but good news for the rest of us. There's negotiating going on because the alternative to negotiating is prohibitively expensive. It serves the Bushists' purposes to have us think the negotiating is a sham, because then we can continue to fail to see that the Bushists are ultimately full of shit.

Why is it that so many who claim to live by the precepts of the "Good Book"--people like those you cite--are so bad? Is it really because they aren't reading the book right? Or is it because the book gives them the excuse to cite some external authority for their principles and actions? I think it's clearly the latter (and certainly not the former, if it can't be both).

There's lot of evidence that events have overtaken Bushism and are forcing it back into its bottle.

Laura Rozen of War and Piece quotes a colleague's e-mail to the effect that the main culprit is the price of oil, which is suddenly of greater import to Washington than the threat of nukes. Meanwhile, Informed Comment is wondering if "Bush's Engagement with Iran <is> Hurting McCain, Helping Obama?."

Gary Sick's weathervain is neo-nut John Bolton:


http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/...

Gary Sick: Bolton is Right
...

While much of the world was hyper-ventilating over the possibility that the United States (and maybe Israel) were getting ready to launch a new war against Iran, Bolton was looking at the realities and concluding that far from bombing the US was preparing to do a deal with Iran. He had noticed that over the past two years the US had completely reversed its position opposing European talks with Iran.

First, the US indicated that it would participate if the negotiations showed progress. Then, when they didn't, we went further and actively participated in negotiating a new and more attractive offer of incentives to Iran. Bolton noticed that when that package was delivered to Tehran by Xavier Solana, the signature of one Condoleeza Rice was there, along with representatives of the other five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.

He had probably also noticed Secretary Rice's suggestion of possibly opening a US interests section in Tehran -- the first step toward reestablishing diplomatic relations. And he didn't overlook the softening of rhetoric in Under Secretary Wm Burn's recent testimony to the Congress about Iran.

Now, just one day after Bolton's cry of alarm that the US is going soft on Iran, we learn that the same Bill Burns will participate directly in the talks that are going to be held on Saturday in Geneva with the chief Iranian negotiator on the nuclear file. Bolton's worst suspicions seem to be confirmed.

Unlike many observers and commentators, Bolton has been looking, not at what the US administration says, but what it does. Ever since the congressional elections of 2006, the US has been in the process of a fundamental change in its policy on a number of key issues: the Arab-Israel dispute, the North Korean nuclear issue, and Iran. Since the administration proclaims loudly that its policies have not changed, and since the tough rhetoric of the past dominates the discussion, it is easy to overlook what is actually going on.


...

before I actually started seeing that phrase on signs, buttons and posters that fall and winter. I don't claim credit for it. I didn't actually put it on a sign, I just told my wife who was with me at the demo (the first against the Iraq war that I know of) that I wished I had a sign with that phrase on it. It was a phrase that was bound to be coined sooner or later.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/200...

Via Politico's Jonathan Martin, here's John McCain speaking at a town hall in New Mexico earlier this week:

Could I mention the presence of my friend Congressman Steve Pearce who I believe will be joining me in the United States Senate.

Pearce is running to replace his fellow New Mexico Republican, Pete Domenici, in the Senate. If he and McCain both win their elections, Pearce actually would not join McCain in the Senate. He wouldn't be inaugurated until next year, at just about the same time McCain would be leaving the Senate for the White House. (Of course, you can nitpick this joke if you really want to, and point out that the new Congress will be sworn in before the new President is, but it's likely that whoever wins the presidency will resign their Senate seat before the new Congress comes in. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush resigned from their previous posts the month before they were first inaugurated.)

Andy Dick

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/751142...

...

Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed nation, according to a report from several US charities.

The report found that the US ranked 42nd in the world for life expectancy despite spending more on health care per person than any other country.

Overall, the American Human Development Report ranked the world's richest country 12th for human development.

The study looked at US government data on health, education and income.

The report was funded by Oxfam America, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Conrad Hilton Foundation.

...

The US report identifies obesity and the lack of health insurance for some 47 million Americans as the most significant factors in premature death.

...

Among other findings:

* Of the world's richest nations, the US has the most children (15%) living in poverty
* Of the OECD nations, the US has the most people in prison - as a percentage and in absolute numbers
* 25% of 15-year-old students performed at or below the lowest level in an international maths test - worse than Canada, France, Germany and Japan
* If the US infant mortality rate were equal to first-ranked Sweden, more than 20,000 babies would survive beyond their first year of life

This is what passes for "serious," "reasonable," and "wise" argument among the soulless "moderates" who shape discourse and policy in the American republic: Bush should pardon all war criminals so the Democrats who suddenly find themselves cluelessly back in power and the Republicans who've abused it for the last 30 years can make nice and everything will go back to morning in America.

