Politics: Forgotten "Heroes" of a Forgotten War

It's heartwarming, to say the least, that despite the unpopularity of both the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars, the troops who are doing the fighting have not faced anything like the hostility and condemnation that Vietnam veterans faced when they returned from that unfortunate military episode. Despite the fact that the Vietnam "war" was never actually a war (that is, Congress never actually declared war) and that it was originally sold to the public and the military as a noble attempt to "contain" the "communists," it was, at least initially, quite popular with the American public.

It was not until later in the prosecution of this terrible adoration of Moloch that the American public, seeing their sons come home in body bags, turned against the war that was not a war. Some 58,000 dead sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, and friends later.

The legacy of that military orgy remain with us today. It'll be gone soon enough, when we sweep the last of the bodies under the rug and continue with the foolish militarism that Eisenhower's warned-of "military-industrial complex" continues to indulge in, at the expense of minds and bodies worldwide.

In the interim, what we have are incidents like these:



The elderly man in this clip is one Thomas Bruso, known throughout the Bay Area as "Tom Slick," or "Vietnam Tom." He is apparently well known throughout the Bay Area, having been involved in at least one other videotaped altercation. He swears like a fucking longshoreman, and as you visitors and friends at this fine blog can testify, that makes him exceedingly popular with los gatos de mi casa, given as we are to the fine art of fucking swearing.

Mr. Bruso is, some say, 62 years old, or perhaps 67. Nobody seems to know exactly. The other incident that brought him to the attention of the authorities involved an A's game. Mr. Bruso apparently brought his own alcohol to the game and sat in a seat that he was not entitled to deposit his arse in. Some irate motherfucker or the other called the police, and multiple pigs descended on this elderly gentleman and proceeded to taser the fuck out of him.

To the credit of the fine people of Oakland who were watching the game, the crowd pretty universally booed the pigs, and they have been forced to defend their use of a taser on an elderly man whose only apparent crime was to flip them a finger for interrupting his enjoyment of the game.

Of course, Mr. Bruso may be elderly but he is a motherfucking big guy, and apparently scares the shit out of a lot of people when he starts cussing. Buncha fucking pussies, if you ask me. Actually, los gatos de mi casa would like to repudiate the use of that term and refer you, our fine readers, to cats of your own acquaintance who, in the middle of a fight, have been known to call each other things that would make a longshoreman faint dead away.

In the event, it is not clear to us that Mr. Bruso actually *is* a vet, or actually served in Vietnam, but it appears to be the case, and we take the man at his word. As for his encounter with this dumbass, some people — a lot of people, sadly — are trying to make this about race.

To that, and to those people, let me just say a hearty "Fuck you." Black, brown, and white, all of us who saw this saw an idiot messing with a guy that he should have left alone. And he got his fucking ass kicked, and that's fine by me, and, apparently, by a huge honkin' slice of Oakland's nonwhite community. So don't try to make this about no white people's shit, because it ain't. Kudos to the black lady who tried to calm everyone down and keep the situation from escalating. And a heartfelt kick in the ass to the bitches who kept egging the parties on.

It's about acting tough and trying to fuck people over and getting what you deserve.

The people who videotaped this whole escapade apparently stole (as seen on the video clip) Mr. Bruso's bag, and although police returned it to him some time later, it was missing the money that had been it. I hope the thief develops the world's worst case of crotch rot that will only be alleviated by returning the money.

The upshot of this little incident is that Mr. Bruso was taken by the police to a psychiatric facility to be evaluated. Apparently, he had gone off his medication.

In the event, it ended reasonably well for Mr. Bruso. He was released, and his assailant has refused to press charges. I guess it's just too embarrassing to admit that someone your granddad's age fucking kicked your ass even though you were armed with a knife. It should keep the idiot, at least temporarily, from pulling knives on elderly bus riders.

Here is Mr. Bruso telling his story:



You can tell from listening to him that something is not quite right with Mr. Bruso. He might be developmentally disabled or delayed; he might be mentally ill. Nothing has been confirmed as yet. But there was no call for that bratty little thug to treat him the way he did, and I'm glad that Mr. Bruso escaped unhurt.

In the meantime, he's become an Internet sensation. Apparently, a lot of people are really really pissed off about the thug shit they see going down every day, and the unfortunate characters involved in this YouTube episode have attained the status of a meme. Mr. Bruso is now Epic Beard Man, although I'm not sure he understands any of it. Whatthefuckever, yaknow?

Just please note that if he actually is a Vietnam vet, Mr. Bruso represents a generation — some 3 million young men (mostly) and a few young women — who answered their country's call and (mostly) volunteered to serve in Vietnam because their leaders told them that they were protecting America and keeping her safe. And many of those who fought in that "war that was not a war" came home to a lukewarm welcome at best. More to the point, many of them came home severely fucked up, to a country that did not seem to want to address what they had gone through.

It's too late, probably, to fix whatever went wrong with most of the boys who were shipped over there with their young heads stuffed full of lies. But it's not too late to help the men they have become. If you know a vet who served in that war, thank them for their service. Give them a little respect. Understand that they've seen things, and lived through things, that would have you screaming from nightmares for the rest of your life. They didn't ask for it and they didn't know, but they and their families have had to deal with all kinds of toxic fallout — physical, mental, and emotional — for decades. So give them the kindness of your attention and your respect.

Note: As always, the jackals and vultures are already hovering. Someone's selling "I Am A Motherfucker" teeshirts and advertising it via YouTube, claiming they'll give some of the money to Mr. Bruso. I kind of doubt that. But who knows? We'll try to follow up on Mr. Bruso's story. In the meantime, if anybody tells you this is about race and white people kicking black folks' ass, or black "thugs" owning public transportation, please tell them to just go fuck themselves. The man is not quite right and I hope no one takes advantage of him.

That is all.

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Politics: War Crimes

When do these war criminals go to trial?
As we've mentioned before, a Class A war criminal is anyone who participated in "the planning, preparation, initiation, or waging" of aggressive war, or violated the laws and customs of war. Like, for example, the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Which Convention would certainly apply to Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, and possibly also David Addington, Condoleeza Rice, George Dumbya Bush, and a score of their immediate underlings, highly placed officials all.

Today, I'm reading a fine book on the Kempeitai and their crimes in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, by Raymond Lamont-Brown. Mr. Lamont-Brown's father was a PoW, captured by the Japanese in Shanghai, China, and subjected to the tender ministries of the Kempeitai, who, as brutal torturers go, might rank higher than any other similar body heretofore known.



Here, a little excerpt for your — I can't say entertainment, it certainly isn't entertaining — perusal:

You are a man of education, of intelligence, even in a sense of culture. Yours is the cunning brain under whose direction your instruments of torture performed their evil task. You were well aware of all the moral implications of your policy. In these last six weary years many men have willingly suffered and died in the hope and belief that out of their sacrifice would arise a higher morality in dealings of one nation with another, an international morality soaring above the narrow bonds of patriotism and blind obedience. If, as I believe, some of your victims, Sumida, were amongst those who made their sacrifice in that hope and belief, let this be their epitaph, that they died for an undying cause. To those of us who survive falls the supreme and difficult task of establishing and maintaining that higher morality between nations, of supplanting the rule of force and fear by the rule of law, of ensuring that they did not make their sacrifice in vain.

