Gay Old Party

OUR LEADERS IN CONGRESS

Illustration: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, Democratic Leaders, the party elected to get us out of Iraq.

“Pity the Nation,” after Khalil Gibran.

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,

and whose shepherds mislead them.

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars,

whose sages are silenced,and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice,

except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero

and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.

Pity the nation that knows no other language

but its own and no other culture but its own.

Pity the nation whose breath is money

and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.

Pity the nation -- oh, pity the people who allow their

rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away.

My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

-- Lawerence Ferlinghetti

The Decider and the Gay Old Party (GOP)

Of course, “Gay” means “Grand,” as in elephant. A grand elephant. A white grand elephant. It is gallomphing along. It is the party of Abraham Lincoln and Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and Gordon Liddy. Yes, there is much to be gay about.

Larry Craig resigned, the one who attacked Bill Clinton over a blowjob, left with the words “I am not gay.” Carl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and now Tony Snow have left, but none of them denied being gay. They remain loyal to the last drop.

The Decider showed up in Iraq and shook a lot of hands.

On the same day, Amy Goodman aired an hour long show with Lawence Ferlinghetti of A Coney Island of the Mind. He read a new poem of his and I posted it above. If I’m violating any rights, Larry, let me know and I’ll delete it. I promise.

Another show I heard was on Sacco and Vanzetti – amazing at how deeply Harvard, home of Alan Dershowitz and Henry Kissinger, was involved in that one.

Could that be why Nixon preferred graduates of Indiana?

On the Road was published 50 years ago.

Things look better for me. See, I grew up when we were constantly being warned of a thermonuclear war. It was a good time, knowing that at any time, within 20 minutes, we would all die. I wanted to be there to catch the first bomb as it dropped. I had played centerfield before during times that I beaned too many batters who made a cross as they stepped into the batter’s box (hey, I had enough trouble with the umpires, didn’t need to pitch against God) and that would have been the catch of my life. I once used media reports of the power of the bombs, added them all up together, and calculated that if we set them all off in the same place we could knock the earth off it’s orbit into the sun.

Things sure were depressing when it seemed even the politicians figured it was a bad idea to have such a war and instead played with little ones like Viet Nam, Grenada, and Iraq.

But now, the ecosystem to the rescue! We know that the delicate balance of nature is so fragile that our idiots have not figured it out and any day now they entire things could collapse. I’d rather catch an H-Bomb, but at least I can watch the earth fall apart a little bit at a time, increasing in speed, CNN losing connections once after the other, and then finally total collapse.

Don’t worry, I plan to file an appeal right after that happens.

Some articles that have been waiting:

*ZNet | Israel/Palestine*

*An important marker has been passed*

*by John Pilger; New Statesman

; September 02, 2007*

Those calling for a boycott of Israel were once distant voices.

Now the discussion has gone global. It is growing inexorably and

will not be silenced.

From a limestone hill rising above Qalandia refugee camp you can

see Jerusalem. I watched a lone figure standing there in the

rain, his son holding the tail of his long tattered coat. He

extended his hand and did not let go. "I am Ahmed Hamzeh, street

entertainer," he said in measured English. "Over there, I played

many musical instruments; I sang in Arabic, English and Hebrew,

and because I was rather poor, my very small son would chew gum

while the monkey did its tricks. When we lost our country, we

lost respect. One day a rich Kuwaiti stopped his car in front of

us. He shouted at my son, "Show me how a Palestinian picks up

his food rations!" So I made the monkey appear to scavenge on

the ground, in the gutter. And my son scavenged with him. The

Kuwaiti threw coins and my son crawled on his knees to pick them

up. This was not right; I was an artist, not a beggar . . . I am

not even a peasant now."

"How do you feel about all that?" I asked him.

"Do you expect me to feel hatred? What is that to a Palestinian?

I never hated the Jews and their Israel . . . yes, I suppose I

hate them now, or maybe I pity them for their stupidity. They

can't win. Because we Palestinians are the Jews now and, like

the Jews, we will never allow them or the Arabs or you to

forget. The youth will guarantee us that, and the youth after

them . . .".

That was 40 years ago. On my last trip back to the West Bank, I

recognised little of Qalandia, now announced by a vast Israeli

checkpoint, a zigzag of sandbags, oil drums and breeze blocks,

with conga lines of people, waiting, swatting flies with

precious papers. Inside the camp, the tents had been replaced by

sturdy hovels, although the queues at single taps were as long,

I was assured, and the dust still ran to caramel in the rain. At

the United Nations office I asked about Ahmed Hamzeh, the street

entertainer. Records were consulted, heads shaken. Someone

thought he had been "taken away . . . very ill". No one knew

about his son, whose trachoma was surely blindness now. Outside,

another generation kicked a punctured football in the dust.

