The Rag Blog

The First Sixth-Anniversary-of-the-Iraq-War Article
By Tom Engelhardt, posted March 13, 2008 09:51 am

Please don’t write in with a correction. I know just as well as you do that we’re approaching the fifth, not the sixth, anniversary of the moment when, on March 19, 2003, George W. Bush told the American people:

“My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger… My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail.”

At that moment, of course, the cruise missiles meant to “decapitate” Saddam Hussein’s regime, but that killed only Iraqi civilians, were on their way to Baghdad. I’m perfectly aware that articles galore will be looking back on the five years since that day. This is not one of them.

Think of this piece as in the spirit of Senator John McCain’s recent request that Americans not obsess about the origins of the Iraq War, but look forward. “On the issue of my differences with Senator Obama on Iraq,” he typically said, “I want to make it very clear: This is not about decisions that were made in the past. This is about decisions that a president will have to make about the future in Iraq. And a decision to unilaterally withdraw from Iraq will lead to chaos.”

The future, not the past, is the mantra, which is why I’m skipping next week’s fifth anniversary of the Iraq War entirely. Now, let me ask you a future-oriented question:

What’s wrong with these sentences?

On March 19, 2009, the date of the sixth anniversary of President Bush’s invasion of Iraq, as surely as the sun rises in the East I’ll be sitting here and we will still have many tens of thousands of troops, a string of major bases, and massive air power in that country. In the intervening year, more Americans will have been wounded or killed; many more Iraqis will have been wounded or killed; more chaos and conflict will have ensued; many more bombs will have been dropped and missiles launched; many more suicide bombs will have gone off. Iraq will still be a hell on Earth.

Prediction is, of course, a risky business. Otherwise I’d now be commuting via jet pack through spire cities (as the futuristic articles of my youth so regularly predicted). If you were to punch holes in the above sentences, you would certainly have to note that it’s risky for a man of 63 years, or of any age, to suggest that he’ll be sitting anywhere in a year; riskier yet if you happen to live in those lands extending from North Africa to Central Asia that Bush administration officials used to call the “arc of instability” — essentially the oil heartlands of the planet — before they turned them into one. It’s always possible that I won’t be sitting here (or anywhere else, for that matter) on March 19, 2009. Unfortunately, when it comes to the American position in Iraq, short of an act of God, the sixth anniversary of George Bush’s war of choice is going to dawn much like the fifth one.

As a start, you can write off the next 10 months of our lives, right up to January 20, 2009, inauguration day for the next president. We know that, last fall, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was considering bringing American troop strength in Iraq down to 100,000 by the end of George Bush’s second term. However, that was, as they evidently love to say in Washington, just a “best case scenario.” Since then, the administration has signaled an end-of-July drawdown “pause” of unknown duration after American troop strength in Iraq, now at 157,000, hits about 142,000.

The President is clearly dragging his feet on removing even modest numbers of American troops. As he leaves office, it seems likely that there will be at least 130,000 U.S. troops in the country, about the same number as there were before, in February 2007, the President’s surge strategy kicked in. In addition, in the past year, U.S. air power has “surged” in Iraq — and continues to do so — while U.S. mega-bases in that country continue to be built up. As far as we know, there are no plans to reverse either of these developments by January 20, 2009. No presidential candidate is even discussing them.

Any official “best case” scenario for drawdowns or withdrawals assumes, by the way, that the version of Iraq created during the surge months — at best, an unstable combination of Sunni, Shia, Kurdish, and American plans and desires — remains in place and that Iraqi carnage stays off the front pages of American papers. This is anything but a given, as British journalist Patrick Cockburn reported recently in a piece headlined, “Why Iraq Could Blow Up in John McCain’s Face.” Indeed it could.

Best Case Scenarios

If Senator McCain were elected president, the American position in Iraq on March 19, 2009 will certainly be as described above — and, if he has anything to say about it, for many anniversaries thereafter. But, when it comes to the sixth anniversary of the Iraq War, the truth is that it probably doesn’t matter much who is elected president in November.

Take Hillary Clinton, she’s said that she’ll task the Joint Chiefs, the new Secretary of Defense, and her National Security Council with having a plan for (partial) withdrawal in place within 60 days of coming into office. Since inauguration day is January 20th, that means… March 21st or two days after the sixth anniversary; by which time, of course, nothing would have changed substantially.

Barack Obama has promised to remove U.S. “combat” troops at a one-to-two-brigades-a-month pace over a 16 month period. So it’s possible that troop levels could drop marginally before March 19, 2009 in an Obama presidency, but again there is no reason to believe that anything essential would have happened to change that “anniversary.”

In addition, the stated plans of both Democratic candidates, vague and limited as they may be, might not turn out to be their actual plans. Note the recent comments of Obama foreign policy advisor Samantha Powers, who resigned after calling Clinton a “monster” in an interview with the Scotsman during a book tour. Since name-calling will always trump substantive policy matters in American politics, less noted were her comments in an interview with the BBC on her candidate’s Iraq withdrawal policy. “He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator,” Powers said and then she referred to Obama’s plan as nothing more than a — you guessed it — “best-case scenario.”

