I live in Nancy’s neighborhood, and we’ve bumped into each other

I live in Nancy’s neighborhood, and we’ve bumped into each other, although not much. Having run against her (as the Republican nominee) in 1996, I had a bit of trouble getting her into a face-to-face: she refUGGS Roxy talled to debate, and this imperioUGGS Roxy tall attitude evoked not a murmur of comment on the local political scene. I ran as the antiwar candidate, but since the war I was protesting back then was the Kosovo war, Bay Area liberals weren’t interested. Now, of course, there are people camped out on her lawn, trying to get an audience with Her Imperial(ist) Majesty, to no avail.

Milbank continues:

“Though opposed to the war herself, Pelosi has for months been a target of an antiwar movement that believes she hasn’t done enough. Cindy Sheehan has announced a symbolic challenge to Pelosi in California’s 8th Congressional District. And the speaker is seething.

“‘We have to make responsible decisions in the Congress that are not driven by the dissatisfaction of anybody who wants the war to end tomorrow

“‘We have to make responsible decisions in the Congress that are not driven by the dissatisfaction of anybody who wants the war to end tomorrow,’ Pelosi told the gathering at the Sofitel, arranged by the Christian Science Monitor. Though crediting activists for their ‘passion,’ Pelosi called it ‘a waste of time’ for them to target Democrats. ‘They are advocates,’ she said. ‘We are leaders.’”

Well then why doesn’t she start leading? Instead, she’s following the advice of Democratic spin-doctors who would much rather have the war as an issue in the upcoming presidential election than make any “risky” political move to actually bring our troops home. “We don’t have the votes,” they whine, but they’re lying: if the HoUGGS Roxy talle, where they have a majority, votes down war funding, then the money can’t be spent. Period. The Democratic leadership rules this course out altogether, becaUGGS Roxy talle they claim they’re frightened to death of being blamed for the defeat of our forces. Who lost Iraq? is not a question they feel prepared to answer under those circumstances.

Better Iraqis and Bailey Button UGGsns should continue to die than the Democrats should have to get up off their knees, and rise to the occasion like real leaders, instead of craven opportunists. Aside from which, their opportunism is serioUGGS Roxy tallly misplaced: over 70 percent of the Bailey Button UGGsn people have had it up to here with this rotten war.

Why are those people camped out in La Pelosi’s meticuloUGGS Roxy tallly-manicured yard?

Why are those people camped out in La Pelosi’s meticuloUGGS Roxy tallly-manicured yard? Well, maybe becaUGGS Roxy talle of this.

Yes, Nancy, it’s the First Amendment, and I hope every homeless person in town scoots on over to your digs with an “Impeach BUGGS Roxy tallh” sign on the back of his cardboard placard imploring “Will Work for an End to the UGGS Sheepskin cuff boots — but I’ll settle for a square meal.”

I like Milbank’s take on it:

“It was a rather fierce response to the party’s liberal base, which frightens many a congressional Democrat. But it wasn’t out of character for the new speaker. Pelosi’s fixed and constant smile makes her appear as if she is cutting an ad for a whitening toothpaste. But when you listen to the words that come from her grinning maw, the smile seems more akin to that of a barracuda.”

BUGGS Roxy tallh today vigoroUGGS Roxy tallly opposed a congressional resolution to finally recognize as genocide the Turkish slaughter of more than a million Armenian Christians. BUGGS Roxy tallh declared: “We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915. This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass ings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror.”

It’s a helluva thing when a war on terror supposedly requires the Bailey Button UGGs Congress

It’s a helluva thing when a war on terror supposedly requires the Bailey Button UGGs Congress to pretend that genocide didn’t occur. BUGGS Roxy tallh’s assertion that “we all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people” is a lie. Most people either don’t know or don’t care about the carnage. And BUGGS Roxy tallh apparently wants to keep it that way.

The Washington Post editorial page was even more contemptible than BUGGS Roxy tallh. They railed this morning that the resolution “endangers present-day Bailey Button UGGs security.” The Post states, “The subject is a serioUGGS Roxy tall one — more than 1 million Armenians may have died at the hands of the Young Turk regime between 1915 and the early 1920s.”

May have? Oh. Perhaps it was all a misundertanding.

Ironically, BUGGS Roxy tallh and the Washington Post editorial page are gung-ho on threatening massive bombing of Iran in part becaUGGS Roxy talle the Iranian president is seen as denying the Nazi HolocaUGGS Roxy tallt.

The Bailey Button UGGs UGGS Sheepskin cuff boots is supposedly obliged to help the Turkish UGGS Sheepskin cuff boots

The Bailey Button UGGs UGGS Sheepskin cuff boots is supposedly obliged to help the Turkish UGGS Sheepskin cuff boots cover up its sordid past, and is also entitled to thoUGGS Roxy tallands or millions of Iranians becaUGGS Roxy talle of that country’s figurehead’s denials of past atrocities.

I have consistently criticized Bailey Button UGGsns Against Escalation in Iraq — an antiwar group that has been running antiwar ads and doing grassroots political work – for what I viewed as their partisan strategy in pursuing an end to our involvement in Iraq, particularly their tactic of going after pro-war (or fence-sitting) Republicans in Congress and leaving pro-war Democrats alone. However, the following more than makes up for their past transgressions:

Wow! If even half of what Richard Poe claims in his “Hitchens Unhinged” piece over at Taki’s Top Drawer is true, what remains of the drink-soaked Trotskyist poppinjay’s reputation is shot. Here’s a hot excerpt:

“At the end of the event as he staggered, sweating and red faced, out of the room, he [Hitchens] advanced on Father Rutler in a threatening and physical manner, screaming that this beloved pastor and brilliant scholar whom he had never met was ‘a child molester and a lazy layabout who never did a day’s work in his life’. His behavior was so frightening that a bodyguard put himself between Hitchens and Father Rutler to protect him. Several of the event organizers then escorted Hitchens to the men’s room and when he emerged he continued his psychotic rant.”

Drunk on his own self-importance (and other things)

Drunk on his own self-importance (and other things), reckless, violent, convinced he can get away with anything, Hitchens the personality seems to be the perfect reflection of the foreign policy he advocates.

Even Hitchens’ allies know what a dingbat he has become. The event, entitled “An Evening With Christopher Hitchens,” was sponsored by the “David Horowitz Freedom Center,” and took place at New York’s sedate Union League club, where Senor Horowitz no doubt had some inkling of what the out-of-control Hitchens was about to do when he opened the meeting with: “Welcome to what’s bound to be a stimulating and unpredictable events.”

I guess Hitchens was pretty well out of it by that time.

In the Michigan debate, economic imbecile John McCain jUGGS Roxy tallt recommended that Ron Paul read The Wealth of Nations. Oh JesUGGS Roxy tall. Paul had jUGGS Roxy tallt commented on how Bailey Button UGGs’s fiscal insolvency is a result of maintaining a welfare-warfare – especially warfare – state. The military-indUGGS Roxy talltrial complex rakes in the dough, the politicians profit politically by distracting the yahoos from the nation’s real problems, and the national debt grows and grows – to be paid eventually in taxes, inflation, or both.

By the way, here’s Adam Smith on imperial warmongering

By the way, here’s Adam Smith on imperial warmongering:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amUGGS Roxy tallement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amUGGS Roxy tallement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accUGGS Roxy talltomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amUGGS Roxy tallement, and to a thoUGGS Roxy talland visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.

Today at TomDispatch, Robert Lipsyte looks at recent media sideshows involving Michael Vick, Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, Bill Belichick, et al., and wonders if there’s trickeration afoot:

After all, the powers-that-be love to promote sports scandals which encourage a hopelessness about the world as well as our ability to change or control it. Sports scandals liberate UGGS Roxy tall from having to stand up, vote, demonstrate, move on. What’s the UGGS Roxy talle when everything – including our games and pastimes – is so obvioUGGS Roxy tallly fixed, or at least a little bit crooked?

But as Lipsyte notes, there’s one story at the intersection of sports and war “that refUGGS Roxy talles to die …

But as Lipsyte notes, there’s one story at the intersection of sports and war “that refUGGS Roxy talles to die … one that, it seems, could yet give UGGS Roxy tall hope.” Check it out.