You, Sumida, have shown by all that you did, ordered, and willingly allowed, that to you there is nothing of higher consequence than domination by brute force and fear.

You were prepared, for the glorification, as you thought, of your country, to reduce men and women below the level of beasts and to send them without pity or compunction to an agonizing death. You did not realize that your actions have not glorified, they have degraded, your country. As in the past, so in the future, you would always be the implacable enemy of that great cause for which so many made their sacrifice. You and men like you cannot be allowed to hinder the fulfilment of that cause. Accordingly it is in no spirit of vengeance upon a fallen foe, no desire to have an eye for an eye, a life for a life, that this Court has solemnly decided that you must die. Nor is it merely to rid the world — and your country now preparing for its moral rebirth — of one man who is a danger to all moral progress. Rather it is a stern example to all who would willingly support the powers of evil and brute force against the rule of law, justice, and humanity.

— Lt.-Col S.C. Silkin, R.A., barrister, at War Crimes Trial of Chusa Haruzo Sumida, Supreme Court Building, Singapore, 18 March 1946

It is my sincere and heartfelt hope to hear words of similar import being spoken one day soon at the trial of those who "planned, prepared, initiated, or waged" the war of aggression against Iraq which is only now winding down.

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Health Care: I Ain't Feelin' Too Good Myself, Now

People, I guess we don't have to remind y'all that the suicide rate among our troops, whom we all support more than god or corned beef, or whatever the Republicans are flapping their gums about this week, has, like, seriously increased? We're talkin' this is the highest it's been in thirty years. (Thanks to nunya at ThePolitickyBitch for the ears-up on this. She has some good questions, so treat yourself to a worthwhile read.)

What, you thought Georgie Porgie was guilty of ordering some 200,000 troops into the field based on lies, and that's where it all ended?

It hasn't ended yet. Dumbya knocked the shit out of this country nine ways to Sunday. He destroyed it, as we all have been saying since, oh, about 2003 and Hurricane Katrina. Some of us were saying it way before, but most of us tried to rally behind the little shit for the sake of national unity. It wasn't until we say the bloated, floating corpses of Katrina that we finally lost all faith in the fucker.

Over at OOIBC, Anti-War, and other such sites, people with more energy and dedication than I have been keeping track of the numbers. Over 4,000 American troops dead, over 150,000 injured, some of them grievously maimed. Over 1 million Iraqis dead, uncounted numbers wounded and maimed (one assumes the injuries are proportionate to those of our troops). Between 3 and 5 million Iraqi refugees, internal and external. Entire neighbourhoods "ethnically cleansed," or to put it more accurately, relieved of any ethnic variety by open, genocidal killings. "Ethnically cleansed" sounds too much like a sanitary procedure, and there's nothing sanitary about pools of blood rotting in the hot desert sun.


We don't know how many Iraqis and Afghanis have committed suicide, other than by blowing themselves up. We don't know how many might be suffering from mental and emotional problems due to the stresses of living in a war zone. What we do know is that our own troops, upon returning home, are not doing so well. In fact, they're doing rather badly. Has anyone heard of anything that our bold Republican leaders and legislators, so quick to approve this war and to threaten anyone who argued against it, have done to take care of our suffering people?

Frankly, I'm feeling pretty shitty myself, today, and it's not just the depressing news. Did you know that certain kinds of medication can eat holes in your gut? That aside. This is a foodie household and when the chief Foodie In Charge can't eat none of that smackalicious pasta sauce with meatballs and sausage and all kinds of tasty stuff, ain't no one here gonna be happy. Not if I can help it. Two days of chicken soup is fucking enough.

So, people are killing themselves. No news there, you say. We're in a recession, you say. It's to be expected, you say. Yeah, I guess. I wish it weren't happening, I wish there was something I could do, or you could do, or we could all do, to fix it, but if there's one thing we learned surviving the mendacious Bushistas, it's that everything takes lots of hard work and the results are never immediate.

Here's a little gratuitous depressionism for those of you as are having just too fucking good a day. Please watch it right through to the end.



We need to do something about this. I can't do anything today. My body is on strike, and I get that. (I'm not as look as I dumb, OK?) But I can resolve to do something tomorrow, and hopefully, the day after, and the day after. One foot after another.

I found this story over at DailyKos, courtesy of nyceve, who has done more to enlighten me (and many others, I'm sure) about the state of health care in the US. We don't need more or better or diferent health insurance. We need health care.

In the interim, if time is weighing heavy on your hands, consider oozing on over to Care2's petition site, and signing a petition to have a special prosecutor appointed to investigate the Bushifarious crimes of the recent era. I'm not sure petitions are entirely helpful but it's a throwaway gesture that does help assess the current mood of the populace.

I'm gonna have to create a torches-and-pitchforks icon for various action items, yaknow?

Finally, a little humour to leaven the endless depression of this post. I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully in better shape. The fight goes on!

Obama Reads Bush's Letter - watch more funny videos

He may not look like Our President, but he sure has the voice and mannerisms down, don't he?

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Politics: The Haramzada Gets The Joota

By now, the entire civilized (and possibly even some of the less-civilized) world has heard about Muntadar al-Zaidi, the plucky Iraqi journalist who dared to tell Bush exactly what many Iraqis thought of his "War on Terra" in Iraq.

In case anyone out there has a very very short attention span, Muntadar al-Zaidi is the guy who yelled "This is from the widows and orphans of Iraq, you dog," or something very like it, at Georgie while flinging both of his shoes at the Fratboy in Chief.



Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard people say repeatedly that the man should have been more ... restrained? (If he wasn't before, he sure as fuck is now, lemme tellya. As in, imprisoned with his hands and feet tied up either before, during, or after the hella beating he took for, um, voting with his feet. Or his footgear, at least.) al-Zaidi's current status is unknown. An Iraqi judge has vowed to conduct an inquiry into the assault on Mr. al-Zaidi. Code Pink has sponsored a petition to support the gentleman, if you care to sign up.

On the lighter side, some kind soul has set up a Web site to thank Mr. al-Zaidi for his fateful shoe-throw.

Unfortunately, the idiots who arrested al-Zaidi destroyed his shoes in the "search" for explosives they conducted upon said footwear. They could have been between $100,000 and $10,000,000 richer today if they'd squirreled one or both away. Muntadar's brother, Dargham al-Zaidi, states that his brother bought Iraqi-made shoes for the purpose. However, a Turkish company, one Baydan Ayakkabicilik San. & Tic. (or Baydan Shoes, in English) claims that they are the designer and maker of the shoe in question and are happy to announce that their sales have shot up so much, they're looking into TV advertising in the coming year. To which, Americans mired in financial distress at the holiday season, must shrug and retort, "Well, at least he's helping someone's economy.

