The Rag Blog

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.

Source

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.

Source

Keith Olbermann: Special Comment on Hillary Clinton

Olbermann Says Clinton “Campaigning Like a Republican”
By Keith Olbermann / MSNBC / March 12, 2008

Finally, as promised, a Special Comment on the presidential campaign of the Junior Senator from New York.

By way of necessary preface, President and Senator Clinton — and the Senator’s mother, and the Senator’s brother — were of immeasurable support to me at the moments when these very commentaries were the focus of the most surprise, the most uncertainty, and the most anger.

My gratitude to them is abiding.

Also, I am not here endorsing Senator Obama’s nomination, nor suggesting it is inevitable.

Thus I have fought with myself over whether or not to say anything.

Senator, as it has reached its apex in their tone-deaf, arrogant, and insensitive reaction to the remarks of Geraldine Ferraro… your own advisors are slowly killing your chances to become President.

Senator, their words, and your own, are now slowly killing the chances for any Democrat to become President.

In your tepid response to this Ferraro disaster, you may sincerely think you are disenthralling an enchanted media, and righting an unfair advance bestowed on Senator Obama.

You may think the matter has closed with Representative Ferraro’s bitter, almost threatening resignation.

But in fact, Senator, you are now campaigning, as if Barock Obama were the Democrat, and you… were the Republican.

As Shakespeare wrote, Senator — that way… madness… lies.

You have missed a critical opportunity to do… what was right.

No matter what Ms. Ferraro now claims, no one took her comments out of context.

She had made them on at least three separate occasions, then twice more on television this morning.

Just hours ago, on NBC Nightly News, she denied she had made the remarks in an interview — only at a paid political speech.

In fact, the first time she spoke them, was ten days before the California newspaper published them… not in a speech, but in a radio interview.

On February 26th, quoting…

“If Barack Obama were a white man, would we be talking about this, as a potential real problem for Hillary? If he were a woman of any color, would he be in this position that he’s in? Absolutely not.”

The context was inescapable.

Two minutes earlier, a member of Senator Clinton’s Finance Committee, one of her “Hill-Raisers,” had bemoaned the change in allegiance by Super-Delegate John Lewis from Clinton to Obama, and the endorsement of Obama by Senator Dodd.

“I look at these guys doing it,” she had said, “and I have to tell you, it’s the guys sticking together.”

A minute after the “color” remarks, she was describing herself as having been chosen for the 1984 Democratic ticket, purely as a woman politician, purely to make history.

She was, in turn, making a blind accusation of sexism — and dismissing Senator Obama’s candidacy as nothing more than an Equal Opportunity stunt.

The next day she repeated her comments to a reporter from the newspaper in Torrance, California.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

And when this despicable statement — ugly in its overtones, laughable in its weak grip of facts, and moronic in the historical context — when it floats outward from the Clinton Campaign like a poison cloud, what do the advisors have their candidate do?

Do they have Senator Clinton herself compare the remark to Al Campanis talking on Nightline… on Jackie Robinson day… about how blacks lacked the necessities to become baseball executives, while she points out that Barock Obama has not gotten his 1600 delegates as part of some kind of Affirmative Action plan?

Do they have Senator Clinton note that her own brief period in elected office, is as irrelevant to the issue of judgment as is Senator Obama’s…

…while she points out that FDR had served only six years as a governor and state Senator before he became President?

Or that Teddy Roosevelt had four-and-a-half years before the White House?

Or that Woodrow Wilson had two years and six weeks?

Or Richard Nixon… fourteen… and Calvin Coolidge 25?

Do these advisors have Senator Clinton invoke Samantha Power — gone by sunrise after she used the word “monster” — and have Senator Clinton say, “this is how I police my campaign and this is what I stand for,” while she fires former Congresswoman Ferraro from any role the campaign?

No.

Somebody tells her that simply disagreeing with and rejecting the remarks is sufficient.

And she should then call, “regrettable”, words that should make any Democrat retch.

And that she should then try to twist them, first into some pox-on-both-your-houses plea to ‘stick to the issues,’ and then to let her campaign manager try to bend them beyond all recognition, into Senator Obama’s fault.