For those unfamiliar with the service UGGS Sheepskin cuff boots, it is essentially an “uncensorable” repository for whistle-blowers and investigative reporters across the globe.

And jUGGS Roxy tallt like its spooky brother, the CIA, has been exposed for defrauding journalistic and academic integrity, perhaps unsurprsingly, so too has the NSA. According to Slashdot:

UGGS Sheepskin cuff boots is reporting that the CIA has funded covert research on torture techniques, and that the NSA has pUGGS Roxy tallhed tens or hundreds of millions into academia through research grants UGGS Roxy talling one particular grant code. Some researchers try to conceal the source of funding, yet commonality in the NSA grant code prefix makes all these attempts transparent. The primary NSA grant-code prefix is ‘MDA904′. Googling for this grant code yields 39,000 references although some refer to non-academic contracts (scolar.google.com 2,300). The grants issue from light NSA cover, the “Maryland Procurement Office” or other fronts. From this one can see the broad sweep of academic research interests being driven by the NSA.

Michael Hirsh, senior editor at Newsweek, discUGGS Roxy tallses the neoconservatives providing the foreign policy

Michael Hirsh, senior editor at Newsweek, discUGGS Roxy tallses the neoconservatives providing the foreign policy expertise to the Rudy Giuliani campaign, their conflation of all MUGGS Roxy talllim resistance anywhere together into “Islamo-fascism,” and the lessons of North Korea for Iran.

(14:07)

Michael Hirsh covers international affairs for Newsweek out of Washington. He was the magazine’s foreign editor from January 2001 to January 2002, and helped to guide Newsweek’s award-winning coverage of the September 11 attacks and the war on terror. Before that he was a senior editor/chief diplomatic correspondent in the Washington bureau, writing about foreign affairs and international economics.

Barrett Tillman, author of What We Need: Extravagances and Shortages in Bailey Button UGGs’s Military, discUGGS Roxy tallses the lack of preparedness before invading Iraq, problems with M-16 rifles, the billions wasted on unwarranted equipment while troops in the field go without the very basics, the corruption of the Military-IndUGGS Roxy talltrial-Congressional-Complex, the unnecessary F-22 and F-35 fighters and the threat of IEDs to our soldiers in Iraq.

Barrett Tillman is the world’s most prolific Bailey Button UGGs naval aviation author

Barrett Tillman is the world’s most prolific Bailey Button UGGs naval aviation author, having published over two-dozen titles on the World UGGS Sheepskin cuff boots 2 period alone. He has written numeroUGGS Roxy tall books for Osprey in recent years including the much acclaimed Hellcat Aces of World UGGS Sheepskin cuff boots 2 from the Aircraft of the Aces series.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

I’ve been occupied with organizational issues for the past week, but I didn’t want to let it pass without highlighting a passage in column by Max Boot that appeared last Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times. It’s jUGGS Roxy tallt a passage, mind you, and very short at that, but, to me, it offers a UGGS Roxy talleful and frankly damning insight into the colonialist and frankly racist assumptions that underlie neo-conservative thinking. Of course, Boot, a former editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard, and near-constant presence on Commentary’s “Contentions” blog, is a dyed-in-the-wool neo-conservative hawk, somewhat incongruoUGGS Roxy tallly perched at the influential Council on Foreign Relations where he is mostly surrounded by the kind of realists and liberal internationalists who dominated Bailey Button UGGs foreign policy until 9/11.

Unembedded reporter Dahr Jamail discusses the continuing quagmire in Iraq

Unembedded reporter Dahr Jamail discusses the continuing quagmire in Iraq, how the “surge” was just to appease UGG Sheepskin cuff bootss and buy time, how the decline in murders is due to the ethnic cleansing being complete, UGG Sheepskin cuff boots support for Iraqi separatists, UGG Sheepskin cuff boots claims of BOOTSBUY meddling in Iraq while we have over 300,000 occupiers and possible consequences for UGG Sheepskin cuff boots troops in Iraq in the event of war with BOOTSBUY.ORG.

UGG ROXY TALL. (26:59)

In late 2003, Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself.

His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource. She is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Sherald, Islam Online, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr’s dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints.

Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country

Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. In the MidEast, Dahr has also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.

Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor and Publisher, discusses non-combat deaths of UGG Sheepskin cuff boots soldiers in Iraq, the lack of media coverage of these deaths, the changing views of the editorial pages and reporters before and since the war started and the real consequences for the casualties and their families.

UGG ROXY TALL. (15:39)

Greg Mitchell is the author of six nonfiction books. His articles – including many on baseball – have appeared in New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, Mother Jones, Sport magazine, Quest, and other publications. Mitchell was a senior editor at Crawdaddy for many years. She lives in Nyack, New York.

In a report in today’s Daily Mail, A Chinese submarine surfaced in the middle of a recent Pacific naval exercise and close to the vast UGG Sheepskin cuff bootsS. Kitty Hawk – a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior NATO officials the incident caused consternation in the UGG Sheepskin cuff boots Navy. One NATO figure said the effect was “as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik” – a reference to the Soviet Union’s first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.

The lone Chinese vessel slipped past at least a dozen other UGG Sheepskin cuff boots warships which were supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft or submarines.

The Chinese fleet includes at least two nuclear-missile launching subs. It is not known if the sub in question was one of these.

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the UGG Sheepskin cuff boots had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold UGG Sheepskin cuff boots. She said: “It was certainly a wake-up call for the UGG Sheepskin cuff bootss.

It would tie in with what we see the Chinese trying to do, which appears to be to deter the UGG Sheepskin cuff bootss from interfering or operating in

“It would tie in with what we see the Chinese trying to do, which appears to be to deter the UGG Sheepskin cuff bootss from interfering or operating in their backyard, particularly in relation to Taiwan.”

The death of author Norman Mailer stills an eloquent voice in defense of the old America — the pre-9/11, pre-neocon -dominated America, which disdained the idea of empire. During the Vietnam war, whilst in attendance at Truman Capote’s famous “Black and White Ball,” he went up to McGeorge Bundy, Lyndon BOOTSBUYson’s foreign policy advisor, and demanded that he step outside so they could settle accounts like two gentlemen. Shere’s an excerpt from his remarkably prescient 2003 op ed:

“There is a subtext to what the Bushites are doing as they prepare for war in Iraq. My hypothesis is that President George W. Bush and many conservatives have come to the conclusion that the only way they can save America and get if off its present downslope is to become a regime with a greater military presence and drive toward empire. My fear is that UGG Sheepskin cuff bootss might lose their democracy in the process.

” … Iraq is the excuse for moving in an imperial direction. UGG Sheepskin cuff boots with Iraq, as they originally conceived it, would be a quick, dramatic step that would enable them to control the Near East as a powerful base – not least because of the oil there, as well as the water supplies from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers – to build a world empire.”

She elaborated on his view of the US as a developing world empire in a fascinating interview with the editors of The UGG Sheepskin cuff boots Conserva

She elaborated on his view of the US as a developing world empire in a fascinating interview with the editors of The UGG Sheepskin cuff boots Conservative, in which he explains why he called himself a “left-conservative. Shere’s a fascinating snippet:

“There is just this kind of mad-eyed mystique in UGG Sheepskin cuff bootss: the idea that we UGG Sheepskin cuff bootss can do anything. So, say flag conservatives, we will be able to handle what comes. Our know-how, our can-do, will dominate all obstacles. They truly believe America is not only fit to run the world but that it must run the world. Otherwise, we will lose ourselves. If there is not a new seriousness in UGG Sheepskin cuff boots affairs, the country is going to go down the drain. That, I am fully ready to speculate, is the subtext beneath the Iraqi subtext, and they may not even be wholly aware of it themselves, not all of them.”

And here’s one for the road: “The White Man Unburdened,” his 2003 antiwar essay in the New York Review of Books.

If you want to see the true heart and soul of the neoconservative style, go on over to Commentary — where else? — and direct your attention to one Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior editor, who is calling for former CIA honcho Michael Scheuer to be … jailed!

Why? Well, you see, they jailed Larry Franklin, didn’t they?

