Meanwhile Back at the Ranch!
_______________________________________
Todays Laugh,
A Vow of ''Celebracy''
The Pope dies and, naturally, goes to heaven. He''s met by the reception committee, and after a whirlwind tour is told that he can enjoy any of the myriad recreations available.
He decides that he wants to read all of the ancient original text ofthe Holy Scriptures, and spends the next eon or so learning the languages.
After becoming a linguistic master,he sits down in the library and begins to pore over every versionof the Bible, working back from the most recent "Easy Reading" to the original script.
All of a sudden there is a screamin the library. The angels come running to him, only to find the Pope huddled in a chair, crying to himself, and muttering,
"An ''R''! They left out the ''R''."
God takes him aside, offering comfort and asks him what the problem is. After collecting his wits, the Pope sobs again,"It''s the letter ''R''... the word was supposed to be CELEBRATE!
_______________________________________
Todays Quote,
Joe Lieberman: "Yeah, Sure, What's Wrong With Supporting a Republican for President
_______________________________
Holocaust and Iraq War
Paul Wolfowitz Under Secretary of Defense
Andrew Bacevich a Boston University foreign policy expert who taught at John Hopkins school of International affairs while Wolfowitz was dean. Said about him " more than any of the other dramatis personae in contemporary Washington, Wolfowitz embodies the central convictions to which the United States in the age of Bush subscribe.’Bacevich wrote in 2005. He singled out " in particular and extraordinary certainty of the righteousness of American actions married to an extraordinary confidence in the efficacy of American Arms."
It is unusual for so much attention to be focused on a second level official of sub cabinet rank,
but Wolfowitz was destined to play an unusually central role on Iraq policy.
There really wasn’t a war party inside the Bush administration prior to 9/11. Rather there really was just Wolfowitz pleading for more attention to Iraq. .Four days after the attack the President and his advisors met at Camp David to discuss the response to 9/11.Three targets in the war on terrorism were discussed, al Qaeda, Afghanistan’s Taliban and Iraq. But only Paul Wolfowitz pressed the case that day for an attack on Iraq.
This wasn’t a new position for Wolfowitz he had been Under Secretary for Defense Under Defense Secretary Cheney in the first Bush administration. At that time he was pushing the president to go on to take out Saddam in the first Gulf War.
Wolfowitz had come to believe that the policy of containment in Iraq was immoral, like standing by and trying to contain Hitler’s Germany. It was a comparison to which he would often return. It carried weight from him as he had lost most of his extended family in the Holocaust. His line surviving because his father left Poland in 1920.
He told the New York Times’ Eric Schmidt that, " That what happened in Europe in World War two has shaped a lot of my views."" What if the west had tried to contain Hitler ?"This orientation toward Nazism would prove central to his thinking on Iraq. Again and again , he would describe Saddam Hussein and his security forces as the modern equivalent of the Gestapo- it was almost a verbal tic with him.
Another idea that he took from the Holocaust is the American people need to be pushed to do the right thing. By the time the Americans entered the war millions of Jews and other victims had been killed by the Nazis. He linked it to Iraq in this way." I think the world in general has a tendency to say if someone like Saddam is killing his own people , " That is too bad but that’s really not my business"." That’s dangerous he said, because Hussein was in a class with very few others-Stalin, Hitler, Kim Jong IL people of that order of evil tend not to keep evil at home
they tend to export it in various ways until it bites us".
The analogy to Hitler gave Wolfowitz a tactical advantage in that it instantly put critics on the defense. If one was convinced that Saddam was the equivalent of Hitler, and his security police the contemporary version of the Gestapo then it was easy to see that he had to be removed .
So for years Wolfowitz prodded the American people toward war with Iraq.