Similarly, a Clinton sometime-advisor on military matters, retired General Jack Keane, also one of the authors of President Bush’s surge strategy, told the New York Sun that, in the Oval Office, “he is convinced [Hillary Clinton] would hold off on authorizing a large-scale immediate withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq.” And Clinton herself, though less directly, has certainly hinted at a similar willingness to reconsider her policy promises in the light of an Oval Office morning.

So let’s face it, barring an Iraqi surprise, the next year in that country may be nothing but a wash (and the lubricant, as in past years, is likely to be blood). It will be — best case scenario — a holding action on the road to nowhere, another woefully lost year in what has now become something like a ghost country.

The Children of War

To put this in more human terms: Imagine that a child born on March 19, 2003, just as Baghdad was being shock-and-awed, will be of an age to enter first grade when the sixth anniversary of George Bush’s war hits. He or she will have gone from babbling to talking, crawling to walking, and will by then possibly be beginning to read and write. Of course, an Iraqi child born on that day, who managed to live to see his or her sixth birthday, might be among the two million-plus Iraqis in exile in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East, or among the millions of internal refugees driven from their homes in recent years and not in school at all. (Similarly, a child born on October 7, 2001, when the President first dispatched American bombers to strike Afghanistan, will be in second grade in March 2009; of course, seven-and-a-half years after being “liberated,” an Afghan child, especially one now living in the southern part of that failed narco-state, is unlikely to be in school at all. As with Iraq, we could take some educated guesses about the situation in Afghanistan a year from now and they would be grim beyond words.)

Depleted uranium baby, Iraq
For those children, the real inheritors of the Bush war era that is not yet faintly over, the Iraq War has essentially been the equivalent of an open-ended prison sentence with little hope of parole; for some Americans and many Iraqis, including children, it is a death sentence without hope of pardon. All this for a country which, even by the standards of the Bush administration, never presented the slightest national security threat to the United States of America. Only this week, an “exhaustive,” Pentagon-sponsored study of 600,000 captured Iraqi documents confirmed, yet again, that there were no operational links whatsoever between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda.

With those children in mind, here’s what’s so depressing: In mainstream Washington, hardly anyone has taken a step outside the box of conventional, inside-the-Beltway thinking about Iraq, which is why it’s possible to imagine March 19, 2009 with some confidence. For them, the Washington consensus, such as it is, is the only acceptable one and the disagreements within it, the only ones worth having. And here are its eight fundamentals:

*A belief that effective U.S. power must invariably be based on the threat of, or use of, dominant force, and so must centrally involve the U.S. military.

*A belief that all answers of any value are to be found in Washington among the serried ranks of officials, advisors, former officials, pundits, think-tank operators, and other inside-the-Beltway movers and shakers, who have been tested over the years and found never to have a surprise in them. Most of them are notable mainly for having been wrong so often. This is called “experience.”

*A belief that the critics of Washington policy outside Washington and its consensus are, at best, gadflies, never worth seriously consulting on anything.

*A belief that the American people, though endlessly praised in political campaigns, are know-nothings who couldn’t think their way out of a proverbial paper bag when it comes to the supposedly arcane science of foreign policy, and so would certainly not be worth consulting on “national security” matters or issues involving the sacred “national interest,” which is, in any case, the property of Washington. Like Iraqis and Afghans, the American people need good (or even not so good) shepherds in the national capital to answer that middle-of-the-night ringing phone and rescue them from impending harm. (The very foolishness of Americans can be measured by opinion polls which indicated that a majority of them had decided by 2005 that all American troops should be brought home from Iraq at a reasonable speed and that the U.S. should not have permanent military bases in that country.)

*A belief that no other countries (or individuals elsewhere) have anything significant or original to offer when it comes to solving problems like the situation in Iraq (unless, of course, they agree with us). They are to be ignored, insists the Bush administration, or, say leading Democrats, “talked to” and essentially corralled into signing onto, and carrying out, the solutions we consider reasonable.

*A belief that local peoples are incapable of solving their own problems without the intercession of, or the guiding hand (or Hellfire missile) of, Washington, which means, of course, of the U.S. military.

*A belief that the United States — whatever the problem — must be an essential part of the solution, not part of the problem itself.

*And finally, a belief (though no one would ever say this) that the lives of those children of George Bush’s wars of choice, already of an age to be given their first lessons in global “realism,” don’t truly matter, not when the Great Game of geopolitics and energy is at stake.

Of course, the most recent Washington solution, involving the endless military occupation (by whatever name) of alien lands, can “solve” nothing. The possibilities of genuine improvement in Iraq or Afghanistan under the ministrations of the U.S. military are probably nil. And yet, because the only solutions entertained are variations of the above, little better lurks in our future at this moment.

