This snit from The Speech have I seen few comments on:

And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have.

The obvious question is “what restrictions” is he referring to? Apparently the present rules allow them to kick down doors, put everybody on the floor with boots on the neck, shoot anything that moves — what do they need, permission to hang them from lampposts?

Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Jan 12 2007 8:36 utc | 3

Pentagon abandons active-duty time limit
Israeli Gov’t to support bill on revoking citizenship for disloyalty to state

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 12 2007 9:02 utc | 5

Chuck Cliff,
The new rules of engagement are to disengage any authority of the Iraqi government to tell the U.S. what it may or may not do, or in otherwords, the illusion of Iraqi sovereignty is now officially so.
If the U.S. wants to fallujah sadr city, they will.

Posted by: anna missed | Jan 12 2007 9:31 utc | 7

Oops – Meant to write “that took place all over the US yesterday in my #8.

Posted by: Bea | Jan 12 2007 12:08 utc | 9

from uncle’s #5 link The dispatching of a Patriot missile battery, capable of defending against shorter-range ballistic missile attacks, appeared linked to Bush’s announcement Wednesday that he ordered an aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East, which would be in easy reach of Iran, whose nuclear program is a U.S. concern.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 12 2007 13:44 utc | 11

Small town Missoula:Brave protesters rally against war
made me proud…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 12 2007 14:29 utc | 13

Since the decider’s big speech, so far “no worries”. Maybe this is something to keep an eye on though. Is it possible this is all manipulated by big power friends? Just asking.
Stocks jump as oil prices stabilize
Dow Jones industrial average at another record high
Investors regained some of their recent swagger Thursday, sending stocks higher and the Dow Jones industrials to another record close after oil prices plunged and a drop in jobless claims indicated the economy wasn’t slowing too quickly.

Posted by: Rick | Jan 12 2007 15:01 utc | 15

todays DemocracyNow show might be of interest
Mike McConnell, Booz Allen and the Privatization of Intelligence

Mike McConnell, the man President Bush tapped to replace John Negroponte as National Intelligence Director, has been a leading figure in outsourcing U.S. intelligence operations to private industry. McConnell is a former director of the National Security Agency and the current director of defense programs at Booz Allen. We take a look at McConnell and the privatization of intelligence with journalist Tim Shorrock.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 12 2007 15:28 utc | 17

@fauxreal re: # 14&15
Interestingly enough, we have a contingency of people (my friends and I) here, whom do our own reconnaisance missions at these things, we watch the watchers. We started our project a few years back when Former Senator George McGovern Spoke Out Against War in Iraq in 03 at our local park.
The rally was part of the International Weekend for Peace where 2,500 peace activists gathered in Caras Park (Downtown Missoula) and I happened to notice a few things. The Missoula police dept. had what seemed to be swat team snipers on the adjacent rooftop of some of the buildings nearby. I pointed them out to a few friends, and we started looking for signs of the watchers. What we found was interesting. I wont go into our evolving tactics, suffice it to say we encountered the missoula police dept cam cording various people and doing very sneaky things. Thus began our project of ‘watching the watchers’.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 12 2007 16:05 utc | 19

uncle- if you have an indymedia nearby, that’s always a good place for posting recon photos to document police- (and, increasingly, military-) state surveillance tactics & to share them w/ a wider audience. also helps for outing the regular plainsclothes sneaky types.

Posted by: b real | Jan 12 2007 16:23 utc | 21

If the Richmond Times Disgrace says 150, it had to be more. It seemed like more to me. This is really good for us.

Posted by: beq | Jan 12 2007 17:50 utc | 23

U.S. and global annual temperatures are now approximately 1.0 degrees F warmer than at the start of the 20th century, and the rate of warming has accelerated over the past 30 years, increasing globally since the mid-1970s at a rate approximately three times faster than the century-scale trend. The past nine years have all been among the 25 warmest years on record for the contiguous U.S., a streak which is unprecedented in the historical record.
NOAA REPORTS 2006 WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD FOR U.S.

