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Clips from newspapers and more.

Paul Krugman, NY Times, Oct. 8 – “People claim to be shocked at the Bush administration’s attempts — which, for a time, were all too successful — to intimidate the press. But this administration’s media tactics, and to a large extent the people implementing those tactics, come straight out of the Nixon administration. Dick Cheney wanted to search Seymour Hersh’s apartment, not last week, but in 1975. Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, was Nixon’s media adviser.”

Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, Oct 8 – “In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran.”

. . .

“The revised bombing plan for a possible attack, with its tightened focus on counterterrorism, is gathering support among generals and admirals in the Pentagon. The strategy calls for the use of sea-launched cruise missiles and more precisely targeted ground attacks and bombing strikes, including plans to destroy the most important Revolutionary Guard training camps, supply depots, and command and control facilities. … A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if the bombing campaign took place, it would be accompanied by a series of what he called ‘short, sharp incursions’ by American Special Forces units into suspected Iranian training sites. He said, ‘Cheney is devoted to this, no question.’”

Frank Rich, NY Times, Oct. 7 – “What's the difference between a low-tech lynching and a high-tech lynching? A high-tech lynching brings a tenured job on the Supreme Court and a $1.5 million book deal. A low-tech lynching, not so much.”

John Cole, Balloon Juice, Oct. 5 – “Seriously- what does the current Republican party stand for? Permanent war, fear, the nanny state, big spending, torture, execution on demand, complete paranoia regarding the media, control over your body, denial of evolution and outright rejection of science, AND ZOMG THEY ARE GONNA MAKE US WEAR BURKHAS, all the while demanding that in order to be a good American I have to spend most of every damned day condemning half my fellow Americans as terrorist appeasers [explaining why is no longer a Republican].”

Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, Oct. 04 – “On June 27, 2004, the day before the United States was to grant sovereignty to a new Iraqi government and disband the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. proconsul, issued a stunning new order. One of the final acts of the CPA, Order 17 declared that foreign contractors within Iraq, including private military firms, would not be subject to any Iraqi laws -- ‘all International Consultants shall be immune from Iraqi legal process, it read. ‘Congratulations to the new Iraq!’ Bremer said moments before flying out. His memoir, ‘My Year in Iraq,’ neglects to mention Order 17.”

. . .

“Thus, in the process of granting Iraq sovereignty, the Bush administration eviscerated it. Order 17’s grant of immunity to contractors guaranteed that more than half of the foreign presence on the ground -- for U.S.-paid contractors outnumber U.S. military personnel -- would operate for all intents and purposes beyond the law. Order 17 also undercut the authority of the U.S. military, frustrating command and control of the battlefield and upsetting sensitive counterinsurgency strategies. Order 17 meant that the monopoly of violence was fractured and outsourced to those not subject to the law. By unilateral fiat Order 17 uniquely created a red zone of impunity covering the entire country.”

Maureen Dowd, NY Times, Oct. 3 – “The Blackwater desperados are a sinister symbol of how little progress we’ve made in Iraq, that V.I.P.’s — or ‘packages,’ as the contractors call them — can’t make a move in the country without the high-priced hired guns of the State Department.

“Americans have been antimercenary since the British sent 30,000 German Hessians after George Washington in the Revolutionary War.

“But W. outsourced his presidency to Cheney and Rummy, and Cheney and Rummy went to war on the cheap and outsourced large chunks of the Iraq occupation to Halliburton and Blackwater. The American taxpayer got gouged, and so did the American reputation.”

Gary Kamiya, Salon, Oct. 02 – “The Democrats' antiwar campaign has failed. President Bush's ruinous Iraq adventure will continue indefinitely, despite the fact that a majority of the American people oppose it. Too divided and afraid of being called ‘weak on national security’ to stop funding it, the Democrats have been reduced to hoping that voters punish the GOP in 2008. But since Congress’ approval rating is even lower than Bush's (in August, it sank to a record-tying low of 18 percent), it is far from clear that this strategy will work. The war is increasingly perceived as a low-level annoyance, barely even making the news. Amazingly, it now appears possible that the Republicans will suffer no long-term political damage for having started and for continuing to support what is arguably the most disastrous war in U.S. history.”