Another Iraq Hawk in the Bush Administration was the Under Secretary of Defense for policy
Douglas Fieth who because his father was the only survivor of the Holocaust, who had similar views. As did Senator Joe Lieberman whose mother in law was a survivor of Dachow. These three along with Donald Rumsfeld , Richard Pearle and Josh Bolton had sent a letter to President Clinton urging him to take action against Saddam. To Clintons credit he did not as the sanctions then in place were doing a good of keeping Saddam contained, even though he too was a hawk. Which probably explains why his wife Senator Hilary Clinton is also
Most of the above from" Fiasco, American Military adventure in Iraq" Tom Ricks
By the Way Paul Wolfowitz for his part as the instigator of the failed Iraq war was rewarded with a Medal of Freedom Award and a position as head of the World Bank ______________________________________
D'oh! We Still Don't Have Any Good Iraq Intel let us praise CQ's Jeff Stein for pointing out that among the casualties of Baghdad's continuing meltdown is... the CIA.
According to several well informed intelligence sources, hundreds of CIA operatives have become virtual prisoners in the Green Zone, the sprawling American enclave whose high walls and guards separate the U.S. embassy, military command and related civilian agencies from the raging sectarian violence in Baghdad’s streets.
The CIA operatives cannot safely roam the city to meet their few agents, much less recruit new ones.
It’s just too dangerous. CIA chiefs don’t want to risk one getting kidnapped, tortured on camera and beheaded.
That would certainly dampen the allure of a career in the CIA.
So "they spend their days playing cards and watching DVDs," said a former senior CIA operations official who maintains close ties in the agency.
You can't make this stuff up.
_______________________________________
Private Contractors!
The new Congress is promising far tighter oversight of Bush administration spending programs, and few targets are more in need of scrutiny and daylight than the outsourcing of government programs to private contractors. This highly lucrative world quietly ballooned by 86 percent — to $377 billion annually — during the first five years of the Bush administration, according to Congressional estimates. Outsourced spending, on Iraq, Katrina and other bonanzas, has grown twice as fast as other discretionary spending, according to Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the oversight and reform committee.
Mr. Waxman is fairly itching to finally map the waste, fraud and abuse in private contracting that went largely ignored by the previous Republican Congress. Taxpayers should wish him well.
In a preliminary glimpse, 118 contracts worth $745 billion were found by government auditors to be rife with questionable award procedures, mismanagement, overcharging and skimpy to nonexistent oversight. Full inquiries and public hearings are vital if the rich and shadowy world of privatization is ever to be plumbed for the scandal it is nurturing. Taxpayers have only a vague notion of what’s gone on, mainly through reporting on the fantastic good fortune of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, whose contracts increased a whopping 600 percent across five years as the Iraq war costs cascaded. Not incidentally, privatization has been a cash cow in stirring campaign donations from successful contractors.
According to one recent audit reported in The Washington Post, among 49 privatized contracts, three out of five were awarded noncompetitively, lacked oversight, and raised questions of legality. What’s been going on out there? This question cries out for an answer from the new Congress.
______________________________________
AP
Air America Radio, in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings since October, will be rescued at the 11th hour by Manhattan real estate developer Stephen L. Green.
Al Franken, the best-known host of the liberal network, will announce his expected departure on his show later today, to explore a run for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota.
Green is the brother of Mark Green, the New York Democrat who served as the city's public advocate in the 90s and ran for mayor against Michael Bloomberg in 2001.
He has already signed a letter of intent, and plans to finalize a purchase agreement within the week.
Air America CEO Scott Elberg confirmed the sale. "This is a great thing, for our affiliates, the company, the audience and every employee in our organization."
Green is chairman of SL Green Realty Corp, a real estate investment trust specializing in office buildings with a market cap of $12 billion.
Brother Mark is a frequent guest on Air America, and sat in for David Bender, the host of the Air America show Politically Direct, for a couple of weeks earlier this month.
When Franken leaves the network in a few weeks, he'll be replaced by Thom Hartmann, who already has a syndicated show on the network's lineup.
______________________________________