Who would want to speculate on just how old those children of March 19, 2003 will actually be before the Iraq War is ended? So here’s my next question: What’s wrong with this sentence?

On March 19, 2010, the date of the seventh anniversary of President Bush’s invasion of Iraq, as surely as the sun rises in the East I’ll be sitting here and we will still have…

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute’s Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture’s crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.

Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt

Source, including links to additional references

For more information, Instruments for Peace.

Laura Ingraham-behind the scenes and uncensored!
March 13 / 2008

[Jim Baldauf sent this great transcript from Ann Coulter-impressionist right wing radio host Laura Ingraham getting really pissed at her guest. It was released by Harry Shearer and the post below comes from riverdeep on DemocraticUnderground.com — Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog]

Somehow Harry Shearer got audio of Laura Ingraham behind the scenes of her radio show (I’m guessing someone on her show hates her), off-air conversations with and about her guest, one Dr. Diane Sollee, some family counselor. He played it on his marvelous, off-beat radio show, ‘Le Show’, airing on NPR and other stations.

Listen to her ridicule her guest because she had the nerve to tell her she has never heard the great Laura Ingraham Show. It’s really harrowing, and gives some wonderful insight into how the conservative mind works, i.e. destroy your enemies.

Here is a link to Harry’s March 2nd show. The action starts at 28:44 and ends at 34:20.

http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/ls/ls080302le_show_-_march_2_20

Take a listen to his other shows, they’re all good.

http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/ls

Here is the piece excerpted.

http://telepathboy.fileave.com/LeShowIngraham.mp3

And the target of Ms. Ingraham’s scorn, Diane Sollee’s site.

http://www.smartmarriages.com/diane.sollee.html

And, for those of you who can’t get to these links, here is a transcript. Enjoy!

Harry Shearer: Uh, from the Found Objects Department…the, uh, the word to the wise is here, don’t tick off a conservative talk radio host by admitting that you haven’t heard her show.

This is from the Laura Ingraham show, both on AND off the air.

(Off air)

Radio Staff: You’re on with the guest.

Dr. Diane Sollee: Hi there.

Laura Ingraham: It’s Laura, I just wanted to say hi off air before we came back.

Dr: Well, thanks for having me, I’m really happy to be on.

LI: Great, well we’re gonna open it up to calls so you can be, uh…

Dr: Oh, I didn’t know that…

LI: Dr. Diane for a, for a, uh…

Dr: No one, no one told me about the calls.

LI: Well, we’re going to, uh, is that okay?

Dr: Yeah, I’m so sorry I’ve never listened to your show, but I’ve never listened to any show, so.

LI: Really? Well, here’s a word to the wise-before you’re going on a show with five million listeners, go online and listen to it.

Dr: Well…

LI: Do some homework.

Dr: …I know, I know. But don’t lecture me, ’cause I was up to three working two nights in a row so I don’t have a second. I would’ve, I wanted to.

Staff: One minute.

LI: Okay, well uh, I’ll try to forget that you’ve haven’t heard our show. I usually would hang up on people who haven’t heard the show, but…

Dr: Well, I haven’t heard, I’ve never heard anyone. I have never heard a radio show.

LI: How do you, how do you…you’ve never heard a radio show? How are you, how are you on the culture? You gotta listen to radio, you can’t, you can’t-

Dr: Well, obviously it’s not true. I mean, I don’t know when people listen, I’m never in a car and I work 24/7. I mean, literally.

Staff: Thirty seconds.

LI: That’s the way to endear yourself to hosts, tell ’em you never listen to the show. Here we come.

(on air)

LI: So Diane is a very successful marriage and family therapist, and it turns out that, guess what, marriage is good for your health and divorce isn’t. And Diane joins us now. Diane, how are you?

Dr: I’m fine. And you’re annoyed because I told you that I didn’t listen to your show, and I said I haven’t listened to ANY radio show.

LI: Yeah, I actually, I, well, to be, since you want to bring up something that happened during the break, let’s bring it up. Because I asked you, I said, have you, have you listened to the show? And yes, it’s a pretty big radio show. It’s not, it’s not the biggest thing on the earth, and who cares if you don’t. But, I was, I WAS surprised that when you’re in the business that YOU’RE in, where it’s about values and connecting with people, that-and it’s just interesting-you just have never listened to ANY talk radio in your entire life EVER, right?

Dr: I may have fifteen years ago before I started this thing I’m doing. But, I, I work 24/7, literally. You know, I worked last night ’till three o’clock, and the night before until three o’clock and I get up and I start working again. And I don’t, I don’t commute, I’m not in a car-

LI: You can have a radio, right? You don’t need to commute, you put on the kitchen.

Dr: I don’t turn on music, I don’t turn on talk radio, I’m sorry. You know, I, I, and I thought I should be honest with you -I haven’t- I haven’t heard your show. I didn’t realize there was call-in, even. No one told me that. Which I don’t mind, I look forward to-

LI: Let’s…um-hmm.