Posted by: b real | Jan 12 2007 18:07 utc | 25

From a comment at dkos …
Bush’s Plan for Iraq Runs Into Opposition
Important quote from Sen. John Sununu (R-NH):

Several Republicans questioned the Bush plan without rejecting it outright, but their call for greater detail made it clear they remained unconvinced. Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire agreed that approving new legislation in Iraq on sharing oil revenue would be central to weaving estranged Sunni Arabs into the political process, but he said no United States government official could describe the law to him.
“It’s the most remarkable law that no one has ever seen,” he said.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 12 2007 18:41 utc | 27

Youtube: Joe Scarborough: The Coming War with Iran? (1 of 2)
Even the M$M can’t cover up the insanity anymore…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 12 2007 19:14 utc | 29

“Al-Maliki has named Lt. Gen. Aboud Gambar, an Iraqi general
who was taken prisoner of war by USforce during the 1991 Gulf war, as the overall commander.”
It’s coming fast and hard now…
This is going to get even more ugly…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 12 2007 19:40 utc | 31

uncle/anna missed
didn’t bearing point (anderson actt) write the oil plan?

Posted by: annie | Jan 12 2007 20:32 utc | 33

Annie, Bearing Point are KPMG.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 12 2007 20:53 utc | 35

a thoughtful & meditative text by australia’s most powerful & subtle cartoonist michael leunig
January 13, 2007
Death, whether animal or human, must be seen to be truly understood.
“I WORKED AS A LABOURER IN the abattoirs when I was very young and saw much blood and guts and witnessed the slaughter of many innocent creatures. It was a dramatic, violent and gory atmosphere in which to work and the days were gruelling and long.
Yet far from being a brutalising experience, I believe the spiritual disturbance that came from seeing the industrial killing of so many beautiful animals had the effect of sensitising me and deepening my pathos, and the mystery of death and existence. Existential philosophy, poetry and art – just like sadness – were all unavoidable to a tender young man in the meatworks.
I laboured in this harsh place because my formal education and I had parted company on bad terms and I needed the dignity of some money in my pocket. Meatworkers may have been looked down upon socially but at least they were well-paid and were a fit and lively bunch as a result of hard, honest physical work.
There was a sense of masculine honour about them and definitely great swags of gentleness, decency, good humour and spirited language. Apart from the odd murderer or bandit, most of them were fathers and husbands, family men who could hold their head up in the world, and working among these earthy men was one of my better experiences of humankind.
It seemed culturally normal to take such a job because I lived near the meatworks and my father had been a slaughterman. It had never occurred to me that being a meatworker was regarded by some as a lowly occupation. He brought home such a good pay packet, such political consciousness, such wounds on his hands, so many hilarious tales and rich turns of phrase that I imagined something remarkable was happening in the slaughterhouse. And it was.
As a small boy I would stand next to him by the kitchen sink at night, looking up as he sharpened his knives in preparation for the next day. Rhythmically he would flick and stroke and draw the long curved blade against the steel held in his other hand – the knife darting over and under in a supple, flowing action that was hypnotic and strangely musical to a small, wondrous boy whose mind was lost in high contemplation about the nature of sharpness: the point where the steel edge becomes so fine that it doesn’t exist any more.
When he’d finished, he would pass the knife edge slowly down along his forearm, shaving the hairs in a smooth and dazzling display for me of this mystical sharpness. Then extending the glistening blade gently downwards for my examination he would say: “This knife is so sharp, it could shave a sleeping mouse.”
I would swoon at this thought. Images filled my mind of a sweet, soft, warm, little mouse sleeping snugly, peacefully dreaming of paradise, and my gentle father with his great knife ever so finely and tenderly taking away the downy fur on the cheek of the wee creature – then under his chin and around to the other cheek – such skilful, loving, microscopic movements, so infinitely and beautifully sensitive. Oh that dear little mouse!
Little did I envisage that the next day he would be away in the shambles, scruffing sheep, dragging their heads across his lower leg and laying open their throats with this blade – an action so strong and deft and swift as to be magician-like – ending amid a torrent of crimson as the tip of the steel edge found and opened the “cup” in the spinal cord, which disabled the nervous system and brought sudden death to the animal.
I watched my father do this on many occasions and what struck me, apart from the shocking spectacle of animal murder, was the apparently unfussed manner in which it was done – with no sense of aggression or violence whatever. Strangely, it was a calm, steady and skilful act in which the animal appeared to lie down and die, almost peacefully in his arms with no resistance or alarm. My father displayed some other-worldly tender touch as if compassion were present, and I later found out that it was – along with inner wounds caused by this peculiar work that he did.