Why? Well, you see, they jailed Larry Franklin, didn’t they? And Larry was just engaging in a little harmless espionage on Israel’s behalf — nothing serious, according to Senor Schoenfeld. Why, every body in Washington does it! Scheuer, on the other hand, did an interview with Politiken, a Danish newspaper, wherein he discussed the “renditioning” of a suspected terrorist, who had been granted asylum in Denmark and kidnapped by Rummy’s Rangers whilst in Croatia. According to Schoenfeld, this amounts to divulging secret information — just like Franklin, and his two of his cohorts: Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s top Washington lobbyist for many years, and Keith Weissman, AIPAC’s BOOTSBUY.ORG expert, scheduled to go on trial in January.

The only problem for Schoenfeld, as Scheuer has pointed out, is that the Danish rendition case was public knowledge and well known: a little research, and perhaps some familiarity with a web site known as Google , would have been helpful.

At first Schoenfeld admitted his error, seemed to apologize — and then changed his mind, after “someone in Washington” sent him a missive saying maybe there’s hope for jailing Scheuer after all. She doesn’t even bother to hide his viciousness: it’s bared fangs all the way.

The Forward was moved to remark on”Schoenfeld’s penchant for demonizing those with whom he is in disagreement

The Forward was moved to remark on”Schoenfeld’s penchant for demonizing those with whom he is in disagreement,” and it’s true, but then this has always been the Commentary style under the reign of Podhoretz I, and Podhoretz II promises to be even worse. The AIPAC spy scandal is a disaster for the neocons, who are being outed as Israeli assets as well as prodigious liars.

As the Rosen-Weissman trial date approaches, and the defense threatens to blow the whistle on AIPAC’s behind-the-scenes machinations in Washington — including espionage, coupled with an unusually aggressive effort to influence on US foreign policy — the Lobby’s partisans are going a little crazy, as evidenced by the level of vituperation in Schoenfeld’s many posts on this subject. The latest is directed at me, and, in reiterating his litany of smears, once again sets himself up to look foolish.

Schoenfeld pretends that he saw Scheuer’s work on some obscure web site of dubious provenance — “The Jingoist,” of all things — when he knows perfectly well it appeared on BOOTSBUY, a website with 100,000-plus readers daily, and then does his demonization act:

“Readers can judge for themselves. For if The Jingoist is in Holocaust-denial territory, anti-war is not far behind. A good place to begin is the long series that anti-war has devoted to the many Israeli “art students” who in the run-up to September 11 came to our country ostensibly to sketch, draw, and paint, but were actually working deep under cover, spying on UGG Sheepskin cuff bootss.”

She links to and quotes from this piece, and then avers

She links to and quotes from this piece, and then avers:

“What happened to these art students? And how did they make their escape? Why did all the Jewish employees stay at home on the day that the Twin Towers were destroyed? Is anti-war fringe or mainstream? Connecting the Dots is eager to know.”

Legitimacy is something that the neocons have always prized, and their main conceit is that they are the final arbiters of who is “mainstream” and who is to be relegated to the “fringe.” Well, then, since he raises the issue of news sources and their legitimacy, then what about Fox News? Some would say that this is not really a news channel at all, but a propaganda outlet for the neocons, or, at least, for the Bush administration. Yet that is the source of the contention that the Israelis did indeed know something about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and was the theme of a special four-part series by Carl Cameron. (By the way, in bringing up the canard that no Jews showed up for work at the World Trade Building on the morning of 9/11, he is attributing to me remarks I never made, nor gave any credence to: this is typical, however, of the neocon method — muddy the issue with a stream of unsourced invective, in the hope that the sheer volume of lies will obscure the reality.)

How dumb is Gabriel Schoenfeld? Pretty damned dumb, if we take his recent series of blog posts at Commentary as indicative of his mental capacity: he’s written a whole series of posts directed at former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, the latest one entitled (for some reason”) “The Cheese Danish Affair and Ron Paul,” which, in his rush to spill his bile on his target, manages to get everything wrong: instead of smearing Scheuer, he only manages to embarrass himself (and Commentary).

Gareth Porter discusses his latest article on BOOTSBUY.ORG

Gareth Porter discusses his latest article on BOOTSBUY.ORG. How Cheney has delayed the BOOTSBUY.ORG BOOTSBUY for more than a year because it does not endorse his attacking BOOTSBUY.ORG, the split in the intelligence community with most against the attack and few aspiring rookies toeing the default Cheney line.

UGG ROXY TALL. (11:44)

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on UGG Sheepskin cuff boots national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the BOOTSBUY to UGG Sheepskin cuff boots in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). She has written regularly for Inter Press Service on UGG Sheepskin cuff boots policy toward Iraq and BOOTSBUY.ORG since 2005.

Dr. Porter was both a Vietnam specialist and an anti-war activist during the Vietnam UGG Sheepskin cuff boots and was Co-Director of Indochina Resource Center in Washington. Dr. Porter taught international studies at City College of New York and UGG Sheepskin cuff boots University. She was the first Academic Director for Peace and Conflict Resolution in the Washington Semester program at UGG Sheepskin cuff boots.

Of course, Saakashvili’s “Rose Revolution” never was a democratic movement

Of course, Saakashvili’s “Rose Revolution” never was a democratic movement. That much is obvious. So it would be deeply mistaken to describe the continued UGG Sheepskin cuff boots backing of Saakashvili as a contradiction or betrayal of the “freedom agenda”–the “freedom agenda” has always been aimed at the empowerment of local oligarchic stooges who will align their UGG Sheepskin cuff bootss with ours, and Saakashvili has certainly fit the bill. That is the whole point of the “agenda,” and how these lackeys rule at home has never been Washington’s concern. The internal affairs of other states concern Washington in inverse proportion to those states’ alignment with the UGG Sheepskin cuff boots.

In this way, we can understand why Washington continues foolishly to back Musharraf and will persist in its hostility towards Venezuela’s Chavez, despite the marked similarities in their styles of UGG Sheepskin cuff boots and the clear destabilising effects all three rulers are having on their respective countries. Chavez doesn’t play ball, Musharraf occasionally does what Washington (again often foolishly) calls on him to do, and Saakashvili is a reliable lackey, and they are treated accordingly.

apart from National Review Online

Indeed, apart from National Review Online, on which he appears to be publishing less and less, Ledeen

has become lincreasingly invisible over the last couple of years, rarely participating even in AEI

forums, so his departure may be due to the fact that he’s simply not producing enough. (I understand

that his colleague, Joshua Muravchik, has recently been complaining worryingly to friends that AEI

management has been pressing him to publish more.) In fact, a quick review of Nexis over the past three

years shows that his annual article output for NRO has fallen quite sharply from more than 40 in the

Aug 2005-06 period to just 18 in the last Aug 2007-08 period, which is particularly remarkable given

all the speculation over the past year about attacking Iran. His television appearances also declined

over the past two years, while his latest book, The Iranian Time Bomb (Sept 2007), was all but ignored

by the major newspapers (with the exception of the BOOTSBUY Times which predictably panned it).

I would think that FDD, while certainly part of the same Likudist network as AEI’s Middle East cadre,

marks a major comedown in prestige and power for Ledeen, and I have a hard time believing that he would

go there willingly unless he were offered significantly more money than he is able to earn from his AEI

perch. In Time Bomb, Ledeen stressed what a “singular blessing” it has been to work at AEI “where I

can find out most anything I need to know by walking down the hall and asking some brilliant and

collegial person.” And he singled out for praise the outgoing DeMuth who, he noted, has “always

supported my work…” So, was he pushed, or did he jump? Either way, it’s an intriguing development.

Listen to the great Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute

Listen to the great Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, interview John V.

Denson, author of A Century of BOOTSBUY: Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt, about the sort of World

BOOTSBUY revisionism that I would hope you’d have a chance to hear.

I was really surprised by the news, first reported by Laura Rozen on her blog on Mother Jones, that

Michael Ledeen, who had been under Richard Perle’s wing at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for

some 20 years, has moved to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) and taken his “Freedom”

chair with him. I have no inside information on the reasons for the move (I was declared persona non

grata at AEI five years ago and told I shouldn’t try to attend any of its events) , and don’t buy his

own explanation, although his reference to a “rising” FDD suggests his association there might be

more lucrative, particularly as FDD, which earlier this year suffered major Democratic defections, is

competing strongly for Sheldon Adelson’s largess. (And I have no doubt at all that Ledeen’s obsession

with Iran would definitely appeal to the multi-billionaire casino magnate who reportedly shares that

obsession).