Never let it be said, however, that anyone has passed up an opportunity to make money off this supposed insult to Teh Leader of Teh Free (??) World. The entrepreneurial spirit thrives in the bosom of one Kenney Jacob, who has posted here for your further enjoyment the "Throw Shoe at Bush" game, one that we all here at La Casa de Los Gatos highly recommend, irritating music and all.

If you want to yell at the Haramzada in Arabic at the same time, try this site. Wired has a nice piece (complete with flash games) on the plethora of other Concerned Citizens and Furrners who felt called upon to memorialize the Idiot'nThief's, um, booting. And DuckDuckBush lets you throw lots of other fun stuff at Der Dumbkopf, but not, alas, scheiss. However, they do let you suggest other things to throw, so if anyone sees fit to head over there with suggestions, hey.

To all of those who are planning to get your knickers in knots about the disrespect this post and all those linked hereto are showing to the President of the U.S.A., I'd like to point out that the somewhere between four and five thousand of your fellow citizens who are dead and the estimated 100,000 maimed and injured are probably wishing they'd been able to hurl something more painful. Four million Iraqis are refugees inside and outside their own country, and I'll bet they'd like to be in on the throwing. Add the more than one million Iraqi, Afghani, and Pakistani dead and the countless numbers of maimed and injured. Don't forget the one in seven who can't buy sufficient food for themselves and their families, the children who are literally dying of malnutrition, and the uncounted number who are being attacked on the basis of gender, sexual preference, or other failure to conform to the hardline Islamist nutcases we have put in power.

If they could do anything they wanted to the man they consider responsible for the death, disability, disappearance, and torture of their loved ones, I don't think they'll be reaching for a mere shoe.

Note: Although many translate haramzada as "bastard," that translation is incorrect. Haram is an Arabic word meaning "unclean." Think treyf. Treyf is a Hebrew word that is applied to things that are forbidden under the Mosaic laws. Haram is the Arabic equivalent. Thus, dogs are haram (though not windhounds, search me); pigs or anything made of them is haram; bottom-dwelling seafood is haram. Zada is a Farsi word meaning "son of." (The female equivalent would be zadi.)

Joota is a Hindi word meaning shoe, or shoes. Although some of you may remember having heard the old filmi song, Mera joota hai Japani, we would like to take this opportunity to point out to you that an updated version is being created for the InterTubes, titled Mera joota hai Iraqi.

For those who wonder about the significance of throwing a shoe or two at Gee Dumbya, kindly consult Salman Rushdie's brilliant novel, Shame, in which he recounts the creation of a garland of shoes as suitable wear for the shameless females Munni, Chunni, and Bunny, who chose to become pregnant without the benefit of that holy matrimony which our straight brothers and sisters so strenuously deny to their gay and lesbian siblings.

Finally, some wise soul has recommended that those who agree with Mr. al-Zaidi instantly mail an old shoe or two to Preznitwit Booooosh, at the white house. DO IT NOW so them shoes don't end up on President Obama's lawn. You might want to put a note on the package like "If unable to deliver before 01/15/2009, please return to" and put the nearest Goodwill store's address on it. Or something.

Thanks to FOTPC and Ms. Manitoba for holding down the fort while I fought with lawyers, doctors, insurance company scumbags, and pain medication. That new knee is looking more likely in the coming year!

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The Countdown Clock

Man, those seconds just can't run out fast enough for me. Or any other of my fine fellow bloggers. The remaining denizens of La Casa de Los Gatos don't seem to care as long as they get their 18 hours of shuteye per day, interspersed with fine kibble, treats, toys, pets, catnip, and the daily constitutional exploration of the hillside, but.


Me, I can't bear waking up to a headline such as this:

Bush 'very pleased' with Iraq war outcome: Report

Is there anything that bothers this pathetic, revolting little man? Does he think for even one minute of the nearly 5,000 coffins in which the remains of his fellow-citizens lie moldering? The tears of their parents? Their spouses and children? The suffering their families and friends endure, having lost a loved one? The estimated 50,000 or so lying in their own piss in military hospitals or suffering quietly at home? Missing a limb or an organ, struggling to get along on disability payments, homeless? Doomed to a lifetime of fighting the mental and emotional impact of what has been seen and lived through?


And what of the Iraqis who have died by the hundreds of thousands? Does he ever think about, see, respond to, the sight of a pool of blood blackening in the desert sun? Filled with the limbs, separated from their erstwhile owners, of children, housewives, cab-drivers, innocent bystanders, stallholders in the marketplace where the latest atrocity occurred? A little more than two years ago, a Lancet study estimated the number of Iraqi dead at 655,000. UNHCR estimates 4.7 million refugees, both inside and outside Iraq, most in dire need of food, shelter, medical aid.

Does the monster-in-chief ever contemplate the children who have seen their parents blown up before their eyes, the fathers who have no jobs but still must feed their children, the mother whose child burned and stuck to her body when our troops opened fire on her car?


Because, in addition to that first heart-wracking headline, in fact, almost immediately below it, I notice this:

Baghdad blasts kill 19

The Green Zone blast splashed blood and seared flesh across the grey concrete barriers at the entrance, according to an AFP correspondent.

Meanwhile, the rotten thing that wears the mantle of this country's leader announced today that he

believes the Iraq war was a success and is "very pleased" with what is happening there.

[He added] ..."remarkable" progress had been made in Iraq since the late dictator [Saddam Hussein] was toppled in 2003.

"People have been able to take their troops out of Iraq because Iraq is becoming successful. I'm very pleased with what is taking place there now," he said, adding there still is "a lot of work" to be done.

"We are bringing troops home because of the success in Iraq. But Iraq is not yet completely safe.

"So there will be a US presence for a while there at the request of the Iraqi government," he said.

"The United States is willing to continue to help. Most countries there within a very broad coalition have come home but we want to help this government," he said without further elaborating.

Of course, without further elaborating. Either he's lying through his teeth or he, as usual, doesn't have the first fucking clue what he's talking about. He doesn't elaborate on his statements because someone, some very malevolent wretch in the bowels of this misadministration, writes these deliberately disingenuous things for him to say, and he parrots them as his "handlers" tell him to. He has nothing to say about the armless, the legless, the blind and insane, those proud wounded heroes of his money-burning war that is crashing and burning our economy around our ears. Jesus, what a fucking blind, limited, self-satisfied pig he is. A thousand, no, a million curses on his empty head.

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Economy: Feedback

It's a good idea, actually. Longtime friend and commenter Bob has this to say about that bailout bill:

The bailout "consensus" has fallen apart. It seems that Congress actually wants to discuss the wisdom of a trillion dollar outlay before rushing it through. That's good. As long as we're going to discuss this, let's add something to the deal.

We can't afford to be engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if our economy is in grave danger. Whatever bailout is deemed necessary, we'll need to put our tax money into trying to save the economy, rather than fighting oil wars. What should we do?

We should stand firm on the requirement that, before any bailout money is dispersed, the Iraq war must end. The Iraq war can be ended in a few days; just bring the troops back home. Stop pouring money into a dumb oil-theft scheme. "We can't just leave"? That mantra is what kept us in Vietnam for years. In the end, we left. In Iraq, just leave now.

