjoy the love that is in your lives.

Bombing Al-Jazeera

Over at Kos again, he comments on the fact that, if the story about Bush wanting to bomb Al-Jazeera offices in Arab-ally nation Qatar were fabrication and lies, then why are the British intelligence services so quickly moving to prosecute leakers of the memo?

If it weren't true, there'd be no need to investigate who leaked it.

Blue Country

Kos has a beautiful, if somewhat "babyblue" version of the US- a new representation of the country based on the plummeting approval ratings of The Administration and Congress.

Check it out, and feel good about it, particularly when thinking about that horribly bold RedCountry map from just under a year ago.

A couple quick thoughts:

• The Good: The pink holdouts - This is the best news thus far. The pink holdout states, those that still "support" the policies of this country. The strongest holdouts are Utah and Idaho, plus a handful more. These states represent the best news and the strongest evidence of the erosion of support of power. None of these states polls above 60% according to the chart [I know, it seems like it's unreasonably high...] but most of these states float around the 50% mark. Not that they're going to tip and turn to a majority disapproving. But the fact is that even in the strongest Conservative holdouts, The Administration and the Republican leadership are having immense troubles maintaining reasonable support.
• The Bad: The Blue Chill - The thing any reasonable Opposition needs to recognize is that the turn toward blue represented on this map does not include them as a favorable opposition. In fact, this map simply shows how awful our country is doing- there's little approval here. Therefore the Blue shows not the shifting tides of support, but the general icing of the optimism and approval of the country.

The Three Year Test

The Pope has pushed a plan forward that would allow homosexuals onto the track of becoming ordained priests in the Catholic Church... kind of:

"The Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the Seminary and to Holy Orders those who practice homosexuality, present deeply rooted homosexual tendencies or support the so-called gay culture," the document said.

But the document said when "homosexual tendencies are only the expression of a transitory problem ... these must be clearly overcome at least three years prior to diaconate ordination."

In other words, if you stopped being gay three years ago, you can be a priest [insert obvious "and then..." joke here].

This is a relatively paltry attempt at reconciliation, isn't it? This policy might signal a progressive comfort to certain populations, particularly those who have an interest in actually moving toward the priesthood. I'm no theocratic scholar, either, so the claims of the AntiC can't hold much validity beyond simple reaction, but isn't what the Catholic Church has just identified as "the expression of a transitory problem" somewhat short sighted? Their demand that if you're homosexual you must have prohibited all sexuality for 3 years time seems ridiculous, a second sexual standard- why not simply invoke celibacy?

But the "sin" is homosexuality- the actual attraction is the condemnation here. In reality, by forging the priesthood based on any interest or support of homosexuals or homosexual organizations ["support of the so-called gay culture"] The Church locks out the priesthood from various progressive organizations and movements. In a way, this is a more-conservative document than the progressive stance some claim it takes. For instance: if, as a missionary or a convert, you work with populations of AIDS victims, and in so doing you work with homosexual organizations which also act as cultural organizations for the GLBT communities, then you cannot become ordained [for at least 3 years]. As a priest, you can offer no assistance to these organizations.

This is just the start of it. It also codifies something of a Dark Ages understanding of sexuality, which can now be manipulated and used by various other culturally conservative factions for other actual social policy decisions. It furthers in the establishment a systemic concept of homosexuality as a "disorder" which must now be "transgressed."

The new document underlines that church teaching consider homosexual acts "grave sins" and also intrinsically immoral and contrary to natural law, news agncies reported. "Therefore, in no case can they be approved," it says.

"If a candidate practices homosexuality or presents deeply rooted homosexual tendencies, his spiritual director, like his confessor, have the duty to dissuade him in conscience from proceeding towards ordination," it said.

The document is sure to cause waves in the church, with some saying it will root out homosexuality in the priesthood and others saying it will cause gay priests to go underground -- what they say was one of the factors that led to the sex abuse scandal .

Rev. Fred Daley, a gay priest at St. Francis DeSales Church in Utica, New York, said he is afraid that the church's attempt to "glean out homosexuals" will "put that whole area back in the closet and will keep folks from being able to work those issues out in the seminary."

But Msgr. Steve Rohlff, rector of Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Maryland, disagreed.

"It flows obviously from the church's teaching on human sexuality, which has been constant from the First century to the 20th Century -- that homosexuality is an intrinsic disorder. It is a psychosexual disorder."

He added, "Does that mean that somebody is wicked or evil? No. It means they have a psychosexual disorder."

Far from a progressive move by the conservative Church- and far from a reasonable one, either.

Smoke 'Em Out of Their Holes

Jeremy Scahill over at the HuffPo has an interesting and distressing piece up entitled "Did Bush plan to bomb al Jazeera's Headquarters?":

If reports circulating in the British press today turn out to be true, there could be another smoking gun memo floating around across the Atlantic. The reports circulating in the British press today turn out to be true, there could be another smoking gun memo floating around across the Atlantic. Daily Mirror reports that, during a White House meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair last April, President Bush proposed bombing the Qatar-based international headquarters of Arab TV channel al Jazeera.

"The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush," The Mirror quotes a source as saying. "He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem. There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

Bush's suggestion reportedly came during the US onslaught of Fallujah. al Jazeera, which is considered by many in the Arab world to be too pro-American or pro-Israel, is characterized by the administration as being anti-American because it shows the civilian face of the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The White House has shown a passionate obsession for attacking the network.

Former Labor Defense Minister Peter Kilfoyle challenged Downing Street to publish the five-page transcript of the Bush/Blair meeting. "It's frightening to think that such a powerful man as Bush can propose such cavalier actions," he said. "I hope the Prime Minister insists this memo be published. It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were the architects of war." If this report proves true, this would significantly bolster the case of those that charge that Washington has deliberately targeted al Jazeera and other news outlets and journalists during the so-called "War on Terror."

The US military has killed more than a dozen journalists in Iraq and the Pentagon has ruled all of those that it has investigated either accidents or justified killings. Among the "mistakes" that al Jazeera has endured: the US bombing of the network's Afghanistan offices in 2001, the killing of its Baghdad correspondent, Tareq Ayoub, by a US missile during the siege of Baghdad in 2003 and the torture of several of its journalists in Iraq, among them Salah Hassan and Suheib Badr Darwish, by US forces. And this is just one news outlet. The Committee to Protect Journalists says 58 journalists and 22 other media workers have been killed in Iraq since March 2003.

From the Daily Mirror Article:

The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.

"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

A Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious".

But another source declared: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

But don't worry about it, Bushy. Because this couldn't possibly make your position in the world more difficult at all. I mean, pretty much nobody's listening to these reports, true or not...