And as dumb and amoral as this constipated Broder-like advice may be, you can bet it mirrors what's on the minds of most of the Democrats and Republicans within spitting distance of power in the US. This is the future of torture in America: pardons, commissions, excuses, and, ultimately, forgetting.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/145842/output/p...


The Truth About Torture

To get a full accounting of how U.S. interrogation methods were used, the president should give those accused of 'war crimes' a pass.

Stuart Taylor Jr.
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 2:26 PM ET Jul 12, 2008

Dark deeds have been conducted in the name of the United States government in recent years: the gruesome, late-night circus at Abu Ghraib, the beating to death of captives in Afghanistan, and the officially sanctioned waterboarding and brutalization of high-value Qaeda prisoners. Now demands are growing for senior administration officials to be held accountable and punished. Congressional liberals, human-rights groups and other activists are urging a criminal investigation into high-level "war crimes," including the Bush administration's approval of interrogation methods considered by many to be torture.

It's a bad idea. In fact, President George W. Bush ought to pardon any official from cabinet secretary on down who might plausibly face prosecution for interrogation methods approved by administration lawyers. (It would be unseemly for Bush to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney or himself, but the next president wouldn't allow them to be prosecuted anyway—galling as that may be to critics.) The reason for pardons is simple: what this country needs most is a full and true accounting of what took place. The incoming president should convene a truth commission, with subpoena power, to explore every possible misdeed and derive lessons from it. But this should not be a criminal investigation, which would only force officials to hire lawyers and batten down the hatches.

Pardons would further a truth commission's most important goals: to uncover all important facts, identify innocent victims to be compensated, foster a serious conversation about what U.S. interrogation rules should be, recommend legal reforms, pave the way for appropriate apologies and restore America's good name. The goals should not include wrecking the lives of men and women who made grievous mistakes while doing dirty work—work they had been advised by administration lawyers was legal, and which they believed was necessary to prevent terrorist mass murder.

A criminal investigation would only hinder efforts to determine the truth, and preclude any apologies. It would spur those who know the most to take the Fifth. Any prosecutions would also touch off years of partisan warfare. The lesson for occupants of the toughest government jobs—if the next administration could find people willing to fill them—would be that saving innocent lives is less important than covering their posteriors. Any hope of a civil conversation about lessons we need to learn would be dead.

...

Case in point, this self-congratulatory mild-mannered screed by someone named Roger Scruton, who can't seem to see his pathetic anthropocentric provincialism any better than the most strident fundamentalist.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,2871,n,n

There are two reasons why people start shouting at their opponents: one is that they think the opponent is so strong that every weapon must be used against him; the other is that they think their own case so weak that it has to be fortified by noise. Both these motives can be observed in the evangelical atheists. They seriously believe that religion is a danger, leading people into excesses of enthusiasm which, precisely because they are inspired by irrational beliefs, cannot be countered by rational argument. We have had plenty of proof of this from the Islamists; but that proof, the atheists tell us, is only the latest in a long history of massacres and torments, which – in the scientific perspective – might reasonably be called the pre-history of mankind. The Enlightenment promised to inaugurate another era, in which reason would be sovereign, providing an instrument of peace that all could employ. In the eyes of the evangelical atheists, however, this promise was not fulfilled. In their view of things, neither Judaism nor Christianity absorbed the Enlightenment even if, in a certain measure, they inspired it. All faiths, to the atheists, have remained in the condition of Islam today: rooted in dogmas that cannot be safely questioned. Believing this, they work themselves into a lather of vituperation against ordinary believers, including those believers who have come to religion in search of an instrument of peace, and who regard their faith as an exhortation to love their neighbour, even their belligerent atheist neighbour, as themselves.

At the same time, the atheists are reacting to the weakness of their case. Dawkins and Hitchens are adamant that the scientific worldview has entirely undermined the premises of religion and that only ignorance can explain the persistence of faith. But what exactly does modern science tell us, and just where does it conflict with the premises of religious belief? According to Dawkins (and Hitchens follows him in this), human beings are 'survival machines' in the service of their genes. We are, so to speak, by-products of a process that is entirely indifferent to our well-being, machines developed by our genetic material in order to further its reproductive goal. Genes themselves are complex molecules, put together in accordance with the laws of chemistry, from material made available in the primordial soup that once boiled on the surface of our planet. How it happened is not yet known: perhaps electrical discharges caused nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms to link together in appropriate chains, until finally one of them achieved that remarkable feature, of encoding the instructions for its own reproduction. Science may one day be able to answer the question how this occurred. But it is science, not religion, that will answer it.