And thus these advisers give Congresswoman Ferraro nearly a week in which to send Senator Clinton’s campaign back into the vocabulary… of David Duke.

“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up.

“Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white.

“How’s that?”

How’s that?

Apart from sounding exactly like Rush Limbaugh attacking the black football quarterback Donovan McNabb?

Apart from sounding exactly like what Ms. Ferraro said about another campaign, nearly twenty years ago?

Quote:

“President Reagan suggested Tuesday that people don’t ask Jackson tough questions because of his race. And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his “radical” views, “if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.”

So… apart from sounding like insidious racism that is at least two decades old?

Apart from rendering ridiculous, Senator Clinton’s shell-game about choosing Obama as Vice President?

Apart from this evening’s resignation letter?

“I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.

“The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you.”

Apart from all that?

Well. It sounds as if those advisors want their campaign to be associated with those words, and the cheap… ignorant… vile… racism that underlies every syllable…

And that Geraldine Ferraro has just gone free-lance.

Senator Clinton:

This is not a campaign strategy.

This is a suicide pact.

This week alone, your so-called strategists have declared that Senator Obama has not yet crossed the “commander-in-chief threshold”…

But — he might be your choice to be Vice President, even though a quarter of the previous sixteen Vice Presidents have become commander-in-chief during the greatest kind of crisis this nation can face: a mid-term succession.

But you’d only pick him if he crosses that threshold by the time of the convention.

But if he does cross that threshold by the time of the convention, he will only have done so sufficiently enough to become Vice President, not President.

Senator, if the serpentine logic of your so-called advisors were not bad enough…

Now, thanks to Geraldine Ferraro, and your campaign’s initial refusal to break with her, and your new relationship with her — now more disturbing still with her claim that she can now “speak for herself” about her vision of Senator Obama as some kind of embodiment of a quota…

If you were to seek Obama as a Vice President, it would be, to Ms. Ferraro, some kind of social engineering gesture, some kind of racial make-good.

Do you not see, Senator?

To Senator Clinton’s supporters, to her admirers, to her friends for whom she is first choice, and her friends for whom she is second choice, she is still letting herself be perceived as standing next to, and standing by, racial divisiveness and blindness…

And worst yet, after what President Clinton said during the South Carolina primary, comparing the Obama and Jesse Jackson campaigns — a disturbing, but only borderline remark…

After what some in the black community have perceived as a racial undertone to the “3 A-M” ad… a disturbing — but only borderline interpretation…

And after that moment’s hesitation in her own answer on 60 Minutes about Obama’s religion — a disturbing, but only borderline vagueness…

After those precedents, there are those who see a pattern… false, or true.

After those precedents, there are those who see an intent… false, or true.

After those precedents, there are those who see the Clinton campaign’s anything-but-benign neglect of this Ferraro catastrophe — falsely or truly — as a desire to hear the kind of casual prejudice which still haunts this society voiced… and to not distance the campaign from it.

To not distance you from it, Senator!

To not distance you… from that which you as a woman, and Senator Obama as an African-American, should both know and feel with the deepest of personal pain!

Which you should both fight with all you have!

Which you should both insure, has no place in this contest!

This, Senator Clinton, is your campaign, and it is your name.

Grab the reins back from whoever has led you to this precipice, before it is too late.

Voluntarily or inadvertently, you are still awash in this filth.

Your only reaction has been to disagree, reject, and to call it regrettable.

Her only reaction has been to brand herself as the victim, resign from your committee, and insist she will continue to speak.

Unless you say something definitive, Senator, the former Congresswoman is speaking with your approval.

You must remedy this.

And you must… reject… and denounce… Geraldine Ferraro.

Good night, and good luck.

Source.