And yet, what Nelson Mandela has called "the greatest moral

issue of the age" refuses to be buried in the dust. For every

BBC voice that strains to equate occupier with occupied, thief

with victim, for every swarm of emails from the fanatics of Zion

to those who invert the lies and describe the Israeli state's

commitment to the destruction of Palestine, the truth is more

powerful now than ever. Documentation of the violent expulsion

of Palestinians in 1948 is voluminous. Re-examination of the

historical record has put paid to the fable of heroic David in

the Six Day War, when Ahmed Hamzeh and his family were driven

from their home. The alleged threat of Arab leaders to "throw

the Jews into the sea", used to justify the 1967 Israeli

onslaught and since repeated relentlessly, is highly

questionable. In 2005, the spectacle of wailing Old Testament

zealots leaving Gaza was a fraud. The building of their

"settlements" has accelerated on the West Bank, along with the

illegal Berli! n-style wall dividing farmers from their crops,

children from their schools, families from each other. We now

know that Israel's destruction of much of Lebanon last year was

pre-planned. As the former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison has

written, the recent "civil war" in Gaza was actually a coup

against the elected Hamas-led government, engineered by Elliott

Abrams, the Zionist who runs US policy on Israel and a convicted

felon from the Iran-Contra era.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is as much America's crusade

as Israel's. On 16 August, the Bush administration announced an

unprecedented $30bn military "aid package" for Israel, the

world's fourth biggest military power, an air power greater than

Britain, a nuclear power greater than France. No other country

on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without

sanction, as Israel. No other country has such a record of

lawlessness: not one of the world's tyrannies comes close.

International treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation

Treaty, ratified by Iran, are ignored by Israel. There is

nothing like it in UN history.

But something is changing. Perhaps last summer's panoramic

horror beamed from Lebanon on to the world's TV screens provided

the catalyst. Or perhaps cynicism of Bush and Blair and the

incessant use of the inanity, "terror", together with the

day-by-day dissemination of a fabricated insecurity in all our

lives, has finally brought the attention of the international

community outside the rogue states, Britain and the US, back to

one of its principal sources, Israel.

I got a sense of this recently in the United States. A full-page

advertisement in the New York Times had the distinct odour of

panic. There have been many "friends of Israel" advertisements

in the Times, demanding the usual favours, rationalising the

usual outrages. This one was different. "Boycott a cure for

cancer?" was its main headline, followed by "Stop drip

irrigation in Africa? Prevent scientific co-operation between

nations?" Who would want to do such things? "Some British

academics want to boycott Israelis," was the self-serving

answer. It referred to the University and College Union's (UCU)

inaugural conference motion in May, calling for discussion

within its branches for a boycott of Israeli academic

institutions. As John Chalcraft of the London School of

Economics pointed out, "the Israeli academy has long provided

intellectual, linguistic, logistical, technical, scientific and

human support for an occupation in direct violation of

international law [against whic! h] no Israeli academic

institution has ever taken a public stand".

The swell of a boycott is growing inexorably, as if an important

marker has been passed, reminiscent of the boycotts that led to

sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Both Mandela and

Desmond Tutu have drawn this parallel; so has South African

cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils and other illustrious Jewish

members of the liberation struggle. In Britain, an often

Jewish-led academic campaign against Israel's "methodical

destruction of [the Palestinian] education system" can be

translated by those of us who have reported from the occupied

territories into the arbitrary closure of Palestinian

universities, the harassment and humiliation of students at

checkpoints and the shooting and killing of Palestinian children

on their way to school.

British initiatives

These initiatives have been backed by a British group,

Independent Jewish Voices, whose 528 signatories include Stephen

Fry, Harold Pinter, Mike Leigh and Eric Hobsbawm. The country's

biggest union, Unison, has called for an "economic, cultural,

academic and sporting boycott" and the right of return for

Palestinian families expelled in 1948. Remarkably, the Commons'

international development committee has made a similar stand. In

April, the membership of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ)

voted for a boycott only to see it hastily overturned by the

national executive council. In the Republic of Ireland, the

Irish Congress of Trade Unions has called for divestment from

Israeli companies: a campaign aimed at the European Union, which

accounts for two-thirds of Israel's exports under an EU-Israel

Association Agreement. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to

Food, Jean Ziegler, has said that human rights conditions in the

agreement should be invoked and Israel's trading ! preferences

suspended.

This is unusual, for these were once distant voices. And that

such grave discussion of a boycott has "gone global" was

unforeseen in official Israel, long comforted by its seemingly

untouchable myths and great power sponsorship, and confident

that the mere threat of anti-Semitism would ensure silence. When

the British lecturers' decision was announced, the US Congress

passed an absurd resolution describing the UCU as

"anti-Semitic". (Eighty congressmen have gone on junkets to

Israel this summer.)

This intimidation has worked in the past. The smearing of

American academics has denied them promotion, even tenure. The

late Edward Said kept an emergency button in his New York

apartment connected to the local police station; his offices at

Columbia University were once burned down. Following my 2002

film, Palestine is Still the Issue, I received death threats and

slanderous abuse, most of it coming from the US where the film

was never shown. When the BBC's Independent Panel recently

examined the corporation's coverage of the Middle East, it was

inundated with emails, "many from abroad, mostly from North

America", said its report. Some individuals "sent multiple

missives, some were duplicates and there was clear evidence of

pressure group mobilisation". The panel's conclusion was that

BBC reporting of the Palestinian struggle was not "full and

fair" and "in important respects, presents an incomplete and in

that sense misleading picture". This was neutralised in BBC

press r! eleases.