As for the existence of a planet in which the elements abound in the quantities observed on planet earth, such a thing is again to be explained by science – though the science of astrophysics rather than the science of biology. The existence of the earth is part of a great unfolding process, which may or may not have begun with a Big Bang, and which contains many mysteries that physicists explore with ever increasing astonishment. Astrophysics has raised as many questions as it has answered. But they are scientific questions, to be solved by discovering the laws of motion that govern the observable changes at every level of the physical world, from galaxy to supernova, and from black hole to quark. The mystery that confronts us as we gaze upwards at the Milky Way, knowing that the myriad stars responsible for that smear of light are merely stars of a single galaxy, the galaxy that contains us, and that beyond its boundaries a myriad other galaxies slowly turn in space, some dying, some emerging, all forever inaccessible to us – this mystery does not call for a religious response. For it is a mystery that results from our partial knowledge and which can be solved only by further knowledge of the same kind – the knowledge that we call science.

Only ignorance would cause us to deny that general picture, and the evangelical atheists assume that religion must deny that picture and therefore must, at some level, commit itself to the propagation of ignorance or at any rate the prevention of knowledge. Yet I do not know a religious person among my friends and acquaintances who does deny that picture, or who regards it as posing the remotest difficulty for his faith. Dawkins writes as though the theory of the selfish gene puts paid once and for all to the idea of a creator God – we no longer need that hypothesis to explain how we came to be. In a sense that is true. But what about the gene itself: how did that come to be? What about the primordial soup? All these questions are answered, of course, by going one step further down the chain of causation. But at each step we encounter a world with a singular quality: namely that it is a world which, left to itself, will produce conscious beings, able to look for the reason and the meaning of things, and not just for the cause. The astonishing thing about our universe, that it contains consciousness, judgement, the knowledge of right and wrong, and all the other things that make the human condition so singular, is not rendered less astonishing by the hypothesis that this state of affairs emerged over time from other conditions. If true, that merely shows us how astonishing those other conditions were. The gene and the soup cannot be less astonishing than their product.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-tomorrow...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...


What other country in the world has leading members of its political class who justify unprovoked attacks on other countries -- who casually justify the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people -- in such depraved and sadistic terms? And, for that matter, what other country has a leading presidential candidate who sings songs about bombing another country and who continues to joke openly about killing its citizens?

If there were a powerful nation (besides the U.S.) that had a leading foreign policy analyst unapologetically justifying the brutal destruction of another country by explaining that its citizens needed to "Suck On This," and had a leading presidential candidate who sung songs about dropping bombs on the U.S. and who told jokes about killing Americans (while his leading ally demands that that country attack even more countries), we would be subjected to an endless array of Op-Eds from Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer condemning them and demanding that "meaningful action" be taken against such a "rogue nation." And Tom Friedman would be righteously and darkly insisting that such a country be "compelled to change its behavior."

In light of that, just ponder the self-delusion required for Tom "Suck-On-This" Friedman and the political establishment he leads to express befuddlement -- confusion -- over our extreme unpopularity in the world over the last seven years. How would a rational person expect our country to be perceived when the face we present to the world is the face that appears on that grotesque You Tube clip -- the same face that, to this day, giddily boasts that "sometimes it takes a 2-by-4 across the side of the head" to get our message across and that we need high-ranking foreign policy officials "quietly pounding a baseball bat into his palm"? When it comes to violent behavior that is disruptive to the world order and threatening to people around the world, what has a two-bit dictator like Robert Mugabe done -- what could he ever do -- that can even compete with the savagery that George Bush has unleashed, that Tom Friedman has justified, and that John McCain jovially threatens?

Critically, the unpopularity of our country that has Friedman deeply confused and angry is not the by-product of some sort of reflexive anti-Americanism, nor is it due to the fact that America is inherently a destructive force in the world. Prior to the brutal radicalism of the last seven years as embodied by that Tom Friedman video, America was viewed quite favorably throughout the world. That is just a fact. Those who want to claim that the U.S., in the post-World-War-II era, has been the root of most evil are (whether they're right or wrong) in the distinct minority of worldwide opinion. That just is not how much of the world viewed the U.S. -- not until the era of George Bush and Tom Friedman's "Suck On This" neoconservative depravity.