Orchinus talks often about the poitical tendencies on the right toward eliminationism toward their ideological enemies. This memo potentially is a dangerous new part of that tradition, and it goes hand in hand with Bush's continued negligence of any opposing point of view. It does show a strange reactive desire toward actual action that we haven't seen before, except in the "strategies" of right-wing lunatics such as Tom Tancredo of CO who actively believe that a preemptive nuclear strike of a major Islamic capital would be a good thing for America's image abroad and would assist us in the War on Terror.

So. If true, Bush has, in private meetings with his only staunch international ally in the War on Terror espoused the bombing of civilian targets in ally nations- and much much more disturbing- in Islamic ally nations. The only deductions to draw from this, again, if this is true, are:

• Bush is so idiotic that his capacity to help the greatest armed forces on earth should be immediately revoked;
• Bush is so absurdly stupid when it comes to international politics and media that his right to head the civil side of the nation should immediately be revoked
• Bush is childlishly naive, coming from Texas and all, and should be given a "Time Out"
• Or that Bush, and likewise, The Administration, has no interest in "winning" the global war on terror. In this instance, they have more to gain by inflaming the enemy than they do in even placating their electorate. The systems they wish to manipulate are massive and excrutiatingly dangerous on global scales.

Aik!

[Feel Free to leave any other deductions in the Comment Box!]

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UPDATE: 11:59 pm - GeneralStan
On re-reading the above, I want to state that all of this is supposition at this point. If the memo exists and is leaked, then we'll know. Yet, it is entirely possible, and certainly hopeful, that none of this has occurred. The Administration has already denounced the claims of the Daily Mirror as "outlandish," and various political interests have already begun to debate it:

A White House official said: "We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response." Ex-UK minister Peter Kilfoyle, who opposed the Iraq war, had called for a transcript of the alleged conversation to be published.

...
A Downing Street spokesman said: "We have got nothing to say about this story. We don't comment on leaked documents."

But Mr Kilfoyle - a former defence minister and leading Labour opponent of the Iraq war - has called for the full text to be published. "I believe that Downing Street ought to publish this memo in the interests of transparency, given that much of the detail appears to be in the public domain. "I think they ought to clarify what exactly happened on this occasion.

"If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces." Mr Kilfoyle said he had not seen the memo, but had learnt of its alleged contents at the time of the original leak and believed it tallied with the Mirror's report.

In a statement, al-Jazeera said it needed to be sure of the report's authenticity before reaching any conclusions and urged Downing Street to confirm its status as soon as possible. The statement said: "If the report is correct, then this would be both shocking and worrisome not only to al-Jazeera but to media organisations across the world. "It would cast serious doubts in regard to the US administration's version of previous incidents involving al-Jazeera's journalists and offices."

Syriana

Basically, in "Syriana," writer/director Stephen Gaghan (the Oscar-winning adapter of "Traffic"), former CIA agent Bob Baer and producers George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh have made a thriller for people who read the Financial Times.

It's also a companion piece in many ways to a great movie Clooney starred in several years ago, "Three Kings."

Shot in Morocco and Dubai, "Syriana" may be an eye opener to Westerners who don’t give much thought to world events.

...
Indeed, the actors are so uniformly good from the start that they all seem very real, as does the situation. This is "Fahrenheit 411," meaning full of urgent information that rings true in every scene. Liberals and conservatives all have to put gas in their cars. One look at the prices, and you know that "Syriana" is not far off base.

Clooney was there with an unidentified blonde who sat in the back during the Q&A with a black hat pulled down to hide her face. He gained 30 pounds to play a fictionalized Baer. On screen he looks and feels bloated, sporting a gray beard and effecting almost a waddle.

His character is no joke, though. He’s Jack Lemmon from "The China Syndrome," a whistle-blower who wakes up too late to realize his whole life has been a sham.

It’s Clooney’s best and most coherent work on the big screen, and should get him a Best Actor nomination and lots of rave reviews.

Look. We at the AntiCentenarian categorially refuse to give air or play to sleaze-ball, corporate -interest mass media outlets who write non-sensical, antipatriotic puff pieces to manipulative films and other media crafted by the coastal elitists. And we particularly disdain of any media outlets that blow so much hot air into George Clooney's already bloated ego- who do you think that guy's looking out for? Certainly not you. He's got cash comin' in and he doesn't care whose minds he has to erase or what cultures he has to destroy by constantly ramming his liberal socialist nonsense down our throats. A good actor? Please. He's just trying to make a fast buck by spewing vitriolic anti-American nonsense.

So we at the AntiCentenarian hereby denouce those liberal collaborator windbags over at... Fox News.

The Chemical Weapon

Kos points out the particularly strange irony that seems to have arisen over the Pentagon's repeated assertions that their dropping white phosphorus potentially on civilian targets does not constitute usage of a chemical weapon.

White phosphorus' valid usage in the field includes a use as a luminous marker or cloaking device, and as an illuminatory device for enemy locations. However, due to it's ability to shear unprotected flesh directly from a human body, and to bring up boils, bleeding sores, and open wounds within seconds of exposure, it also has found a certain favor as an incindiary weapon. As an Italian television station has reported, it's possible, even, that it has been used on civilians in Iraq.

The Pentagon's position has, at very best, shifted- but they have always ascertained that white phosporus is not listed as a chemical weapon, and therefore, this entire affair is a non-affair.

This position might be accepted, if it were not for for ThinkProgress' sluething work...

What You Get When You Beg The Bank For More

Bush had many reasons to go into China recently - urging further support in the global war on terror, urging the opening of democratic avenues, and the addressing vital issues of America's trade deficit in China.

Well, what do you get when you near-bankrupt an entire country, and you finance your wars and tax cuts with loans from China, and then you beg China to be more open to your ideology?

Turns out, not much.

-Note: In fairness, it may just be the President's bargaining style. Which, if his door-opening style is any indicator, would be a severe disadvantage.

Wasn't Asked

Over at Aravois' place, we learn that this morning on the ol television, Donald Rumsfled let go with an interesting tidbit that should intrigue all reasonable-minded historians of the current age.

For context, let me set the stage: George W. Bush has taken over the Presidency after a hotly contested, painful, drawn out election in 2000, whereby a SCOTUS ruling that self-terminates with this one case and this one case only, ends any recounts of ballots in Florida [recounts which are required by Florida's constitution]. This gives Bush the win.

Bush, [who had run on the two basic tenets of political personality of the Washington Outsider who can Bring Change, and the first MBA CEO President. Bush later bankrupted the country.] nominates a slew of very-old-hat conservative insiders and ideologues, including, as his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, a man who had shaken Saddam Hussein's hand in the 80's.

September 11, 2001. Then the so-called "war on terror." All of a sudden, Colin Powell is at the UN saying we need to invade Iraq- preemptive strikes on an imminent threat. Later, when asked about Powell's response in The Meeting convened whereby The President requested from all of his greatly learned officers of council thier professional and valued opinion on the need to invade Iraq, Powell says: What meeting? There never was one. I was never asked.