The courageous Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, believes a single

democratic state, to which the Palestinian refugees are given

the right of return, is the only feasible and just solution, and

that a sanctions and boycott campaign is critical in achieving

this. Would the Israeli population be moved by a worldwide

boycott? Although they would rarely admit it, South Africa's

whites were moved enough to support an historic change. A

boycott of Israeli institutions, goods and services, says Pappé,

"will not change the [Israeli] position in a day, but it will

send a clear message that [the premises of Zionism] are racist

and unacceptable in the 21st century . . . They would have to

choose."

And so would the rest of us.

*ZNet | Labor*

*Labor Day Hypocrisy*

*by Stephen Lendman; September 01, 2007*

Labor Day is commemorated on the first Monday in September each

year since the first one was celebrated in New York in 1882.

Around the world outside the US, socialist and labor movements

are observed on May 1 to recognize organized labor's social and

economic achievements and the workers in them. This day gets

scant attention in the US, but where it's prominent it's

commonly to remember the Haymarket Riot of May 4, 1886 in

Chicago. It followed the city's May 1 general strike for an

eight hour day that led to violence breaking out on the 4th.

Labor Day became a national federal holiday when Congress passed

legislation for it in June, 1894 at a time working people had

few rights, management had the upper hand, only wanted to

exploit them for profit, and got away with it. It took many

painful years of organizing, taking to the streets, going on

strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard

forces, and paying with their blood and lives before real gains

were won. They got an eight hour day, a living wage, on-the-job

benefits and the pinnacle of labor's triumph in the 1930s with

the passage of the landmark Wagner Act establishing the National

Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It guaranteed labor the right to

bargain collectively on equal terms with management for the

first time ever.

All of it was won from the grassroots. Management gave nothing

until forced to and neither did government. It always sides with

business never yields a thing unless threatened with disruptive

work stoppages or possible insurrection. All this is in a

democracy that claims to be a government of the people, by the

people and for the people, most of whom are ordinary working

class ones.

Since a worried Congress passed the 1935 Wagner Act during The

Great Depression, the state of organized labor declined,

especially post-WW II. It accelerated precipitously during the

Reagan years under an administration openly hostile to worker

rights in its one-side support for management. It continued

unabated, under Republican and Democrat administrations, and

today stands at a multi-generational low.

Under George Bush conditions got much worse. Since coming into

office in 2001, he sided with management openly on policies to

strip workers of their right to organize and be able to bargain

for a living wage and essential benefits. He hired anti-union

officials, denied millions overtime pay, cut pay raises for 1.8

million federal workers claiming a "national emergency," and

schemed to end Social Security as we know it by plotting

(unsuccessfully so far) to let Wall Street sharks take it over.

Since labor's ascendency decades earlier, corporate America, in

league with government, shamelessly denigrated unions and the

rights of working people in them. In 1958, 34.7% of the work

force was unionized, but now the figure is around 12% overall,

and only 7.4% in the private sector - the lowest it's been in

seven decades.

Even worse, most jobs are low-pay service sector ones because

the nation's manufacturing base and many higher-paying positions

in finance and technology have been offshored to low-wage

developing nations. Workers there can be hired for a fraction of

the pay scales here or as virtual serfs at below poverty wages

as low as $2 a day or less and no benefits. They fill legions of

sweatshop factory jobs in countries prohibiting unions and fair

worker practice standards for Wal-Mart's "Always low prices" on

the backs of ruthlessly exploited working people.

Nonetheless, on the first Monday each September, this nation

"remembers" working Americans with a federally-mandated holiday

in their "honor." Who's celebrating when it's disingenuously

commemorated at a time worker rights are threatened, ignored,

forgotten, and uncared about by heartless governments beholden

to capital. They scorn working people who are no longer as

deceived with meaningless bread and circus droppings at the

expense of what they need most: good jobs at good pay, essential

benefits, job security, and a government on their side doing

what counts most - supporting their rights with worker-friendly

legislation.

Workers are reminded every day that backing like that is off the

table by governments shamelessly mocking their day. It's

commemorated in name only by a nation beholden to capital, the

corporate giants controlling it, and the best democracy their

money can buy for them alone.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at

lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to

The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on

TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

*ZNet | Labor*

*Labor Day Hypocrisy*

*by Stephen Lendman; September 01, 2007*

Labor Day is commemorated on the first Monday in September each

year since the first one was celebrated in New York in 1882.

Around the world outside the US, socialist and labor movements

are observed on May 1 to recognize organized labor's social and

economic achievements and the workers in them. This day gets

scant attention in the US, but where it's prominent it's

commonly to remember the Haymarket Riot of May 4, 1886 in

Chicago. It followed the city's May 1 general strike for an

eight hour day that led to violence breaking out on the 4th.