Dr: I know about talk radio, I think it’s incredibly (overtalk by Laura)

LI: Well, you’re a, but you’re a professional, you’re a professional, and you’re head of this big, ah, interesting, and I think a vibrant group and that’s why we wanted to have you on. I’m just, I’m always interested that people, who, you know, want to get the word out about your group, I mean, just, just a little research on, you know, with whom you’re talking and to whom you’re talking.

We’re going to take a break. When we come back, more questions for our guest, Diane Sollee. She’s the founder and director of Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. You can go to smartmarriages.com for more information. We’ll get to all your calls. Be patient, be brief. Stay with us.

(off air, talking to her radio staff)

LI: If you are supposedly tapped into the culture, what’s happening, you’ve never listened to talk radio-you’re completely out to lunch. I mean, she’s out to lunch. Idiot. By the way-

Staff: An author.

LI: -really stupid for her, to, uh, open that door. Screw off, she revealed that, and so I’m going to friggin’ destroy her. What else can you find out about her? This is, uh, I didn’t really get any, this information about what kind of a person she is. So what else do we know about this woman?

Marriage and family therapist, let’s find out more about her.

Staff: She’s been in this-

LI: I don’t care how long she’s in it. She’s a friggin’ IDIOT.

Look at her…okay, I just saw a picture of her.

Staff: Two(?) minutes.

(laughter)

LI: This big liberal. She’s a big liberal, I can tell.

Staff: Big, stinky, long-haired liberal?

LI: She’s a…okay. She did something with Heritage, Tom, so can’t be all bad. (imitating the good doctor) “You’re just mad I don’t listen to talk radio.” Yeah, no, I just don’t think you do your homework, sweetheart.

Oh, she quotes Maya Angelou!! Maya Angelou’s on the front of the website! Oh my God! Oh, get out. (gibberish) What a, what’s her, what’s, she hasn’t given one piece of common sense information.

First of all, don’t PISS OFF one of the biggest talk show hosts in the United States…

Staff: One minute.

(on air)

LI: We LOVE Maya Angelou on the Laura Ingraham Show. We love, I love, if you’d listened, you’d know how much I love Maya Angelou.

Dr: Well, I wish you didn’t, I wish you’d just realize, you know, that, this is a, a full time revolution.

LI: You’re busy, you’re busy.

Diane, I really appreciate it, thanks so much.

Dr: Thank you, bye bye.

LI: Alright, stay with us on the Laura Ingraham Show, we’ll close it out.

(off air, to staff)

LI: Ah, was she annoying?

Staff: She’s ridiculous.

LI: “Oh, if you’d listen to the show, you’d know how much I LOVE Maya Angelou.” She didn’t even know what I was talking about, I totally goofed on her.

Staff: Yeah, mean-meanwhile, the listeners are…

LI: You guys, when she said she’d never listened to radio, I just couldn’t hold it back, I was so livid.

DON’T COME ON MY SHOW if you’ve never even bothered to even listen to it online. I just would never go a show that I’ve never heard before, unless it was like a local, you know, radio show that I had to do a book tour for.

Staff: Never.

LI: What’s odd is that, this Diana, Diane Sollee is pretty conservative, but she’s, she’s just a dummy on how to push her stuff.

I love that, “You’re just mad that you said, I said…” Well, big mistake, sweetheart.

What a nightmare! Alright, good job you guys. Good job.

This image comes courtesy of Mariann Wizard, who says of it, “I propose the ashram rules for general adhesion.”

Republican Treasurer Embezzles Hundreds of Thousands
From Congressional Committee
By Ben Pershing / Washingtonpost.com / March, 13, 2008

National Republican Congressional Committee officials acknowledged publicly today that they have found discrepancies in their books of more than a million dollars and evidence that the NRCC’s former treasurer, Christopher Ward, made “several hundred thousand dollars” worth of unauthorized wire transfers out of the committee that appear to have ended up in Ward’s own bank accounts.

The NRCC launched an internal probe and contacted the FBI in January after learning that Ward “apparently fabricated and submitted 2006 financial statements to the NRCC’s bank,” according to a memo issued by the committee today. Some details of the probe have been reported previously, but today’s memo and press briefing by a lawyer retained by the committee marked the fullest public accounting so far of the unfolding scandal.

The initial dollar amounts disclosed by the NRCC today suggest that this case could be the biggest campaign swindle ever recorded.

“Based on analysis conducted to date, it appears likely that over a period of several years Ward made several hundred thousand dollars in unauthorized transfers of NRCC funds to outside committees whose bank accounts he had access to, including joint fundraising committees in which the NRCC participated,” said the NRCC memo.

“He also appears to have made subsequent transfers of several hundred thousand dollars in funds from those outside committees to what appears to be his personal and business bank accounts. Those unauthorized transactions date back to at least 2004.”