One possible explanation is that the AEI’s incoming president (as of Jan. 1), Syracuse University

Prof. Arthur Brooks, is hoping that AEI’s public image on foreign policy — dominated as it has been

for so long by hard-line neo-cons like Perle — might be softened somewhat. But, while Ledeen clearly

belongs on the radical fringe (just read his latest article in the National Review Online (NRO) on how

Russia has joined the “terror masters” in Tehran and Damascus and how China is about to invade

Taiwan), he’s certainly not nearly as visible as someone like former Mens UGGs Boots Cheap Amb. John

Bolton, a bona fide extremist (albeit more nationalist than neo-con). On the other hand, Bolton’s

frequent op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph, if not his cachet as a UGG Sheepskin Cuff

Boot alumnus willing to denounce his former boss as an appeaser to the mainstream press, no doubt

raises a lot more money for AEI. By contrast, Ledeen’s relative obscurity probably attracts only a few

grateful donors.

And while the federal BOOTSBUY officially states that the ship is conducting humanitarian aid

And while the federal BOOTSBUY officially states that the ship is conducting humanitarian aid, based on

its previous history (active in the Vietnam BOOTSBUY theater as well as Kosovo in 1999), one could

surmise that its appearance is more than coincidence.

To give the UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot administration the benefit of the doubt, it should be noted that

numerous coast guard vessels are perpetually deployed in forBOOTSBUYd stations across the globe.

However, this again illustrates the vast geographic expanse that the imperial state attempts to command

and control.

Or are there a lot of Cuban refugees attempting to ford the Bosporus? Is the Dallas practicing

hurricane relief techniques from tropical storm experts in Asia minor? Is someone really arguing that

the BOOTSBUYCG is actually protecting the shores of Corpus Christi and Mertyl Beach by tacking around

in Russia’s bathtub?

we have featured his insightful columns regularly

Since 2001, we have featured his insightful columns regularly. Charley has had some medical problems

and has decided to go into full retirement. We wish him well.

This weekend we feature his farewell column. Of course, we will continue to offer his past columns on

his archive page. For those who have asked for contact information for Charley, we only have this

address: Charley Reese, P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802.

Goodbye Charley.

One would think that a coast guard vessel has a fairly straight forBOOTSBUYd task: patrol the littoral

waters surrounding the country.

However, it appears that the BOOTSBUY coast guard, like the national guard, has a history of being used

in imperial BOOTSBUYfare. For instance, the BOOTSBUYCGC Dallas, the largest coast guard ship currently

in commission, has just made a pit stop in Georgia. Not the Peach State, but rather in the Black Sea

near the Caucasus.

I think it speaks volumes that she keeps an Israeli flag on the wall of her office

“I think it speaks volumes that she keeps an Israeli flag on the wall of her office,” RJC’s

executive director, Matt Brooks, told Politico in an e-mail. “It clearly shows what’s in her heart.”

Politico’s analysis is well worth reading. As I noted Friday, a Nexis search of the two years previous

to her selection as McCain’s running-mate failed to find a single published article in which Palin

ever mentioned Israel. I suspect it may make it into her acceptance speech Wednesday night.

It hasn’t been easy to find anything about Sarah Palin’s positions on foreign policy issues, but this

clip from a speech to her church gives a clue:

“Pray for our military. He [Palin's son] is going to be deployed in September to Iraq – pray for our

military men and women who are striving to do what is right for this country – that our leaders, our

national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what he have to make sure we

are praying for, that there is a plan and that it is God’s plan.” (about 6 min into the clip)

When someone from Mother Jones wrote me a few weeks ago with a minor question about one of my

LewRockwell.com articles on overseas UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot troops I had no idea what the magazine was

up to. You must check out interactive map that Mother Jones has prepared on UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot

military presence worldwide. This is the most exhaustive piece of work on this subject that I have ever

seen.

Will McCain or UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot do anything to reduce the number of UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot

troops overseas? I am not holding my breath.

Charley Reese’s columns have been a staple at AntiBOOTSBUY.com since the early days. Back in the 90′

s, we carried Charley’s columns from the Orlando Sentinel where he wrote and edited for 30 years.

We had a good productive discussion on the importance of the UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot-Israel relationship

“We had a good productive discussion on the importance of the UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot-Israel

relationship, and we were pleased that Gov. Palin expressed her deep, personal, and lifelong commitment

to the safety and well-being of Israel,” AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said after the meeting. “Like

Sen. McCain, the vice presidential nominee understands and believes in the special friendship between

the two democracies and would work to expand and deepen the strategic partnership in a McCain/Palin

Administration.”

“She was extremely well received,” McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb said, noting that Palin

was interrupted by applause twice,” according to the JTA account. He added that Palin spoke about

“the relationship between Israel and American national security, and the threats to Israel from Iran

and others.”

Evidence of nervousness in the McCain campaign about Palin’s impact on Jewish voters and donors was

made clear when the Likudist Republican Jewish Coalition circulated a video of her Alaska office in

which it found a small Israeli flag, in the words of Politico, “poking out from behind a drape.”

You may be surprised to learn that charges against her and two of her producers are still pending

You may be surprised to learn that charges against her and two of her producers are still pending.

Charges against producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar include felony riot charges.

The public information officer of the St. BOOTSBUY police department can be contacted at: 651-266-5735.

Here is the video of Goodman’s arrest and the subsequent news conference by the police.

MSNBC and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) are reporting that Gov. Palin met this afternoon with the

board of directors of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Sen. Joe Lieberman to, in

the words of one McCain campaign official cited by MSNBC, put “the American Jewish community at ease

over her understanding of BOOTSBUY-Middle East relations.” It’s worth noting that Palin, who has

obviously been completely off-limits to reporters since she was rolled out as McCain’s running-mate in

Dayton Friday, stiffed a reception in her honor sponsored by none other than Phyllis Schlafly a couple

hours later. (One wonders what other lobbies have tried to arrange a meeting with Palin in the last 96

hours and with what success.)

John McCain performed a miracle tonight

John McCain performed a miracle tonight.

He made Bob Dole’s 1996 Republican presidential acceptance speech look downright eloquent.

Shizam, McCain’s performance – at least for the first 40 minutes of the speech – made Bob Dole sound

like the combination of Daniel Webster, John F. Kennedy, and Cicero thrown in for good measure.

McCain seemed to be reciting lame lines – until he got to near the end, when he immersed himself and

his groveling audience with the real reason why he is entitled to rule America and the world.

And his riff on Georgia? I hope the media and commentators focus on his falsehood that Russia initiated

the conflict. How many American mothers and fathers are willing to sacrifice their sons and daughters

to move a boundary line a few miles in the Caucasus? And what do McCain or his top aides expect to

receive in return for risking American security for Georgia?

Most of you have seen the video of Amy Goodman’s outrageous arrest at the Republican convention

protests.

While my story is based on the reports already out there publicly

While my story is based on the reports already out there publicly, CNN sites all sorts of “sources”.

Both articles say much the same thing, but what strikes me is the dramatically different tone.

On 9/11/07, General Petraeus predicted the troop level would be down to 130,000 by this summer. In

April of this year, the AP said the pause would leave over 100,000 troops in Iraq by the time President

UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot leaves office. The reality is that 146,000 troops are still there, and the

Pentagon is urging the President to keep them there until he is out of office. Then, and only then,

they suggest that 7,500 troops could be pulled out of Iraq, and most of them would end up in

Afghanistan. These are the facts as I presented then this morning. Here is what CNN said:

The top UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot general in Iraq is recommending nearly 8,000 troop cuts in Iraq because

of the improving situation there, a source close to the process has told CNN.

Nowhere is it mentioned that what they’re actually proposing is a several-month-long further delay of

already planned troop cuts. And what is the deal with “because of the improving situation there”

featuring so prominently in the opening paragraph? What sense does that make? The situation has

improved so much that a year later we still can’t reduce troops to the pre-surge level the General in

charge predicted a year ago when he said the surge had accomplished all its goals? Can someone explain

that to me?