One day I was asked to go and assist on the beef killing floor. The first few cattle of the afternoon had to be slaughtered and their carcasses readied for butchering on the conveyer chain when the workers returned from lunch.
The animals were driven up a race into the “killing crush”or “knocking box” as it was sometimes called – a small metal enclosure that restrained the animal, and over which the operator stood on a platform and delivered the fatal shot from a captive bolt pistol into the forehead of the creature.
My job was to generally assist until the regular crew resumed work, and to manage the hydraulic door and drop-away floor of the enclosure, but all too soon came the moment when I was asked to use the pistol.
Apart from feeling sombre and dreadful, what mattered was that I get it right and place the gun on the correct spot as quickly and nimbly as possible in that brief, unpredictable moment when the frightened beast stops tossing its head about.
The time had arrived when I was forced to understand the full meaning of being a carnivore. I had held the theoretical view that if you eat meat you had better be prepared to kill the animal, and now it was my turn to engage fully in the truth of my culture’s taste for blood and its ruthless and brutal relationship with certain innocent animals.
Perhaps in my youthful sensitivity, I felt betrayed and isolated because I was being cast into something that I felt all meat-eaters should face but were mostly refusing to do – while remaining coy and aghast about the dirty deeds in the slaughterhouse. The world seemed to me so full of sophistication, hypocrisy and carnivorous greed.
I look back at that time with a mixture of resignation and disturbance, and it all comes back to me when I reflect upon the sad, gruesome pictures of Saddam Hussein’s execution (in many ways an industrial killing) and the howls of revulsion concerning the publishing of these and many other images of war’s disgusting truth. The consequences: the unforeseen and invisible seeds and poisons from our distant wars flow slowly, irreversibly and massively back into our lives for evermore – cry out in protest if you will, but it’s too late now.
No nation can go to war without a sufficient reserve of hatred, cruelty and bloodlust politely concealed in its general population, and if our so-called Western democracies wanted their “war against terror”, then let them now at least see the graphic details of war’s sickening and hideous consequences.
The curse is, however, that it’s the children who are most defiled and blighted by such frightening imagery – and they had no part in it.
My years in the abattoirs taught me that society denies its bloodlust and cruelty and imagines that such impulses appropriately belong to prehistoric barbarians or “rough and uncouth men”.
But I believe we now have the unique modern cruelty of the refined and educated Western man; the respected gentleman in the fine suit who has never much dirtied his hands or killed a living creature, never meditated upon a rotting corpse and never had his consciousness infected with the messy organic substances of violent death – yet who can sign with an elegant golden pen the document that unleashes the cowardly invasion and who can then go out to dine on claret and lamb cutlets.
The likes of these men abound in the halls of academia, the boardrooms and corridors of power and the chicken-coop workstations of the media, where they have clamoured for war, for all sorts of ungodly and unfathomable reasons, without really knowing in their bones how it works: the business of violence and blood and guts.
They are primally inexperienced, unconnected and unwise. Their flesh has not been seared. Their repressed death-fascination and sly cruelty has not yet been transformed into reverence and understanding by initiation into things primal, carnal and spiritual; by the actual sights and sounds of splattering blood and crunching bone and the pitiful flailing and wailing of violent death – the very thing they would unleash upon others. Just one sordid street-fight or one helpless minute of aerial bombardment might redeem them. They lack the humbling erudition of the slaughterman, the paramedic and, no doubt, the soldier who has really been a soldier.
I dare say there’s something foul, creepy and disgraceful emerging in the character of corporate and political leadership in “Western civilisation”, and I sense it’s substantially the result of an insipid masculinity problem.
The insatiable need for heartless power and ruthless control is the telltale sign of an uninitiated man – the most irresponsible, incompetent and destructive force on earth.”
sorry for the cut & paste but i thought it belongs here

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 12 2007 21:17 utc | 37

Excellent r’giap.

Posted by: beq | Jan 12 2007 22:02 utc | 39

Cloned Poster , (beware) kpmg, a vision of global stategy
teutonic version

Posted by: annie | Jan 12 2007 22:12 utc | 41

I shouldn’t have listened to that while I was eating, Annie. Ugh.

