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Saturday, September 24, 2005
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 American Progress hosted a press roundtable with retired Marine Corps General Joseph Hoar on September 13. Hoar headed U.S. Central Command following Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, overseeing U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf after the first Iraq war.
Gen. Hoar was blistering in his assessment of the current conflict, and the failure of the Bush administration’s civilian leadership to grasp the dynamics on the ground in Iraq. Excerpts follow (or read the full transcript here):
Iraq is like our Revolutionary War, except now we’re the British:
Well, it’s true [that the two conflicts are alike], but we’re on the wrong side. We’re the Brits. This is part of the hubris of this crowd that would think that in a country where 95 percent of the population was tribal, where it had been under various colonial rules for however long – since the Caliphate I guess – that all of a sudden this thing was going to turn around overnight. By the way, I just finished reading [David] McCullough’s book, 1776. We’re in there. (Laughter.) … Yeah, but we have red coats.
Iraq’s political development is essential; the war cannot be won simply by killing more Iraqis:
I’m not at all optimistic about the outcome [in Iraq]. I think part of the reason is that our leadership – civilian leadership has got it wrong. Once the government was overthrown, the requirement from there on in was for political leadership; for the politics to take the lead, rather than the military side. … We’ve had three successive civilian leaders out there, all of whom in my judgment have been ineffective; one bordering on criminal, but the other two relatively ineffective as well. And as a result, the object out there is to kill more Iraqis. I want to tell you that you cannot win this war by killing Iraqis. Now, that ought to be self-evident, but it apparently is not.
As long as Iraq’s insurgents don’t lose, they win:
Ho Chi Minh won as long as he didn’t lose, and these guys [Iraqi insurgents] are in the same category. They are on an entirely different track than we are. This is the George Washington plan: don’t get decisively engaged, hang in there, sooner or later events are going to change and the foreign invaders are going to lose.
Specific steps to improve the security situation in Iraq:
In the list of security things, first of all you have to protect this electoral process that’s ongoing. And then the second priority would be to continue to train Iraqis, but to redouble our efforts and to make sure that they have the appropriate equipment and so forth. Stop conducting search-and-destroy missions out over territory that you’re not going to occupy after you’ve carried out these sweeps, and concentrate on the population centers and the political side of things.
Iraq will be a terrorist breeding ground in the region for years to come:
I want to leave you with something that I think is really important. I was in the Middle East on a trip of five countries this past winter, and in Saudi Arabia there seemed to me to be agreement that, regardless of what happens in Iraq, these jihadis that are now there…, these people are going to be well trained and be out of a job, and they’re going to disperse into the local countries and continue their work. And so it seems to me that the Defense Department not only needs to think about disengaging in Iraq, but to develop the contingency plans if you wind up with a full-scale insurgency in, say, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or if these people redouble the efforts of Hezbollah and Hamas in Israel.
Read the full transcript here.
(Via Think Progress.)
8:01:10 PM 
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"George Bush is a fan of mine -- he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him."
~ Bette Midler
(Via Nanovirus.)
6:22:33 PM
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Bet you don't get good answers.
6:20:28 PM
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Amazing. David Brin passes along this story of how Mirapex, a drug designed to treat Parkinson's disease, turns some of its users into compulsive gamblers!
Mirapex was among the top-selling Parkinson's drugs last year, with more than $200 million in sales in the United States. The drug reduces tremors and the slow, stiff movements that are a hallmark of Parkinson's disease. Mirapex belongs to a class of drugs that mimic the effects of dopamine.
he medication for Parkinson's, the desire to gamble and the craving for excess food have one common denominator, dopamine.
Dopamine is a pleasure-inducing brain chemical, a neurotransmitter that controls action. Dopamine is associated with addiction of all types. Recent studies have indicated that dopamine responds more to unpredictable rewards than to predictable ones. A part of the brain called the striatum where dopamine exists seems to care more about what it cannot predict. In a sense, dopamine produces a need for novelty.