To blithely justify unprovoked wars and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, as Tom Friedman did and does, is bad enough. To dismiss matters such as government-sponsored torture and lawless detention camps with nothing more than an acknowledgment in passing that perhaps they deserve a "thumbs-down" is almost as bad. That the same people who do that are then surprised and even offended that the rest of the world finds them repellent and dangerous -- that they actually expect that the world should view them as honorable moral arbiters -- is probably the most revealing aspect of all. The casual embrace of widespread, unparalleled aggression and violence by the Tom Friedmans of the world is exceeded only by their complete inability to see themselves for what they are. How should a country be perceived in the world when it honors the likes of Tom Friedman as a revered Foreign Policy guru, or when it strongly considers electing a brand new, reckless war-lover as President even after the last seven years?

This is an amazing story, the whole thing a must-read. It raises fascinating questions about the very fundamental mistrust of the judicial system by those who believe the government itself is unjust--or who will do anything to keep justice at bay:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/...

...

Like the Midwestern farmers before them, the Baltimore inmates were susceptible to the notion that the federal government was engaged in a massive, historic plot to deprive them of life, liberty, and property. Such suspicions are prevalent in certain pockets of the black community—that year, a study from the Rand Corporation found that over 25 percent of African Americans surveyed believed the AIDS virus was developed by the government, and 12 percent thought it was released into the population by the CIA. And black separatist groups like the Nation of Islam—also fond of conspiracy theories—have long cultivated members through the prison system; some of these groups have explicitly adopted the language of constitutional fundamentalists. Given these developments, Levitas told me, “I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner.”

This, then, was how Willie Mitchell came to draw on the accumulated layers of three decades of right-wing paranoia and demand that his case be dismissed “in accord with … House Joint Resolution 192, and Public Law 73-10”—laws that involved the abandonment of the gold standard and the Federal Reserve. And it explained why Shawn Gardner kept insisting that he be addressed as “Shawn-Earl: Gardner,” rather than the capital-letter SHAWN GARDNER printed on the indictment: he thought that if he could convince the court to call him by his “natural” name, it would be tantamount to admitting that the charges had been filed against someone else.

On the morning of January 10, 2006, two months after the first flesh-and-blood hearing, Gardner returned to Judge Davis’s courtroom. Moments after Davis arrived, Gardner stood up. “I object,” he said, over and over, until Judge Davis had finally had enough. “Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked Gardner. “You are committing suicide in broad daylight. There are public suicides in this country far too often. People jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge. People walk into their workplaces with a gun and put the gun up to their head and pull the trigger. People slash their wrists. I don’t want you to join that community, but that’s what you’re doing, sir.”

Gardner tried to argue that the court had no power over him under “common law.” “At common law,” Judge Davis replied, “you were property. You were bought and sold just like those Timberlands on your feet today can be bought and sold. That’s what your ancestors were, some of them, and that is what my ancestors were, some of them.”

“You have invoked ideas formulated and advanced by people who think less of you than they think of dirt,” Davis continued. “The extremists who have concocted these ideas that you are now advancing in this courtroom are laughing their heads off. You are giving them everything they ever wished for. They should be paying you to do what you are doing. They are going to make you the poster child for their movement. When you complete this suicide, they will honor you because you are doing their work, better and more effectively than any of them ever dreamed they could do. Some of them—” “I object,” said Gardner, interrupting. “The government wants to do the same thing anyway. So what’s the difference?”

Gardner, unrepentant, was escorted from the courtroom. And so the tenets of Posse Comitatus continued their long, strange journey, from the racist, hate-filled mind of William Gale to four black defendants on trial for their life in Baltimore federal court.


...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...

Costly Weapon-Detection Plans Are in Disarray, Investigators Say

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 16, 2008; A15

Bush administration initiatives to defend the nation against a smuggled nuclear bomb or a biological outbreak or attack remain poorly coordinated, costing billions of tax dollars while basic goals and policies remain incomplete, according to new reports by congressional investigators.

The administration budgeted $2.8 billion in 2007 for nuclear detection but lacks a strategic plan to plug gaps and move beyond its initial goals, such as placing radiation detectors at domestic and overseas ports, according to reports by the Congressional Research Service and the Government Accountability Office for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that will be held today.

Separately, a five-year-old program to detect the airborne release of biological warfare agents such as anthrax, plague and smallpox in more than 30 major U.S. cities still lacks basic technical data to help medical officials determine how to respond to an alert triggered by the sensors, congressional investigators and state and local officials will report to the House Homeland Security Committee.

In written testimony submitted for a House hearing today, state and local public health laboratory directors were highly critical of the program known as BioWatch, saying it is underfunded, improperly managed and of unclear benefit, despite $400 million in federal spending.