The NRCC has found that the amount of cash on hand it reported to the Federal Election Commission at the end of 2006 was approximately $990,000 more than the committee actually had in the bank. The total the NRCC reported in the bank to the FEC as of Jan. 31, 2008, was $740,000 more than the actual amount, and the committee has discovered that it owes $200,000 more on its outstanding line of credit than it has reported to the FEC.

It is not clear yet to investigators whether those discrepancies are all due to money transferred out of the committee by Ward, or whether at least some of the shortfalls are attributable to other accounting errors.

“The evidence we have today indicates we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual,” NRCC Chairman Tom Cole (Okla.) said in a statement.

Ward and his attorney have not spoken to the media since news of the NRCC investigation first broke.

While the FBI’s investigation is ongoing, the NRCC has also hired the law firm Covington & Burling to conduct an internal probe, and that firm has in turn hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to do a forensic audit of the committee’s books. NRCC officials now believe the last bona fide audit of the committee took place in 2001, and that Ward submitted “bogus audits” every year from 2002 through 2006 on faked stationary from a genuine, respected accounting firm.

Rob Kelner of Covington & Burling explained to reporters today that his firm’s initial probe revealed a “pattern in which Ward would wire transfer funds to other committees where he did accounting work and had signature authority.” The evidence further showed transfers from those committees to Ward’s bank accounts.

“The exact dollar figures are currently a moving target, and as the investigation progresses, it is entirely possible that these figures will change, either by increasing or decreasing,” the NRCC memo said.

The NRCC borrowed $8 million in 2006 from Wachovia Bank in order to fund that year’s Congressional races, and the committee was required to give the bank detailed financial information in order to secure the loan. It is illegal to knowingly submit false information to a bank for such a transaction, though Kelner said he believed the committee itself would not face any charges for its submissions to Wachovia.

“We’re not aware of any reason why the NRCC should have any [legal] exposure,” Kelner said.

In addition to the NRCC, Ward has served as treasurer for more than 80 other GOP fundraising committees, many of which are now concerned they may also have had money stolen.

Kelner pointed out that it is “not that unusual” for campaign committees to fall victim to embezzlement schemes, and several past examples can be found here.

As of now, Kelner said, this appeared to be a one-man operation. “We’re not aware of anyone colluding with [Ward] on this,” he said.

The NRCC already faces a challenging election cycle. Plagued by a rash of retirements, the GOP has far more open seats to defend in the fall than Democrats do, and the party suffered an important symbolic blow on Saturday when Democrats captured the Illinois seat of ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert (R) in a special election.

Republicans are also at a significant financial disadvantage. As of Jan. 31, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had nearly $30 million more in the bank than the NRCC had.

Source

Friends and fellow history buffs:

The first of my two-volume history of the Texas Rangers, “The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900” (New York: Forge Books, 496 pages, $29.95) will be published March 18.

I am humbled that some 80 per cent of the first press run has already sold and that pre-publication reviews from Kirkus Reviews, the American Library Association’s Booklist, the San Antonio Express-News and others have been very favorable.

You all are invited to the book signings scheduled so far, as listed in the attached flyer. If that’s not convenient for you, the book is available at a nice discount of $17.33 from www.amazon.com or from Barnes and Noble and most other booksellers in the U.S. and Europe.

Not listed on the flyer is a talk I’ll be giving on the book at the Westlake Barnes and Noble in Austin at 7:30 p.m. March 27.

I hope you’ll consider ordering my book or that you can make one or all of the scheduled events.

I’ll look forward to visiting with you.

Best, Mike Cox

Tarot by Kate 512-454-2293
www.tarotbykateinaustin.com
kate_braun2000@yahoo.com

“In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it…”

Thursday, March 20, is the Vernal Equinox, also named Spring Equinox, Lady Day, Ostara, Oestra. Thursday is Thor’s Day; Thor is the Norse god of war. Lady Moon is in her second quarter of Virgo, a sign of new beginnings. The combination of blustery Thor and balancing Moon could prove interesting, to say the least. I recommend you take the attitude that anything can happen on this day.

The egg is a traditional symbol for the Vernal Equinox, as is the rabbit. Both were sacred to Eostra, Saxon goddess of the Dawn, and customs associated with venerating her have morphed over time into current traditions involving Easter egg hunts and the Easter Bunny. Eostra, so the lore tells us, was also fond of sweets; offerings to her shrines frequently included honey and other sweet dessert items. Today the sweet treat of choice for this celebration is: Chocolate! If you like rich, organic, dark chocolate treats of exceptional quality, I suggest you visit the Arte y Chocolate website at www.aychocolate.com to discover where you may obtain some of the highest-quality chocolate available in this area.