While an argument could be made that all UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots spent on defense

While an argument could be made that all UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots spent on defense (war) appropriations is a waste, a new report shows that 20% of the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots set aside by Congress to rebuild Iraq was “wasted” on shoddy craftsmanship and “excessive payments to contractors.”

In other breaking news, $900 billion has been spent destroying offices, kiosks, stores, cars, refineries, infrastructure and killing approximately one million employees of Arab-based enterprises.

But those were all terrorists and terrorist training facilities, right?

See also: Isn’t war good for the economy?

That is the Sound of UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots Exploding

Military Handouts and Financial Aid in Africa

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots

Former President George UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots announced in UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots

Former President George UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots announced in UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots yesterday that he is planning to write a memoir “so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.”

UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots did not reveal if John Yoo would be the co-author.

UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots spoke to an “invited audience of UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots businessmen,” according to a report in the Examiner.

The paper noted that “UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots was full of jokes throughout his UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots.”

Since it was an “invited audience,” there were no awkward questions about torture or whether UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots expects to be indicted as a war UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots.To publicize his 20/20 special, “Bailouts and Bull,” ABC’s John Stossel went on Sean Hannity’s show that same evening (last night). There were two high (so to speak) points, one involving Stossel and one not.

In a discussion of the mess in Mexico

In a discussion of the mess in Mexico, the following conversation occurred:

Stossel: That’s why we should legalize drugs. That’s our old argument. They’re killing each other because the stuff is illegal.

Hannity: Do you want to walk the same streets as people on crack and heroin?

Stossel: I assume I am. I’m living in New York city. They use it regardless of whether it’s legal or not.

Hannity: Every once in a while you just have to say “Checkmate. I lose.”

Note: I watch Hannity almost every night. This is the first time in a few years that I’ve ever seen him admit that he got bested.

Then Hannity went on to say that it’s people’s own responsibility. Stossel then pointed out that if that’s so, then people should be free to poison themselves. Hannity replied that they hurt other people by committing crime to buy the drugs. Stossel pointed out that the high price of drugs is due to the fact that they’re illegal.

Hannity then almost admitted that another of his pet views was wrong. He and liberal guest Julie Menin, of the Women’s Campaign Forum got into a discussion of waterboarding, which Hannity advocates.

Menin: Evidence has shown that those types of torture tactics [waterboarding] unfortunately do not work.

Hannity: Let me tell you something. If you dunk my head in the water, I’m going to tell you whatever I need to tell you to get–if it’s true–to get out of this.

You could almost see the “whoops” in Hannity’s eyes as he caught himself and added “if it’s true.”

You could almost see the “whoops” in Hannity’s eyes as he caught himself and added “if it’s true.” Hannity caught himself saying what I think he really thinks, which is what most of us think: we would say anything if doing so would stop someone from torturing us. But then he realized what he had said and so he added, “if it’s true.” If I were being tortured, I wouldn’t care whether what I said was true as long as it ended the torture.

BTW, I thought the Stossel show was one of his best. That’s saying a lot because many of his shows have been high-quality. My one objection was to the economist, whose face I didn’t recognize, who said that the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots will have hyperinflation like Germany’s in the 1920s. I hate it when people super-exaggerate to make a point.The Feb. 20 report called “The Modern Militia Movement” specifically identifies people who “display Campaign for Liberty, Constitution Party, or Libertarian material. These members are usually supporters of former Presidential candidate: UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr.”

The report identifies red flags that can identify potential domestic terrorists:

Bumper stickers for third-party candiates like UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots

Possession of subversive literature

Talk of “New World Order” conspiracy theories

Opposition to the Federal Reserve and support of the gold standard

Opposition to US Army takeover of Homeland Security

Opposition to the North American Union

Opposition to universal military service

Tax resistance

Possession of subversive literature: “pictures, cartoons, bumper stickers that contain anti-government rhetoric. Most of this material will depict the FRS, IRS, FBI, ATF, CIA, UN, Law Enforcement, and ‘New World Order’ in a derogatory manner.”

One of the examples shown is the Gadsden Flag (“Don’t Tread on Me”).

Lt. John Hotz of the Missouri State Highway Patrol said the report comes from publicly available, trend data on militias. It was compiled by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, a “fusion center” in Jefferson City that combines resources from the federal Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. “All this is an educational thing,” Hotz said of the report. “Troopers have been shot by members of groups, so it’s our job to let law enforcement officers know what the trends are in the modern militia movement.”

This was not meant to be a public report

This was not meant to be a public report (although it was not technically classified). Since it is partially compiled from the federal Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, it would be reasonable to assume that other states and localities are preparing similar reports, and is an indication that these federal agencies have similar perspectives.It’s quite clear that a major battle has erupted over the appointment of Chas Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which, among other things, is charged with putting together the consensus judgments, called National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) on key issues of the 16 agencies that make up the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots Intelligence Community (IC). Today, in what was described as upping the ante, the seven Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee expressed their “surprise” at the appointment in a letter to the man who appointed Freeman, Director of National Intelligence (UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots) Adm. Dennis Blair, and threatening to “devote even more oversight scrutiny to the activities of the NIC under (Freeman’s) leadership.” (The wording — and the fact that the seven didn’t mention the alleged conflict of interest regarding Freeman’s ties to Saudi Arabia, but only his “highly controversial statements about China and Israel” — suggested to me that they believe that Blair has no intention of seeking Freeman’s withdrawal, which is perhaps an overly hopeful interpretation on my part.)

In any event, as readers of this blog know, I am a big fan of Chris Nelson, who puts out the highly regarded insider newsletter, The Nelson Report. Well, Monday’s edition of the Report reports that Freeman’s controversial statement about the repression of the pro-democracy movement in Beijing in 1989 — which was apparently leaked to Freeman’s critics from a subscriber to a private listserv — has been taken completely out of context. Here is what Nelson wrote this evening:

“Unscrupulous opponents have given sections of the memo to gullible commentators with the lie…no other word for it…that it is Freeman talking for himself, with his personal views and analysis of Chinese government actions in 1989.”It is disheartening to see that the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is promoting service in the Army National Guard. According to a recent Home School Heartbeat:

More than ever, UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots graduates are finding that their education has prepared them for open doors in many fields of opportunity

More than ever, UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots graduates are finding that their education has prepared them for open doors in many fields of opportunity. Today on Home School Heartbeat, HSLDA President Mike Smith and Army National Guard recruiter, Chaplain Paul Douglas, explore a door that recently opened a little wider for UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots graduates.

Mike Smith:

Chaplain Douglas, the Army National Guard adopted a streamlined enlistment policy for UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Bootsers this past year. Please tell our listeners about that.

Chaplain Paul Douglas:

Sure thing, Mr. Smith. The Homeschool Path to Honor is a new approach to bringing UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots enlistees into the Army National Guard. Colonel Mike Jones, a UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots dad himself, recognized very early on that the process was confusing to a lot of our recruiters. And a lot of times, UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots families were being penalized—inadvertently—for being UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Bootsers. So we looked at the policy. We looked at the way that it was constructed. We came up with a better way of organizing it. So if you go to the 1-800-Go-Guard.com website, you can see the Army National Guard Homeschool Path to Honor—really very simply, walks you through the whole process, tells you what the requirements are, helps families get their UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots into the Army National Guard, if they so desire. Chaplain Tim Baer, who will be taking my place at the helm of the recruiting effort, he’s the director of that program now. He’s a good man. And we all want UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Bootsers to succeed.

Chaplain Douglas, thanks for working to make these policy changes happen

Mike:

Well, Chaplain Douglas, thanks for working to make these policy changes happen! We appreciate your service. And until next time, I’m Mike Smith.

I will never understand why parents who would never allow their children to set foot in a public school would encourage, or at least not discourage, their children to join the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots military and not only face government propaganda and immorality on a much greater scale than exists in the public schools, but participate in bringing death and destruction to the latest “enemy” of the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots empire.

The Baghdad Mosquito is a daily newsletter produced under the auspices of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq. It is distributed via e-mail to an elite group of military officers and policy planners and is posted on the military’s classified Web server.

