The Bush-McCain Challenge

Take this challenge and see if you can tell the difference between these two War Mongers!

A new video by MoveOn.org Political Action asks:

Q: How do you get to 100 years in Iraq?
A: Six months at a time.

TPMuckraker: By Paul Kiel

When we compiled our vast catalog of the Bush Administration’s war on information, we had to devote a whole section on global warming, so unrelenting was the administration’s effort to stifle dissent.

Well, today House oversight committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) has released the results of the panel’s 16-month investigation into political interference in government climate change science. You can see the 37-page report here.

It details how the administration censored climate scientists, edited climate change reports, and involved itself in the Environment Protection Agency’s legal opinions.

The takeaway? “The evidence before the Committee leads to one inescapable conclusion: the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming.”

My favorite part, from the committee’s summary of its report:

The White House played a major role in crafting the August 2003 EPA legal opinion disavowing authority to regulate greenhouse gases. [Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality] James Connaughton personally edited the draft legal opinion. When an EPA draft quoted the National Academy of Science conclusion that “the changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities,” CEQ objected because “the above quotes are unnecessary and extremely harmful to the legal case being made.” The first line of another internal CEQ document transmitting comments on the draft EPA legal opinion reads: “Vulnerability: science.” The final opinion incorporating the White House edits was rejected by the Supreme Court in April 2007 in Massachusetts v. EPA.

.

The first film of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq’s descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality and anarchy, NO END IN SIGHT is a jaw-dropping, insider’s tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness and venality.

Based on over 200 hours of footage, the film provides a candid retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials such as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad during the Spring of 2003), Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, and General Jay Garner (in charge of the occupation of Iraq through May 2003) as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, and prominent analysts.

NO END IN SIGHT examines the manner in which the principal errors of U.S. policy – the use of insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, the purging of professionals from the Iraqi government, and the disbanding of the Iraqi military – largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today. How did a group of men with little or no military experience, knowledge of the Arab world or personal experience in Iraq come to make such flagrantly debilitating decisions?

NO END IN SIGHT dissects the people, issues and facts behind the Bush Administration’s decisions and their consequences on the ground to provide a powerful look into how arrogance and ignorance turned a military victory into a seemingly endless and deepening nightmare of a war.

“I think this decision to disband the [Iraqi] Army came as a surprise to most of us…”
Q: What was your reaction?
“I thought we had just created a problem. We had a lot of out of work
[Iraqi] soldiers.”
– our interview with Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State

NO END IN SIGHT alternates between U.S. policy decisions and Iraqi consequences, systematically dissecting the Bush Administration’s decisions. The consequences of those decisions now include 3,000 American deaths and 20,000 American wounded, Iraq on the brink of civil war, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, the strengthening of Iran, the weakening of the U.S. military, and economic costs of over $2 trillion. It marks the first time Americans will be allowed inside the White House, Pentagon, and Baghdad’s Green Zone to understand for themselves what has become the disintegration of Iraq.

Think Progress

Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service reports that Vice President Cheney has been thwarting the release of a long-overdue National Intelligence Estimate on Iran because it doesn’t deliver the casus belli for war:

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.

The current dispute over the Iran NIE bears striking resemblance to the controversies that played out over pre-war Iraq intelligence in at least two important ways:
Continue Reading »

After seven years of Emperor C-Plus Augustus and his Avignon Presidency (to use Charles Pierce’s exquisitely apposite terminology), the international community has apparently decided that America, so long as Bush and the John Bolton neocons remain in positions of power, cannot be trusted to play nice, particularly when it comes to Iran.– The IAEA’s El-Baradei has said that there is no evidence that Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons. They are working on nuclear technology to supply power and electricity, which they are allowed to do under treaty. (In fact, Iran was given its first taste of nuclear energy back in the 1950s by American oil companies, who didn’t want the Iranians to waste all that lovely oil on themselves when they could be letting Americans take it from them.) Furthermore, he’s said flat-out that attacking Iran “would absolutely lead to disaster” — something our wonderful US corporate media doesn’t want to emphasize.