Today. Rumsfeld- the Secretary of Defense, when asked about his learned opinion as to whether the US should proceed with the Invasion, says: "I wasn't asked."

"I didn't advocate invasion, I wasn't asked." - Rumsfeld on THIS WEEK, this morning.

Now keep in mind, Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, says he wasn't asked either.

If true, that means George Bush went to war in Iraq without asking the opinion of the Secretary of Defense of the Secretary of State. Who did he get his advice from, anyone? Are they telling us the president of the United States, who had no foreign policy experience whatsoever, had never visited another country in his life (give or take one or two I believe), made a decision to go to war in Iraq without asking the advice of his top advisers on the issue?

The AntiCentenarian, drawing from its centuries-old established political advocacy and studies of geopolitics, would argue that invading another country without consulting your Cabinet members is probably not a good idea. But much worse- not consulting at least the man in charge of your armed forces for his opinion- simple idiocy.

Avian Flu: The Choice

For those of you afraid of dying by Avian Flu [that means you, nate]: Senate Republicans propose their absolute truest values. Check this out guys, I'm not even kidding:

WHO has urged all countries to come up with plans for tackling a pandemic of bird flu, but U.S. efforts stalled on Thursday when Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives refused to approve funding for Bush's $7.1 billion plan.

After days of intensive talks between the House and Senate, negotiators dropped a plan for $8 billion in funds that Democrats pushed through the Senate last month.

Conservative Republicans in the House insisted that an emergency U.S. effort to stockpile vaccines and anti-viral drugs that could be effective against the deadly flu would have to be paid for by cutting other government programs.

Yes. House Republicans [led by the spector of Tom Delay] have vowed that the President's own Avian Flu pandempic pre-positioning plan would not be supported until other government programs are cut. In other words: If you are a poor American, expect the same beligerant non-assistance unless you take the cuts in medicare, food stamps, learning assistance, and other welfare programs.

Other Americans- your House Repulican leadership says you can't get your flu protections [which, currently, kills 50% of those it infects] unless you agree that everybody beneath you either dies by the flu or dies by social neglect.

Wow.




Wow...

Torture: Drive Thru Intelligence

We've spent some time here at the AntiCentenarian talking about how torture tends to produce terrible intelligence, even in its best forms [the opposite version of intelligence gathering, which deals with manipulating trust and a system of rewards RATHER than torture, tends to produce excellent, and reliable, intelligence]. Atrios has perhaps the most concise version of why torture, not in spite of this fallacy but because of this "feature" is a necessary component to The Administration's GWOT.

Think of it like a fast food meal- you're really hungry, you need sustenence. You know that if you spend some time and cook a meal all by yourself, it'll probably be better for you.

But... right over there, there's a McD's, and for like $3 bucks you can fill your gut. Who cares about long term colon cancer, obesity, bad-attitudes, when you're this hungry?

Likewise- The Administration needs intelligence. They need intelligence that supports their claims that Iraq has WMDs, and that it's been connected to Al Qaeda. It'd be great if they had intelligence that stated that it even had training grounds for terrorists within its borders. Now- we could send in investigators, spend lots of time and money doing actual intelligence work... OR. There's this dude: al-Libi. He was captured in Afghanistan, an al Qaeda guy. If we just... you know... coerce these things out of him...

In the end, it's the same as the fast food: you're less fulfilled, the nutritional value is atrocious, and there's long-term problems you can't even begin to justify.

Atrios:

A recent Times article pointed out that the methods for torture we used were taken adapted from tolitarian communist techniques valued not for their success in obtaining the truth but in their ability to obtain false confessions.

Apparently that wasn't really a bug, but a feature. The Times also recently pointed that even though the Bush administration was warned that one of the information sources, al Libi, was full of shit they kept on using his information to justify the war.

The Times article quoted a Defense Intelligence Report claiming that al-Libi "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" although this stretches the concept of "intentionally" somewhat.


You see, al-Libi was a fine graduate of our exciting new school of interrogation. On him we used torture techniques designed to encourage the subject to tell the interrogaters what they wanted to hear. And, miracle of miracles, he did indeed tell them what they wanted to hear.

...
Just to recap. Bush administration needs evidence to support their war. They use torture techniqes designed to extract false confessions to obtain that "evidence," which they then use to sell the war despite knowing full well of the lack of reliability of the information.

So. It's not a good idea to torture, right?

But this explains why Cheney's so hell-bent to maintain the practice- because it's going to keep producing those results he so vehemently cherishes- little gems of terrible intelligence masked as actual information he can use to walk all over the world.

The Vatican on Intelligent Design: No Thank You

The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.

The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.

"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

His comments were in line with his previous statements on "intelligent design" — whose supporters hold that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Proponents of intelligent design are seeking to get public schools in the United States to teach it as part of the science curriculum. Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism — a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation — camouflaged in scientific language, and they say it does not belong in science curriculum.

There's alot of competing interests in the ID Story- there's the science community attempting to defend scientific theory and practice; the protestant religious community attempting to interject in the social/cultural "wars" against liberalism's various influences [including homosexual marriage, abortion issues, etc.]; the conservative political movement who simply uses and abuses the cultural movement for reinforcement of their political power. Now the Vatican weighs in- really not on either side of the issue. They're just as interested in making sure that the cultural conservatives of America do not dictate theocratic thinking globally- that's their arena. But an interesting intervention that people should heed. Fact is, there IS no place in the science classroom for ID, and that those parties trying to put it in there aren't really fighting for ID, per se, but are fighting for a variety of other conservative, controlling social measures.

Life After Katrina

Watching a very eloquent woman named Carlanda on CNN Live today who has been struggling in the Atlanta region following her family's evacuation from New Orleans. She's speaking about the continued struggle to move forward toward stability, and hearing the newest deadline by FEMA: No more funding for your living expenses after December 1.

Some of her thoughts, paraphrased, of course:

• I have no choice but to continue trying to make my life on my own. There is nothing else the government is willing to do to help.
• FEMA and other assisstance organizations have misappropriated funds- they had enough money allocated and donated: as of Oct, they had over $400 million dollars, more than enough to assist all of those still living in temporary housing for six months [not the 2 months provided]. [Over 150,000 people currently live in hotels, and many more live in temporary apartments, etc]
• The government has definitely failed us. All I can do is continue to try to find work and pray.

Anybody want to explain to her, to me, and to all of us, why our country is so inept that it still can't figure out how to help citizens meet their core needs after this disaster? This is incredible, and horrifying.

The Plame Affair: A New Jury

Guess what, kids. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is about to convene a new Grand Jury and show them new evidence in the ongoing Plame Affair investigation. This investigation is far from over.