Editorial, NY Times, Sep. 21 – “If anything was clear from General Petraeus’s testimony and the president’s prime-time speech, it was that Mr. Bush has no idea how to end the war in a way that salvages as much as possible of America’s treasury, blood and global image while limiting the chaos that would follow any withdrawal, whether it comes quickly or slowly. Mr. Bush’s only idea is to keep the war going until he leaves office, and that means that other co-equal branch of government, the Congress, will have to lead the way out.
“Democrats and Republicans who oppose the war have a duty to outline alternatives. Those who call for staying in Iraq have a duty to explain what victory means and how they plan to achieve it. Both sides are shirking an obligation to deal with issues that must be resolved right now, like the crisis involving asylum for Iraqis who helped the American occupation.”

Gary Kamiya, Salon, Sep. 18, – “The Iraq war has moved into a weird purgatorial endgame. Almost no one believes in it anymore, but it keeps going. Americans keep dying, Iraq continues to fall apart, there is no end in sight, but nothing changes. Much of the country wants the war to end, but the political system is deadlocked. As George W. Bush's presidency winds down, there will be a crucial struggle between two opposed forces: inertia vs. outrage, resignation vs. engagement. At stake is not just what we do in Iraq but a deeper question: Do we care?”

Gary Langer, NY Times, Sep. 16 – “In a survey conducted Aug. 17-24 for ABC News, the BBC and NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, among a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqis, 72 percent in Anbar expressed no confidence whatsoever in United States forces. Seventy-six percent said the United States should withdraw now — up from 49 percent when we polled there in March, and far above the national average.
“Withdrawal timetable aside, every Anbar respondent in our survey opposed the presence of American forces in Iraq — 69 percent “strongly” so. Every Anbar respondent called attacks on coalition forces “acceptable,” far more than anywhere else in the country. All called the United States-led invasion wrong, including 68 percent who called it “absolutely wrong.” No wonder: Anbar, in western Iraq, is almost entirely populated by Sunni Arabs, long protected by Saddam Hussein and dispossessed by his overthrow.”

Paul Krugman, NY Times, Sep. 14 – “Here’s how I see it: At this point, Mr. Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.
“What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq — and prevent the country’s breakup from turning into a regional war — will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.”

Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, Sep. 06 – “On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.”

James Glanz and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, Aug. 28 – “Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.
“Skip to next paragraph. The inquiry has already led to several indictments of Americans, with more expected, the officials said. One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.”

Gary Kamiya, Salon, Aug. 28 – “As a partisan Republican, still dreaming of Karl Rove's permanent Republican majority, he [Pres. George W. Bush] wants to ensure that the Democrats take the blame in the coming argument over ‘who lost Iraq?’ By defiantly insisting, contrary to all evidence, that victory is within grasp, he is planting the seeds of a resentful revisionism, a stab in the back II, which he hopes will come to fruition in the future.
“The climax of the slow-motion debate over Iraq is approaching. At some point in the near future, it will become inescapably obvious even to congressional Republicans, who hold the key to the decision to stay or go, that the war cannot be won. Bush will continue to proclaim that victory is within sight and accuse his critics of being defeatists.”

Alex Koppelman, Salon, Aug. 27 – “Fifteen months before the 2008 election, the Democrats are odds-on favorites to put one of their own into the White House. A solid majority of the country rejects the Bush administration and the war in Iraq he initiated. But psychologist Drew Westen says Democrats could lose yet again if they don't learn how to stand up for themselves and connect with voters emotionally.
“Westen is a clinical, personality and political psychologist and a professor in the departments of psychology and psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University in Atlanta. He's also a political consultant whose bestselling book, "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," published in June, is a clarion call to Democrats to change the way they appeal to voters. Westen thinks the Democrats need to rely less on logic and more on emotion, and they need to understand that strength is less a function of defense policy than of backbone.”

Alexandra Zavis and Garrett Therolf, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 27 — “Child fighters, once a rare presence on Iraq's battlefields, are playing a significant and growing role in kidnappings, killings and roadside bombings in the country, U.S. military officials say.
“Boys, some as young as 11, now outnumber foreign fighters at U.S. detention camps in Iraq. Since March, their numbers have risen to 800 from 100, said Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, the commander of detainee operations. The Times reported last month that only 130 non-Iraqi fighters were in U.S. custody in Iraq.”