– Russia’s Vladimir Putin has come out and told the US to shut the bleep up with regard to Iran. In case you’re wondering why Bush might want to listen to Putin, it seems that Russia (unlike Iran) has these things called nukes. You may have heard of them. Bush won’t respond to morality, but he responds to force.

– Previous Bush efforts to isolate Iran economically have failed badly, so of course Bush is now ramping up the pressure. Europe, so far, seems to be yawning — that is, when guys like Putin aren’t telling Bush to STFU. Of course, Dick Cheney’s Halliburton has operated in Iran for decades, despite President Bill Clinton’s 1995 Executive Order forbidding American oil companies from doing business in Iran, and Cheney himself opposed sanctions while he was officially running Halliburton, so it could be that the Europeans are sick of the Bush-Cheney hypocrisy on this.

– Meanwhile, the Iranians get to look above the fray as they counsel the Turks, Kurds and Iraqis to stop attacking each other, even as Bush orders our troops to help Turkey hunt down Kurdish separatists in Iraq.

Whatever you’re hoping to accomplish, George — besides high oil prices — I don’t think you’re getting it.

Brave New Foundation is pleased to release this video promoting a historical and momentous event that is about to occur.

Watch it and see how you can participate in a gathering that can help change the world.

On Saturday, October 27th there will be 11 massive demonstrations for peace throughout the United States. In Boston, Chicago, Jonesborough, Tennessee, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Seattle, people from all walks of life will join together to express their anti-war sentiments and to call for an immediate end to the conflict in Iraq.

With each passing day the human and financial cost of this unnecessary war grows more and more painful. It’s time for the American people to speak out; to collectively let our government know that it’s time for this war to end. October 27th provides just that opportunity and the world will be watching.

Take a look at the mobilization web site to get details on the marches October 27th and join your family, friends and neighbors in making sure that your voice is heard. It’s time.

Working together with our partners at United For Peace And Justice, Brave New Films has demonstrated again just how effective an advocacy tool video can be. As this video spreads throughout cyberspace, help it on its essential journey by spreading the word to friends and family. The power is in your hands, please use it and help the cause of peace now.

The video is presented by Robert Greenwald and the entire team at Brave New Foundation. It was produced by John Ehrenfeld and Chris Gordon, who also edited the piece.

The original song “People” was written by Alex Dickson and produced and mixed by Alex Elena. Featured musicians were Alex Elena on drums, Alex Dicksonon bass and guitar, Riley Geare on the Wurlitzer organ and Milena Mepris, Darren Geare and Alex Dickson on vocals.

Update: Why Not News has tons of video

By David Swanson

Oil towers and windmills in Independence Avenue, all the doors to Congressional Office Buildings blocked, mucic blasting, dancing polar bears, a faux Blackwater patrol, a reborn SDS, traffic blocked by a wall of kids, everyone arrested, traffic restarted, another group blocking the street again, including Ted Glick who still hasn’t eaten, corporate reporters and staffers annoyed they can’t get across the street but rather uninterested in why, chants of Arrest Bush Not Vets and Arrest Bush Not Kids, banners declaring No War No Warming, code pink, billionaires for warming, more dancing polar bears, racially and age mixed activists for the first time getting serious and having fun doing it, groups marching in the road and chanting on nearby corners occupying hundreds of Capitol Police (in shorts in October!), equipment confiscated and people (including our friend Zool, who had planned to be arrested later inside the Capitol) arrested haphazardly with no warning, a few people in tears, the old folks learning where the juvenile jail is, and a chant of Resistance Is Forming, No War No Warming.

It’s a beautiful day in Washington DC.

DemocracyCellProject, Fox, Reuters, Washington Post, WaPo video, CNN, Associated Press, AP version 2, AP version 3, DailyKos, The Hill, Indymedia, YouTube, Flickr, watch for news at code pink DC, whynot news, grassrootsamerica, IVAW, al Jazeera, etc… It’s the oil, stupid!

No War No Warming
From October 21-23, 2007, join a global movement rising up against war and global warming by participating in a massive intervention in Washington DC or your own community.

We need to take immediate action to:

STOP the war in Iraq and future resource wars by ending our addiction to fossil fuels.

SHIFT government funding to rebuild New Orleans and all communities suffering from racism and corporate greed.

GO green and promote environmental justice with new jobs in a clean energy economy.