“All the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul”
By Ron Jacobs

12/03/08 “Counterpunch” — — -Recently, the Boston Globe reported that the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) had set up an offshore company to hire close to half of the men and women working for KBR in Iraq as contractors. According to the report, this enables KBR to avoid paying social security, unemployment insurance and other taxes. When workers complained, they were essentially told that they had already signed a contract with the offshore company and therefore had no recourse. On the other hand, at another time KBR argued that some of its workers that sued the company after being exposed to dangerous chemicals in Iraq were KBR employees and, because of laws granting contractors doing military work overseas, the company was not legally responsible. Like the lawyer for the nine men suing KBR said, “When it benefits them, KBR takes the position that these men really are employees. You don’t get to take both positions.”

Of course, this is exactly what KBR wants to do. After all, this corporation and most other companies involved in what is euphemistically called contracting in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and “homeland security” are much more interested in making money than they are in being fair or even patriotic. The bounty provided by what London and DC term the “war on terror” has moved the money grubbing of these corporations to an even higher level of greed. The executives of these companies are not interested in seeing this war end. If it did, then they would lose the gravy train it has become.

This is what Solomon Hughes makes quite clear in his new book War on Terror, Inc. Corporate Profiteering From the Politics of Fear just released by Verso. Hughes is an investigative reporter that does that title proud. His work has appeared in British newspapers and the journal Private Eye. What he does in this book is nothing less than rip the mask of false patriotism and concern for the world’s well-being from the faces of the corporations that constitute a major part of the today’s war industry. In the process, he exposes the shallow greed and willing corruption of the politicians and government bureaucrats who hand over their nation’s coffers to those companies, despite their public ineptitude and chicanery—not to mention the lies the whole shell game is based on. Meanwhile, people die for no reason.

A topic of conversation amongst some Boston Red Sox baseball fans a few years ago was the revelation that a member of one of the ownership groups was a man named Philip Morse. It seems that Morse owned at least one plane that was leased to the CIA for rendition flights. This revelation didn’t cause any Red Sox fans that I know to end their support for their team — given the irrational nature of sports fandom to do so would make too much sense — but it did serve to illustrate just how connected the dots are between corporate American and US intelligence. Furthermore, it showed that money is more important to those businesses involved in the military-industrial complex than morality or even legality.

Hughes’ book takes these connections even further, suggesting that the corporations’ drive for profits is what might very well drive the US government to attack a certain country, even if the government believes there might be other methods it could use. Now, when I was younger a teacher once explained to me the difference between Soviet-style communism and fascism like this: under the former the state is the corporation and under the latter the state serves the corporations. The litany of corporate involvement in war and preparing for war described in War On Terror makes it clear that the US and UK are certainly headed towards the latter. Furthermore, Hughes suggests (and documents with a long list of supporting facts) that once the US is in a country, its policies are driven as much if not more by private contracting companies’ desire for profits than by a government policy that might actually make Washington’s intervention less bloody and shorter in duration. An example of this scenario, suggests Hughes, can be found in the policy of separating societies along ethnic, religious and tribal lines. This was done in the former Yugoslavia and continues in the case of the occupation of Iraq. If one accepts this theory, what becomes even clearer is that the sectarianism now apparently rampant in Iraq is more the result of the US/UK intervention and its complementary use of mercenaries than it is from any intent by Iraqis to foment a civil war. Whether or not this widening of the sectarian divide was Washington’s intention or not it no longer matters because it has created a situation Washington seems to prefer–a country divided amongst itself.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Hughes’ work is that one can see his thesis played out in the daily news. Walls dividing neighborhoods in Iraqi cities. Airbus gaining contracts to build refueling planes and being challenged by Boeing on the grounds of unfair business practices and a false patriotism. Airplane charter services lending their services to Homeland Security to fly prisoners being held in private prisons by private contractors out of the country so they can be tortured in prisons overseas by private interrogators. Just recently, a story crossed the wires about a $30 million dollar wall being built in Iraq to protect an oil pipeline from insurgent attacks. This occurred despite several Iraqis (and others) stating that the work of guarding the pipeline could have been done much cheaper just by hiring local tribesmen to guard it. Of course, the latter choice would not have put several millions into the coffers of whatever western corporation is building the wall.

