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Tuesday, December 06, 2005
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Vertigo Then and Now. Great stills from the Hitchcock classic paired with the same shots today (er, 2003).
8:30:59 PM 
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While Rice is in Europe trying to prop up the US's image and defending renditions, secret prisons and any method used in the “War on Terror”, she has admitted that “mistakes are made”. I'm sure that's cold comfort for those people who have had their lives ruined by these mistakes. But even when the system does work, it only works for those who have access. For those who don't have access there's this:
Benyam Mohammed travelled from London to Afghanistan in July 2001, but after September 11 he fled to Pakistan. He was arrested at Karachi airport on April 10 2002, and describes being flown by a US government plane to a prison in Morocco. These are extracts from his diary.
They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor's scalpel. I was naked. I tried to put on a brave face. But maybe I was going to be raped. Maybe they'd electrocute me. Maybe castrate me.
They took the scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Maybe an inch. At first I just screamed ... I was just shocked, I wasn't expecting ... Then they cut my left chest. This time I didn't want to scream because I knew it was coming.
...
Warning the rest of this is extremely graphic and disturbing. And I don't want to hear how fucking bad Saddam was, we're not talking about him. This is about us.
(Via All Spin Zone.)
8:16:41 PM
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Raw Story
An analysis released by a Democratic senator found that Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton stock options have risen 3,281 percent in the last year, RAW STORY can reveal. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asserts that Cheney's options -- worth $241,498 a year ago -- are now valued at more than $8 million. The former CEO of the oil and gas services juggernaut, Cheney has pledged to give proceeds to charity.
Not surprisingly, even in a blind trust, Cheney made sure he's a rich man. His stock benefit amounts to $8 million of debt that will be paid by future taxpayers, our children.
(Via Shining Light in Dark Corners.)
8:13:38 PM
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In a double-whammy followup to a recent story about the plans of the University of Kansas to offer a course debunking "intelligent design," the course has not only been cancelled, but the professor who organized it was beaten and hospitalized. Lovely. Just lovely.
Hat tip to the invaluable Cursor for this and many other stories.
(Via Left I on the News.)
8:09:29 PM
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In his excellent Atlantic Monthly article on building an Iraqi army, James Fallows busts some administration spin about the extent of the violence there:
The first major attack on Iraq's own policemen occurred in October of 2003, when a car bomb killed ten people at a Baghdad police station. This summer an average of ten Iraqi policemen or soldiers were killed each day. It is true, as U.S. officials often point out, that the violence is confined mainly to four of Iraq's eighteen provinces. But these four provinces contain the nation's capital and just under half its people.
To illustrate the absurdity of this point, which the White House and Defense Department use frequently, imagine if there were a rebellion in the US and the government said, well, 41 out of 50 states are safe, and the unsafe states were California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Michigan, and Massachusetts, plus the District of Columbia. That's roughly half the US population and the nation's capital.
(Via Brendan Nyhan.)
8:02:14 PM
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9/12/01
But on Wednesday, two former senators, the bipartisan co-chairs of a Defense Department-chartered commission on national security, spoke with something between frustration and regret about how White House officials failed to embrace any of the recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism delivered earlier this year.
Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism — which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying — while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.
The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA’s attention.
Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be taking the commission’s suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. “Frankly, the White House shut it down,” Hart says. “The president said ‘Please wait, we’re going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.’ And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day.”
Four years later? U.S. given ‘more F’s than A’s’ on terror preparation
(Via Oliver Willis - Like Kryptonite To Stupid.)
9:03:55 AM
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Love it, love it.
A former GM senior executive and lifelong Republican echoes my last post in "Mr. Bush, have I got an exit strategy for you!"
Any CEO of a corporation who screwed up as many things as George W. Bush would have been fired by its board of directors. Here's a few of the ways:
Invasion of Iraq, which is the biggest strategic blunder and scandal in U.S. history. Saddam Hussein never initiated a belligerent act of aggression or terrorism against us. The buildup to that war was based on fabrications, deception and lies.
Death of 2,100 U.S. soldiers, wounding 15,000 more, and the death of 30,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children.
Immoral and unconstitutional trade policies that caused $2.824 trillion in trade deficits in just five years.
The worst fiscal performance in our history, piling up $2.472 trillion in added federal debt in five years en route to a major economic collapse.
Tax policies that are an insult to working people who make dividends possible but who are required to pay a higher marginal tax rate than those who collect dividends without working.
Foreign policies that have alienated most of the rest of the world.
A misguided attempt to turn future Social Security pensions over to Wall Street.
...
In view of his miserable record, his arrogant lack of good judgment and his failure to understand the gravity of his record, President Bush (and Vice President Dick Cheney) should be shown the exit door with a proviso to never darken the Oval Office again.
That should be exit strategy No. 1!
(Via No More Apples.)
9:02:05 AM
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Love it, love it.
A former GM senior executive and lifelong Republican echoes my last post in "Mr. Bush, have I got an exit strategy for you!"
Any CEO of a corporation who screwed up as many things as George W. Bush would have been fired by its board of directors. Here's a few of the ways:
Invasion of Iraq, which is the biggest strategic blunder and scandal in U.S. history. Saddam Hussein never initiated a belligerent act of aggression or terrorism against us. The buildup to that war was based on fabrications, deception and lies.
Death of 2,100 U.S. soldiers, wounding 15,000 more, and the death of 30,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children.
Immoral and unconstitutional trade policies that caused $2.824 trillion in trade deficits in just five years.
The worst fiscal performance in our history, piling up $2.472 trillion in added federal debt in five years en route to a major economic collapse.
Tax policies that are an insult to working people who make dividends possible but who are required to pay a higher marginal tax rate than those who collect dividends without working.
Foreign policies that have alienated most of the rest of the world.
A misguided attempt to turn future Social Security pensions over to Wall Street.
...
In view of his miserable record, his arrogant lack of good judgment and his failure to understand the gravity of his record, President Bush (and Vice President Dick Cheney) should be shown the exit door with a proviso to never darken the Oval Office again.
That should be exit strategy No. 1!
(Via No More Apples.)
9:00:55 AM
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More on a recent poll of historians, from a fine historian Richard Reeves:
This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:
He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
*He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
*He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
*He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
*He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign ( Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
*He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
*He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
*He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.
Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.
Nice last sentence.
(Via Rising Hegemon.)
9:00:46 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 1/1/2006; 11:08:43 AM.
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