Dopamine has been associated with the novelty of drinking, gambling and other addictions, but it is also connected with curiosity, adventure, entrepreneurship and accomplishments. An experiment performed by Dr. Gregory Burns, author of a book on dopamine, Satisfaction, shows a positive side of dopamine.
6:17:05 PM
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The planet Mars, already very bright in the midnight sky, is about to get much brighter.
(Via Science @ NASA.)
No, it's not going to get as bright as the moon, despite what some emails say. But it is going to be bright, and a bright Mars is always fun. It rewards even something so easy as pointing binoculars at it. Get out and have a look!.
6:01:19 PM
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Some things in the world are truly disgusting. Thanks to Threadwatch and Shakespeare's Sister for remininding me that although some modern legal systems are disgustingly relativistic, many others are still tyrannical and brutish.
Two gay Iranian teenagers -- one 18, the other believed to be 16 or 17, were executed this week for the "crime" of homosexuality, the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) reported on July 19. (The ISNA report is in Farsi, and was translated into English by the British gay rights group OutRage!, which released its report today--ISNA also provided the terrifying photos of the teens' last moments you see on this page.) The two youths -- identified only by their initials as M.A. and A.M., were hanged in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad in north-eastern Iran, on the orders of Court No. 19.
...And Outrage, in its release about the gay teens' execution, noted that, "according to Iranian human rights campaigners, over 4000 lesbians and gay men have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979. Last August, a 16-year-old girl was hanged for 'acts incompatible with chastity.'"
In the case of the two teens hanged in Mashhad, "They admitted having gay sex (probably under torture) but claimed in their defense that most young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death," according to the ISNA report as translated by Outrage. "Prior to their execution, the gay teenagers were held in prison for 14 months and severely beaten with 228 lashes."
Pope Benedict XVI, via Downtown Express:
"It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation..."
(Via The Pope Blog: Pope Benedict XVI.)
5:59:37 PM
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It's pretty easy: set low standards for yourself and high ones for the liberals. And, oh, yeah, it involves hating.
5:57:37 PM
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Why was Sodom destroyed? Because it was decadent and there were homosexuals and all that sinful stuff, right? That’s what the Fundies say, isn’t it? But right in Ezekiel, The Lord tells us why he destroyed the city: because they didn’t take care of their poor…
48 As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done.
49 “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy…”
(Via God is for Suckers!.)
5:49:42 PM
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Yes! And while Clinton was in office. The claim made by some, such as Brit Hume, that this never happened is just plain false. Media Matters has the details: Here's my summary.
- October 13, 1993, Bush I expressed concern about the humanitarian mission to Somalia
- February 1994, Bush I criticized the Clinton administration's purported lack of a "general strategy" in foreign policy particularly with regard to Haiti.
- March 8, 1994, Bush I again criticized Clinton with regard to Haiti.
- On April 8, 1994, Bush I criticized Clinton's proposed health care reform legislation.
- During a July 26, 1996, Bush I criticized Clinton for boasting of about the "current economic stability."
- November 1, 1996, Bush I suggested that Clinton had compromised the "integrity of the White House."
- April 23, 1998, Bush I criticized the Clinton White House and its allies for their continuing public campaign against the independent counsel and his investigation"
And I'll bet Media Matters missed a few cases. For the documentation and details, see the Media Matters post.
I'm not claiming that Clinton didn't deserve criticism for some or maybe all of these things. My claim and that of Media Matters is that there is not some kind of a tradition that former presidents do not criticize current presidents as I have heard in the media from time to time. It's high time Clinton began speaking out against the current President and his ideological cronies. My real question is, "Why didn't he do it sooner?"
(Via Abnormal Interests.)