Labor Day became a national federal holiday when Congress passed

legislation for it in June, 1894 at a time working people had

few rights, management had the upper hand, only wanted to

exploit them for profit, and got away with it. It took many

painful years of organizing, taking to the streets, going on

strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard

forces, and paying with their blood and lives before real gains

were won. They got an eight hour day, a living wage, on-the-job

benefits and the pinnacle of labor's triumph in the 1930s with

the passage of the landmark Wagner Act establishing the National

Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It guaranteed labor the right to

bargain collectively on equal terms with management for the

first time ever.

All of it was won from the grassroots. Management gave nothing

until forced to and neither did government. It always sides with

business never yields a thing unless threatened with disruptive

work stoppages or possible insurrection. All this is in a

democracy that claims to be a government of the people, by the

people and for the people, most of whom are ordinary working

class ones.

Since a worried Congress passed the 1935 Wagner Act during The

Great Depression, the state of organized labor declined,

especially post-WW II. It accelerated precipitously during the

Reagan years under an administration openly hostile to worker

rights in its one-side support for management. It continued

unabated, under Republican and Democrat administrations, and

today stands at a multi-generational low.

Under George Bush conditions got much worse. Since coming into

office in 2001, he sided with management openly on policies to

strip workers of their right to organize and be able to bargain

for a living wage and essential benefits. He hired anti-union

officials, denied millions overtime pay, cut pay raises for 1.8

million federal workers claiming a "national emergency," and

schemed to end Social Security as we know it by plotting

(unsuccessfully so far) to let Wall Street sharks take it over.

Since labor's ascendency decades earlier, corporate America, in

league with government, shamelessly denigrated unions and the

rights of working people in them. In 1958, 34.7% of the work

force was unionized, but now the figure is around 12% overall,

and only 7.4% in the private sector - the lowest it's been in

seven decades.

Even worse, most jobs are low-pay service sector ones because

the nation's manufacturing base and many higher-paying positions

in finance and technology have been offshored to low-wage

developing nations. Workers there can be hired for a fraction of

the pay scales here or as virtual serfs at below poverty wages

as low as $2 a day or less and no benefits. They fill legions of

sweatshop factory jobs in countries prohibiting unions and fair

worker practice standards for Wal-Mart's "Always low prices" on

the backs of ruthlessly exploited working people.

Nonetheless, on the first Monday each September, this nation

"remembers" working Americans with a federally-mandated holiday

in their "honor." Who's celebrating when it's disingenuously

commemorated at a time worker rights are threatened, ignored,

forgotten, and uncared about by heartless governments beholden

to capital. They scorn working people who are no longer as

deceived with meaningless bread and circus droppings at the

expense of what they need most: good jobs at good pay, essential

benefits, job security, and a government on their side doing

what counts most - supporting their rights with worker-friendly

legislation.

Workers are reminded every day that backing like that is off the

table by governments shamelessly mocking their day. It's

commemorated in name only by a nation beholden to capital, the

corporate giants controlling it, and the best democracy their

money can buy for them alone.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at

lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to

The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on

TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

Neo-Cons or Neo-Kissingers?

HOW MANY DO YOU REMEMBER?

Illustrations: Actually, they are the reason for this edition. Our illustrator came up with a great version of the disgraced and outcast Gonzo after I jumped the gun and posted his letter of resignation, so here is the actual picture of him resigning. Also, he keeps updating the neo-con shooting gallery and I’ve posted that too. See how many of the “crazies” (as George Bush Sr. called them) are left standing and how many of the departed can you identify?

Meanwhile, Republic Senator Larry Craig, of Idaho, one of the Foley wing of the party, I guess, called a press conference and announced “I AM NOT GAY! I HAVE NEVER BEEN GAY!” I must agree that in the conference he looked morose, not gay.

Just in: Poison nerve gas was found at the United Nations in New York today. Nope, it was brought here in 1996 by the inspectors. Bad accounting was blamed for the incident. Well, then, we need an Anti-Bad-Accounting Act passed. Anyone suspected of bad accounting can be locked up without a warrant, lawyer, or trial.

Lest we forget, the Decided plans to ask for another 50 billion to continue in Iraq. This will bring the price to a billion dollars a week. We can’t afford Universal Health Care?

Below is an article by Robert Fisk, the most reliable correspondent of the subject of the mideast. He writes for the Independent, but they now charge for his articles, so we have to wait for them to be a week or so old. There is a woman columnist at the NY Times I used to read and they started charging for that as well. I wish I remembered her name. She is funny, Irish, and love to attack Bush.

*ZNet | Iraq*

*The Iraqis Don't Deserve Us, So We Betray Them*

*by Robert Fisk; Independent UK

; August 24, 2007*

Always, we have betrayed them. We backed "Flossy" in Yemen. The

French backed their local "harkis" in Algeria; then the FLN

victory forced them to swallow their own French military medals

before dispatching them into mass graves. In Vietnam, the

Americans demanded democracy and, one by one -- after praising

the Vietnamese for voting under fire in so many cities, towns

and villages -- they destroyed the elected prime ministers

because they were not abiding by American orders.