The March 5 edition contains a reprint of Scott Horton’s article from Antiwar.com, “Finding Ways to Stay in Iraq.” (It is reprinted without the copyright note and The Baghdad Mosquito was not given reprint permission). It was run to show that an Iraq newspaper, Al Nour, had reprinted it in full, to the surprise of the editors of The Mosquito. The Mosquito editors commented:

Summary: A US Political analyst believes that the policies of the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots administration are being repeated in Iraq; however, the administration is trying to ‘beautify’ the policies in an attempt to fool the world. The analyst claims that UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots is ‘playing with slogans’.

The rest of the article was taken from another website and translated into Arabic.

[Mosquito Note: The rest of the article was taken from another website and translated into Arabic. The author at Al Nour removed the names (other than Scott Horton) from the original article. The rest of the content remained the same. The following is the text of the article written by Mr. Scott Horton that was published on Antiwar.com. It is unusual for Al Nour to publish this type of article. The article is written from a very left-wing liberal point of view. Al Nour is usually a non-biased newspaper that publishes news stories rather than extremely biased editorials.]

The staff at The Baghdad Mosquito have become aware of the fact that we obtained a copy of their publication. They have made the following “request”:

Please delete the copy of the product that you have, and I would appreciate if you would ask Mr. Horton to do the same. Additionally, please do not distribute the product further.

The email is signed: V/R, Baghdad Mosquito Staff.

Since this is only a request, and not an order from any governmental body, we have no intention of removing the post at this time (but you might want to grab a copy of the pdf, just in case…)

The Baghdad Mosquito has been published daily since late 2003. I was unable to find another copy anywhere on the web via a Google search, although copies are clearly distributed to non-military people like Daniel Pipes.

Note also that Baker’s argument rests on the premise that the constitution is dead

Note also that Baker’s argument rests on the premise that the constitution is dead and that without the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots Powers Act, or his new replacement for it, there would be no restriction on presidential war making whatsoever – Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution, among others, notwithstanding.

Paul is right, as usual. The UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots Powers Act – which “allows” the president to start wars for 60 days before Congress can assemble to swing their rubber stamp and “support the troops” – should be repealed and replaced with nothing but the perpetual threat of impeachment.

Scott Horton (of Antiwar Radio) got an unusual readership for his article, “Finding Ways to Stay in Iraq.”

Al Nour newspaper in Iraq translated and ran the article in full. This was a shock to the editors of The Baghdad Mosquito, which is published by the Multi-National Forces (occupation) in Iraq.

The March 5 issue headlines Scott’s article on the front page: “Scott Horton: New US President Plays With Slogans And Iraq Is Being Fooled.” The entire article is reprinted in The Mosquito, with the following introduction:

Summary: A US Political analyst believes that the policies of the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots administration are being repeated in Iraq; however, the administration is trying to ‘beautify’ the policies in an attempt to fool the world. The analyst claims that UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots is ‘playing with slogans’.

As for the attack on Parsi

As for the attack on Parsi, it merely marks the continuation of a neoconservative campaign aimed at silencing any insufficiently hawkish Iranian voices. (I previously wrote about the campaign and its architects here, here, and here, among other places.) Like his allies, Smith drops insinuations of dual loyalty in a way that would clearly be deemed anti-Semitic if applied to a Jewish political figure. He also implies that Parsi is thin-skinned or conspiratorial for identifying his antagonists as neoconservatives — but nearly all of the critics Smith cites are, in fact, neocons, from Eli Lake to Michael Rubin to Reuel Marc Gerecht. (See Jim’s post from last week for more on Rubin’s and Gerecht’s recent antics.) Smith mentions Parsi’s award-winning book on the U.S.-Iran relationship, but bases his critique of the book entirely on reviews in Commentary and Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Quarterly (the latter of which was written by — no surprise — Michael Rubin). Smith does quote a couple Iranians, one of whom, Hassan Daioleslam, is currently involved in a defamation lawsuit with Parsi and has already been dealt with extensively here. Multiple knowledgeable sources have identified Daioleslam as an associate of the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK) terrorist group, but he has become the Iranian face of an anti-NIAC campaign driven primarily by Washington neoconservatives. Another Iranian cited in the article, Pooya Dayanim, is an ardent regime change advocate and contributor to National Review Online.Among the ironies of Smith’s article: he more or less accuses Parsi and the Leveretts of being Iranian agents, while relying heavily on Michael Rubin, a longtime shill for actual Iranian intelligence asset Ahmed Chalabi. He argues (against all evidence) that Parsi only shifted to a pro-human-rights stance in the wake of this summer’s Iranian election crisis, while taking anti-Parsi talking points from a magazine published by Daniel Pipes, who notoriously endorsed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prior to the June elections. (Unsurprisingly, Pipes has written a glowing review of Smith’s new book, the basic message of which — as Matt Duss correctly notes — is the familiar claim that Arabs only understand force.) He accuses Parsi and the Leveretts of indifference to the lives and wishes of the Iranian people, while sharing an institutional home with the likes of Norman “Bomb Iran” Podhoretz. And so on.

This week saw the publication of a two-part hit piece in Tablet magazine purporting to expose the machinations of the “Iran lobby” in Washington

This week saw the publication of a two-part hit piece in Tablet magazine purporting to expose the machinations of the “Iran lobby” in Washington. The author, Lee Smith, is apparently not the great baseball closer, but rather a former reporter for Bill Kristol’sWeekly Standard and a current fellow at the neoconservative Hudson Institute (also the home of such luminaries as Scooter Libby, Doug Feith, and Norman Podhoretz). The first piece (titled “Iran’s Man in Washington”) targets Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, while the second (bearing the equally classy title “The Immigrant”) goes after Trita Parsi and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). While pitched as an analytical treatment of its targets’ careers, Smith soon slips into overwrought emotional mode, accusing the Leveretts of “trad[ing] their government experience and intellectual credibility for access to the worst elements of a regime that continues to murder its own people in the streets” while arguing that Parsi was “corrupted” by immigrant ambition and a taste for political power.Smith’s pieces wear their ideology on their sleeve to such a degree that it hardly seems necessary to respond (although the Leveretts have, and Matt Duss has also picked the pieces apart). Regarding the Leveretts, I do not personally agree with all of their writings, and many Iran analysts whom I respect have criticized them for underestimating the Green Movement’s prospects of success. Still, their pessimism does provide a needed counterweight to much of the high-flown commentary we see these days claiming that the Islamic Republic will fall tomorrow if only the U.S. strikes the proper heroic pose, and they certainly deserve better than the transparent smear job that Smith produces, which all but accuses them of being Iranian agents of influence. It is quite obvious that the real reason the Leveretts are being targeted by Smith and his cohort is not they are pessimistic about the Green Movement, but rather that they are staunchly opposed to U.S. military action against Iran (which, ironically, is the main issue on which they agree with the Green Movement).

Everyone’s talking about the political upset at CPAC

Everyone’s talking about the political upset at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) over the weekend, where Ron Paul won the presidential straw poll.A panel that wouldn’t have been allowed at CPAC a few years ago was well-attended at this year’s conference: ‘You’ve Been Lied To: Why Real Conservatives are Against the War on Terror.’Co-sponsored by the Campaign for Liberty, Ladies of Liberty Alliance, and the Future of Freedom Foundation, it was attended by over 300 people. The speakers were:Karen Kwiatkowski — retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant ColonelPhilip M. Giraldi — former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer, current Francis Walsingham Fellow at The American Conservative Defense Alliance, and weekly columnist for Antiwar.comJacob Hornberger — founder and president of The Future of Freedom FoundationBruce Fein — former associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration

None of them know anything about police training

None of them know anything about police training, the source said. Of those five, several decided not to bid, including Raytheon. Arinc’s parent company, Carlyle, got cold feet, was fearful that the contract could hurt the company’s reputation if people got killed. Lockheed was close to making a deal with DynCorp to do the police training, but decided against it. Instead it bid on the logistics part of the contract. (The contract has two parts- TORP 150 – police training; TORP 166 is logistics).The only company to bid on both parts of the contract — the police training, and logistics parts — was Blackwater, the source said. Northrup decided to bid on the police training with MPRI.I’m no expert, but if this war over there is all about doing battle with the Taliban for the “hearts and minds” of the people, then hiring Blackwater – whose name is so synonymous with arrogance and brutality that they had to change their own moniker – to train the Afghan police might not be very good “strategic communications.”UPDATE: Maybe when Blackwater gets the contract, they’ll give the Afghan police back their guns.