5:46:06 PM
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Wow. Reason publishes a remarkable piece linking Samual Delany's amazing novel Dahlgren from 1975 with New Orleans, 2005:
Dhalgren's micro-detailed images of the streets of Bellona portray a
city that is both hellish labyrinth and temporary autonomous zone. Bellona's
residents (mostly poor and black) live on looted cans of food; there's no
economy to speak of, gossip is the most highly valued commodity, and a gang
of thugs (eventually headed by the main character, Kid, an amnesiac Native
American poet) runs a haphazard protection racket. Delany writes, "The city
is a map of violences anticipated. The armed dwellers in the Emboriki [a
department store], the blacks surrounding them, the hiss from a turned tap
that has finally stopped trickling, the time it takes a group who go out to
come back with bags of canned goods, packaged noodles, beans, rice,
spaghetti%u2014each is an emblem of inalienable, coming shock. But the
clashes that do occur are all petty, disappointing, minor, inconclusive,
above all stupid, as though the city prevents any real anxiety's ever
resolving. And the result? All humanity here astounds; all charity here is
graced." Last week, New Orleans was more than hellish ("Worse than Iraq!
Worse than Afghanistan!" those who have recently visited both declared). But
in the months before the rebuilding starts, it's worth asking whether it can
also be a space where new ways of making and speaking and existing can come
into being.
5:40:01 PM
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Even absolutely terrible events have silver linings. Hurricane Katrina is an example. It demonstrated, to the surprise at least of this writer, that George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress not only have hearts- they have compassion. And their compassion was demonstrated in two completely unexpected but nonetheless, welcome ways (not including Mr. Bush's inspiring words spoken from New Orleans days after the crisis in order to show that he was determined to restore his popularity even if it meant sending more federal funds to New Orleans than he had already promised.) The first was Mr. Bush's courageous proclamation that, while not the equivalent of Mr. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, was nonetheless significant and, like the Emancipation Proclamation, addressed the state of the less privileged members of society. He suspended provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act.
4:55:58 PM
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In the wake of a lengthy and ongoing campaign in Iraq, many will be asking, "How much did we spend?" Unfortunately no one seems to know. The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism, limiting Congress's ability to oversee spending, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released yesterday.
The Defense Department has reported spending $191 billion to fight terrorism from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks through May 2005, with the annual sum ballooning from $11 billion in fiscal 2002 to a projected $71 billion in fiscal 2005. But the GAO investigation found many inaccuracies totaling billions of dollars.
"Neither DOD nor Congress can reliably know how much the war is costing and details of how appropriated funds are being spent," the report to Congress stated. The Washington Post article is here, and the GAO report is here (pdf).
(Via In the Agora.)
2:37:52 PM
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NEW MEXICAN - U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan Foundation’s readings-and-conversations series Wednesday night. According to Christie Mazuera Davis, a Lannan program officer,
(Via UNDERNEWS.)
2:23:49 PM
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 Sen. Frist will say anything to convince the American public that he isn’t corrupt. (Especially to convince us of the “coincidence” that he sold his shares in the family business right when the stocks were at a peak. Looks like Frist will now need to convince the SEC as well.)
Frist on his blind trusts in 2003:
Right now, I don’t know if I own HCA [stock] because it’s a qualified blind trust. [National Journal, 1/4/03]
This week, Frist admited that he knew he owned HCA. In fact, he directed his trustees to sell the shares. Office of Senator Bill Frist press statement, 9/22/05:
Senator Frist had no information about the company or its performance that was not available to the public when he directed the trustees to sell the HCA stock.
The lesson: when Frist talks about his stock holdings, you can never be completely certain he’s telling the truth.
(Via Think Progress.)
Man between Frist and Delay, these Republican leaders are quite the pair. Any bets on whether they both will be indicted before, say, the 2006 elections? And how many Bush administration officials?
1:54:08 PM
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So, the U.S. House OKs Faith As Head Start Hiring Issue. That is, if this bill becomes law, religious groups will be able to get federal Head Start grants, but also refuse to hire people who don’t share their religion.
So we’re getting federally-funded programs, supposedly aimed at enriching the early education of underprivileged kids, that are being given explicit permission to engage in straightforward religious discrimination in hiring.
I’m just not sure whether this is really driven by the theocratic impulse, or if instead it’s just back-door ‘Publican attempt to undermine support for Head Start among Democrats and reassign money back from education and help for the less fortunate to the more important things, like big no-bid contracts for Haliburton.