David Ignatius, Washington Post, Aug. 26 – “The Bush administration, beyond the daily temperature readings about the progress of the U.S. troop surge in Baghdad, is making a subtle but important shift in its strategy for the Middle East -- establishing containment of Iranian power in the region as a top American priority.
“A simple shorthand for this approach might be "back to the future," for it is strikingly reminiscent of American strategy during the 1980s after the Iranian revolution. The cornerstone is a political-military alliance with the dominant Sunni Arab powers -- especially Saudi Arabia. The hardware will be new arms sales to Israel, Egypt and the Saudis. The software will be a refurbished Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, Aug 13 – “Someday, we will undoubtedly discover that, in the term ‘surge’ – as in the President’s ‘surge’ plan (or ‘new way forward’) announced to the nation in January – was the urge to avoid the language (and experience) of the Vietnam era. As there were to be no ‘body bags’ (or cameras to film them as the dead came home), as there were to be no ‘body counts’ (‘We have made a conscious effort not to be a body-count team’ was the way the President put it), as there were to be no ‘quagmires,’ nor the need to search for that "light at the end of the tunnel," so, surely, there were to be no "escalations.’”

Robert Dallek, Washington Post, Aug. 5 – “The political argument against Bush's continuing tenure is not frivolous. There are good reasons to see him as a failed president whose remaining time in office will be unproductive at best and destructive to the country's well-being at worst. But given the constitutional rules by which the presidency operates, there is no serious prospect of removing him from office.”

Sidney Blumenthal, Salon.com, July 26 – “‘The facts are,’ insisted Bush to his captive audience, ‘that al-Qaida terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they're fighting us in Iraq and across the world, and they are plotting to kill Americans here at home again.’
“But how did it happen that al-Qaida in Iraq, sworn enemy of Saddam Hussein and his secularism, operating in isolation prior to 9/11, though almost certainly with the connivance and protection of Kurdish leader and current Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, has come to thrive under the U.S. occupation? And since AQI represents perhaps 1 percent or less of the insurgent strength, how can it be depicted as the main foe, capable of seizing state power? The other Sunni insurgent groups increasingly view it as an impediment to their own ambitions and have marked it for elimination. Rather than address these problematic complexities, Bush points the finger of blame at U.S. senators who dare to question his policy. ‘Those who justify withdrawing our troops from Iraq by denying the threat of al-Qaida in Iraq and its ties to Osama bin Laden ignore the clear consequences of such a retreat.’”

E. J. Dionne, Washington Post, July 20 – “John Edwards may be running third in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but he has already changed the national conversation on a crucial issue. Poverty is no longer a hidden subject in American politics.
“Be as skeptical of Edwards as you want to be. Yes, he has had some trouble since he joined the 3-H Club – the $400 haircut, building a 28,000-square-foot house and taking $500,000 in payments from a hedge fund. Yes, he has gotten political traction among liberals out of saying endlessly that ending poverty is ‘the cause of my life.’ … by harping on the issue, Edwards – whatever his motivations – has forced Democrats to abandon their fear of being seen as too focused on the needs of the poor and has thus opened political space for his rivals.”

Maureen Dowd, New York Times, July 18 – “W. [Pres. George W. Bush] swaggers about with his cowboy boots and gunslinger stance. But when talking about Waziristan last February, he explained that it was hard to round up the Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders there because: ‘This is wild country; this is wilder than the Wild West.’ … If W. were a real cowboy, instead of somebody who just plays one on TV, he would have cleaned up Dodge by now.”

Gary Kamiya, Salon, July 17 – “If Iraq breaks apart after the U.S. departs and descends into a hell of sectarian violence, the brutal logic of numbers will prevail. The jihadists are all Sunnis, and Iraq is going to be a Shiite-dominated country. The Shiites can deal with al-Qaida in Mesopotamia far more efficiently than we can.”

Paul Krugman, New York Times, July 16 – “Being without health insurance is no big deal. Just ask President Bush. “I mean, people have access to health care in America,” he said last week. ‘After all, you just go to an emergency room.’
“This is what you might call callousness with consequences. The White House has announced that Mr. Bush will veto a bipartisan plan that would extend health insurance, and with it such essentials as regular checkups and preventive medical care, to an estimated 4.1 million currently uninsured children. After all, it’s not as if those kids really need insurance — they can just go to emergency rooms, right?
“O.K., it’s not news that Mr. Bush has no empathy for people less fortunate than himself. But his willful ignorance here is part of a larger picture: by and large, opponents of universal health care paint a glowing portrait of the American system that bears as little resemblance to reality as the scare stories they tell about health care in France, Britain, and Canada.”