The special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case announced today that he wants to convene a new federal grand jury, a clear signal that the indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr. may not be the last episode in the affair.

"The investigation is continuing," the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, said in a court filing here. He said the investigation would now involve a grand jury different from the one that indicted Mr. Libby, a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, three weeks ago.

The Plame Affair, again, is the criminal investigation we hope will prove the willfull attempt to expose the undercover wife of an Administration critic who had disputed the legitamacy of one of the key pieces of evidence used to take this country to war. It has since been shown, by lack of absolutely any evidence on the ground in Iraq, that nearly every reason The Administration has given to us as justification for the war has been, simply, wrong.

Whatever the outcome of The Plame Affair, there are still massive faults in the reasons we've undertaken this war, the ways that The Administration offered intelligence and debate to the public [or even to members of the Cabinet], and the administration of the war and the followup from the war.

And... I'm done rambling.

Vote Dick Cheney- Vice President for Torture

Pretty frightening, and obvious, language coming from former head of the CIA Stansfield Turner:

Cheney has lobbied against the legislation, prompting Turner to say he's "embarrassed that the United State has a vice president for torture. I think it is just reprehensible."

Turner, a retired Navy admiral who headed the intelligence agency from 1977 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter, stood firm on his earlier remarks Friday and, in a CNN interview, scoffed at assertions that challenging the administration's strategy aided the terrorists' propaganda efforts.

"It's the vice president who is out there advocating torture. He's the one who has made himself the vice president in favor of torture," said Turner, who from 1972 to 1974 was president of the Naval War College, a think tank for strategic and national security policy.

Cheney's positioning of himself at the very top of The Administration's power structure has fed torture's enactment as viable American policy. It's insane. Many of use were "concerned" when Dick Cheney, on the hunt for Bush's VP nominee, found himself. But it truly has turned out to be far worse than we could have imagined. He's restructured America's practices into the forefront of moral compromise, hypocrisy, and confusion. The only goal apparently being that he then gets to do whatever the hell he wishes.

Iraq Pull Out: The Political Triangle

The President: "This is not going to happen on my watch." - Conviction of the correct perception, or ramblings of a crazy ideological madman?

The Representative, Jean Schmidt: "A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bop, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do." - Murtha, a Democratic Hawk, highly decorated Vietnam Veteran... a coward?

The General: "The top U.S. commander in Iraq has submitted a plan to the Pentagon for withdrawing troops in Iraq, according to a senior defense official. Gen. George Casey submitted the plan to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It includes numerous options and recommends that brigades -- usually made up of about 2,000 soldiers each -- begin pulling out of Iraq early next year."

-Stay Tuned, kids. Tomorrow can only make the picture more clear!

Woordward's Revitalization

Bob Woodward's recent disclosure that he, in fact, was among the very first to know Plame's name, and that his source was not Scooter Libby, has, according to AMERICABlog, counteracted his attempts to dismiss the Plame Affair's relevance. In fact, it has sent the hunters back into the labyrinth on the search for the minotaur at the center - exactly the opposite effect Woodward's dismissive analyses seem to have been espousing.

As Atrios has so deftly documented, Woodward has been dismissive of the Plame story -- that is, before we knew he was actually involved in it. Now, he has singlehandedly guaranteed that the story will stay in the news with a whole new round of guessing of who told him. The White House can't love that [...]

Mr Woodward's source was carefully dodged here:

A senior administration official said that neither President Bush himself, nor his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., nor his counselor, Dan Bartlett, was Mr. Woodward's source. So did spokesmen for former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; the former director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet; and his deputy, John E. McLaughlin.

A lawyer for Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff who has acknowledged conversations with reporters about the case and remains under investigation, said Mr. Rove was not Mr. Woodward's source.

Mr. Cheney did not join the parade of denials. A spokeswoman said he would have no comment on a continuing investigation. Several other officials could not be reached for comment.

Now. The Right loves Woodward's after-the-last-minute admission because they think it vindicates Libby and refutes his Indictments, and essentially cuckolds Fitz and his entire investigation. The point for refuting the charges has past- they need to war against the reasons for the investigation.

This is, of course, ridiculous. Here's four reasons why, according to the AntiC:

1. It reinvogorates interest in the investigation- it does not pull interest away. There are, currently, no more SCOTUS openings or controversies to pursue, so the best attempt on the Right currently is full-out battle against Fitz.
2. Libby was not indicted over outing Plame. His charges all stem from attempts to willfully inhibit the investigation during the investigation. The language and charges could not be more clear- so when those Righties attempt to tell you that he's been vindicated for the leak, just say "That may be so. But what about those other 5 things he was charged for, that may contribute to his imprisonment for the next 20 years?"
3. Libby's indictment does not claim he's the first person to leak the name of Valerie Plame. In fact, it states that he is the first "known" person to have done so at the time of the indictment. Woodward's insights only reopen this investigation further. It remains to be seen whether they don't actually harm Libby for further obstructions assisting/covering for whomever the initial leaker was.
4. Fitz never said his intention was to charge for the leak- he stated clearly that his job was to determine if a crime has been committed and prosecute for that crime.

So who thinks this is "good?" Well, nobody. Libby's lawyers are attempting to use it as leverage to feed any controversy or confusion going into trial. The more confused the jury is, the more it helps your client. The Right is trying to use it to invalidate the supposed reasons for the investigation. But this is just silly- the investigation is not over, nobody's been indicted for the reasons that they say have been disputed by Woodward's new admissions.

Their attempts to spin this are simply attempts to control the spin to their advantage- something they've only been able to accomplish in the past by misdirection ["Oh, Look! A New Good/Bad/Conservative/Underqualified/Excellent SCOTUS nominee who Loves/Hates abortion!"], something they cannot do know. But it's not a good thing for them. None of this investigation is.

And they know it.

And by the way, The Washington Post is relatively upset that their starchild reporter/editorjust sat on this vital information for 2 years while one of the largest scandals unfolded in the top tiers of The Administration. This is, of course, the kind of secret Woodward had build his career upon in the Nixon era- and it has become the kind of secret he keeps in order to protect that career... simply reeks of ethical, journalistic, political conflicts of interest.

Also, check out Arianna's 15 Questions for Bob.

But it's okay, Bobby [and The Administration!] Hang in there!

The Forgotten

This is incredible language. I am simply stunned by the consistent, horrifying, continual injustice inspired by Hurricane Katrina. The whole problem with what we saw unfold was a sense of complete and utter internal disconnect- "those" people on tv were not, before those moments, part of "us." They didn't feel it, we didn't feel it, and certainly, "the system," [or "the Man"] didn't feel it either.

Then Katrina. And while we began to weep because we'd seen the facts of our disconnections so evident- the system, the Man, remained cruel and ignorant [and no better spokes-person for the horrifying fact of The Man has existed in our lives before Michael Brown. What a telling example of our age of leadership].