Now we are at work in Iraq. Those pesky Iraqis don't deserve our

sacrifice, it seems, because their elected leaders are not doing

what we want them to do.

Does that remind you of a Palestinian organization called Hamas?

First, the Americans loved Ahmed Chalabi, the man who fabricated

for Washington the"'weapons of mass destruction" (with a hefty

bank fraud charge on his back). Then, they loved Ayad Allawi, a

Vietnam-style spook who admitted working for 26 intelligence

organizations, including the CIA and MI6. Then came Ibrahim

al-Jaafari, symbol of electoral law, whom the Americans loved,

supported, loved again and destroyed. Couldn't get his act

together. It was up to the Iraqis, of course, but the Americans

wanted him out. And the seat of the Iraqi government -- a

never-never land in the humidity of Baghdad's green zone -- lay

next to the largest US embassy in the world. So goodbye, Ibrahim.

Then there was Nouri al-Maliki, a man with whom Bush could "do

business"; loved, supported and loved again until Carl Levin and

the rest of the US Senate Armed Forces Committee -- and, be

sure, George W Bush -- decided he couldn't fulfill America's

wishes. He couldn't get the army together, couldn't pull the

police into shape, an odd demand when US military forces were

funding and arming some of the most brutal Sunni militias in

Baghdad, and was too close to Tehran.

There you have it. We overthrew Saddam's Sunni minority and the

Iraqis elected the Shias into power, and all those old Iranian

acolytes who had grown up under the Islamic Revolution in exile

from the Iraq-Iran war -- Jaafari was a senior member of the

Islamic Dawaa party which was enthusiastically seizing Western

hostages in Beirut in the 1980s and trying to blow up our friend

the Emir of Kuwait -- were voted into power. So blame the

Iranians for their "interference" in Iraq when Iran's own

creatures had been voted into power.

And now, get rid of Maliki. Chap doesn't know how to unify his

own people, for God's sake. No interference, of course. It's up

to the Iraqis, or at least, it's up to the Iraqis who live under

American protection in the green zone. The word in the Middle

East -- where the "plot" (al-moammarer) has the power of reality

-- is that Maliki's cozy trips to Tehran and Damascus these past

two weeks have been the final straw for the fantasists in

Washington. Because Iran and Syria are part of the axis of evil

or the cradle of evil or whatever nonsense Bush and his cohorts

and the Israelis dream up, take a look at the $30bn in arms

heading to Israel in the next decade in the cause of "peace."

Maliki's state visits to the crazed Ahmedinejad and the much

more serious Bashar al-Assad appear to be, in Henry VIII's

words, "treachery, treachery, treachery." But Maliki is showing

loyalty to his former Iranian masters and their Syrian Alawite

allies (the Alawites being an interesting satellite of the Shias).

These creatures -- let us use the right word -- belong to us and

thus we can step on them when we wish. We will not learn -- we

will never learn, it seems -- the key to Iraq. The majority of

the people are Muslim Shias. The majority of their leaders,

including the "fiery" Muqtada al-Sadr were trained, nurtured,

weaned, loved, taught in Iran. And now, suddenly, we hate them.

The Iraqis do not deserve us. This is to be the grit on the sand

that will give our tanks traction to leave Iraq. Bring on the

clowns! Maybe they can help us too.

Amscray Onzalesgrcray

Yahweh mad3e me do it

SPECIAL REPORT
GONZALES' LETTER OF RESIGNATION!!

Amscray OnzalesgrcrayAmscray Onzalesgrcray

EXCLUSIVE: Absurd Times Obtains Gonzo’s Resignation Letter!!!!

By magic, the Absurd Times scoops all other blogs. This is the letter of resignation from the Attorney General to the President of the United States:

Dear Mr. President Decider:

This jobs stinks big time. I quit. I know the constitution and it allows you to torture me, but not maim me, and I had enough. You can take this job and give it to your Daddy Cheney. Even Aschroft had enough! I don’t need no Barment neither! The Bar Association can go to Hell.

Screw you,

Most respectfully,

Your loyal and trusted Servant,

Albertoe Gonzales, Esq.

Elected Insasnity

Illustration: The Decider and Putin have a chat. Did Putin put ‘im up to it?

This last item was so overwhelming in its absurdity that my first reaction was similar to that guy with the mustache in the old Laurel and Hardy movies: “DOOOOOOOOH!!” I mean, how crazy do things have to get?

The Decider gave a speech in Kansas City a few days ago, comparing Vietnam and Iraq. He said, essentially, that if we withdrew from Iraq, it would cause “Killing fields, Boat people, and the death of civilians.” I shit you not.

One wonders where he was during Viet Nam? Oh yeah, in the Texas National Guard? Hm.

Well, let us see. The Kymer Rouge’s coming to power was made possible by Nixon and Kissinger bombing the Hell out of Cambodia because they didn’t like Sianook. Pol Pot was a direct result of our intervention. Boat people? Iraq is virtually landlocked and the Decider would probably torpedo any Iraqis trying to get here. Civilians? During Clinton and the sanctions, it was estimated that over 500,000 innocent civilians, mostly children, were dying in Iraq as a result. Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State was asked if it was worth it. She said “yes”. How many are being killed now? About four million are displaced or refugees so far.