If the Iraq war isn't ended, then let's see what happens if there's no bailout at all. Maybe nothing will happen besides the bankruptcy of companies which richly deserve it.

Congress will need to develop a spine to do this.

Maybe the Chinese will be more willing to lend us money to shore up our crumbling economy if we're not destroying ourselves in Iraq?

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2008 Elections: You Were Wrong!

Jed Lewison does his usual bang-up job of skewering John McCain using his own words, just as Barack Obama did during the debates. Jed, you are a treasure. Watch:



Ah, teh YouTube! It puts into the hands of teh Peeple the ability to point out what a lying sack of shit John McCain is. He's been wrong about so much for so long, electing him now would be like throwing a little gasoline on the fire that's burning the country down.

Think wisely. Choose carefully. Vote Obama/Biden.

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Iraq: We'll Leave If They Ask Us To

From an anonymous contributor over at WTF Is It Now?, the blog of the incomparable Maru, whose regular assaults upon the douchebags in charge leave us weeping with laughter:

Why is this quote not burning all around the internet right now???? From the whitehouse's _own goddam site_, a direct quote from the May 07 press conference. Quote Duh bya:

"We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave."

The White House official site. It's way down near the end of the press release, after reporters have begun asking questions.

From CBS' report of the quote dated May 2007.

Spread the meme!

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Environment: Recent Natural Disasters

Myanmar continues to writhe under the heel of an uncaring dictatorship as the populace tries to deal with the aftermath of the cyclone. The creeps-in-charge are busy telling the populace lies about the trustworthiness of U.S. relief instead of giving them help when they need it so desperately. If you would like to send a pair of used underpants to the Burmese government as a hallmark of your respect for their dunderheaded policies, you have our blessing. In case you were living in a mountain cave someplace, Insane McAncient has had to fire two lobbyists from his campaign because they were working for the Burmese junta &mdash you know, the guys who are watching their countrymen starve to death rather than giving them food, aid, and medical assistance.

For what it's worth, at least the ASEAN relief teams have been promised access; and experts are en route to assessing the needs of Cyclone Nargis' victims. Over 133,000 have been reported dead or missing, and 2.4 million are homeless. Please keep them in your thoughts and, if you can spare anything, send it their way. At present, the U.N. says only 40 per cent of promised funding has come through.

In other sad news, Burmese comedian Maung Thura, who works under the stage name of Zarganar, is missing, says U.N. HRC's Myanmar investigator Tomas Ojea Quintana. According to Thura's relatives, police took him from his home in Yangon shortly after he made a trip to the Irrawaddy delta to donate relief items to survivors. The police also seized his computer and cash intended for survivors.

Zarganar's family has not heard from him since the arrest. The ruling military junta had given no reason for the arrest. Zarganar led a team of around 400 people, mainly actors, comedians and writers, in distributing assistance in the form of food, blankets, mosquito nets, and other such items, to those affected by the floods.

The team had made videos of their relief activities, and Zarganar gave interviews critical of the government's relief effort to foreign media, including the British Broadcasting Corp., whose news broadcasts are popular in Myanmar.

To donate to the victims of Cyclone Nargis, you can give directly to organizations like Medicin sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), or go here.

China: Zhang Ziyi, star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and many other top-notch Chinese films, recently lambasted her fellow artistes for their ignorance of the devastating quake in China. Zhang, who has been raising money for quake relief efforts, said:

"I was as angry as a madwoman. I said, 'Are you idiots? You are well-dressed people who look like you identify with society, but you don't know what's going on on planet Earth.' It's incredible!"

La Casa de Los Gatos hereby gives Zhang Ziyi its Media Spokeswoman of Teh Month award for speaking up about the less fortunate.

People like this impress us. They could be going their pretty, wealthy, empty-headed way as most of them do. It's always extremely satisfying when those who have a perch in the upper echelons choose to turn the spotlight on the less fortunate. So many people who strive for fame and fortune achieve it and then forget what life was like before they became rich and famous. There is a saying in Malay, "Kachang lupakan kulit," which translates to "The peanut forgets its shell," that we've always liked.

Zhang Ziyi rocks.

It has been one month since the quake killed approximately 100,000 people in Sichuan province and left a further 5.2 million homeless. The Chinese government's swift response to aid the survivors was astonishing in its scope and dedication. However, now that the initial crisis has been handled, the government is beginning a crackdown on protests planned by grieving parents. Reporters are being actively discouraged from seeking the reason behind the collapse of so many schools. Poor construction and shoddy materials have already been alleged as the root cause.

On the one hand, the Chinese government responded better to the disaster than the U.S. government under Preznitwit Winky McBrillo (thanks, Sharkbabe!) did to Hurricane Katrina. On the other, China is not a democracy, not a free country. On the third hand (as a former believer in a pantheon of deity, we appreciate the multiple hands that are a Side Benefit), China has never been a democracy and we wonder whether it is more important to ensure one billion people the benefit of food, healthcare, education, and a functional society or freedom of speech and the right to sleep under bridges and beg for one's bread.

Yes, we know the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. But didn't Mao Zedong once tell some American politico that dealing with the sewage problems of one billion people was not something that admitted of a democratic solution?

AP Photo/Jeff Roberson

U.S.: In the town of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Raw Story reports, some 4,000 homes have been evacuated as flooding from the recent spate of heavy rains left cars and homes inundated with water and destroyed a bridge. Nine rivers in Iowa are seeing historic flood levels. A man has reportedly died in Minnesota as a result of floods.

Flood-related evacuations are also taking place in the towns of Des Moines, Iowa City, and Coralville. Thunderstorms continue to damage parts of southern Wisconsin. There are reports of flash floods in the area. A man was reported killed in Grand Rapids, Michigan, due to flooding. Northern Missouri is preparing for flooding of the Mississippi River. Weather forecasters are warning of tornado risk and thunderstorm warnings have been issued for areas of Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Lake Michigan. Several tributaries of the Mississippi River are overflowing their banks, and record flooding has hit areas across the Mississippi Valley.

To no one's surprise, the Preznitwit has not visited nor made any statements that we can uncover. We believe the National Guard, which would ordinarily be assisting stranded citizens, is off in Iraq being hated by that country's beleaguered citizenry.

The weather is expected to affect corn and soybean crops in the named areas, which will result in higher food prices. If you live anywhere in the threatened areas, please be careful. Drive carefully, make arrangements for your children and elderly and pets, and take good care of yourselves.

La Casa de Los Gatos wishes each and everyone affected by this nasty weather worldwide safety and a peaceful resolution to their woes, great or small.

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2008 Elections: Telling The Truth

Was it just yesterday? Or the day before? That senile warmonger John McInsane had the big brass balls to tell Barack Obama he was going to instruct Obama about how peaceful Iraq was and how things are going so fucking well in Iraq? Let's see, here's a few pertinent spittle-fleckings:

[...] McCain added, he [Obama, Ed.] will change his position on the war because of the success the U.S. is having there. “Sen. Obama was driven to his conclusion by ideology, not by the facts on the ground,” McCain said. “Success in Iraq is undeniable.”