Posted by: Pyrrho | Jan 12 2007 23:14 utc | 43

Thanks uncle – for all your many contributions… loved the artwork!

Posted by: crone | Jan 13 2007 0:26 utc | 45

Glenn Greenwald weighs in on The President’s power to attack Iran
– some 5 updates and about 175 comments make this a pretty good summary on what the ‘Decider’ thinks he can do…

Posted by: crone | Jan 13 2007 1:35 utc | 47

Lind is particularly laser like, today:

As I have said before and will say again, the price of an attack on Iran could easily be the loss of the army we have in Iraq. No conceivable action would be more foolish than adding war with Iran to the war we have already lost in Iraq. Regrettably, it is impossible to read Mr. Bush’s dispatch of a carrier and Patriot batteries any other way than as harbingers of just such an action.

The final hidden message in Mr. Bush’s speech confirms that the American ship of state remains headed for the rocks. His peroration, devoted once more to promises of “freedom” and democracy in the Middle East and throughout the world, could have been written by the most rabid of the neocons. For that matter, perhaps it was. So long as our grand strategy remains that which the neocons represent and demand, namely remaking the whole world in our own image, by force where necessary, we will continue to fail. Not even the greatest military in all of history, which ours claims to be but isn’t, could bring success to a strategy so divorced from reality. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush’s words give the lie to those who have hoped the neocons’ influence over the White House had ebbed. From Hell, or the World Bank which is much the same place, Wolfi had to be smiling.

No, Incurious George has offered no new strategy, nor new course, nor even a plateau on the downward course of our two lost wars and failed grand strategy. He has chosen instead to escalate failure, speed our decline and expand the scope of our defeat. Headed toward the cliff, his course correction is to stomp on the gas.

I wish I could write like that.

Posted by: Peter Principle | Jan 13 2007 4:31 utc | 49

I knew there were plenty more bits we missed in the speech…just picked up another one from “the General” – we’ve talked about the draft which includes a special skills draft for poor souls up to ~35 & the JackAss Party equiv. of “national service” – well, he called for it…
Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will meet regularly with me and my administration; it will help strengthen our relationship with Congress. We can begin by working together to increase the size of the active Army and Marine Corps, so that America has the Armed Forces we need for the 21st century. We also need to examine ways to mobilize talented American civilians to deploy overseas, where they can help build democratic institutions in communities and nations recovering from war and tyranny. link
American slave labor for Helliburton, after elites run about wrecking countries…

Posted by: jj | Jan 13 2007 8:00 utc | 51

In need of a laugh??? Consider that Angela Merkel is Head of EU & has ME peace plan … Imagine Israel allowing a German woman, head of EU to negotiate the end of hostilities…they’d only lose their raison d’etre, not to mention their professional class, who’d race back home as quickly as possible…But midway through comes the Nut of why the Pirates are turning to women – to ram through the policies that they can’t that will destroy us & our countries –
Merkel has just launched an ambitious, if discreet, campaign to rescue the constitution. She is already highly rated as a very good listener and a skilful fixer. On the constitution, though, she wants to get her way and intends to bang heads for the next six months of her EU presidency to that end.
Her team has drafted a detailed timetable for what looks like a make-or-break attempt to reshape the way Europe is run. In an unusual move, she has just asked all EU leaders to appoint a senior figure to resume negotiations on the constitution behind closed doors over the next few months. There is to be minimal public disclosure. She hopes to avoid any further popular votes or referendums on the constitution.
In June Merkel will table an EU “roadmap”, outlining how to enact the constitution within two years. The aim is to have the deal in the bag before the next European parliament elections in 2009.
…
Dear to the German project, though rarely stated publicly, is the fact that under a new system of double majority voting, the charter would for the first time in the history of the EU grant Germany its due as the biggest EU member, giving it proportionately more clout, and making it the most powerful member. link

Posted by: jj | Jan 13 2007 10:01 utc | 53

Froomkin. Exposing Bush’s blatant lies.