Much of the lore concerning the Vernal Equinox involves eggs. Equinoxes are the two times each year when a raw egg may be balanced on its larger end, which may be done at any time during the day and which might be fun for your and your guests to do together at the beginning of your feast. You may choose to use eggs or egg-shapes for placecards and party favors. Your guests might enjoy the opportunity to decorate eggs made of wood, papier mache, cardboard, or other materials. These eggs may then be exchanged among your guests and taken home as party favors to decorate their homes/altars. One custom dictates that hard-boiled eggs are first decorated and then ceremoniously buried in the garden as an offering to the garden deities to bring a bountiful harvest.

Spring festivals also tend to involve dressing up in various types of finery, yet another way to celebrate Lord Sun’s emergence. Array yourself, your festive table, your altar, and invite your guests to dress in pastel shades of all colors. Another focus of this festival is plants and planting. Wheatsville Food Coop‘s annual Herb Fest is on Saturday, March 15, starting at 10 AM, in the north parking lot, should you feel inclined to make some additions to your garden.

It is said that Alexander the Great was asked “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Alexander’s reply was that the Orphic Mysteries teach that the Egg is the origin of all things. I suggest that as you decorate, exchange, balance, and eat eggs on this day, you take some time to contemplate beginnings: consider the goals you would most like to start pursuing this year and choose one to focus on. Ideas, like eggs, are the origin of all things.

********
Reminders: 1. I will be Elaine Ireland’s guest on her live-on-the-internet radio talk show on Wednesday, March 19, from 7:55 PM to 8:50 PM. Go to www.bbsradio.com, click on Channel 2, scroll through the Wednesday listings for “Going Global With Spirit with Elaine Ireland“ and click there to listen. There is a toll-free number for listeners to call in to make comments, ask questions, and/or get a short Tarot reading from me.

2. The next Metaphysical Fair will be on April 12 & 13 at the Radisson Hotel, 6000 Middle Fiskvville Rd., Austin, TX., between Highland Mall and Lincoln Village. Saturday hours:10 AM – 6 PM; Sunday hours are 11 AM – 6 PM. $7.00 entry fee, good for both days. If you come to the fair because you read about it here, please stop by the Tarot by Kate table and say “Hi” whether or not you get a reading. If you decide to get a Tarot reading from me, mention this Seasonal Message and you will receive 5 additional minutes free.

2: Effective April 1, 2008, my bigstep.com website will cease to exist. The new site address is: www.tarotbykateinaustin.com. I will be continuing to fine-tune this site for as long as it takes to get it done to my satisfaction. Send your suggestions for changes/improvements to: kate_braun2000@yahoo.com.

Lying Politicians Make Me Wanna Scream

The Real Spitzer Lessons: The Truth About Political Liars Hurts
By Joel Hirschhorn, published Mar 13, 2008

All politicians are liars.

Successful Republican and Democratic politicians are the biggest liars.

Every time you vote for a Democrat or Republican you are voting for a liar.

People keep believing the lies of politicians.

Politicians who appear the most honest, idealistic and inspirational are also liars.

Politicians that somehow win elections and are lousy liars ultimately fail.

Someone who aspires to public office but is totally honest does not stand a chance.

We need a constitutional amendment that requires removal of a president from office if Congress certifies a publicly stated lie of commission or omission.

Any politician that says negative things about a dishonest politician is surely a liar that has not yet been exposed.

Once you realize that all Democratic and Republican political candidates are liars you are an idiot for believing any of their promises, positions and claims.

Whenever politicians talk about reforming government or the political system, or making important changes, your immediate reaction should be healthy skepticism.

The only rational and logical presumption when you pay attention to what a candidate says is to acknowledge the high probability that they are lying.

Once you accept as normal the dishonesty of politicians you have defined our delusional democracy.

Once you conclude that virtually nothing a candidate says can be trusted you have justified boycotting elections or at least voting for an honest third party or independent candidate.

Simply saying that all politicians lie and have always lied is no justification for keep believing their lies.

Stop voting for what you think is the lesser-lying politician, because you will only be disappointed when their big lies are revealed.

Of course political truths hurt, making it easy for politicians to lie, but ultimately their lies hurt our nation more.

I have told you the truth so don’t lie to yourself and keep rationalizing why lying politicians have to be put up with.

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Ashley Alexandra Dupre, AKA Kristen

New York Sex Worker Organizations Respond to Spitzer Scandal
By Desiree Alliance

New York, NY – In the last few days, Governor Eliot Spitzer has publicly admitted to being associated with an escort agency and has resigned his office. As sex worker advocates, we are concerned about the representation and fate of “Kristen” and sex workers who are being thrust into the spotlight because of the investigation into the Governor. We also share the widespread concern for Governor Spitzer’s family.

Sex worker organizations urge the press and the public to focus on the violation of sex workers rights and the need to change these laws and policies, rather than simply on the story of one individual who has purchased sexual services.