The reason Katrina was utter societal devastation is because it exposed how much we'd lost connection, how much we'd "Forgotten" exactly what comprised of American society and culture- on absoltuely every level of culture we'd forgotten.

And NOTHING HAS CHANGED. There are many concerns that many victims, only three months later, have fallen into bureaucratic and societal hell. Good for us, eh?

More.

More.

This is our nation. And even after exposure, we're too ridiculously mis-prioritized to realize it.

-Links provided by Long-Eared Ronin



[Anti-Cynicism Protection Pills rapidly failing...]

A Change in Direction

Bush and Cheney have been striking out at the "irresponsible" "rewriting of history" by the critics of the Iraq War. However, one of their Democratic supporters, has stated that the time has come to leave Iraq:

An influential House Democrat who voted for the Iraq war called Thursday for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, another sign of growing unease in Congress about the conflict.

"It is time for a change in direction," said Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., one of Congress' most hawkish Democrats. "Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region."

Murtha estimated that all U.S. troops could be pulled out within six months. A decorated Vietnam veteran, he choked back tears during his remarks to reporters.

Murtha is no light-hearted man- he's a good, thoughtful congressman, and his decision should be mulled with reverance. He has come [later than many of us] to see that Iraq is going nowhere fast, and that it is only providing constant duress with no benefits for anybody involved. It's a tough thing to realize when he'd staked so much belief in it- but his reframed conceptualization is not the result of revisionist anti-war critics: it's the result of his own deliberation over the unimproved state of Iraq.

Cheney and Bush have begun this process of chiding "war critics" for their revisionism, for "forgetting" what they voted for, and for misleading the population- after all, they saw the same intelligence that The Administration saw; and they voted to take action and support the President!

In Frederich Nietzsche's "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" he argues that the various attempts at manipulating history unduly actually, literally, lead to the smothering of knowledge, and of life itself. That history itself can be an agent of great change and information or great stifling power. Many things are to be attributed to this including attempting to study an "objective, scientific" history or manipulating the various forms of history negatively.

There's certainly a lot of specifics in Nietzsche's work to deal with, and not all apply here. But One thing that The Administration are literally attempting to do, by co-opting the language of "revisionism" and equating it with the same negative power as "activist" [as in "activist judges"] is just what Nietzshe laments- except, intentionally. Their goal is to remove any possible inquiry into the historical circumstances of the Invasion of Iraq. They disallowed any engagement with the intelligence at the time, manipulated the intelligence, and then claim that those who have come out to critcize them are "revising" the historical record.

The revision is, clearly, being done by The Administration, but this is much more dangerous than simple defense- the goal is annihilation of the historical debate and record, for the pure sake of admonishing a couple political critics. Good work, guys. Always on top.

Rev'd Up

We've occassionally posted on the obscene maniacal christain rogue group who has actively claimed that God is enacting violent retribution upon sections of America for acceptance of a liberal lifestyle. Although... we're not talking about Pat Robertson.

Rev. Phelps and his followers at Westboro Baptist have protested and picketed the, yes, funerals of soldiers fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan because America's culture allows gays. Phelps position is clearly beyond reason, and most on the right discount him in strange ways: notably, by pinning him to the left [as obscene as anything], apparently because he pickets and protests, and not because they read any of the signs his followers hold.

But some people have had enough of his bullshit.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the rowdy bikers of the American Legion Riders, revving out of relevance the asinine hatred of Rev. Phelps:

The church members, who have protested soldiers’ funerals in Oklahoma and elsewhere, say God is punishing U.S. soldiers for defending a country that harbors gays.

They stood on a street corner in sight of the church and waved signs with messages such as “God Hates the USA” and “Don’t Worship the Dead.”

But even as they unfolded their signs, their protest was met with a counter protest that erupted in a full-throttle roar.

About 70 members of the leather-clad American Legion Riders from Kansas and Oklahoma revved their motorcycles for about 30 minutes, drowning out anything the church members tried to say.

Cregg Hansen, a Vietnam-era veteran who helped lead the counter protest, said Doles’ family had wanted to hear the engines’ roar.

The riders said they plan to do the same if the group attempts to disrupt other soldiers’ funerals within riding distance.

“It ain’t right to protest a sacred thing like this,” said Ron Scrivner, a rider whose father is a veteran. “He (Doles) died for his country. They ought to show him the respect he deserves.”

This belief that America is suffering because of the shunning of God has to be dealt with- it's absolutely absurd, backwards, regressive thinking. It doesn't solve any problems; it doesn't engage with any sense of respect. Good work to Mr. Scrivner and his crew for- not silencing- overwhelming Phelps' messages of hatred.

The Plame Affair: Woodward's Kinks

Journalistic Hero Bob Woodward has thrown a few kinks into his credibility by... well, testifying this week to Fitzgerald that Libby wasn't his source, crafting copious amounts of contradictions in his statements over the past few months as to the importance of the Plame Affair. There's lots that Woodward has and has not said about the Affair, but it remains clear: Woodward's current career depends on him being an Administration Insider, and he's not willing to risk that by saying that the Administration did something bad. Like... being indicted for outing a CIA agent.

Check out all of Atrios' posts today. Pretty crazy stuff.

The 1985 Paradox

Judge Alito has been attempting to temper some pretty personal language he used in an interview form in 1985.

The Samuel Alito who argued against abortion rights in 1985 was "an advocate seeking a job" with the conservative Reagan administration, the Alito who is now a Supreme Court nominee told Democrats on Tuesday.

The current version "thinks he's a wiser person" with "a better grasp and understanding about constitutional rights and liberties," senators said as Alito tried to downplay a 20-year-old document in which he asserted "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

...
In that document, the younger Alito touted his anti-abortion work in the solicitor general's office, work "in which I personally believe very strongly."

The crux of this is obvious: what, exactly, Mr. Alito, makes your current situation any different in the very least? Aren't you now, simply yet again an advocate seeking a job? This is a concern that Sen. Ted Kennedy has been asking as well, following his meetings with Alito.

Now, it's possible that all of this is simply an attempt to dissuade senators from feeling the relevance of that previous position by Alito, and it is possible that his perception has changed since then. But it's also an interesting paradox that he's framed. Indeed, it is similar to the logical game where you write two statements on both sides of a single piece of paper: "The statement on the other side of this paper is True," says one side, while on the reverse it says "The statement on the other side of this paper is False."

The fact is, it puts both statements into an infinite loop of believability - one cannot accept either as factual because they it is simply too contradictory. Alito, by framing the discrepency into a world of "job seeking" while seeking a job, has achieved this very effect.

Why is this dangerous? Because he's a very smart guy. Perhaps he didn't see this as a consequence of concern, but everything like this is of great consequence when it comes to constitutional law. You see, I don't think it's a good thing for the stated opinion of any SCOTUS justice to move every case into inconsolable paradox. This is a bad idea.