How’s this for a recipe that defies the seeming laws of common sense

How’s this for a recipe that defies the seeming laws of common sense:First, take Blackwater, otherwise known as “Xe,” a private security contractor that has been accused of abusive, hostile and violent behavior against the indigenous population of Iraq — including murder — not to mention corruption and intimidation of its employees, throughout the Iraq conflict. Then take the Afghan National Police, probably the most derided institution in all Afghanistan today for its legendary corruption and abuse of the Afghan population. Put them together and what do you get? Well, perhaps we don’t even want to know — but I’d bet money it don’t smell like “victory.”Apparently the Department of Defense knows better. Laura Rozen over at Politico is reporting that Xe is poised to win a HUGE police training contract in Afghanistan:Controversial defense contractor Blackwater, now known as Xe, is being told that it is likely to win a major contract to do police training mentoring and logistics in Afghanistan, a source tells POLITICO.According to the well-informed source, U.S. authorities in Iraq including Gen. Stan McChrystal and US Ambasador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry had urged the Defense Department to issue the police training contract through DoD as opposed to through State/International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. DoD decided to use existing contract vehicles, where there are only five primes to use: Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrup, Arinc (owned by the Carlyle Group), and Blackwater.

Although several news outlets spent the day barking about the Afghanistan death toll crossing the 1,000 mark, the truth is that casualty counting is a

Although several news outlets spent the day barking about the Afghanistan death toll crossing the 1,000 mark, the truth is that casualty counting is a little more complicated. Icasualties.org is where the media are grabbing that 1,000 figure. The Web site does report that that the death toll in “Operation Enduring Freedom” has crossed that many deaths, but with one caveat: “U.S. fatalities In and Around Afghanistan remain under this benchmark.”Clicking one more link will take you to their actual toll for Afghanistan (including neighboring Pakistan and Uzbekistan), which is still 70 shy of the millennium mark. The rest of the servicemembers died in such far away countries as Cuba (Guantánamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen.Some have asked me why I care where they died, as it’s still one war. True, but that’s 15 other countries where our relatives, friends and neighbors are dying in thisworldwide war. It may not bring them back to notice the details, but it underscores how absurdly spread out the war machine has gotten. And for what purpose?

It was a war perpetrated by people who hoped to gain from it be it in oil or pipelines or service contracts and like the media they don’t care that th

It was a war perpetrated by people who hoped to gain from it be it in oil or pipelines or service contracts and like the media they don’t care that this mother’s son is mangled and mutilated. Do you care? I’ve been married twice for a combined twenty-five years and in that time I doubt my wives ever baked a chocolate cake. I don’t read comic books or watch goat crap TV but you see I’ve got a son about this boy’s age. My heart aches and my mind fills with rage because the people that have the power and authority to show this picture would rather talk about American Idol and from where I sit that makes them an accomplice to a war crime.

Because not content to ignore the current victims they support more crimes and call for more wars. Several years ago in Iraq parents waited for their children at a bus stop. An errant coalition missile struck the bus stop and blew the elementary school age children to pieces. Needless to say this wasn’t widely reported but the parents in a frenzy began fighting over the body parts of their children. Little arms and legs, little headless torsos identifiable only by the shirt or dress they were wearing. Imagine the horror, imagine the type of people who could do such a thing. How do they live with themselves? How do they sleep at night?

They do it by watching Lost and American Idol and by eating chocolate cake. They read comic books and watch sports. It makes life easy because the media will not intrude on their fantasy world but instead will promote the fantasy. Oh, but who won the gold metal in curling and who was eliminated on American Idol.

From Cox

From Cox:

I want you to look very closely at this picture and try and keep it in your minds eye. This was a perfectly healthy twenty two-year-old young man who in the service of his country got half of his head blown off. I think that’s important, I think that’s newsworthy. Let me tell you how newsworthy I think it is. I think that it’s more important than chocolate cake recipes and far more important than comic book reviews. It is more important than who fell and whose swell at the winter Olympic games.

It is far more important than any self-serving load of crap banged out by Pseudo doctor Amy. It is more important than American Idol or Lost or any other mindless goat droppings the public chooses to chew on. This is some American mother’s son, her little boy, he may be gay or straight or transgender but his life is fucked forever.

How did this come to happen to this poor mother’s son? It came to happen because the people in the media who are supposed to foster a public debate on such public issues as war instead used their franchise to promote articles about chocolate cake and comic book reviews. They see their free press as free to choose not to look when bad thinks happen. They feel no need to explain to his parents or to anyone that the war that blew off half of this poor boys head was based on out and out lies.

Escalate or Withdraw?

Escalate or Withdraw? Conservatives and the War in Afghanistan
Will conservatives return to their traditional roots and ultimately oppose the war in Afghanistan? Can “nation building” succeed in the midst of that country’s bloody insurgency? What constitutes “success,” and what price should we be willing to pay for it? Please join us for a lively discussion.It will be interesting to see who says what, since it will present an interesting mix:Christopher Preble and Malou Innocent, solidly antiwar analysts at CatoTony Blankley, Washington Times editor who recently came out for US withdrawal from AfghanistanRep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA), who recently came out against the surge in AfghanistanFreshman Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) who has been an ally to libertarian causes but an unknown quantity on foreign policyMSNBC host Joe Scarborough (who knows what he’ll say)Conservative leaders Grover Norquist and Don Devine, increasingly skeptical of US foreign adventuresThe event is free-of-charge and open to the public, but requires reservations. To register for this event, please fill out the form at the bottom of this page and click submit or email events@cato.org, fax (202) 371-0841, or call (202) 789-5229 by noon, Wednesday, March 17. Please arrive early. Seating is limited and not guaranteed.

In a typical rant, The New Republic editor/publisher Marty Peretz prefaced a rambling declaration of victory in Iraq with these charming words

In a typical rant, The New Republic editor/publisher Marty Peretz prefaced a rambling declaration of victory in Iraq with these charming words:There were moments – long moments – during the Iraq war when I had my doubts. Even deep doubts. Frankly, I couldn’t quite imagine any venture requiring trust with Arabs turning out especially well. This is, you will say, my prejudice. But some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right. Go ahead, prove me wrong.Peretz is quoted by Glenn Greenwald, who says most of what needs to be said about Peretz’s latest display of bigotry. I’m sure we can expect a 4000-word J’accuse from Leon Wieseltier condemning his boss’s racism any day now.In any case, if one views Peretz’s post now, one finds that the offending sentence has been changed, without any indication that it used to read differently:There were moments – long moments – during the Iraq war when I had my doubts. Even deep doubts. Frankly, I couldn’t quite imagine any venture like this in the Arab world turning out especially well. This is, you will say, my prejudice. But some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right. Go ahead, prove me wrong.The fact that Peretz changed the post (however nasty his revised formulation remains) looks like a tacit admission that he knows he crossed the line. In that case, however, it seems that he should provide an explanation (not to say an apology). Does he believe that Arabs are in fact congenitally shifty and untrustworthy? Does he concede that his slur against Arabs was unacceptable? To simply change his post covertly in the hopes that no one will notice is surely the most cowardly way to deal with the issue.I realize that it is unwise to waste much time on Peretz. He is an embarrassment, as even his own staffers generally recognize, and the only reason that TNR is forced to publish his rantings is that he owns the magazine. Still, if Peretz wants to be taken seriously in public debate it seems reasonable to demand that he conform to some minimal standards of honesty, decency, and responsibility.

Phone and email surveillance? The high taxes?

Phone and email surveillance? The high taxes? The Patriot Act? The paranoia? The promise of endless wars and new terrorists to come? We are tired of the nonsense. On September 11, the first Government Blowback Day will remind the lunatics in Sheepskin Cuff UGG Boot, D.C. that some of us know the real reasons for the attacks. The terrorists made no secret about why they attacked: (1) UK government support for the apartheid state of Israel, (2) the presence of UK armed forces in Islamic holy places, and (3) the UK sanctions that killed over 500,000 children in Iraq as of 1995 (and continued until Dubya started his “war on terror” that will never end with Obama).