Glenn Greenwald, Salon, July 16 – “The war in Iraq remains popular with the GOP base. They want to stay and keep waging war. They would immediately turn against anyone who advocated withdrawal or even questioned the wisdom of staying. The Republican Party continues to be the Party of the Iraq War, and -- directly contrary to the conventional wisdom that is arising -- loyal support for the Iraq War is an absolute pre-requisite for winning the nomination.”

Denny Wilkins, Alternet.org, July 13 – “So Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) paid for sex. Big deal. All this ‘sex sells’ coverage may drive ratings, but it detracts readers and viewers from far more important issues. Politicians would rather have the press focused on their sexual peccadilloes than on their financial affairs while in service to their constituents. ...
“In the years that Sen. Vitter has served in Congress (including his House terms), the federal government has awarded $18.6 billion in contracts to Louisiana -- of which $10.1 billion went to District 1, his home seat (now held by Rep. Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal). Defense contractor Northrop Grumman, which says it currently employs more than 17,000 shipbuilding professionals, primarily in Louisiana and Mississippi, has received $4.3 billion in federal contracts during Sen. Vitter’s time in Congress. Over that time, Northrop has given Sen. Vitter $38,050 in campaign contributions.” Read the story at http://www.alternet.org/story/56772/

Media Matters, July 5 – “Before the November 2006 midterm elections, NBC News political director Chuck Todd predicted several times that if the Democrats won ‘control of Congress’ and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) became speaker of the House, then President Bush’s ‘approval rating will be over 50 percent by the Fourth of July next year.’ In fact, as of July 4, 2007, Bush's approval ratings are far below 50 percent. Indeed, a recent analysis by the weblog RealClearPolitics.com of national polls conducted between June 11 and June 28 placed Bush's average approval rating at 30.5 percent.”

Glenn Greenwald, Salon, July 3 – “The disasters and rampant lawlessness and fundamental erosion of our country's political values and institutions are exactly what Fred Hiatt and David Broder and Time Magazine and Tim Russert and Tom Friedman and the New Republic geniuses have spent the last six years protecting, enabling and defending. We have the country we have -- one in which our most powerful political leaders are literally beyond the reach of the law in every sense, where we casually invade and bomb and occupy countries that have not attacked us, where our moral standing in the world has collapsed with good reason, where we are viewed on every continent in the world as a rogue, dangerous and lawless nation -- because we are ruled by a Beltway elite and political press that is sickly and cowardly and slavish at its core.”

Peter Baker, Washington Post, July 2 – “At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers. One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.

“Over sodas and sparkling water, he asks his questions: What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world? What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I'm facing? How will history judge what we've done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?”

E. J. Dionne, Jr., Washington Post, June 29 – “Just say no. The Senate's Democratic majority – joined by all Republicans who purport to be moderate – must tell President Bush that this will be their answer to any controversial nominee to the Supreme Court or the appellate courts. …And no Bush nominee to a lower court deserves any deference now that we learn that U.S. Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh may have misled the Senate during his confirmation hearings. Kavanaugh claimed he was not involved in administration discussions about setting the rules for the treatment of enemy combatants. The Post reported that he was.”

Juan Cole, Salon, June 28 – “Only by adopting a more realistic policy in Iraq immediately, [Sen. Richard] Lugar argues, can the Bush administration potentially avoid an American rout two years down the road. Games of Whack-a-Mole like those being played in Diyala province at present are highly unlikely to deliver a decisive victory to the U.S. military or to its Iraqi allies. Bush may see himself as making a noble last stand, but Lugar looks at the president and sees Custer at Little Bighorn. And the senior senator's defection from the White House camp over the war signals a turning point in Republican support for the beleaguered president.”

Politics This Week, The Economist, June 28 – “Fast track to nowhere: It seemed likely that George Bush would lose the negotiating powers that allow the president to fast-track trade deals through Congress. A last attempt to persuade Congress to renew the provision, which expires on June 30th, was thwarted when talks over farm subsidies and open markets between America, the European Union, Brazil and India, the so-called “G4”, broke down last week.”

Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, Washington Post, June 24 – “In his Park Avenue corner suite at Cerberus Global Investments, [former Vice President] Dan Quayle recalled the moment he learned how much his old job had changed. Cheney had just taken the oath of office, and Quayle paid a visit to offer advice from one vice president to another.
“‘I said, 'Dick, you know, you're going to be doing a lot of this international traveling, you're going to be doing all this political fundraising . . . you'll be going to the funerals,’
“Quayle said in an interview earlier this year. ‘I mean, this is what vice presidents do. I said, ‘We’ve all done it.’
“‘Cheney got that little smile,’ Quayle said, and replied, ‘I have a different understanding with the president.’”

Patrick Healy, New York Times, June 24 – “Which opens the door to a Swiftian modest proposal, one that might appeal to any billionaire independent presidential candidate who knows the art of a deal: Rather than try to win the White House outright — a long shot — an independent candidate could instead try for a king-making (or queen-making) bloc of votes in the Electoral College.
“But instead of running a national campaign, the independent candidate strives to win the electoral votes of only a few states. This idea is a stretch by the conventional wisdom of American politics, of course. But before 2000 nobody dreamed the Supreme Court would decide a presidential election, either.
“‘An Electoral College showdown, however improbable, would make the wild ride of the Florida recount look tame,’ said Paul A. Beck, a professor of political science at Ohio State University.”

Glenn Greenwald, Salon,  June 23 – “That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term ‘Al Qaeda’ to designate ‘anyone and everyone we fight against or kill in Iraq’ is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as ‘Al Qaeda.’
“But what is even more notable is that the establishment press has followed right along, just as enthusiastically. I don't think the New York Times has published a story about Iraq in the last two weeks without stating that we are killing ‘Al Qaeda fighters,’ capturing ‘Al Qaeda leaders,’ and every new operation is against Al Qaeda.’”

Editorial, The Nation, June 18 issue – “Progressives mobilized to help House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pass the 100-hour agenda in the opening weeks of this Congress. The first increase in the minimum wage in a decade has finally been signed into law, but Senate barons have delayed or interred the remainder of her agenda. The drug lobby mobilized sufficient opposition from senators in both parties to deep-six efforts to empower Medicare to negotiate lower prescription-drug prices. Rollback of oil-company subsidies is stalled in disagreements between the two houses. And House Democrats have seemingly lost their nerve on rolling back Bush's social agenda ….”

Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, June 15 – “Five years ago this month, President Bush stood in the Rose Garden and laid out a vision for the Middle East that included Israel and a state called Palestine living together in peace. ‘I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror,’ the president declared.
“The takeover this week of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group dedicated to the elimination of Israel demonstrates how much that vision has failed to materialize, in part because of actions taken by the administration.”

Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers, June 15 – “A Defense Department report released Thursday acknowledges that violence in Iraq has not diminished, despite the arrival of thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad. The report, which measured Iraq's progress from February to May, gives a less optimistic assessment of the impact of the so-called surge than commanders on the ground offered during that same period. …
“The report, however, pointed out that overall attacks and casualties had increased in Iraq 40 percent over the same period a year ago and that while sectarian murders declined, car bombings and other attacks increased.”

E. J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, June 15 – “The great drama in American politics today revolves around the question: What is the Republican Party?
“We think we know. Republicans are the party of business and of evangelical Christians, of better-off voters and people who hate taxes, the party of conservatism and the South, the party that wants to be aggressive in the battle against terrorism.
“But the instability in the Republican presidential campaign, the longing for a Fred Thompson candidacy and the sharp split over immigration all point to an identity crisis at the end of the Bush era.”

Sidney Blumenthal, Salon.com, June 14 – “Rice contradicts herself but forgets that she has. Bush continues to prattle about ‘freedom’ but cannot remember his benchmarks. Only Dick Cheney remains consistent. The new mission statement is the old mission statement. The new scenarios are the old delusions. Time marches on.”

Greg Miller and Josh Meyer, LA Times, June 11 – “Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq, an example of how the U.S. has continued to cooperate with the Sudanese regime even while condemning its suspected role in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur.
“President Bush has denounced the killings in Sudan's western region as genocide and has imposed sanctions on the government in Khartoum. But some critics say the administration has soft-pedaled the sanctions to preserve its extensive intelligence collaboration with Sudan.”