War On Terror, Inc. works on at least two levels. Hughes challenges the legality and morality of the roles played by these firms and, as mentioned above, he also exposes their sheer ineptitude and gross corruption. The collaboration of western politicians in this conspiracy is something that should be front page news and provoke the outrage of every citizen of these countries. The fact that it doesn’t is witness to the effectiveness of the neoliberal myth that privatization is better than anything any government could do. The narrative in War on Terror, Inc. is proof that that myth is a brazen lie.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net.

Source

With March 20 marking the fifth anniversary of the United States-led invasion of Iraq, it’s time to take stock of what has happened.

In our new book The Three Trillion Dollar War, Harvard’s Linda Bilmes and I conservatively estimate the economic cost of the war to the U.S. to be $3 trillion, and the costs to the rest of the world to be another $3 trillion – far higher than the Bush administration’s estimates before the war.

The Bush team not only misled the world about the war’s possible costs, but has also sought to obscure the costs as the war has gone on.

This is not surprising. After all, the Bush administration lied about everything else, from Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction to his supposed link with Al Qaeda. Indeed, only after the U.S.-led invasion did Iraq become a breeding ground for terrorists.

The Bush administration said the war would cost $50 billion. The U.S. now spends that amount in Iraq every three months.

To put that number in context: For one-sixth of the cost of the war, the U.S. could put its social security system on a sound footing for more than a half-century, without cutting benefits or raising contributions.

Moreover, the Bush administration cut taxes for the rich as it went to war, despite running a budget deficit. As a result, it has had to use deficit spending – much of it financed from abroad – to pay for the war.

This is the first war in American history that has not demanded some sacrifice from citizens through higher taxes; instead, the entire cost is being passed onto future generations.

Unless things change, the U.S. national debt – which was $5.7 trillion when Bush became president – will be $2 trillion higher because of the war (in addition to the $800 billion increase under Bush before the war).

Was this incompetence or dishonesty?

Almost surely both.

Cash accounting meant that the Bush administration focused on today’s costs, not future costs, including disability and health care for returning veterans.

Only years after the war began did the administration order the specially armoured vehicles that would have saved the lives of many killed by roadside bombs.

Not wanting to reintroduce a draft, and finding it difficult to recruit for an unpopular war, troops have been forced into two, three or four stress-filled deployments.

The administration has tried to keep the war’s costs from the American public. Veterans groups have used the Freedom of Information Act to discover the total number of injured – 15 times the number of fatalities.

Already, 52,000 returning veterans have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The U.S. government will need to provide disability compensation to an estimated 40 per cent of the 1.65 million troops that have already been deployed.

And, of course, the bleeding will continue as long as the war continues, with the health-care and disability bill amounting to more than $600 billion (in present-value terms).

Ideology and profiteering have also played a role in driving up the war’s costs. America has relied on private contractors, which have not come cheap.

A Blackwater Security guard can cost more than $1,000 per day, not including disability and life insurance, which is paid for by the government.

When unemployment rates in Iraq soared to 60 per cent, hiring Iraqis would have made sense; but the contractors preferred to import cheap labour from Nepal, the Philippines and other countries.

The war has had only two winners: oil companies and defence contractors. The stock price of Halliburton, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s old company, has soared. But even as the government turned increasingly to contractors, it reduced its oversight.

The largest cost of this mismanaged war has been borne by Iraq. Half of Iraq’s doctors have been killed or have left the country, unemployment stands at 25 per cent and, five years after the war’s start, Baghdad still has less than eight hours of electricity a day.

Out of Iraq’s total population of around 28 million, 4 million are displaced and 2 million have fled the country.

The thousands of violent deaths have inured most Westerners to what is going on: A bomb blast that kills 25 hardly seems newsworthy anymore.

But statistical studies of death rates before and after the invasion tell some of the grim reality. They suggest additional deaths from a low of around 450,000 in the first 40 months of the war (150,000 of them violent deaths) to 600,000.

With so many people in Iraq suffering so much in so many ways, it may seem callous to discuss the economic costs.

And it may seem particularly self-absorbed to focus on the economic costs to America, which embarked on this war in violation of international law. But the economic costs are enormous, and they go well beyond budgetary outlays.