The Seattle Times responds with an editorial that basically informs McInsane of what everyone else with a working brain cell already knows: the aged, cranky, nasty old Republican nominee is fuller of shit than a constipated cow. A pertinent snippet:

McCain is having a jolly time pretending he is the only candidate with enough cachet and experience to lead the U.S. on military matters, even offering to squire Obama around Iraq.

McCain's posturing would be silly one-upmanship if the costs of the war in Iraq and at home were not so enormous and never-ending. McCain has the wrong position. He supports continued military involvement in Iraq. Obama, more credibly, vows to end the war and bring troops home.

Kudos to the editorial writer! More than two-thirds of the American electorate is utterly sick and tired of this bogus war. Bombing the helpless populace of a small country that has done nothing to us is nothing less than a war crime. A war crime that has, incidentally, destroyed our economy and is threatening the combined economy of the rest of the world.

Does anybody remember the last time McInsane went to Iraq? March of this year. Protected by about 100 Marines, in full body armour, with helicopter gunships overhead, McInsane was photographed (at taxpayers' expense, of course) strolling about in Baghdad, proclaiming it safe. The old geezer conveniently forgot to mention to anyone during his recent spittle-flecked rant that his army escort would not let him go to the Shorja market where he had his picture taken last year, because it was "too unsafe."

Of course, someone who can't tell Sunni from Shi'a and doesn't even know how many troops we have in Iraq is hardly the authority on the war. If only fate wasn't tempted to give the old man the smackdown every time he opens his mouth and switches feet. Pertinent snippet:

McCain's comments about Mosul being "quiet" have also been criticized. On the day he made them, 30 Iraqis were killed by suicide bombings in the Mosul area.

Meanwhile, the town of Hit, near Baghdad, didn't want to be left out of the rush to smear a little egg on the erstwhile candidate's face. A suicide bomber in that town, no doubt having read or heard McLame's comments, rushed off to glory, taking ten people with him and wounding 12 others.

McLame displayed his usual tin ear on the issue:

McCain, speaking to reporters in Milwaukee, refused to acknowledge a mistake, saying that "I said we have drawn down. And we have drawn down."

Gee, where have we heard that refusal to admit making a mistake before? Oh, yeah, the previous two terms of Gee Dumbya Pumpkinhead.

In an attempt to defend the senile warmonger, his advisers said the flap amounted to nothing more than "nitpicking" about "verb tenses."

"It is the essence of semantics," said a frustrated Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser, on a conference call organized by the campaign. "We're having this call about a verb tense."

Wow, they sure have learned their lessons well. They're borrowing from the arsenal of Karl Rove and Bill Clinton. Next they're going to tell us what the definition of "is" is. Good work, kids! No, let's rephrase that: Heckuva Job, Johnny!

In other convincing evidence of the peacefulness of Iraq, thousands of Iraqis turned out to protest the U.S. presence. Intelligence (a quality Mr. McInsane seems dreadfully short on) officials announced today that our progress in Iraq basically sucks wet monkey ass. The scheduled elections are already getting the Sunni mad at each other. Progress! Peace! Missing Limbs! Awakening Councils!

Is there anyone in Iraq that we haven't pissed off yet? Well, maybe McInsane's definition of "progress," "success," "drawdown," and so forth are not exactly the same as Merriam-Webster's or Oxford's OED, or, let's be honest, any fucking body else's.

Tell the truth, Mr. McCain. If you remember how that's defined any more, that is. And don't forget to tell all those American servicemen being blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan why you refuse to sign Jim Webb's GI Bill that would give them better benefits than the pile of steaming crap the Bush misadministration's been trying to feed them for the past X years.

Crossposted over at Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus

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War: Telling It Like It Is

Fellow-blogger and esteemed compadre Chuck Butcher over at Chuck for ... lays out very clearly exactly what war is.

We highly recommend you read it. Better yet, go find every warmongering service-dodging conflict-humping Yellow Elephant you know, tie them to a chair and read it to them in cycles. Preferably, accompanied by illustration.

Chuck pulls no punches, so don't read immediately after a meal. On the other hand, this excellent post could serve a dual function as a diet aid.

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Iraq: The Needle And The Damage Done

Sgt. Merlin German poses with actress Elizabeth Rohm

Neil Young wrote a song with that title, about what junk was doing to great musicians as he watched them get hooked and OD before his eyes.

We were thinking about that yesterday as we trawled the intarwebs looking for information about Iraq. And the damage done. And damage aplenty it is. From being the nation that stood for economic achievement, honour, dignity, the enshrining of human rights in the very foundation of our existence, we have become a universal pariah, despised, pitied, and shunned. We're like the mad aunt in the attic, fouling ourselves, locked away out of the sight of the children because we're so unpredictable, so damaged, so pitiable.

Our currency has sunk to unheard of lows. Our economy writhes and flails pathetically struggling to rise like a wounded Leviathan even as it bleeds jobs in the tens of thousands, as homes go into foreclosure and families are forced out onto the street, as suburbs and subdivisions lie abandoned, rotting, damaged by those who once lived there or by casual thieves looking for an easy mark. Our infrastructure rots before our eyes, and we have no money to fix our sewage systems, our water systems, our dams and bridges and roads, even as we bleed billions of dollars into a war without a foreseeable end.

Today's reminder of the ongoing multiple wars in which the Bush regime has entangled us, and the continuing damage. Click the preceding link to read the story of Marine Sergeant Merlin German, who died April 11 as the result of injuries sustained from a roadside bomb blast in Iraq. Sgt. German was 22 years old.

He suffered damage to 97 per cent of his body from the bomb. It took him a little over three agonizing years of multiple surgeries and therapies to die. Sgt. German was a saxophonist. The bomb blew off his fingers. He would never be able to play his favourite instrument again. The article talks about how this poor man was "an emblem of resolve." Well, fuck your resolve. Tell us how it took him one and a half agonizing years to learn how to walk again. As a gimp, we can totally understand the torture of having a body that does not like to obey one's wishes and responds with agonizing pain when one does something it doesn't care for.

Tell us how it feels to have 40 surgeries. Each time someone cuts your body open, your chances of infection, fatal complications like clots in your veins and lungs, and, of course, the never-ending pain, increase. And sometimes pains create more, unexplained and inexplicable pains. So that when someone operates on your right knee, two years later you can suffer agonizing pains in your left toe.

They give you gabapentin for that. It's medication for epileptics, but apparently works off-label to cope with nerve-related pain. Unfortunately, it causes your wrist and forearm muscles to behave strangely, and can result in carpal tunnel syndrome.

In related news, a New York state appeals court has held that the New York/New Jersey Port Authority is liable for damages caused by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, because it knew about but chose to ignore “an extreme and potentially catastrophic vulnerability that would have been open and obvious to any terrorist who cared to investigate and exploit it.”

We can't help but wonder if this means Gee Dumbya and his criminal cronies can be held liable for the deaths of the 3,000 who died in the attack on the Twin Towers? Personally liable? For damages? And the 4,000-plus troops who have died so far. And the 620,000 suffering from PTSD and TBI. And the 30-50,000 maimed and wounded?