And did we withdraw from Vietnam or were we chased out? Remember footage of helicopters evacuating U.S. soldiers, citizens, and journalists from the top of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon?

Do you remember the Decider saying over and over again that this is not a quagmire or like Vietnam and accusing those who made the comparison of treason?

Do you remember predictions that we would be chased out like dogs with our tails between our legs? Out of where? You decide.

No civil war in Iraq I seem to remember being said.

We gotta bomb Iran, yeah, that’ll fix things.

Well, I really can’t deal with this, but Amy Goodman had first headlines and then someone to set things straight and I’m reprinting the transcript here. The headlines themselves are flabbergasting enough as they stand.

Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org

Bush Invokes Vietnam to Argue Against U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Iraq

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

President Bush warned Wednesday that a withdrawal of U.S. troops from

Iraq would lead to mass bloodshed similar to what happened in Southeast

Asia after the Vietnam War. He urged critics of the current war to

"learn something from history" and "resist the allure of retreat." We

speak with historian and investigative journalist, Gareth Porter.

[includes rush transcript]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

President Bush has compared the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to

earlier US wars against Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. He spoke Wednesday at

the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City. The president

warned that a US withdrawal from Iraq could result in a similar outcome

to what happened in Vietnam and Cambodia after the withdrawal of US troops.

* *President Bush*, speaking in Kansas City, August 22nd, 2007.

The president also pointed to Japan and Korea in his speech as examples

of past US military successes. He urged critics of the current war to

"learn something from history" and "resist the allure of retreat."

* *Gareth Porter*, a historian and investigative journalist. He is a

specialist in U.S. military and foreign policy and was the

director of the IndoChina resource center towards the end of the

Vietnam War. He now writes regularly on Iraq and Iran for Inter

Press Service and maintains a blog on The Huffington Post

. His most recent book is "Perils

of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *President Bush has compared the current wars in Iraq

and Afghanistan to earlier US wars against Japan, Korea and Vietnam. He

spoke Wednesday at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas

City. The President warned that a US withdrawal from Iraq could result

in a similar outcome to what happened in Vietnam and Cambodia after the

withdrawal of US troops.

*PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: *The Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule

in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation

and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United

States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen

were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished.

Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many

of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got

into the Vietnam War and how we left. There’s no debate in my mind

that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the

United States of America. Whatever your position is on that

debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of

America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens

whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat

people,’ ‘re-education camps’ and ‘killing fields.’

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *President Bush, comparing the costs of withdrawing US

troops from Iraq to the withdrawal from Vietnam over thirty years ago.

The President also pointed to Japan and Korea in the speech as examples

of past US military successes. He urged critics of the current war to

‘learn something from history’ and ‘resist the allure of retreat.’

*AMY GOODMAN: *Gareth Porter is a historian and investigative

journalist. He’s a specialist in US military and foreign policy and was

the director of the Indochina Resource Center towards the end of the

Vietnam War. He now writes regularly on Iraq and Iran for Inter Press

Service and maintains a blog on the Huffington Post

. His most recent book is /Perils of

Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam/. Gareth

Porter joins us from Washington, D.C.

Gareth, welcome to /Democracy Now!/ Your response to President Bush's

speech’

*GARETH PORTER: *Well, you know, it reminds me very much of the way in

which, of course, Richard Nixon used the threat of a bloodbath in

Vietnam as the primary argument for continuing that war for four more

years after he came to power in 1969. And really, it seems to me, the

lesson of the Vietnam War that should be now debated and discussed is

really the way in which Nixon could have ended that war when he came to

power, negotiated a settlement and avoided the extension of that war

into Cambodia, which happened because Nixon did not do that.

Had Nixon listened to the antiwar movement and the American people by

1969 and ended that war, there would not have been the overthrow of

Norodom Sihanouk in 1970. There would not have been the extension of the

war into Cambodia. There would not have been the rise of the Khmer

Rouge. When Sihanouk was overthrown, we tend to forget that the Khmer

Rouge was really an insignificant movement. They were about 2,500 or

3,000 very poorly armed soldiers or guerillas. And it was really the

extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia which made the Khmer Rouge

the powerful movement that they were.

So really, you know, the lesson of Vietnam that we should be hearing,

which we should have heard for the last three decades, but we haven’t,

is that government officials in the White House simply do not pay

attention to the real consequences of the wars that they wage. They seem

to be totally unable to take account of the destabilizing ways that the

wars that they wage affect not only the country in which the war is

being waged, but then the neighboring countries, as well.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Gareth Porter, Senator Kerry, in reacting to the

President's words yesterday -- John Kerry -- said that they were as

irresponsible as it is ignorant of the realities of both of those wars.

And he noted that half the soldiers whose names are on the Vietnam

Memorial died after the politicians knew our strategy would not work.