And besides: it means that at some point in history Mr. Alito has lied to his interviewers. Either that time was then or that time is now. But which one is acceptable? It might be possible that he has fabricated his position every single time.

Great. I love this guy.

Crazy Bush

Is George losing his marbles?

Rumor has it that he's retreated from outside contact and only speaking on a daily basis to mother Barbara, wife Laura, Condi, and Karen Hughes.

Check out Armando and Hunter at dKos for some fun reads.

It may be simple supposition or jibberjabber, but hey, let me sum up the singular reason this story is great: The man has inspired mania, division, insanity, and rage among his country. It's nice to think that he's finally sharing in that.

Plan B: A Political Prescription

Senior Food and Drug Administration officials were told that the application to sell the "morning-after pill" without prescription was going to be rejected before the staff completed its scientific review and months before the decision was made public, government investigators reported yesterday.

A report by the independent Government Accountability Office also said senior FDA officials, including then-Commissioner Mark B. McClellan, were actively involved in the politically sensitive decision -- one of four aspects of the agency's actions that the investigators called "unusual."

The GAO report, requested by Congress more than 16 months ago, said the agency did not follow its normal procedures in making the scientific assessment of the Plan B proposal and in having a top official sign off on the eventual decision after lower-ranking scientists refused.

Critics of the FDA's handling of the issue said the report confirmed their view that the agency had allowed politics to trump science. The application was strongly opposed by some social and religious conservatives, including 49 members of Congress who wrote a letter to President Bush asking that the application be rejected.

The FDA, in a statement responding to the report, said: "We question the integrity of the investigative process that results in such partial conclusions by the GAO. The report mischaracterizes facts and does not appear to take into consideration the input provided by the FDA."

But Susan F. Wood, a former FDA assistant commissioner for women's health who left her job to protest the agency's actions, said: "This report is a sad reminder of why I felt compelled to resign. Instead of improving and advancing women's health, the FDA leadership is ignoring its process and not relying on science and medical evidence."

But I'm sure that everything was done with the best of intentions, and that our Republican helmed FDA and Congress will allow full acountability and transparency:

In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) said the GAO was unable to fully assess McClellan's role because he would not speak with investigators and because the agency provided no documents reflecting his communications with other officials. The FDA told the investigators that e-mails to and from McClellan had been deleted and that written memos were routinely destroyed.

Raising the possibility that this practice was a violation of federal record-keeping law, the congressmen wrote that "as the Plan B decision makes clear, retaining the documents of the agency head is essential for the transparent operation of government."

Unfortunately, kids, science, medicine and health are not privy to the Target policy of selective moral qualification. The fact is this fits perfectly nestled into the cultural activist attempt to reduce women's rights to determine their own health of the current leadership. It also shows the same kind of political pressure exerted on intelligence and scientific information across the board by The Administration- from selective environmental data that supports their devastating "Clear Skies" laws which allow industry to spew copios amounts of pollution to their pressures and many manipulations on intelligence faculties to twist intelligence to support their justifications for Invasion. This is an Administration, and a cultural ideology, that does not respect intelligence, science, or inquiry, and cannot redeem their positions any other way than underhanded, ethically devoid political trickery.

Shame, really. Because they might find out that a woman's right to determine her health, in the long run, ends up building cultural health. Motherhood is about nurturing health- but The Administration's interests are in stifling, controlling, paternal disgust.

Political Accountability in Security

When your country suffers dramatic terrorism attacks, largely due to failures in your own government and intelligence capacities, the appropriate response is to hold those officers who failed the country to some degree accountable for those failures. When it turns out that security agents and intelligence agents mishandled vital intelligence, it's time for them to go.

That's not The AntiCentenarian's philosophy, that's Jordan's:

Eleven top Jordanian officials, including the kingdom's national security adviser, resigned Tuesday in the wake of last week's triple hotel bombings, state-run TV announced.

King Abdullah II appointed Marouf al-Bakhit, Jordan's ambassador to Israel, to replace outgoing security chief Saad Kheir, a former chief of Jordan's intelligence department.

No details were given for the resignation of Kheir and 10 others -- including Royal Court chief and former Prime Minister Faisal Fayez, one of the king's closest confidants -- and prominent religious advisers to King Abdullah.

Or, I guess you could just lie about it, cover it up, and invade a country. Either are appropriate responses.

Mixed Signals

The low-rating President has stated that anti-war Democrats are sending US Soldiers in the theatre of battle "mixed signals." Bush seems to be co-opting his own action here and pinning it on Democrats. Shrewd re-assignment of language, ace, but not shrewd enough.

"Mixed signals" might better be assigned where they belong: to sending soldiers to war without armor, and failing to reimburse them like you're legally liable for buying their own; or slashing benefits while extending the period of the war into unknown territory. "Mixed Signals" to the enemy is saying we "do not torture" while... ahem... torturing people to death.

"Mixed Signals" is not: calling into question the reason we're in a failing, disastrous war.

Mixed signals is having the most ridiculously moronic president in history with the most manipulative and ideologically corrupt movement exedrting force through him, and claiming that democracy can be promoted under those circumstances. That signal is the one we're all corroborating - and desperately hoping to rectify asap.

Hitchens Hearts Chalabi

Cristopher Hitchins has published what equates to a Chalabi puff-piece on Slate today. More specifically, it rightly calls into debate the left's insistence that Chalabi is a master-manipulator who had conned the neoconservative movement into a war through fraudulent practice and misinformation. I say "rightly" because, franly, Hitchins is right, but he's also missing the fact that the debate does not rely on Chalabi's presumed fraud. Rather, the neoconservatives adopted and funded Chalabi because he presented and represented an opportunity they could use to exploit their agenda- Chalabi's role in the motivation for the war in Iraq is not one of fraud and manipulation, exactly; it is, rather, much more frightening- it is one of convergence between Chalabi's self-righteous agenda to overthrow Saddam Hussein for his personal power-trip and the ideological desire of teh neoconservatives to enforce democracy and open markets. Chalabi didn't manipulate American interests: his interests happened to be in parallel to the ideological interests of a certain well-funded group of American neoconservatives.

Hitchins:

It was, of course, the sinuous and dastardly forces of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress who persuaded the entire Senate to take leave of its senses in 1998. I know at least one of its two or three staffers, who actually admits to having engaged in the plan. By the same alchemy and hypnotism, the INC was able to manipulate the combined intelligence services of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the CIA, the DIA, and the NSA, who between them employ perhaps 1.4 million people, and who in the American case dispose of an intelligence budget of $44 billion, with only a handful of Iraqi defectors and an operating budget of $320,000 per month. That's what you have to believe.