Americans like to say that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Nor is there such a thing as a free war. The U.S. – and the world – will be paying the price for decades to come.

Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, is professor of economics at Columbia University and co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

Source.

From David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

John McCain runs for George Bush’s third term
By Juan Cole

Based on his policies and the company he keeps, this year’s Republican presidential candidate sounds a lot like the guy who ran in 2000 and 2004.

March 12, 2008 | The most important thing about the endorsements proffered to John McCain by George W. Bush and evangelist John Hagee last week was McCain’s reaction to them. The freshly minted Republican nominee for president, who has had harsh words in the past for both Bush’s policies and evangelical “agents of intolerance,” meekly accepted their support. He knows he cannot win in November if the evangelicals and pro-war conservatives stay home. How far will McCain go in presenting himself as Son of Bush in order to energize his party’s base? To date, based on his willingness to embrace the Bush agenda and to associate with religious extremists, the answer seems to be pretty far indeed.

When John McCain went to the White House last week, President Bush seemed to be offering him an out. Bush “welcomed” McCain as “the Republican nominee” in his official statement, but didn’t initially use the word “endorse.” It was McCain who leapt for the e-word. “Well, I’m very honored and humbled,” said McCain, “to have the opportunity to receive the endorsement of the President of the United States, a man who I have great admiration, respect and affection [for].”

McCain’s strategists, meanwhile, are said to be privately plotting how best to deploy the deeply unpopular Bush, perhaps by quietly sending him to host fundraisers deep inside red states where he would not risk alienating the general population from McCain. But McCain is hewing so faithfully to Bush’s legacy he may need no help from the man himself in alienating the population.

Whereas in his 2000 presidential bid, the Arizona senator sharply criticized Bush for appearing at the anti-Catholic Bob Jones University, which at that time also still banned interracial dating, he is less vocal about such matters now. He is himself behaving as Bush did then. McCain once dismissed evangelicals such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance.” But last week the senator embraced Hagee’s endorsement. Talk about an agent of intolerance! Hagee is like Pat Robertson on steroids.

The Democratic National Committee was quick to point out that Hagee said that Jews have faced persecution “right up to this very day” because they rejected Jesus and so demonstrated “disobedience and rebellion” toward Jehovah. He said that the difference between a woman with premenstrual syndrome and a terrorist is that you can negotiate with a terrorist. He said that Katrina was divine punishment on New Orleans for its sinfulness, and on gays for planning a parade there. He said that Roman Catholics were linked with Hitler “in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews,” and called the Catholic Church “the Great Whore.” He suggested a faux “slave auction” as a church fundraiser. He told a startled Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” that the Quran directs Muslims to kill Christians and Jews. (In fact the Quran recognizes Christians and Jews as “people of scripture” and only urges the early Muslims to fight back against the militant “infidels” or polytheists who were trying to wipe them out.)

McCain reacted warmly to Hagee’s endorsement, saying, “I am very proud of Pastor John Hagee’s spiritual leadership to thousands of people and I am proud of his commitment to the independence and the freedom of the state of Israel.” (Apparently for Hagee Israel is good, even if Jews are bad.) Pressed by Roman Catholics and others, McCain refused to distance himself from the pastor, saying only, “In no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee’s views, which I obviously do not.” This non-disavowing disavowal has not satisfied most of the people offended by McCain’s having associated himself with Hagee.

Hagee’s endorsement is McCain’s “Bob Jones moment,” taken from the W. playbook of 2000. In other respects, McCain is trying to repeat Bush’s big win of 2004, when he fended off a near-upset by a weak Democratic candidate by doubling down on fear. McCain has adopted foreign policy and domestic stances similar to those of Bush’s successful reelection run.

In July of 2004, Bush abruptly announced that he was looking into whether Iran played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., and accused the Shiite ayatollahs of Tehran of harboring al-Qaida operatives, who are Sunnis. The whole fantastic set of allegations was immediately denied by Bush’s own intelligence officials. Hawkishness toward Iran was one way for Bush to take the focus off his failures in Iraq. Bush by his belligerence appealed to a combination of evangelical holy warriors and so-called national-security conservatives, and McCain seems poised to move in the same direction.