After all, there's plenty of evidence that Bush and his stooges knew about 9/11 nearly a year before it happened.


Meanwhile, Reuters tells us that on April 19th, "Iraqi government troops" swept into the oil-rich southern Iraqi city of Basra and took the bastions of Hojatoleslam Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, at whose hands they had suffered such a humiliating defeat in the first weeks of April.

Of course, the article fails to mention that the "Iraqi government troops" are, for all intents and purposes, the military arm of puppet prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, a man with so little support among his own people that defections among "his" police troops and "his" army forces number in the thousands. In the event, he required massive air support from British and American forces. Caveat: Registration (free) required.

And if you don't know what happens to "collaborators," consider what you would do assuming your country was invaded by some other occupying power. What would you do to Americans who aided the enemy? Jeez, let some politician make a speech about how things are totally fucked in Iraq and every frothing rightwinger is simultaneously wanking their dicks off while screaming "Treason! Aiding and Abetting! Giving comfort to the enemy! Hang them!"

As far as the rest of Iraq, Sunni and Shi'a, religious or secular, are concerned, al-Maliki's "troops" are collaborators, calling in American and British air power to bomb the living fuck out of their own countrymen and women and children.

So we had to bomb hundreds to death, destroying their homes and hospitals and streets and towns, in order for al-Maliki's so-called "army" to succeed against al-Sadr's militiamen. Remember, if you will, that al-Maliki's "army" gets its uniforms, salaries, training, equipment, and ammunition from our treasury, while al-Sadr's militia, if they're lucky, get an inferior grade of weaponry if they can pay for it either from the black market or from our soldiers and their proxies, the Iraqi army.

Damn, if we're paying them, training them, and giving them top-notch guns and ammo, and they still can't beat a rag-tag bunch of untrained fucking desert dwellers, what the fuck does that say about this "war"? Incidentally, both al-Sadr's and al-Maliki's followers are Shi'a muslims. In other words, this is a civil war. Moreover, many people are saying that this is simply an attempt by al-Maliki's Dawa party to ensure that no other Shi'a politicians can possibly win the coming elections.

Does anyone else get the feeling that this is just a sham, set up for a gullible American electorate that doesn't bother to inform itself? Does anyone want to take a bet that the Iraqi "elections" will be held not too distant from the American elections and steps will be taken by the CheneyBush Misadministration to ensure that they can proclaim a victory, success, a drawdown?

Of course, they'd better pray that the Iraqi units don't flee their posts, as this one did. Caveat: Registration (free) required.

A pertinent snippet:

A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias.

The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led to a tense series of exchanges between American soldiers and about 50 Iraqi troops who were fleeing.

This occurred in Baghdad around April 16th. Commanders in Iraq are, to the extreme frustration and resentment of their troops, doing their best to paint any success as being led by Iraqi troops when in fact, it is American troops that are doing the dirty work, reaping the death toll, and receiving none of the credit.

Meanwhile, the Sons of Iraq, or the Sons of the Awakening, or the Awakening Council, or whatever they're calling themselves this week &mdash the number, out of the approximately 40 per cent of Iraq's population that is Sunni Muslim, who have decided to cooperate with the U.S. in attempting to expel from Iraq the al-Qaeda in Iraq "turrrrists" who are blowing up people and things &mdash have degenerated into an internecine conflict, the likes of which make the al-Sadr/al-Maliki conflict pale in comparison.

Patrick Cockburn, writing for The Independent, tells us that aQI, as al-Qaeda in Iraq is referred to, is targeting the al-Sahwa, that is, the Awakening Council, or Sunni Awakening, or, as we've been reduced to calling it of late, the Sunni Whatever. Christ. And this, hard on the heels of news that the U.S. has not provided agreed-upon amounts of arms and money to these poor sods who are in the frontline of this battle.

Is it any surprise, then, that U.S. troop deaths are currently at their highest for the past seven months? According to AP, 50 U.S. soldiers died in the month of April. Iraqi civilian deaths are also at a high. 36 people per day.

So, close to 40 people are dying every day, and what exactly are we supposed to be doing there? Preventing civil war? Too late, it's raging as we speak. Bringing democracy to the nation? How can there be democracy in a nation at war? The conditions don't exist for people to use the ballot box when they have to kill or be killed each day. We can't even successfully steal their fucking oil, which is, let's face it, the real reason that we attacked a small, poor nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. If this was about 9/11, we would have invaded Saudi Arabia which has lots of oil and, apparently, lots of terrorists, having supplied some 15 or so to the effort to bomb the fuck out of the Twin Towers.

Whoever tells us that our effort in Iraq is succeeding is lying through their teeth. This is not success. Watching 22-year-old boys get blown to smithereens is not success. Fomenting civil war in a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on us is not success. Building a mercenary army is not success.

Fuck, we can't even build a mercenary army properly. Incompetence, dishonesty, and outright idiocy resulting from greed and short-sightedness are the hallmark of what Maru likes to call the Cheney Menstruation. Here, for example, we have a wonderful incident in which mercenaries, most of whom are former military personnel, often U.S. military personnel, get killed because some senior manager used the armored vehicle in which these poor sods were supposed to travel, to &mdash no, really &mdash transport hookers.

Meanwhile, arms and equipment that we, the taxpayers, are paying through the arse for, are showing up for sale on ebay.

And little schoolgirls in Iraq are weeping while celebrating Saddam Hussein's birthday. So much for being greeted with flowers as liberators.

As we used to say when we was a yoof, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth &mdash bugger me blind. What the fuck? Is there anything we're doing that's remotely likely of success? Fuck, no. We keep propping first one, then another foot up while we take potshots at each, each time with a weapon of a greater caliber. Call us when they trundle out the cannon.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross is reporting that health care and clean drinking water in Iraq is less available to the populace, after five fucking years of our presence. The city of Baghdad has overflowing sewers that are visible from Google Earth.

There is no doubt, as Rep. Ike Skelton of MO says, that our continuing engagement in Iraq is preventing us from anticipating and preparing for future acts of terror. We're bogged down, boys 'n girls. Plain and simple.

The Pentagon is claiming that it is cutting funding for the Iraq war even as the Idiot-in-Chief is trying to force through a $70 billion dollar request for funding in Iraq. This is called, "The right hand knoweth not in whose underpants the left hand is sticking a finger." So you cut a twenty-cent purchase out while slipping a two-thousand dollar purchase in. Veddy clever.

And the Senate's Armed Services Committee is asking the GAO to find out where billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue have gone. Admittedly, the previous, Republican, congress didn't even bother to find out if the taxpayer was being screwed without lube. But, gentlemen, isn't this a bit like closing the barn door long after the horse has embarked on a trip to a different fucking continent?

In other news, the Iraqis prove that they, at least, are not as stupid and befuddled as the American electorate-cum-taxpayer. Even as John McInsane was tootling around those parts, our erstwhile bosom friends and financial dependents of the Iraqi power structure were chortling with glee. Pertinent excerpt:

Many Iraqi politicians are closely monitoring the American presidential race, and some said the visit bolstered their belief that if Mr. McCain, of Arizona, succeeded President Bush in the November election, the American military would have a large presence in Iraq for a very long time.