Your reaction to Kerry's words’

*GARETH PORTER: *Well, you know, the problem, of course, with that view

is that we -- I mean, it’s ambiguous -- essentially ambiguous whether

Nixon and Kissinger believed that they could salvage something in

Vietnam and Southeast Asia and in the world or not. I mean, it depends

on how you look at it. I think that it’s true that Kissinger and Nixon

did not believe that they could really produce a stable, long-lasting

South Vietnamese anti-communist regime. That’s pretty clear on the record.

The problem, of course, is that the real reason that those leaders

continued that war for four years had very little, if anything, to do

with Vietnam itself. They were more concerned with, really, their own

credibility, the credibility of the US military machine, the credibility

of the United States as the world's preeminent superpower, and that's

why they continued that war. And I think that’s another parallel,

really, that needs to be discussed between Vietnam and Iraq, because I

think the same thing is true now of George Bush and the Bush

administration, that they really -- that their concern is not about

Iraq, /per se/. They cry crocodile tears about the Iraqi people, as Bush

did about the Cambodian people, but they really don't care about the

people. What they care about is the ‘credibility,’ quote/unquote, of the

United States.

And if you look at the Op-Ed piece by Peter Rodman in the /New York

Times/ last June, which Bush quoted yesterday -- and Rodman, by the way

is the direct link between Henry Kissinger, who he worked for during the

Vietnam War, and George Bush, who he worked for during the Iraq war --

Rodman and William Shawcross really were more concerned --

*AMY GOODMAN: *Shawcross, who wrote /Sideshow/ --

*GARETH PORTER: *That’s right.

*AMY GOODMAN: *-- about Cambodia.

*GARETH PORTER: *About Cambodia. And it’s bizarre that Shawcross is

associating himself now with Henry Kissinger’s viewpoint on Cambodia and

Vietnam. But what Shawcross and Rodman expressed in that Op-Ed piece was

really mostly concern about ‘credibility,’ quote/unquote. It’s as

though, you know, we’re in a time warp, and we’re still living in a

world with two superpowers, and the United States has to impress the

Soviet Union with its military prowess. You know, it’s really bizarre,

because, you know, Rodman and Shawcross really sort of expressed the

kind of worldview that was prevalent during the Cold War and which today

we should understand is really irrelevant. I mean, the idea that we can

impress the Muslim world by defeating people in Iraq and that that’s

going to make us more secure, the American people don't even believe

that anymore.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Gareth Porter, I want to play an excerpt from the new

documentary by Norman Solomon and the Media Education Foundation. It’s

called /War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to

Death/. This clip features Presidents George W. Bush, Lyndon Johnson and

Richard Nixon.

*PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: *Withdrawal of all American forces from

Vietnam would be a disaster.

*PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: *Let no one think for a moment that

retreat from Vietnam would bring an end to conflict.

*PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: *We're not leaving, so long as I’m the

President. That would be a huge mistake.

*PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: *Our allies would lose confidence in

America.

*PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: *To yield to force in Vietnam would

weaken that confidence.

*PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: *Any sign that says we're going to

leave before the job is done simply emboldens terrorists.

*PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: *A retreat of the United States from

Vietnam would be a communist victory, a victory of massive

proportions and would lead to World War III.

*PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: *If this little nation goes down the

drain and can't maintain independence, ask yourself what's going

to happen to all the other little nations.

*PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: *It would not bring peace. It would

bring more war.

*AMY GOODMAN: *An excerpt of /War Made Easy/. Gareth Porter, final

comment, and could you include what you’ve been writing about, which is

your belief that the US might well attack Iran’

*GARETH PORTER: *Well, I mean, that’s right exactly. The linkage between

Bush's speech, the Rodman article in the /New York Times/ and the

current situation regarding policy toward Iran is precisely that Rodman

argues very specifically in his piece -- again, Rodman being a former

Bush administration official, as well as a former assistant to Kissinger

-- that we have to prevail in Iraq so that we can impress Iran with our

determination and strength, our credibility. He says, in fact, that the

United States cannot be strong against Iran or anywhere, if we accept

defeat in Iraq. So these people are really girding for the potential war

with Iran. I think that Rodman probably is part of that group that would

like to have a war with Iran, as well. And so, I think that this is

another indicator that Bush is certainly preparing for a potential war

against Iran. I think that’s a very grave danger at this moment.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And this new ad campaign, once again attempting to link

the attack on the World Trade Center to the war on Iraq in the minds of

the American people, your reaction’

*GARETH PORTER: *Well, that, of course, has been completely discredited,

you know, by the facts as we now understand them. Documentation makes it

very clear that there was no relationship between going into Iraq and

the rationale for Iraq and 9/11, except that it was a convenient moment

for the neoconservatives in the administration to press their advantage,

which, you know, they chose the target that they had already wanted to

bring down -- Saddam Hussein -- before -- long before 9/11, as we now

know. So this is simply a continuation of the now-proven lie that the

Bush administration has been giving the American people now for three

years.