"The BioWatch program has been variously described by my fellow state and local laboratory directors as a parasite to the public health laboratory and squatters in valuable public health laboratory space," said the prepared testimony of Frances Pouch Downes, a Michigan state health official and president of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. "I am hard-pressed to disagree."

DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said that BioWatch guidelines were provided for jurisdictions to create their own operating rules and that the program has paid for its own staff, equipment and materials. A different GAO report recently quoted Energy Department officials praising the DHS for helping shift their focus to detecting nuclear materials overseas away from ports, he added, providing "a more balanced defense of our homeland."

"These criticisms simply don't bear truth," Knocke said.

Democrats are using the Senate and House hearings to air dissatisfaction with the White House's domestic response to the threat from weapons of mass destruction, which was a focus of President Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003, his 2004 reelection fight and several presidential security directives. As Bush prepares to leave office in January, critics say that despite progress, his administration's actions have not fulfilled its rhetoric.

Following is the amicus brief filed by 375 current and former members of the British and European Parliaments in support of the Hamdi defense team's moves to challenge the very basis of the Bushist military tribunals, which Congress is complicit in trying to slip past the court of world and historical opinion. It won't pass muster, no matter how the American justice system rules. (More about this case is here):

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/up...



MEMORANDUM OF LAW ON BEHALF OF
UNITED KINGDOM AND EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTARIANS
AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER’S MOTION
FOR A PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

IDENTITY AND INTEREST OF THE AMICI CURIAE

The identity of the amici

The amicus group is comprised of 375 United Kingdom and European
Parliamentarians: 264 current or former Members of the Parliament of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and 111 current or former Members of
the European Parliament.1

Amici are drawn from all across Europe, and the group spans the political
spectrum, including senior figures from all major political parties in the United Kingdom.
The group also includes several former judges of the highest court in the United
Kingdom; former Cabinet Ministers, including a Secretary of State for Defense; a former
Attorney-General of the United Kingdom; a former European Commissioner and United
Kingdom ambassador to the United Nations; two former Speakers of the House of
Commons; 9 Bishops and Archbishops of the Church of England; a former Archbishop of
Canterbury; a Vice President of the European Parliament; and a former Vice President of
the European Commission.

The interest of the amici

Amici take no view on whether Petitioner is guilty of acts of terrorism or conduct
in violation of the laws of war. Nor do amici seek to express any view on the legitimacy
of the military action in Afghanistan or Iraq or the politics or tactics of the war on terror
in general, or against al Qaeda in particular. These latter issues are questions on which
amici continue to hold differing individual views.

Amici have nevertheless come together to present arguments in this case in
support of Petitioner since the case was first before this Court in 2004 and throughout the
proceedings in the Court of Appeals and in the Supreme Court of the United States
because, despite their divergent political perspectives, they share a common view: that it
is essential to the international legal order that, even when faced with the threat of
international terrorism, all states comply with the standards set by international
humanitarian law and human rights law. Amici share a concern that the prosecution by
military commission to which Petitioner will imminently be subjected will contravene
these standards.

Amici hope that the views of leading parliamentarians from states with close legal,
historical and political ties to the United States may be of assistance to the Court when it
is weighing Petitioner’s request for a preliminary injunction to stay his military
commission trial pending this Court’s resolution of the merits of his challenges to the
legality of those proceedings. Amici note the long tradition of shared policies, joint legal
progress and mutual learning that have characterized the development of relevant
domestic and international law in the United States and in other democracies governed by
the rule of law. The United States has long been known as a nation “unwilling to witness
or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been
committed.” President Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961, available at
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html . The international legal principles to which
amici wish to draw this Court’s particular attention find eloquent expression in the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, which themselves
reflect principles in the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights. These principles
have in turn influenced the development of constitutional democracies the world over at
the same time that they have underpinned the treaties, principles and institutions that
form the international humanitarian and human rights law framework that nations today
rely upon to discipline the exercise by states of authority vis-à-vis individuals within their
power and to humanize, as much as possible, the treatment of individuals caught up in
armed conflict.

Amici, concerned that, in the context of a global struggle to defend the very
freedoms and limitations on state power that are the bedrock of contemporary
international humanitarian and human rights law, the United States should be seen clearly
to respect its international legal obligations, submit their arguments in the light of this
shared legal tradition and the international legal commitments of both the United States
and the countries of Europe.



--------------
1 The members of the amicus group are identified individually in an Appendix to this Memorandum.
Counsel for Petitioner has consented to the filing of this brief. Counsel for Respondents have indicatedthat they do not take a position regarding the proposed filing at this time.





<the 20 page document continues at the link above>