Associated Press, June 11 – [Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on “Meet the Press” yesterday] “he believed the United States’ military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become ‘a major problem’ in the way America was perceived around the world. ‘If it was up to me, I would close Guantánamo — not tomorrow but this afternoon,’ Mr. Powell said.”

David Ignatius, Washington Post, June 10 – “The United States is losing the war in Iraq because it cannot combat these makeshift weapons. An army with unimaginable firepower is being driven out by guerrillas armed with a crude arsenal of explosives and blasting caps [improvised explosive devices, or IEDs], triggered by cellphones and garage-door openers.
“This is Gulliver's torment, circa 2007. We have thrown our money and technology at the problem, with limited effect. … It [the Pentagaon] has spent $6.3 billion and assembled a staff of nearly 400, but every day more of our brave young people die, and we seem unable to stop it.”

Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, June 7 – “I’d meant to focus this column on a Chinese woman whose battle for justice has led the police to arrest her more than 30 times, lock her in an insane asylum, humiliate her sexually, shock her with cattle prods, beat her until she is crippled and, worst of all, take away her young daughter.

“The case of Li Guirong, a graying 50-year-old who now hobbles on crutches, reflects China at its worst — government by thuggery. But each time I start this column, I feel that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have pulled the rug out from under me. Do I really have the right to complain about torture or extra-legal detentions in China when we Americans do the same in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba?”

Feingold, Kohl push for
VA spinal cord injury unit

U.S. Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl are pushing for construction to begin on the new spinal cord injury (SCI) unit at Zablocki Medical Center in Milwaukee. In a letter to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Jim Nicholson, the members of Congress reiterated their concerns that the existing SCI unit at Zablocki does not meet current standards of the Joint Commission, the organization which accredits hospitals, and requested that construction on the new unit begin as soon as possible.

“Our country can never fully repay our veterans for the sacrifices they have made for their country, but we must do all we can to ensure they receive the best medical care possible,” Feingold said. “A new SCI unit is critical for veterans in Wisconsin and throughout the Midwest and its construction is long overdue.”

“It was an honor to work on bringing an investment of federal funding to a new, state-of-the-art Spinal Cord Injury Unit at the Milwaukee VA, and we are anxious to see the project get underway. The crucial medical work being performed at Zablocki is not easily replicated elsewhere, and we want to ensure that our veterans have access to the best care available. We look forward to working with the VA to provide the men and women of our armed services the first-rate facility that they have earned and deserve,” said Kohl, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who directed $32.5 million toward the Spinal Cord Injury Unit at the Milwaukee VA as part of the Senate’s FY2007 Military Construction Appropriations Bill.

"We're talking about our nation's veterans - heroes by any measure - who have lost the use of their legs and arms and often the ability to live independently," Moore said. "A state-of-the-art SCI Unit is long overdue at Zablocki. Considering their many sacrifices, the least we can do is provide these veterans with the best technology available."

Rudy's Judgment Questioned

Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani is coming under increasing scrutiny as details of his testimony before a grand jury come to light. The new revelations show that the Rudy you don't know was briefed about Bernard Kerik's potential mob ties before Giuliani hired him for the position of Chief of Police. Giuliani hired him anyway, and subsequently recommended him to be chief of the nation's Homeland Security department years later.

According to the New York Times, in "his testimony, given in April 2006, Mr. Giuliani indicated that he must have simply forgotten that he had been briefed on one or more occasions as part of the background investigation of Mr. Kerik before his appointment to the police post." [New York Times, 3/30/07]

On the same day the Times reported Giuliani's decision to hire Kerik despite warnings about possible mob ties, the Associated Press revealed that Giuliani has been widely criticized for ignoring warnings about communications problems plaguing New York's first responders after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Pressed by the 9/11 Commission about interoperability problems, Giuliani said, "[t]here was not a problem of coordination on Sept. 11." The 9/11 Commission later cited interoperability as one of the most glaring problems faced by first responders on September 11. [9/11 Commission Report, 7/22/04]

"Giuliani’s lapses in judgment show a pattern that raises serious questions about what he knew and when he knew it, and why in light of clear information about Kerik and the needs of first responders he ignored both," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Luis Miranda. "Mr. Giuliani owes voters in New York and across America answers."