“This visit confirms that the Republicans believe that the Iraqi war is very important in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East,” said Wael Abdul Latif, an independent Shiite member of the Iraqi Parliament. “It’s a message to Iran that the United States will never leave, even after Bush is gone.”

Never leave? Hah! Why don't we just line up every single American man, woman, and child who has less than one million dollars to their name (which would be most of us, don't kid yourself), and remove half their blood, or half their limbs?

Those of you planning to vote for McInsane? Just join the military already. Take your spouse and sprogs with you. Don't plan on coming back. They'll just foreclose on your home while you're gone, anyway, and if McInsane's in charge, your kid won't be able to afford health care or college, and there won't be any jobs left after you've served. At least in the military they often give you food, plus your housing and clothing and health care is all paid for. Sure, you risk ending up like Marine Sgt. German. But that's a small price to pay to see McInsane in charge, innit?

Meanwhile, since we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, the following has occurred:

• The real, genuine, original al-Qaeda (the one in Iraq has the same name but no links to these big daddies) just tried to kill Afghani President Hamid Karzai;
  
  Bush's old oil buddy Karzai must be wondering how long he can hold on to power.
  
  
• Our own intelligence guys are reporting that al-Qaida is doing just ducky, over in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they started out and continue to grow and thrive;
  
  
• We still don't have the first fucking clue where Osama bin Laden is, but we're willing to bet he's laughing his ass off, even if it's in some cave;
  
  Note to our so-called allies: If you see an ass wandering around sans legs, torso, or any other identifiable part, please turn it over to the U.S. military.
  
  
• No matter how much we grovel and beg, nobody wants to give us more pennies or bodies for our war in Afghanistan.

So what do we do about this? Do we keep making "support the troops" noises and buying flag pins made in China while leaving the men and women who do our dirty deeds for us to rot and die in body, mind, and soul?

Libby, over at TheImpolitic, tells us about some of the horrifying things our troops have gone through. Jesus, we're fucking outraged and disgusted.

One soldier's father was so disgusted by the treatment of his son's comrades, he videotaped it and posted it on YouTube. All on a sudden, the brass are putting away their balls which they've been playing with for ages, and leaping up to "address the issue" of the appalling conditions at Fort Bragg.

The good folk of Vermont continue to protest the war with all their might and main. Thanks, people! You give us hope!

Meanwhile, we ask, when are the Young Republicans going to step up and volunteer in droves? Because they're sitting around in school leeching off the taxpayer teat or the parental teat, the military has had to lower its standards to the point where people such as this eminent worthy get to disgrace the service.

And, to leave you all with something other than the bitter taste of ashes, here's a sweet story about service members who have to leave their four-footed friends behind, and the kind folks who help them out by taking their little beastlies in.

Crossposted over at Out of Iraq Bloggers' Caucus

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World: Israel and Peace

The only good thing about this story is that The Man With The Reverse Midas Touch basically shit all over his own legacy, and as Steve Gilliard used to say, you can't unshit the bed.

Now that Mr. 28 Per Cent needs a legacy (other, that is, than eight years of the worst misadministration and destruction of the United States of America), he's been sending his hunchmen and women flying around the globe looking for something that's not covered with the foul effluent of his and Cheney's eight years of lies, thievery, thuggery, crookedness, deceit, maladroitness, perversion, immorality, cruelty, mendacity, and exploitativeness ad nauseam.

Try as they might, they've failed to find a single thing that they can leave as the Idiot Boy's legacy. A single positive thing, that is. And now, to find that he's fucked up his own hopes of a Mid-East peace agreement, well, what can we say? Tears of joy, children, tears of joy. And bitterness, too. All our lives since we were sprog we've heard about and hoped for peace in the Middle East. But for an incompetent crook to think he can just snap his fingers and have it be so, well, it's good to see him skewered on his own stupidity. Hoist, as it were, on his own petard. And given that he's Le Petomaniacal in his petardaciousness, it's only too fitting.

Because here's what the Israelis are saying. Chimpy McTurdibus personally delivered a letter to Ariel Sharon giving

[...] the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.

U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements.

Whom do you believe? The administration, which has told nearly one thousand lies about the Iraq war alone? Or the Israeli government, which may or may not lie but is unlikely to do so if it would embarrass their chief source of financial aid?

The article adds this nice little zinger from the then-ambassador to Israel:

Daniel Kurtzer, then the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he argued at the time against accepting the Weissglas letter. "I thought it was a really bad idea," he said. "It would legitimize the settlements, and it gave them a blank check." In the end, Kurtzer said the White House never followed up with the plan to define construction lines. "Washington lost interest in it when it became clear it would not be easy to do," he said.

Sounds like the frat schmuck in chief, alright. Got bored with Afghanistan because we would need a detailed plan to take out Osama bin Laden, so here we are seven years later &mdash no Osama, increasing problems in Afghanistan. Got bored with New Orleans, so nearly three years later housing still hasn't been rebuilt, and NOLAians are still scattered all over the fifty states. Got bored with Iraq so five years later diplomats are refusing to serve in Baghdad, the city is an open sewer, concrete walls and ethnic cleansing everywhere, an Iraqi army that sees defection by the thousands, and 4,050 lives (U.S. military), ~1 million lives (Iraqi) and unknown numbers of dead contractors and U.S. civilian personnel and veterans who have committed suicide.

Who let this idiot near the controls? We did. Do we want four more years of this type of disastrous shenanigans? The economy in the toilet, shrinking lifespans for women, no health care for children, joblessness growing, rising crime, increasing poverty, a failing infrastructure, burdensome debt, and a world at war?

see more crazy cat pics

That's your legacy, Chimpenfuhrer. And, make no mistake, John McSame's job is to continue that legacy. And Hillary Clinton's, according to whispers throughout the blogosphere, is to ensure that McSame is elected.

Who you gonna vote for? Because Hillary will never beat McSame, and her only mission appears to be to damage the only candidate who can bring real change. Think carefully before you choose. Remember, the fate of your children, your neighbours, your nation, and your world is in your hands.

Stumble It!

2008 Elections: The Nuclear Threat

Good grief. Just when we were starting back on that old Clinton Love Roller Coaster, beginning to feel sympathetic to Hillary for the misogyny of the media vultures, she finds a way to knock us back on our behind and go WTF??

Raw Story tells us that Senator Clinton went on Good Morning America yesterday to issue this statement:

“I want the Iranians to know, if I am president, we will attack Iran,” if they launch nukes against Israel, Clinton said. “I want them to understand that. … We would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that.”

Clinton said she hoped her stern warning would serve as a deterrent from Iran doing anything “foolish and tragic.”

Say WHAT??? The Iranians don't have nuclear weapons. Israel does. The Iranians are a decade or more away having functional nuclear weapons. Israel has a goddamned nuclear arsenal.