“Nobody is talking about the impact of this story on ‘Kristen’ and other women, men and trans people who are currently working in the sex industry,” Shakti Ziller of SWANK in NYC added, “Prostitutes disproportionately face punitive action after arrest as compared to clients. Whether or not she will face prison time, “Kristen” has been dragged into the spotlight and will be subjected to public humiliation. Shouldn’t the police emphasis be on catching perpetrators of violent crime and protecting sex workers – not exposing adults who are consenting to a transaction? All she did was try to make a living.”

“Governor Spitzer ran on a platform of being a different kind of politician and then portrayed an inaccurate image of himself. Being involved with the services of sex workers is a very common thing, if all forms of consensual sex work were decriminalized for adults involved in a consensual transaction, sex workers could access the services they need,” says Dylan Wolfe of SWANK (Sex Workers Action New York).

Governor Spitzer took a lead role in developing the NY State Anti-Trafficking Law. Over the objections of advocates who worked directly with victims of human trafficking and with sex workers, Governor Spitzer pushed through penalty enhancements against clients of all sex workers. Sex worker advocates fought against such provisions because these policies drive people who need help further underground.

“Spitzer has stood up for workers’ rights in certain capacities, but has not followed through with meeting the real needs of sex workers,” Audacia Ray, author of Naked on the Internet, noted, “It would be great if the government could use money towards services, not punitive measures.”

The press has picked up on the relationship that inter-state trafficking laws (under the Mann Act) have to this case. This connection illustrates a point that sex worker advocates have been making for a long time: Laws against inter-state transportation for the purposes of commercial sex are too often used for punishing people working as sex workers and those who work with and patronize them.

The exposure of Randall Tobias last year as a customer of an escort agency, Senator Vitter’s rumored association with sex workers and now this recent news of Governor Spitzer, the corruption and hypocrisy inherently associated with prohibiting consensual prostitution are again being brought to light. Shaming these men will do nothing to improve the nature of the sex industry and the deeply-rooted corruption that is associated with the prohibition of prostitution.

“The criminalization of prostitution breeds this type of hypocrisy and makes our politicians (and other public figures) vulnerable,” says Carol Leigh of Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA. “This vulnerability exists until our society recognizes that consensual sexual behavior is private and these private acts should no longer be criminalized.”

“Many of our clients are politicians, judges, lawyers and even police,” Monica S., 26 of Brooklyn said. “It’s odd that they spend so much effort putting us into jail, but then turn around and give us their money in exchange for sex. Why do they think they won’t get caught breaking the laws that they make?”

The commentary on Dealbreaker.com, a Wall-Street news site, says about Wall-street’s anti-Spitzer reaction to the ‘Client 9′ story: “‘There is a God’ was the first thought on Wall Street. The next thought is, ‘Please don’t let it be revealed that I’m Lucky Number 7.’

Source.

From Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

Public Is Less Aware of Iraq Casualties, Study Finds
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2008; Page A12

Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer and 23 percent think it is higher, according to an opinion survey released yesterday.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.

Related Pew surveys have found that the number of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined this year, along with professed public interest. “Coverage of the war has been virtually absent,” said Pew survey research director Scott Keeter, totaling about 1 percent of the news hole between Feb. 17 and 23.

The Iraq-associated median for 2007, he said, was 15 percent of all news stories, with major spikes when President Bush announced a “surge” in forces in January of that year and when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, testified before Congress in September.

“We try not to make any causal statements about the relationship between the absence of news and what the public knows,” Keeter said. “But there’s certainly a correlation between the two. People are not seeing news about fatalities, and there isn’t much in the news about the war, whether it be military action or even political discussion related to it.”

Although Iraq topped the list of the public’s most closely followed news stories in all but five weeks during the first half of 2007, according to Pew’s research, interest fell rapidly in the fall, and Iraq has not held the top spot since October. That corresponded with a sharp drop in the rate of U.S. casualties in Iraq and increased news coverage of the U.S. presidential campaign.

During the last week in January, 36 percent of those surveyed said they were most closely following campaign news, while 14 percent expressed the most interest in the stock market and 12 percent in the death of actor Heath Ledger. In contrast, 6 percent said they were most closely following coverage of Iraq.

Read all of it here.

Moko at play at Waikokopu Bay, Mahia, this summer.

The Iraq Follies: Eighteen things you’ve already forgotten about the media’s flawed coverage of Iraq.
by Greg Mitchell

In putting together my new book, So Wrong for So Long, on Iraq and the media, I revisited the good, the bad, and the ugly in war coverage from the run-up to the invasion through the five years of controversy that followed. Even though I monitored the coverage closely all along, I was continually surprised to come across once-prominent names, quotes, and incidents that had faded to obscurity. Here is a list of 18 of those nearly forgotten episodes, in roughly chronological order.

1. The day before the invasion, Bill O’Reilly said, “If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it’s clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation; I will not trust the Bush administration again, all right?”