*AMY GOODMAN: *We just have ten seconds, but Cheney's role in pushing

for attacking Iran, Gareth Porter’

*GARETH PORTER: *Dick Cheney, we know, is determined to use the excuse

of alleged Iranian training camps -- that’s camps supposedly in Iran,

where Hezbollah is training the troops of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army

-- as an excuse to attack Iran, with the hope that the Iranians would

then retaliate and make possible then a strategic attack against Iran's

-- not only the nuclear fatalities, but against economic and military

targets. The aim of the Bush administration is to weaken Iran as a power

in the Middle East.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Gareth Porter, we want to thank you very much for being

with us, investigative journalist and historian, writes a blog on the

Huffington Post . His book is /Perils of

Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam/.

www.democracynow.org

Git Bugger!

He Enjoyed It All

Illustration: This illustration is so good and so timely that I put this edition out just because of it. See Rove cry. Cry, cry, cry. Rove must run. Run, run, run. Git!

Rove has been called “bush’s brain,” such as it is. When the whole Rovegate started, I expected him, not the “scooter,” to wind up behind bars. I should have known better. I am including an excellent article by Amy Goodman about him. She is the host of Democracy Now, a program now carried on over 500 stations as well as the two major satellite companies.

ZNet | U.S.

Rove’s Science of Dirty Tricks

*by Amy Goodman; truthdig

<http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070814_roves_science_of_dirty_tricks/>;

August 16, 2007*

Karl Rove’s resignation as deputy White House chief of staff cements the political future of the waning Bush administration. George W. will have little to do except wield his veto pen; he doesn’t need the steadying hand of Rove for that, or his strategic insight. As Rove joins the ranks of discredited politicians who resign “in order to spend more time with family,” a retrospective of his dirty tricks might be in order. Much is attributed to Rove, dubbed “Bush’s Brain” by Texas journalists Wayne Slater and James Moore—yet very little sticks to the man. Bearing in mind that we presume innocence until guilt is proved, read on:

—In 1970, College Republican Rove stole letterhead from the Illinois Democratic campaign of Alan Dixon and used it to invite hundreds of people to Dixon’s headquarters opening, promising “free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing,” disrupting the event.

—In 1973, Rove ran for chair of the College Republicans. He challenged the front-runner’s delegates, throwing the national convention into disarray, after which both he and his opponent, Robert Edgeworth, claimed victory. The dispute was resolved when Rove was selected through the direct order of the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who at the time was none other than George H.W. Bush.

—In 1986, while working for Texas Republican gubernatorial hopeful William Clements, Rove claimed that Rove’s personal office had been bugged, most likely by the campaign of incumbent Democratic Gov. Mark White. Nothing was proved, but the negative press, weeks before the election, helped Rove’s man win a narrow victory. FBI agent Greg Rampton removed the bug, disrupting any attempt to properly investigate who planted it.

—When Rove was an adviser for George W. Bush’s 1994 race for governor of Texas against Democratic incumbent Ann Richards, a persistent whisper campaign in conservative East Texas wrongly suggested that Richards was a lesbian. According to Texas journalist Lou Dubose: “No one ever traced the character assassination to Rove. Yet no one doubts that Rove was behind it. It’s a process on which he holds a patent. Identify your opponent’s strength, and attack it so relentlessly that it becomes a liability. Richards was admired because she promised and delivered a ‘government that looked more like the people of the state.’ That included the appointment of blacks, Hispanics and gays and lesbians. Rove made that asset a liability.”

—After John McCain thumped George W. Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary, with 48 percent of the vote to Bush’s 30 percent, a massive smear campaign was launched in South Carolina, a key battleground. TV attack ads from third groups and anonymous fliers circulated, variously suggesting that McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam had left him mentally scarred with an uncontrollable temper, that his wife, Cindy, abused drugs, and that he had an African-American “love child.” In fact, the McCains adopted their daughter Bridget from a Bangladesh orphanage run by Mother Teresa.

—According to the investigation of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Rove played a central role in the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak and former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in retaliation for the accusation by her husband, Joe Wilson, that the Bush administration falsely claimed Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Niger.

—Rove has ignored subpoenas to testify before Congress about the Justice Department scandal stemming from the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. He skipped a hearing on improper use of Republican National Committee e-mail accounts by White House staffers that allowed them to skirt the Presidential Records Act. Rove claims he enjoys executive privilege, which travels with him as he leaves the White House.

These are but some of the dirty tricks attributed to Karl Rove. We are to believe that Rove, born Christmas Day, 1950, is retiring to write books. Former Texas Agriculture Commissioner and populist firebrand Jim Hightower describes Rove’s departure as “a rat jumping off a sinking ship.” But arch-Rove watcher Wayne Slater of The Dallas Morning News knows better. He notes that Rove and his wife have built a house in the Florida Panhandle—the “Republican Riviera”—and that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will be 59 in 2012, a ripe age for a run for the White House. Regardless, the art and science of the political dirty tricks, learned by Rove in the Nixon years and perfected by him in the George W. Bush White House, will be with us for years to come.

/Denis Moynihan provided research assistance on today’s column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily

international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North

America./