So how exactly will Iran launch nukes against Israel, Senator? Or is this a different verse of the "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" song that Senator John McSenile has been singing lately? Wait, let us rephrase that. Are you fucking insane, Senator? Are you out of your fucking mind? Are you just tossing off this statement because you, like Senator McSenile, share the hope of keeping your nation in a state of perpetual war?

Iran has not threatened Israel with nukes because Iran has no nukes. We hold no brief for the mullahs who run that country. But threatening to obliterate a nation, threatening a nuclear attack &mdash isn't that the reason we helped Israel acquire an arsenal of nukes? Israel is perfectly capable of defending herself. She has more nukes than the rest of the Middle-East combined. Because no one else in the Middle East has, or has plans to acquire, nuclear weapons.

Don't you read the intelligence reports? The NIE reports, the IAEA reports? Oh, that's right. You don't. That's why you gave George Bush your vote to authorize the endless war against and occupation of Iraq. Despite the fact that 42% of the Senate voted against such authorization. Despite the fact that Senator Carl Levin proposed an amendment that would have forced Bush's neocon warmonger cabal to seek further permission to wage war. You preferred to give an idiot a blank check and then acted surprised when he used it.

And now you talk so lightly about obliterating an entire nation. Using nuclear weapons against Iran will affect these countries:

• Iraq
  
• Armenia
  
• Azerbaijan
  
• Turkmenistan
  
• Afghanistan
  
• Pakistan
  
• Oman
  
• Qatar
  
• UAE
  
• Saudi Arabia
  
• Kuwait
  
• Bahrain

In addition, fallout would affect:

• Yemen
  
• Egypt
  
• Jordan
  
• Syria
  
• Lebanon
  
• Turkey
  
• Cyprus
  
• Georgia
  
• Uzbekistan
  
• Kashmir
  
• India

Are you insane? You're threatening an imaginary enemy with real consequences that could affect half the world's population?

Back away from the red button, Senator. Do not pass Go. Do not collect delegates or votes. We don't need another lunatic within a mile of the controls of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

Holy quacking duckshit. Why do you do this to yourself, and to all the people who once loved and respected you? Why?

People, anyone who cannot distinguish between enemies real and imagined, threats real and imagined, anyone who can talk so casually of obliterating a nation and possibly killing and definitely sickening billions of people has no business being near the reins of power. Do you want that kind of blood on your hands? Vote for Ron Paul, vote for your local dogcatcher, write in your grandson, but do not let this woman near the red button.

Update: To his credit, Barack Obama sounds a welcome note of sanity. His comments, in part:

Obama promised a swift and forceful response to an attack on Israel by Iran, but he said the hypothetical of a nuclear attack “presupposes a failure to begin with.” Iran does not have a nuclear weapon yet and the US should do everything possible to stop that, he said. Obama has said he would open diplomatic channels with Iran, but he has not ruled out the possibility of an attack on the country to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons.

We can live with that.

Raw Story has the video clip.

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Iraq: Teh Success Is Killing Us

The WahPoo reports that yesterday provided further evidence of success in Iraq. In fact, that particular day in Iraq was so successful that we may not have an army left at all, if each day to come is exactly like that one.

Shoot, we may not have any Iraqis, either. Then we can just mosey on in there and suck up all the oil for our Hummers. According to the article,

Two bombings killed nearly 60 people Tuesday in parts of Iraq where U.S. and Iraqi forces have claimed significant success in combating Sunni insurgent groups.

Just imagine what the death toll might have been like if we weren't that successful.

Bombings took place in Baquba (Diyala province), Mosul, Ramadi (Anbar province), and Baghdad. Some 82 people were wounded, and the carnage inspired one Iraqi spokesman to add to our treasury of unforgettable quotes this particular remark:

"Half of the dead people are still at the Baqubah morgue because it is so hard to identify their bodies," Jassem said.

Being cursed with an overactive imagination, we're currently searching for our psychoactive meds while speculating on just why identification appears to be so elusive. Possibly, the difficulty of identifying a knee or a wrist is greater if it is no longer attached to the person one might know and love.

What a terrible thing this war is. Day after day, our purported "leaders" lie to us, until even the tinpot soldier in charge of the current efforts (since all the better men were forced out for daring to tell the truth about this misadventure) is forced to admit that no corners have been turned, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and the "last throes" of the insurgents have persisted for three too many long, weary years even as the U.S. Army is in its last throes thanks to the throe-er's friends and cronies accumulating wealth by winning no-bid contracts to give our military insufficient arms and equipment and poisoning them with bad food and dirty water.

Some people are doing something about it. Some very courageous people. Grateful thanks to those of you speaking out against the war.

Crossposted over at Out of Iraq Bloggers' Caucus

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Politics: The Drumbeat For War in Iran

Persian Gulf regional map

Attention, people! The Bush/Cheney Misadministration is starting the drums beating for a war with Iran. Seymour Hersh warned us about this two years ago. Now that the elections are only six months away, what better present could the crooks and thugs in power deliver to John McInsane's presidential ambitions than to start yet another war?

Here's the evidence: Yesterday (April 11th, 2008), the Times told us that "new satellite photographs" have uncovered a secret launch site in Iran for long-range missiles. Iran has always claimed that this site and the launches therefrom are part of their civilian space program, by the way.

Yesterday (April 11th, 2008), AP informed us that a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Typhoon, trespassing in Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf (in order to access which body of water, vessels must first pass through the Straits of Hormuz, Iranian waters) "encountered"

... a small Iranian high-speed boat in the central Persian Gulf and warned it away by firing a flare, the Pentagon said Friday.

Two other similar Iranian boats in the area did not come as close.

The USS Typhoon tried unsuccessfully to establish radio contact with the Iranian boat after it came within an estimated 200 yards of the Typhoon on Thursday, outside Iranian territorial waters. A Navy official said the ship then fired the flare and continued on its way without incident.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said there were no signs any boat was armed.

Question: How exactly did the USS Typhoon "try unsuccessfully" to establish radio contact? Do they have Farsi speakers on board? Or was it the old tourist stratagem of "If they don't speak English just shout louder and slower"?

The Iranian authorities are claiming that there was no incident.

Today (April 12th, 2008), in the WahPoo, Staff Writer Karen deYoung tells us that Robert Gates, General Betrayus, and Ambassador Ryan Crockoshit have determined that Iran is the biggest threat to Iraq.

Consider this: Iraq is majority Shi'a. Iran is majority Shi'a. They are two of the very few majority Shi'a nations in the Islamic world.

The Sunni tribes of Iraq form the backbone of the "insurgency," about which not word one has been said of late. Saudi Arabia, home of Gee Dumbya's good friends, is Sunni. The Saudis follow the fundamentalist Wahhabiya flavour of Islam. Most of the hijackers who destroyed the twin towers were Saudi nationals.

Which of these players poses a greater threat to the U.S.?

We're fairly confident that, if asked, the Shi'a majority in Iraq would gladly embrace Iran as good friends and allies. It wasn't that long ago that Iranian President Ahmedi Nejad was greeted with flowers on an official visit to his good friend Nouri al-Maliki.

Don't let Gee Dumbya and his gang of thugs lie us into another war.

Crossposted over at Out of Iraq Bloggers' Caucus

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