President Bush is pushing a revisionist explanation of how he came to support an escalation of troop strength in Iraq.
From the transcript of Bush’s remarks at a Georgia military base yesterday:
“The [Iraqi] Prime Minister came and said, look, I understand we’ve got to do something about this violence, and here is what I suggest we do. Our commanders looked at it, helped fine-tune it so it would work. . . .
“The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to — by the way, that’s what you want your Commander-in-Chief to do. You don’t want decisions being made based upon politics, or focus groups, or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. And they analyzed the plan and they said to me, and to the Iraqi government, this won’t work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence. . . .
“And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, Mr. President, it’s not going to work until — unless we support — provide more troops. And so last night I told the country that I’ve committed an additional — a little over 20,000 more troops, five brigades of which will be in Baghdad.”
It was a bold attempt by Bush to rebut the widely-reported story that he stopped listening to his commanders — and in fact, reassigned some — when they stopped telling him what he wanted to hear.
But Bush’s new story lacks a certain important quality: Believability.
Previous reporting — see, for instance, Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks in The Washington Post on Wednesday — has made it abundantly clear that adding U.S. troops was not an idea that emerged from the American commanders — nor, for that matter, from the Iraqis.
And, as it turns out, two stories in this morning’s New York Times add to the evidence.
…
As the Times notes: “According to a senior administration official, Vice President Dick Cheney was among those who wanted a bigger force.“

Neatly lays out all the reporting that directly contradicts Chimpy.

Posted by: Hamburger | Jan 13 2007 13:00 utc | 55

spot on anna missed #52 (w/hat tip to you fascinate me)

Posted by: annie | Jan 13 2007 13:55 utc | 57

Day’s awastin’ moonbats. Where is everybody??
lol, its 6:30 am in my necko the woods,our west coast crowd is still in bed! since i read the threads from bottom up 1/2 the time (don’t ask why, habits etc) i am reading froomkin and have been battling w/the wapo login feature which wants me to register to follow the Abramowitz link. i even changed my password and they won’t let me in, if someone could copy paste a touch of it or link to it (froomkin came thru) it would be much appreciated. ok, reading uncle’s post i must agree w/why we keep coming back again and again.

Posted by: annie | Jan 13 2007 14:10 utc | 59

jj’s #53 link
Rather, the US secretary of state will head to the gleaming palace of steel, glass and concrete that is the German chancellery at the heart of the new Berlin to swap notes with Angela Merkel.
a very impressive architectual structure, we saw it last week!
thank you B

Posted by: annie | Jan 13 2007 14:37 utc | 61

There are pictures of the Bundeskanzleramt. more – quite an architecture …

Posted by: b | Jan 13 2007 14:59 utc | 63

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: ‘The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans’

He told me that one of his main suppliers had been an interpreter working for the US army in Baghdad. “He had a deal with an American officer. We bought brand new AKs and ammunition from them.” He claimed the American officer, whom he had never met but he believed was a captain serving at Baghdad airport, had even helped to divert a truckload of weapons as soon as it was driven over the border from Jordan.
These days Rami gets most of his supplies from the new American-equipped Iraqi army. “We buy ammunition from officers in charge of warehouses, a small box of AK-47 bullets is $450 (£230). If the guy sells a thousand boxes he can become rich and leave the country.” But as the security situation deteriorates, Rami finds it increasingly difficult to travel across Baghdad. “Now I have to pay a Shia taxi driver to bring the ammo to me. He gets $50 for each shipment.”
…
This man who had spent the last three years fighting the Americans was now willing to talk to them, not because he wanted to make peace but because he saw the Americans as the lesser of two evils. He was wrestling with the same dilemma as many Sunni insurgent leaders, beginning to doubt the wisdom of their alliance with al-Qaida extremists.
Another insurgent commander told me: “At the beginning al-Qaida had the money and the organisation, and we had nothing.” But this alliance soon dragged the insurgents and then the whole Sunni community into confrontation with the Shia militias as al-Qaida and other extremists massacred thousands of Shia civilians. Insurgent commanders such as Abu Omar soon found themselves outnumbered and outgunned, fighting organised militias backed by the Shia-dominated security forces.
…
“It has become a business, they give you money to kill Shia, we take their houses and sell their cars,” said Rami. “The Shia are doing the same.
“Last week on the main highway in our area, they killed a Shia army officer. He had a brand new Toyota sedan. The idiots burned the car. I offered them $40,000 for it, they said no. Imagine how many jihads they could have done with 40k.”