(Via Ron's Blog.)
1:48:41 PM
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One of the many benefits of not being a Christian is that you don't have halfwits like this telling you what you have to beleive.
When the chairman of the Kansas State Board of Education told the crowd here that it was impossible to believe in the Bible and evolution — it has to be one, not the other — only one family got up and left.
(Via Thoughts from Kanasas.)
1:46:59 PM
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No comment:
SAN ANTONIO, Sept. 23 – President Bush was supposed to land here on Friday afternoon on the first stop of a tour intended to make clear that he was personally overseeing the federal government’s preparations for Hurricane Rita’s landfall. But the weather did not cooperate.
It was too sunny.
(Via Suburban Guerrilla.)
11:34:23 AM
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Dr. Bruce Prescott adds another dimension to my previous post about Bush's attempts to fund faith-based social services, and how national disasters are being used to further the establishment of religion in the U.S.
It's not hard to see what is happening here if you just ignore their pious sounding rhetoric and look at the reality of what they are doing. They are slowly creating an established church. It is being established not by a direct act of congress (that would violate the First Amendment which says "congress shall pass no laws respecting the establishment of religion"), but indirectly by government appropriations. Christian churches and religious groups are being funded while minority faiths, with tokens here and there for the Jews, are being marginalized as a matter of public policy.
A good example of this establishment of religion by appropriation is taking place in Houston. A couple weeks ago Texas State Representative Garnet Coleman told participants at an Americans United forum that Second Baptist Houston "bought" the right to direct relief efforts for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the city. He said they came in with a million dollars and offered it for the relief efforts on the condition that they take control of the effort. He also indicated that the church's much publicized assent to work with the interfaith community was forced upon them by the mayor of Houston. Coleman asked, "Why is this church that never showed an interest in helping the poor in the past suddenly interested in leading this effort?" He answered, "They are making an investment. They know that billions of dollars are going to be funneled into this and they are the ones who will be in position to control it."
By the time the graft, corruption and injustice of what is now being done in the name of "faith-based initiatives" and "hurricance relief" is widely known and publicized, the Supreme Court will be stacked with jurists who will deny minority rights and interpret the constitution to mean that Christianity has always been the established religion of our nation.
For more about the conspiracy/agenda of the religious right, read this. To better understand the intent of the framers of the Constitution regarding establishment of religion, read this.
(Via No More Apples.)
11:30:26 AM
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Brian Williams, the NBC anchor, has a nice piece in the NYT today about LBJ's response to Hurricane Betsy in 1965. The Johnson tapes captured a phone call from Senator Russell Long telling LBJ to get down to Louisiana to offer help. When LBJ said he was busy, Long hit the politics of the trip hard: "If you go there right now, Mr. President, they couldn't beat you if Eisenhower ran!" Naturally, LBJ went.
The implication of the story is that modern presidents use natural disasters to help themselves politically, which is true enough. But Williams, perhaps slyly, hints at one big difference between LBJ and Bush. LBJ, Williams notes at the opening of his piece, not only kept up on the news of the storm by watching his three famous TV sets, he also monitored the "news service wires clacking away inside the soundproof cabinet next to his desk."
Bush, in contrast, had to be given a video by his aides to find out what was happening after Katrina struck.
LBJ and Bush. Both Texans. Both stuck with unpopular wars (though one inherited his war and the other started it). But one man was curious about the world and the other isn't.
(Via POTUS.)
11:28:50 AM
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "LAURA INGRAHAM: If you need someone to be that military spokesperson over in Iraq, I'm happy to give up my microphone any time, Mr. Secretary. Any time you call I'll be happy to jump over there.
SECRETARY RUMSFELD: You're terrific, Laura. Thanks so much." - "journalist" Laura Ingraham, offering to be an official spokesperson for the Bush administration on Iraq. Why pay her, when she'll do it for free over here?
(Via Daily Dish.)
11:28:41 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 10/1/2005; 12:09:27 AM.
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