A few little strokes of Occam's razor are enough to dispose of this whole accumulation of fantasy. Suppose that every single Iraqi defector or informant, funneled out of a closed and terrified society by the INC, had been a dedicated and conscious fabricator. How could they persuade a vast organization, equipped with satellite surveillance that can almost read a license plate from orbit, of a plain untruth? (Leave to one side the useful intelligence that was provided by the INC and that has been acknowledged.) Well, what was the likelihood that ambiguous moves made by Saddam's agents were also innocuous moves? After decades in which the Baathists had been caught cheating and concealing, what room was there for the presumption of innocence? Hans Blix, the see-no-evil expert who had managed to certify Iraq and North Korea as kosher in his time, has said in print that he fully expected a coalition intervention to uncover hidden weaponry.

Occam's razor is always interesting tool to bring out, particularly because one can assume that one's own usage of Occam's razor is the only possible solution to the question at hand. But which will really be easier to understand in simple terms of motivation: that Chalabi's position was so justified by fact that he could not have possibly have been the only defector to provide this information; or that Chalabi's life-long goal happened be the correct shape to fill the hole that the neoconservative agenda had created in its agenda of exporting democracy? Chalabi found himself with a very friendly audience who shared his motivated interests in overthrowing Saddam Hussein. It's as simple as that.

The problem then becomes this: Hitchins is right to criticize the factions of the left who claim Chalabi fraudulently led the country to invade Iraq; or that the Bush Administration had predetermined it would use the IRC's information to invade before it was elected. Neither of these are correct, wholly, nor are they useful ways to examine the Invasion. It is, rather, much much worse than that, because both incidences, Chalabi's influence of American conservative think tanks which then came to power and America's invasion of Iraq, are privy to one very dangerous precedent:

Opportunism.

In this manner, Chalabi has been utterly consistent. His life is filled with political and ethical opportunism, none of which would be acceptible. He has been convicted in absentia of the largest bank fraud Jordanian history; has faced several legal woes in Iraq; and, when the opportunity arose, he opened secret connections to Iran, connections which have led to office raids by, yes, American intelligence agents. He is currently under investigation by several US agencies.

So, as Salon published in May of 2004, Chalabi's "con" of the neocons was not one of fraud, but was entirely consistent with the shady opportunism he has exhibited as recently as last week: he shrewdly, simply, told the neocons what they wanted to hear at the time he wanted them to hear it:

When the definitive history of the current Iraq war is finally written, wealthy exile Ahmed Chalabi will be among those judged most responsible for the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. More than a decade ago Chalabi teamed up with American neoconservatives to sell the war as the cornerstone of an energetic new policy to bring democracy to the Middle East -- and after 9/11, as the crucial antidote to global terrorism. It was Chalabi who provided crucial intelligence on Iraqi weaponry to justify the invasion, almost all of which turned out to be false, and laid out a rosy scenario about the country's readiness for an American strike against Saddam that led the nation's leaders to predict -- and apparently even believe -- that they would be greeted as liberators. Chalabi also promised his neoconservative patrons that as leader of Iraq he would make peace with Israel, an issue of vital importance to them. A year ago, Chalabi was riding high, after Saddam Hussein fell with even less trouble than expected.

Now his power is slipping away, and some of his old neoconservative allies -- whose own political survival is looking increasingly shaky as the U.S. occupation turns nightmarish -- are beginning to turn on him. The U.S. reversed its policy of excluding former Baathists from the Iraqi army -- a policy devised by Chalabi -- and Marine commanders even empowered former Republican Guard officers to run the pacification of Fallujah. Last week United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi delivered a devastating blow to Chalabi's future leadership hopes, recommending that the Iraqi Governing Council, of which he is finance chair, be accorded no governance role after the June 30 transition to sovereignty. Meanwhile, administration neoconservatives, once united behind Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress he founded, are now split, as new doubts about his long-stated commitment to a secular Iraqi democracy with ties to Israel, and fears that he is cozying up to his Shiite co-religionists in Iran, begin to emerge. At least one key Pentagon neocon is said to be on his way out, a casualty of the battle over Chalabi and the increasing chaos in Iraq, and others could follow.

If Hitchins defends Chalabi, that tells us more about Hitchins' perspective than anything- he's willing to compromise a reasonable assessment of the historical motivations that led us into war for his ideological mind-stroke, which Chalabi is all-too-willing to administer.

But the problem with Ahmed Chalabi is not Chalabi himself- he's total sleaze, and this should have been determined years ago. But the problem arises when we realize that this convergence determines the neoconservative sleaze as well. Opportunism and ideological motivation- that's all there is to it.

We Do Not Torture: Rev 1

"We Do Not Torture." - George Bush, Nov. 7 2005

"...Such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack." - Dick Cheney, on the need to exempt the CIA from a John McCain sponsored anti-torture bill.

"The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement." - Dana Priest, Washington Post, Nov. 2 2005

And today, we learn more:

WASHINGTON (AFX) - CIA interrogators apparently tried to cover up the death of an Iraqi 'ghost detainee' who died while being interrogated at Abu Ghraib prison, Time magazine reported today, after obtaining hundreds of pages of documents, including an autopsy report, about the case.

The death of secret detainee Manadel al-Jamadi was ruled a homicide in a Defense Department autopsy, Time reported, adding that documents it recently obtained included photographs of his battered body, which had been kept on ice to keep it from decomposing, apparently to conceal the circumstances of his death.

The details about his death emerge as US officials continue to debate congressional legislation to ban torture of foreign detainees by US troops overseas, and efforts by the George W. Bush administration to obtain an exemption for the CIA from any future torture ban.

Jamadi was abducted by US Navy Seals on November 4, 2003, on suspicion of harbouring explosives and involvement in the bombing of a Red Cross centre in Baghdad that killed 12 people, and was placed in Abu Ghraib as an unregistered detainee.

After some 90 minutes of interrogation by CIA officials, he died of 'blunt force injuries' and 'asphyxiation', according to the autopsy documents obtained by Time.

Dee-Fucking-Licious, guys. Thanks. Really standing by your word.

"WE DON'T TORTURE, because, you see, we cover it up. But we can't be excempted from torturing because then we'd have to prosecute our interrogators.

And then the terrorists win."

Good work.

Clooney and the new Left Political Star

NYT Film Critic of-note A. O. Scott has a very interesting piece placing George Clooney in the current position of a natural lineage of wise leftist political actors who have transformed their glittery stardom into auteur empires of ideas following nearly directly from Warren Beatty and Robert Redford's career moves through the 1970's.

This premise is interesting and noteworthy for various reasons, and by no means exclusive or unique- Mel Gibson, for instance, constantly espouses his political and religious concepts through his arts. In a much more moronically trifling example, Bruce Willis has offered up some of his personal fortune as a bounty on Osama or other Al Qaeda leaders- the active parallel to the Sean Penn's boat sinking in New Orleans. These are dissatisfying because they are so clearly self-serving, too-direct, brutalist. No one man can change the world by force, as each of these examples attempts to do.