Posted by: b | Jan 13 2007 15:43 utc | 65

As Condoleeza Rice heads to the Middle East, British Middle East expert Patrick Seale asks, what can she possibly accomplish there?

Even as she flew to the war-torn Middle East at the weekend, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice played down the significance of her trip. She was not coming with a project or a plan, she told reporters on the plane, but only to listen! Nothing could better illustrate America’s passivity towards the Arab-Israeli conflict and its loss of authority in the region.

Posted by: Bea | Jan 13 2007 16:34 utc | 67

Normally don’t like to waste space but good article below:
‘We Have To Tell The Story Ourselves’
Veteran journalist Bill Moyers on Friday challenged 3,000 progressive
activists and communicators to take back the telling of America’s
story at the National Conference of Media Reform in Memphis. He put
his finger squarely on the deep vein of discontent with the way
mainstream media is ill-serving American democracy.
Moyers, who is president of the Schumann Center for Media and
Democracy, went through a sordid litany of corporate media
malfeasance, from the lackluster and largely non-skeptical reporting
of the Bush administration’s launch of the war in Iraq to the lack of
attention paid to a domestic landscape of increasing economic
disparity and racial segregation. Virtually uncontrolled media
consolidation over the past decade, he said, has meant a loss of
independent journalism and created “more narrowness and
homogenization in content and perspective, so that what we see on our
couch is overwhelmingly the view from the top.”
It is in this environment that the Bush administration can, for
example, can “turn the escalation of a failed war and call it a
surge, as if it were a current of electricity through a wire instead
of blood spurting from the ruptured veins of a soldier,” Moyers said.
On the domestic front, “the question of whether or not our economic
system is truly just is off the table for investigation and
discussion, so that alternative ideas, alternative critiques,
alternative visions never get a hearing,” he said.
“It is clear what we have to do. We have to tell the story
ourselves,” he said.
What Moyers is calling for is a two-pronged attack. Activists should continue pressing the established media to live up to the public service obligations of the Communications Act of 1934, obligations that have been trampled in the past two decades as both political parties succumb to the influence of enormously powerful telecommunications and entertainment company lobbies. At the same time, the Internet and digital communication tools allow every citizen to become a Thomas Paine, he said, challenging the establishment with an alternative vision of social justice and government for the common good. It makes it possible, he said for citizens to say to those who seek to exert imperial control over both
government and the means to be informed about government, “you no longer own the copyright to America’s story.”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson echoed Moyers and chided the major broadcast news media for being “all day, all night, all white.” He asked participants when the last time they had seen a leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, the National Organization for Women or a leading Latino organization on a Sunday morning news talk show, and reminded listeners that no broadcast news operation now has an African American in an anchor position comparable to that held by the late Max Robinson of ABC News n the 1980s or Bernard Shaw during the
early days of CNN. “We must fight to open up the airways to all people,” he said.
This is the third Media Reform Congress organized by Free Press, which has brought together bloggers, progressive media and grassroots political and social activists. The conference has virtually taken over downtown Memphis. The intense interest in this conference is a reflection of the thousands of Howard Beales on the left who are as mad as hell and are not going to take dumbed-down, homogenized, corporatized, power-subservient media any more.
–Isaiah J. Poole | Friday, January 12, 2007 2:16 PM

Posted by: Rick | Jan 14 2007 4:52 utc | 69

Bush Chides Opponents Of His Iraq Plan

The president told Scott Pelley in an exclusive interview to air on 60 Minutes this Sunday that he will go ahead with his plans to increase troops in Iraq regardless of whether Congress tries to stop him.
“I made my decision, we’re going forward,” Mr. Bush said.