Echoing Bush’s fear-mongering about the Islamic world, which by August 2006, two years after his reelection, regularly included references to so-called Islamic fascism, McCain maintains that the “transcendent” challenge facing the United States in 2008 is “radical Islamic extremism.” McCain alleges that “al-Qaida in Iraq” will “follow us home” if the U.S. withdraws from that country. McCain takes this line even though most Muslim countries are close allies of the United States and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida has been revealed to be a small fringe, now in disarray.

Hagee’s endorsement, meanwhile, brings more than white Protestant intolerance to the table. The organization he founded, Christians United for Israel, is lobbying for a war on Iran and dismisses last fall’s National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program as “incompetent.” McCain himself has joked about bombing Iran, to the tune of an old Beach Boys song.

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Rep. Lloyd Doggett on Waterboarding

U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett today [11 March 2008] spoke on the House floor on the override of President Bush’s veto of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008 that would have banned the practice of waterboarding.

In his remarks, Rep. Doggett cited the 1983 conviction of San Jacinto County Sheriff James C. Parker, who according to court records subjected prisoners to waterboarding.

Hear This Hammer Ring
by Sarah Browning

Don’t you hear this hammer ring?

I’m gonna split this rock

And split it wide!

When I split this rock,

Stand by my side.

– Langston Hughes

When we first began organizing the Split This Rock Poetry Festival about a year and a half ago, I told people that we’d chosen the date to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I can’t tell you how many asked us, “Oh, do you think the war will still be going on then?”

My first reaction was, “What are you smoking?”

But slowly it dawned on me that many people did not recognize what had happened in our country after September 11. Of the three wars the Bush administration is currently waging, the U.S. public is selectively aware of only the one that is devastating the country of Iraq, killing countless Iraqi civilians and thousands of U.S. service members. The public has a growing awareness of the administration’s second war – on U.S. foreign policy. The Bush administration and its neocon theorists have committed us to worldwide, perpetual, preemptive war. They have made the notion that we can bomb our way to “security” the main tenet our nation’s foreign policy.

The third war, however, has gone virtually unnoticed. The administration is at war with language.

Word War III

In this new paradigm the word is no longer valued for its power of negotiation, diplomacy, understanding, but only for its power to control, to pacify. It’s an age-old technique, to repeat the same flattened phrases over and over until they become accepted wisdom. But with a complicit mass media, propaganda is easier than ever to perpetuate. The latest “spin”: The surge is working. The surge is working. The surge is working. Repetition does not, however, change the facts on the ground.

Which is why we need poetry now, more than ever. We need poets to tell the complex human story. Poets cut through the fog of propaganda and remind us of the real consequences of our government’s actions. As the poet and essayist Martín Espada, who will be reading on the opening night of Split This Rock, says, we need poetry to give politics a human face. Poetry reminds us of what matters. It wakes us up. With its immediacy and idiosyncrasy and great heart, it shakes us from our despair.

Poets have taken up this challenge, uniting against the war in Iraq with unprecedented public action. Split This Rock originates in the Poets Against War movement, spurred by the leadership of Sam Hamill. Here in the capital city, DC Poets Against the War has been active for five years, reading at demonstrations, in schools, churches, libraries, community centers, night clubs, and cafes. We’ve published two anthologies and organized poets’ delegations to march in the national peace demonstrations, carrying lines of poetry through the streets of Washington.

As this election year approached and we were hearing more about the powerful activism of poets all over the country, we decided the time had come to step it up. Uniquely situated here in the nation’s capital, we felt it our obligation to provide a national forum that could bring poets together, celebrate and publicize their art and their activism, and build bonds across differences of geography, age, race and ethnicity, social class, gender, sexuality, physical ability, and poetic style. We hope to make Split This Rock a regular event – every other year, perhaps – and to nurture and support this nascent community that is just beginning to be born.

Read all of it here.