Over and above the obvious - the cost of gas and food, the loss of millions of homes, the first time incomes have not grown for Americans - there are a few other things making us blue:
No bid oil contracts
Yes, once again the FOB (friends of Bush) get a leg up in Iraq. First in 2007 Hunt Oil secured an oil deal with the Kurds with the help of the State Department - which denied it until email messages were uncovered by a Congressional Committee. That pesky Congressional Committees! Just think how much easier it would be for Cheney's buddies at Halliburton to make a profit without them. And now American companies are getting no-bid contracts that will give them an extreme advantage in future oil drilling awards. Who says we didn't go there for oil? Not the Iraqis.
- Political hiring/firing by the Justice Department
This time it was the Justice Department's own inspector general who uncovered the scandal that the Department had illegally used "political or idealogical" factors in recruiting and hiring, weeding out candidates they considered "leftists" or - heaven forbid - for social justice. Even Attorney General Mukasey said that using politics in hiring career lawyers was "impermissible and unacceptable". For example, in 2002 all 7 honors applicants who were members of a liberal group, the American Constitution Society (sounds like a group we should be really scared of, right?) were rejected white 27 of 29 members of the conservative Federalist Society were hired.
- Ignoring the Bill of Rights
Yes, I realize the Bill of Rights is so unimportant to Americans - the right of free speech and so on. But some of us draw the line at letting the President and his cabal spy on us, unfettered by a court order. George Bush always had the right to spy on us, as long as he got a search warrant from the FISA court - he could even get it after the fact. But that's just not good enough for him. He wants to listen to your phone calls and read your email whenever he damn well pleases. Sort of like the way my father described what Russia did, as in "if you don't like this country (the Viet Nam war, the draft, segregation, etc.), you can move to Russia." Well, now we don't have to!
Pop quiz: what group's charter is to protect the Bill of Rights?
Yeah, I know that the violence is down, which is great. But it's still a pretty dangerous place to be. The level of violence is still as bad as it was in 2003.
That said, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office released a report last month claiming that the measures that the Bush Administration is using to demonstrate progress in Iraq are either incorrect or more mixed than they are admitting.
For example, the President - in his strategy called "The New Way Forward" - set out a plan that would take 12 to 18 months to enact a law to regulate Iraq's oil industry and handing over all of the provinces to Iraqi control. That was in January 2007. Now, almost 18 months later, only half of the 18 provinces have been handed over to Iraqi control and the oil law is still not enacted.
"The New Way Forward" only covered the period through July 2008. What is the strategy for next month?
The Pentagon says that 70% of Iraqi units are in the lead in counterinsurgency operations. But an analysis based on a study of Iraqi Army battalions done by the GAO finds that only 10% are capable of operating independently.
The Iraqi Parliament enacted a law reforming the Baathist purge; but no members have been named to the commission to carry out this law.
So, though violence is down, it's still higher than it was pre-attack and the political measures are much worse than the Bush Administration will admit
- The White House can deny knowing about greenhouse gases - because it simply refused to open the e-mail from the EPA
Really. Not kidding. The EPA sent an email in December 2007 with the conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, and the White House told agency officials that that document would not be opened, said seniior EPA officials in late June.
Really. Not kidding.
Won't do it. It's unAmerican. Except Nixon spoke to Brezhnev, met with Mao, negotiated in secret with North Vietnam; Reagan met with Gorbachev, as did George HW Bush. Israel is meeting with Syria. Note to George: you don't gain anything by only negotiating with your friends.
This is my favorite. Do you know where we got those "highly effective" interrogation techniques that we use in Guantanamo? You got it - from the Chinese! They've been using the same interrogation techniques that were used on American P.O.W.s in Korea by Chinese captors. They took a 1957 chart describing death threats, degradation, sleep deprivation and worse and made it a part of their handbook for interrogators at Gitmo.
You can't make this stuff up.
But here''s the best part: the original author, Albert Biderman, wrote that the Communists techniques mainly served to "extort false confessions", that the techniques were the same that "inquisitors had employed for centuries" and that "inflicting physical pain is not a necessary nor particularly effective method" to persuade P.O.W.s. I guess that's why American P.O.W.s made false statements themselves.
So, we're (red, white &) blue this July 4 weekend. But - hopefully - not for long.
Pop quiz answer: The group whose charter is to protect the Bill of Rights is none other than the American Civil Liberties Union - the ACLU. So, if you support the bill of rights, you too must be a Commie left wing pablum puking liberal. Or not.