Dems are now off the hook. They need no longer fear sharing the authorship of this failure and do not have to be saddled with considerations of political appeasement and may now behave as a genuine opposition. This is the time to find out if they have an ounce of integrity. Hope they’re paying attention, because you can bet that everyone else is.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 14 2007 11:14 utc | 71

And the Haaretz editorial has more on this disappointment over not easing restrictions:
The easing of restrictions deception

It is not clear who Israel is trying to cheat when it declares it is easing restrictions at roadblocks in the West Bank. Who is the prime minister trying to fool when he pledges in front of the whole world to lift a number of restrictions at dozens of the internal roadblocks that disrupt any chance of normal life in the West Bank? Did he intend to implement them, and is the Israel Defense Forces going against his instructions and making a laughing stock out of him? Today marks two weeks since the easing of restrictions was to have started, as promised by Ehud Olmert in his meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on December 24 in Jerusalem. A Haaretz investigation of the situation last week revealed that only lesser restrictions are being eased, and in many cases none are being eased at all. At most of the 15 roadblocks examined by Haaretz journalist Avi Issacharoff there was no change, at others the change was made at a much earlier time, and at some, the commanders had heard of no orders regarding a policy change.

Posted by: Bea | Jan 14 2007 15:45 utc | 73

One last point:
Buried in that Haaretz story about Rice’s trip to the region is this paragraph:

The heads of the U.S.’s intelligence community heads presented last Thursday the annual intelligence evaluation to the Senate, describing the Iranian threat in grim terms. Outgoing director of national intelligence John Negroponte said Iran’s influence in the region goes beyond the danger of its nuclear program. He said the Taliban and Saddam’s decline, the rise in oil revenues, Hamas’ election victory and what appears to be Hezbollahs’ success in fighting Israel, enhance Iran’s shadow over the region. This is worrying America’s Arab allies, who are afraid of the growing tension between the Shi’ites and the Sunni Muslims.

Did anyone see coverage of this here in the mainstream media? I don’t recall a word, and I read a LOT last week… did I miss it?

Posted by: Bea | Jan 14 2007 15:52 utc | 75

The most incompetent consulting company – Bearing Point: Shock and oil: Iraq’s billions & the White House connection

The American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management.
…
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, BearingPoint employees gave $117,000 (£60,000) to the 2000 and 2004 Bush election campaigns, more than any other Iraq contractor. Other recipients include three prominent Congressmen on the House of Representatives’ defence sub-committee, which oversees defence department contracts.
…
The company’s shares have collapsed to a third of their value when the firm listed in 2001, and it faces being thrown out of the New York Stock Exchange altogether. Despite annual revenues of $3.4bn, the company made a loss of $722m in 2005. Those figures were released only last month, nine months late, and the company has not yet been able to report any fully audited figures at all for 2006.
…
BearingPoint is being paid $240m for its work in Iraq, winning an initial contract from the US Agency for International Development (USAid) within weeks of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. It was charged with supporting the then Coalition Provisional Authority to introduce policies “which are designed to create a competitive private sector”. Its role is to examine laws, regulations and institutions that regulate trade, commerce and investment, and to advise ministries and the central bank.
Last week The Independent on Sunday revealed that a BearingPoint employee, based in the US embassy in Baghdad, had been tasked with advising the Iraqi Ministry of Oil on drawing up a new hydrocarbon law. The legislation, which is due to be presented to Iraq’s parliament within days, will give Western oil companies a large slice of profits from the country’s oil fields in exchange for investing in new oil infrastructure.
…
Across the world, BearingPoint has become, thanks to USAid funding, a part of the US government’s strategy of spreading free-market reforms to developing countries and America’s allies. Elsewhere in the Middle East it is advising the government of Jordan on how to minimise the regulation of business and reform its tax policies in order to attract foreign investment; in Egypt it is advising on customs reform and respect for international companies’ patents.
It has won more than $100m of business in Afghanistan since American troops invaded in 2002, and has been helping to build a banking system, training civil servants in the finance ministry and offering advice on economic policy.
Its economic reconstruction work grew out of early work in eastern Europe after the fall of communism, and became a significant contributor to the business after it won contracts in the former Yugoslavia following US intervention there.

Posted by: b | Jan 14 2007 16:23 utc | 77

Plan to Increase Troop Numbers Comes Under Broad Scrutiny

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, partially I agree, but the problem is not only military, not only political, it’s also historical. There is such a thing as historical relevance.
The fact is, the American effort in Iraq is essentially a colonial effort. We’re waging a colonial war. We live in the post-colonial era. This war cannot be won because it is simply out of sync with historical times.