2. Phil Donahue lost his show at MSNBC, he later claimed, because he did not wave the flag enough. A leaked NBC memo confirmed Donahue’s suspicion, noting that the host “presents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war…. At the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

3. After the fall of Baghdad, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declared, “We’re all neocons now.”

4. The same day, Joe Scarborough, also on MSNBC, said, “I’m waiting to hear the words ‘I was wrong’ from some of the world’s most elite journalists, politicians, and Hollywood types.”

5. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman wrote, “As far as I am concerned, we do not need to find any weapons of mass destruction to justify this war…. Mr. Bush doesn’t owe the world any explanation for missing chemical weapons.”

6. President Bush’s comedy routine during the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 2004, included a bit about the still-missing WMD. While a slide show of the president scouring the White House was projected on the wall behind him, he joked, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere…Nope, no weapons over there…Maybe under here?” Most of the crowd roared, and there was little criticism in the media in following days. Mother Jones‘ David Corn, then Washington editor of The Nation, was one of the few attendees to criticize the routine. Corn wondered if they would have laughed if Ronald Reagan had, following the truck bombing of our Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241, said at a similar dinner, “Guess we forgot to put in a stoplight.”

7. Who was the first mainstream editor/columnist to call for a U.S. pullout? It was the unlikely Allen H. Neuharth, founder of USA Today, who is certainly not known for expressing anti-war or liberal views. His May 2004 column drew wide reader protest but “the old fighting infantryman” (as the former soldier billed himself) stuck to his guns and penned a few more columns in that vein in the years that followed.

8. When the New York Times carried its now-famous editors’ note on May 26, 2004, admitting some errors in its WMD coverage, it appeared on page A10 and Judith Miller’s name was nowhere to be found. The note is often described today as an “apology,” but it was no such thing. On the day it ran, Executive Editor Bill Keller, not exactly chastened, called criticism of the Times‘ coverage “overwrought” and said that the main reason it even published the note was because the controversy had become a “distraction.”

9. Likewise, it’s often said that the Washington Post also issued an apology. But the criticism of its prewar coverage came not in an editors’ statement but in an article by the paper’s media critic, Howard Kurtz. Post editors offered several defenses for the coverage and top editor Len Downie argued that it didn’t make much difference anyway, because tougher coverage would not have stopped the war.

10. Stephen Colbert’s routine at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April 2006 is remembered for the in-his-face mockery of President Bush-but he also spanked the press, perhaps one reason his mainstream reviews were mixed at best. Addressing the correspondents directly, Colbert said, “Let’s review the rules. The president makes decisions; he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell-check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know-fiction.”

11. In one of the purest “my bads” of the war, Fox News’ John Gibson ripped Neil Young after the rocker released his protest album Living With War. Gibson demanded that Young go see the new United 93 movie and even offered to buy his ticket. Young, it was soon pointed out, had actually written one of the first 9/11 songs-”Let’s Roll,” about, you guessed it, Flight 93.

12. Surprise: David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, and Oliver North all came out against the “surge” last January after it was announced by President Bush. George Will wrote a column titled, “Surge, or Power Failure?” And, after the botched hanging of Saddam, Charles Krauthammer declared, “We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a government.”

13. When Valerie Plame finally testified before Congress in March 2007, much of the media coverage focused on her appearance. Mary Ann Akers wrote a piece for the Washington Post titled “Hearing Room Chic,” noting that Plame wore “a fetching jacket and pants” and should be played by Katie Holmes in the movie version of her story because they both favor Armani.

14. On March 27, 2007, John McCain, referring to the supposed calm settling on Baghdad, said, “General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed Humvee.” This turned out to be pure bunk, but McCain quickly visited Iraq to try to prove his overall point. There, the Arizona senator went from the ridiculous to the maligned, touring a Baghdad market and claiming all was safe-while troops surrounded him and helicopters twirled overhead. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) likened the scene to “a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.”

15. In April 2007, CBS’ Bob Simon admitted to Bill Moyers that his network should have dug deeper into the false claims on WMD. “I think we all felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive as this, we should keep it, in a way, almost light-if that doesn’t seem ridiculous,” he said.

16. Contrary to popular belief, the New York Times, which had editorialized against the invasion, did not call for a change in course or the beginning of a withdrawal from Iraq until July 8, 2007.

17. On Meet the Press in July 2007, David Brooks declared that 10,000 Iraqis a month would perish if the United States pulled out. Bob Woodward, also on the show, challenged him on this, asking for his source. Brooks admitted, “I just picked that 10,000 out of the air.”

18. Also in July 2007, an old clip of a C-SPAN interview with Vice President Cheney from 1994 surfaced, in which he defended the decision not to depose Saddam Hussein during Gulf War I: “Once you got to Iraq and took it over…then what are you going to put in its place?…It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.” He explained, “And the question for the president…was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.”

Greg Mitchell is editor of Editor & Publisher and the author of So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits-and the President-Failed on Iraq (Union Square Press), which was published this week.

© 2008 The Foundation for National Progress

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