But Clooney's capacity is not one of brutalism- he espouses charm, wit, and fun while engaging seriousness, ambiguity, and reason- all this seemingly in his movie-star personality, mind you, and reflected in his work.

But this fall, Clooney is in two movies that are likely to dominate discussions of the political relevance - and also the political limitations - of American cinema. "Good Night, and Good Luck," which he directed and helped to write (and in which he almost incidentally appears), reconstructs the on- and off-air battles between Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy. "Syriana," written and directed by Stephen Gaghan and produced by (among others) Clooney and Soderbergh, takes place very much in the present. Loosely based on the memoirs of Robert Baer, a C.I.A. officer, its four entwined plots deal with Islamic terrorism, American foreign policy and the machinations of big oil companies - all of which swirl together in a nexus of double-dealing and moral ambiguity.

Much has been made of the topicality of "Good Night, and Good Luck," not least by Clooney himself, who screened it for high-profile journalists and media figures in the weeks before it opened last month. Like a number of other recent films - Bill Condon's "Kinsey" was last year's prime example - it uses a story from the past as a way of approaching, by implication and indirection, issues that bedevil the present. The period details serve as a kind of insulation, like oven mitts protecting against material that may otherwise be too hot to handle. The parallels are inevitably inexact but provocative all the same. In a recent interview on the public radio program "Fresh Air," Clooney called the film's events "prescient" for raising "the responsibility of the Fourth Estate to always question authority, whoever that authority is" and added, "I thought it was a good time to talk again about the debate of using fear to erode civil liberties." The picture sounds a warning - or rather repeats one, by beginning and ending with a speech Murrow made in 1958 about the dangers facing broadcast journalism - but it also tells a nostalgia-tinged story of triumph. In some quarters, it has been derided (and in others welcomed) as a "message movie," burying complexities of history and character in a parable of good and evil.

But the film's mood is more striking than its lessons; more than the subject matter, it is the atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia that places "Good Night, and Good Luck" in the tradition of American political filmmaking. The narrative may move toward an outcome that seems preordained - the exposure of McCarthy as a bully and a demagogue - but the camera tells another story, of murk and shadows and shades of gray.

"Syriana," with its sun-bleached desert colors, works almost in reverse, setting up expectations of clarity and systematically undermining them, suggesting that the world consists entirely of gray areas, interlocking conspiracies and ulterior motives. Invoking the conventions of the political thriller even as it departs from them, the film depicts a world in which paranoia is common sense and conspiracies are hatched in daylight.

...
The two "Ocean" films, both directed by Soderbergh, are Clooney's biggest hits to date, and while they don't challenge him much as an actor, they do allow him to indulge the playful nonchalance that is a large part of his appeal and paradoxically gives him license to be serious. Much as he makes headlines for feuding with Bill O'Reilly and pronouncing on the state of journalism, he has also been known to flaunt the prerogatives of celebrity and bachelorhood and to play elaborate practical jokes on friends and associates. His ability to be both devilish and earnest is perhaps best captured in his definitive performance so far, as Major Archie Gates in David O. Russell's "Three Kings."

That movie, released in the fall of 1999, looks back at the first gulf war and forward as well. A bit of a disappointment at the box office, it has had a vibrant afterlife, especially as the geopolitical situation has given it the air of prophecy. The movie is a fast-moving, funny and appallingly violent meditation on, among other things, the contradictory nature of American power. It betrays some of the liberal ambivalence of the Clinton era - an eagerness to believe that America could be the exemplar and enforcer of democratic and humane ideals checked by a habitual suspicion of ulterior motives. Gates, who sets out with a ragged band of misfit soldiers to steal Kuwaiti bullion he hears is stashed in a bunker, embodies both arrogance and decency. The arc of his character takes him from self-serving nihilism to heroic fellow-feeling, a progression that enables the movie's uplifting, somewhat implausible ending. Archie Gates is an updating of the Humphrey Bogart wartime hero: a cynic called to a higher purpose who turns his low cunning into virtue. Gates also recalls the insider-outsider, alienated heroes of the 70's, a man at odds with the institution in which he finds himself embedded but who turns out, half-unwittingly, to be the truest defender of its principles.

Clooney's engagement in political narrative is interesting enough because of our current era of non-engagement. Venues such as the No Spin Zone on The Factor constantly deride both celebrity involvment and intellectual involvement in the political arena while the conservative movement behind them seeks to simply replace leftist political celebrities with rightist ones, and to replace intellectualism itself with right-wing think-tank ordained ideology. Celebrity is mocked and derided, and constantly dumped to the wayside by the media as an irrelevancy in matters of social policy. And yet, as A. O. Scott says earlier in his piece:

Not that the transaction runs smoothly. Like everyone else, actors have ideas and opinions not directly related to their work, which they are sometimes inclined to express publicly. As soon as they do, however, they are accused of exploiting (and therefore of risking) their presumptive right to public attention. As tempting as it is for actors to use their stardom as a platform, to speak out on causes and issues or to involve themselves in crusades or campaigns, the temptation to ridicule them when they do so is perhaps even greater. We are accustomed to suspecting that their sincerity is an act and to assuming that their displays of concern are at bottom expressions of narcissism. Who do they think they are? Why should we care what these people - whose faces lure us into buying magazines, whose clothes and hairstyles we imitate, whose private lives we take to be our business - have to say about AIDS in Africa or the war in Iraq? How dare they presume to tell us how we should vote?

It is as though the currency we've culturally exchanged with celebrity is one of gossip, feel-good page coverage, and relationship or drug-inspired tragedy; and yet when personalities arise that are willing to espouse their perspectives in a way that inspires thought, they are put at risk.

But Clooney is, it is true, engaging in the culture with great similarities to Redford and others that came before him. While he wants you to consider his perspective, he creates art that grapples with that perspective. Good Night, and Good Luck is subtle and haunting, but it is as much about the limitations and potential of the medium of television as being a smart, willingly-intellectual and informed medium of debate and reason. It is not about heroism, but rather the hero stands firm in saying that his position offers the absolute most positive version of television- one that serves and informs the public, rather than the Bill O'Reilley school of disinformation and self-serving controversy.

Clooney chose not to campaign for his father's congressional bid in Kentucky in 2004 and actively comments that it's time that Hollywood took its fingers off of political intervention, because it does more harm than good for their candidates. Prescient knowledge, in many ways- he understands the culture's exchange with Hollywood has constructed and false limits, but limits nonetheless. And yet, he refuses to disengage from the battle for cultural ideas and wisdom. Clooney is rediscovering the potential and the limitations of the medium of stardom in a refreshing way. Good for him.