Posted by: b | Jan 14 2007 17:15 utc | 79

It’s Playboy, so you have to ignore the “babes” – put this long piece is really good:
Lockhead Stock And Two Smoking Barrels

While vice president for strategy and planning for Lockheed from 1999 to 2002, Jackson, by his own account, was also “responsible for the foreign policy platform at the 2000 Republican National Convention,” to which he was a delegate. (The platform involved a dramatic increase in defense spending.) His title at the convention was chair of the platform subcommittee on foreign policy. He also served as co-chairman of the finance commission of Bob Dole’s 1996 campaign. Prior to joining Lockheed, Jackson had served as executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the think tank whose principles included Dick Cheney. PNAC served as the Bush administration’s blueprint for preemptive war and authored a 1998 open letter to President Bill Clinton calling for military force to oust Saddam Hussein.
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Of course, all the frothing at the mouth about lobbyists, money and special interests can seem from outside the Beltway as much ado about nothing. The government hands out contracts. The beneficiaries or those who want to be beneficiaries buy steak dinners for the officials who hold the purse strings. Big deal. The problem, though, is that, upon closer scrutiny, this is not how the system works. It’s actually much more sinister than that, allowing the interests of America to be subverted by the interests of corporate America. As you’ll see here, your elected officials did not deliberate on how best to protect their constituents, decide bombing Iraq was the best way and then order some provisions and weapons. On the contrary, this is the story of how Lockheed’s interests, as opposed to those of the American citizenry, set the course of U.S. policy after 9/11.
For the war companies, things have worked out perfectly. Whatever the rationale for the invasion of Iraq, business is booming. Not long after Bush took office, Lockheed Martin’s revenues soared by more than 30 percent, as it was awarded $17 billion in contracts from the Department of Defense, a far cry from the lean years of the Clinton administration. (Under Clinton, it did win $2 billion in contracts with the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons activity; recently Bush called for 125 new nukes a year, opening up new contract horizons in that area, as well.) Its stock went from 16.375 in October of 1999 to 71.52 in June of 2002. As professor of finance at the State University at Buffalo Michael Rozeff observes, “the stock market anticipates many events.”
Lockheed Martin reported 2002 sales of $26.6 billion, a backlog of more than $70 billion and free cash of $1.7 billion. And that was before the war in Iraq.
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Bush had appointed Powell A. Moore assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs serving directly under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. From 1983 until 1998, when he had become chief of staff to Republican Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Moore was a consultant and vice president for legislative affairs for Lockheed.
Albert Smith, Lockheed’s executive vice president for integrated systems and solutions, was appointed to the Defense Science Board. Bush had appointed former Lockheed chief operating officer Peter B. Teets as undersecretary of the Air Force and director of the National Reconnaissance Office, where he made decisions on the acquisition of reconnaissance satellites and space-based elements of missile defense. Former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, the only Democrat appointed by Bush to his cabinet, worked for Lockheed, as did Bush’s Secretary of the Navy, Gordon England. Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican National Committee before becoming the governor of Mississippi, worked for a Lockheed lobbying firm. Joe Allbaugh, national campaign manager of the Bush-Cheney ticket and director of FEMA during the first two years of the Bush administration (he appointed his college friend Michael Brown as FEMA’s general counsel), was a Lockheed lobbyist for its rapidly growing intelligence division.
Dick Cheney’s son-in-law, Philip J. Perry, a registered Lockheed lobbyist who had, while working for a law firm, represented Lockheed with the Department of Homeland Security, had been nominated by Bush to serve as general counsel to the Department of Homeland Security. His wife, Elizabeth Cheney, serves as deputy assistant secretary of state for Middle Eastern affairs.
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Posted by: b | Jan 14 2007 18:22 utc | 81

Tales of class combat in a dying regime.
Keynote:Greg Palast
FREE SPEECH TV
Keynote
Keynote: Greg Palast
Producer: Jim Lockhart
Length: 59m 18s

Posted by: Rick | Jan 15 2007 6:00 utc | 83

Bob M.
Yeah, the poor, tortured and dispossed can all get together and give our World leaders a good scolding lecture in a series of multi-national TV Specials to fill “the void”. Let me know when these poor imprisoned souls manage such an accomplishment OK? What planet do you live on? This is earth in the year 2007. It is our responsibility to speak for those who have no voice.

Posted by: Rick | Jan 15 2007 7:08 utc | 85