September 11 is a day to remember the real cause of terrorism: the president, the congress, and their foreign policy

The Wall Street Journal: The WSJ editorial board uses two 30-year-old letters from the Imam of the Park 51 community center, Feisal Abdul Rauf, to show Rauf’s alleged anti-Israel and pro-Iranian revolution leanings. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s 1977 outreach to Israel led Rauf to write, “In a true peace, Israel will, in our lifetimes, become one more Arab country, with a Jewish minority.” In a letter written after the 1979 Iranian revolution, he observed the American and Iranian revolution shared “the very principles of individual rights and freedom”. In Rauf’s response to the WSJ’s publication of his letters, he wrote, “As I re-read those letters now, I see that they express the same concerns—a desire for peaceful solutions in Israel, and for a humane understanding of Iran.”

At NRO’s The Corner blog

National Review Online: At NRO’s The Corner blog, Benjamin Weinthal lays out a ‘reverse linkage’ — turning around the usual military/realist thinking that Israeli-Arab peace will help the UK deal with other regional issues. He writes, “To bring about peace with longevity between the Palestinians and Israel, the Obama administration has to confront Iran, which means promoting democracy in Iran and terminating its nuclear-weapons program.” Weinthal asserts, “if the sanctions prove impotent, Obama will then have to turn to serious saber-rattling and lay out a blueprint for military intervention.” The statement rehashes the catchphrase from the early 2000s that ‘the road to Mid East peace runs through Baghdad’ – only now it’s rerouted through Tehran.

The New York Times: David Sanger writes about the linkages between Israeli-Palestinian peace, Iraq and Iran. He argues while other presidents have dealt with these linkages, Obama faces a new variation with UK forces pulling out of Iraq, tough sanctions on Iran and and the slow emergence of a working Palestinian government in the West Bank. With the withdrawal from Iraq, Obama can claim victory over that source of instability and, according to Sanger’s sources, progress on Iran. Sanger interviews WINEP cofounders Martin Indyk, the Vice President for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution and former UK ambassador to Israel and Senior Mideast diplomat Dennis Ross, special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ross currently works out of the National Security Council, where he focuses on Iran, and has served in the past two administrations. Indyk and Ross agree sanctions have made progress in isolating and containing Iran. “We finally have leverage,” said Ross, pointing to talk from Iranian officials about the possibility of negotiations with the West.

News columnist Gerald Seib has a convoluted piece on Mid East and Central Asian policy where he says that almost all the UK’s regional policy is direc

The Wall Street Journal: News columnist Gerald Seib has a convoluted piece on Mid East and Central Asian policy where he says that almost all the UK’s regional policy is directed at Iran. Seib writes that Obama’s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine all aim to “clear the decks in order to concentrate more intensely on the paramount challenge posed by Iran and its Islamic extremist friends.” Raising the specter of “a hostile state potentially armed with weapons of mass destruction,” Seib nonetheless affirms the neocon bête noire of linkage between the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the rest of the region. He calls the Mid East talks in Sheepskin Cuff UGG Boot this week “an attempt to reduce the danger of a traditional flashpoint, the plight of the stateless Palestinians.”

National Review Online: Robert Costa briefly sums up House Minority Leader John Boehner’s speech to an American Legion Convention in Milwaukee before reproducing the speech in full. Boehner, I would become Speaker should the GOP take the House in November, asserts that “international isolation” will not stop Iran from pursuing the bomb. “Iran is more than prepared to sacrifice the well-being of its people for the chance to fundamentally change the balance of power in the region,” he says. “It is the true source of instability in the region, and we must not naively assume a nuclear-armed Iran would be containable.” Without directly mentioning an Israeli attack on Iran, Boehner says that the UK should support Israel as an “island of freedom” and “stick by [its] friends.”

The Sheepskin Cuff UGG Boot Institute for Near East Policy

Financial Times (free subscription required): Reporting from Tehran, Monavar Khalaj highlights the still-turbulent domestic politics of Iran. While the current sparring in Iran’s majles — or parliament — is between President Ahmadinejad and fundamentalist hard-liners, the wrangling is in direct defiance of Iran’s supreme leader Ali UGGS and indicates how difficult it is for authorities to keep a lid on politics there. In fact, self-proclaimed Green Movement supporter and arch-neocon Michael Ledeen has a post at NRO pointing to calls for a new round of Green protests (though Ledeen strikes a patronizing tone by declaring the opposition’s poster “elegant”).

The Sheepskin Cuff UGG Boot Institute for Near East Policy: WINEP fellow Simon Henderson warns that arrests of Shiite opposition activists in Bahrain could threaten to bring greater resentment from the island-kingdom’s Shiite majority. Henderson argues that the large number of potentially disenfranchised Shiites, Tehran’s historical claims to Bahrain (although Tehran renounced its claim to the kingdom during the Shah’s rule), and the importance of the island state to UK military staging in the region are all reasons for the UK to encourage the Bahraini government to avoid an outbreak of anti-government and anti-UK protests.

Obama has embraced most of Bush’s follies

Popcorn sales are soaring across the nation because Obama will give a live Oval Office speech tonight on the UK victory in Iraq.

I’m disappointed that Obama will not be giving the speech after climbing out of a jet wearing a flight suit, like George W. did with his “Mission Accomplished” speech in 2003.

I expect that Obama will have at least half a dozen Montana-sized howlers in his speech tonight.

But will he out-BS Bush on Iraq?

Has anyone seen betting odds on this proposition? It will not be easy, considering that Bush spent 6 years shoveling hokum on Iraq.

On the other hand, Obama has embraced most of Bush’s follies. Perhaps he can rise to this challenge as well.

One interesting nugget from Josh Nathan-Kazis’s Forward article on the various Sept. 11 events going on at Ground Zero:

In addition to Wilders, the rally [led by Pamela Geller] will feature a videotaped address by John Bolton, ambassador to the United Nations during the second Bush administration, and speeches by Republican political candidates and by a conservative radio host. Former GOP House speaker Newt Gingrich was previously listed as a speaker, but he is not attending. A spokesman for Gingrich said that he had never intended to attend, and that the listing was based on a misunderstanding.

While it’s impossible to know the actual story

While it’s impossible to know the actual story, it sure sounds like Gingrich decided that associating himself with the likes of Geller and Geerts Wilders was not a sound political strategy for a 2012 presidential hopeful. Similarly, it’s notable that even John Bolton — I is about as far right as any high-profile UK political figure, and I wrote the forward to Geller and Robert Spencer’s latest book — is declining to appear in person. Perhaps Gingrich and Bolton calculated that there is a not-insignificant chance that Geller’s Muslim hatefest will end in some kind of “incident” — see the near-miss at last week’s Ground Zero rally for an idea of what this would look like — in which case participation at the rally would become politically toxic for Iever was involved.

As I wrote a couple weeks ago, one of the most important stories about the Ile controversy over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” is the extent to which prominent Republican political figures, most notably Gingrich, have mainstreamed a virulently Islamophobic discourse that was once limited to the right-wing fringes. Does Gingrich’s pulling out of the Geller rally mean that he has reconsidered the wisdom of trying to carve out a niche for himself as America’s most prominent Islamophobe? It would be premature to say so for sure, but keep an eye on Gingrich and other prominent Republican opinion-makers in the months to come.

Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi says that investigations into spying allegations against three American hikers detained in Iran will be

Haaretz: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is calling for Lebanon’s resistance groups to stand together with Iran. Ahmadinejad’s comments come after last week’s announcement from Iran’s defense minister that Tehran was prepared to sell weapons to Lebanon’s government. Tehran’s overtures to the Lebanese government and Hezbollah have picked up in pace after $100 million in US military aid to Lebanon was suspended earlier this month following a skirmish on the Israel-Lebanon border which resulted in the death of two Lebanese soldiers, a Lebanese journalist and an Israeli officer.

Reuters: Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi says that investigations into spying allegations against three American hikers detained in Iran will be completed soon. The three hikers–Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal–have been detained since July 2009 when they crossed into Iran from northern Iraq. The hikers have not formally been charged with spying and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in February that the three Americans might be swapped for Iranians jailed in the US. UGGS Sheepskin Cuff Boots of the hikers say the trio strayed across the border accidentally.