I know it, Barack, you just can't win lately.  You stand up for Wright and you get slammed, you renounce him and you get slammed.  You're sounding like it's really getting to you, which is only human, which means you've got to fall back to the plan.  Why you are doing this.

The pundits and networks are trying to Dean-Scream you with this Wright thing.  Pretty amazing, isn't it?  The guy says the US has killed innocent civilians and everyone acts shocked.  Wright could have put it differently, but you mean to tell me thousands of Iraqi civilians haven't been killed by US bombs and firing into cars at checkpoints?   But you're trying to win an election, and that's a downer.

That means, to stop from veering off in all directions, giving a history lesson on one hand and telling white America they're not all evil on the other, you need to pull back to message.  You need to say, Look, this is what always happens whenever someone gets too close to the real problem, the disappearance of the middle-class and all the bridges that used to let Americans go from one class to another, just working hard and not needing to be a financial genius.  Bridges like college affordability and worker training. They want to get your minds off the fact that your jobs went overseas or to Mexico, and even if your kids are bright and have the grades they probably can't afford their first-choice college.  They want you to forget that a very small number of people have benefited from the lion's share of tax breaks while you can still barely make ends meet.

So here's what you do, Barack.  They'll work the social divisions like always, whether it's gay marriage, abortion, or school prayer, unless you show that poor black people and poor white people have more in common than they have dividing them, which is why the billionaires running the networks are trying to stop this Obama phenomenon.  Anyone who says, "We have to disaggregate tax policy between the wealthy and the working class or middle class," like you did, is dangerous.  Because once you touch on the idea that the interests of the very rich might not be the interests of everyone, well hell, everything that keeps them getting richer no matter what happens might come crashing down.

Do what you do best, which is thinking and uniting.  And not by tearing old Jeremiah a new one - yes, he should have shut up after you asked him to, when you explained to him that people can't handle too much truth at once.  The last guy who tried that got nailed to a cross.  I mean Wright didn't have to say 9/11 was "payback," that's a little harsh, but you mean the CIA didn't overthrow the democratic president of Iran, Mossadeq, in 1953?   And install the bloody Shah, which led to the Iranian Revolution and furthered Middle East extremism?  Give me a break.

You need to pull out of this nosedive where the talkingheads are, AGAIN, going to snooker people into voting against their own interest, for a woman whose husband fairly personified NAFTA and all those other free trade agreements which they lied would help everyone, but were really aimed at their fat-cat businessman contributors.  Sure, that was Bill, but Hillary, as a co-equal like she always says, said not one word against those agreements when she could have politely disagreed with her husband, the way even Laura disagrees with George about some things.

You need to announce the American First Choice College Initiative.  (AMFCHOICE?  Help me out here.)  You've got to think big or media hyenas will keep circling and tearing of little pieces out of you.

The idea is, in the first 100 days of an Obama administration, any American student will have the funds to go to the best school he or she can get into, or wants to go to, from the Opportunity Fund.  Max-out what a poor or middle-class parent will pay, and Uncle Sam takes care of the rest. In one very real,  concrete way Obama is REBUILDING the bridges to the middle-class.

No kid should have to go to Iraq for college money.  The dirty little secret is, over the past 25 years, fewer and fewer kids have been able to afford their first choice college.

Here's the kicker: It's financially do-able.  Since you're getting us out of a Iraq, like you said in your Superbowl ad, that $100 billion or so we spend every year could go to this program.  Joe Stiglitz calls this the $3 trillion war.  "Unmet college need," a rough measure of what this program would cost, runs at about $30 billion a year.  Do you know how many times $30 bill fits into $3 trill?  You don't want to know.  Put your numbers crunchers on it, the guys you pay, and they should be able to come up a some good estimates in under 24 hours.  It isn't rocket science. It's arithmetic.  $100 billion minus $30 billion gives you a year plus two more of a fully funded program.  Kill that idiotic Star Wars, and we've got the money forever.

Here's your sticker, I want credit:

Obama: Building Bridges, Uniting Americans

Make them forget that you're black, and they're white, and make them remember we're all in this together.  And if you really use this idea, I want a job.  The Bush economy got me too.

at http://ralphlopez1.blogspot.com/

The historic vote on New Hampshire State House Resolution HR 24, introduced by 87 year old State Representative Betty Hall, will be coming to a vote tomorrow, Wednesday, April 16th.  If adopted, New Hampshire will not only be the first-in-the-nation presidential primary but the first-in-the-nation on impeachment, employing Jefferson's Manual rules, whereby a single state legislature may direct Congress to initiate hearings.  This avenue has never before been employed for a president or vice president, and so legal ramifications are not clear.  What is clear is that legal scholars would have to get to work to decipher the meaning.  In addition, a resolution like this coming from flinty New Hampshirites rather than hippie Vermonters casts an different pale on impeachment.  

The vote follows a day-long event in Concord, which was reported to have standing-room-only, in support of HR24.  It featured Daniel Ellsberg, Dr. Robert Bowman, John Nichols, and others as speakers, and the "Paul" of Peter Paul and Mary as part of the entertainment.  

If you are in NH PLEASE CALL your state representative, urge "Yes on HR24." If you are not in New Hampshire you can still pick out a rep. or two and and explain that, although you are not a constituent, you are pleading with them as one American to another to vote yes on HR24.  The eyes of a nation weary of Bush-Cheney law-breaking are upon them.  Say "Please, New Hampshire, save America."  As Daniel Ellsberg has said, just waiting this administration out is not good enough.   Ellsberg argues that no future president or congress will roll back the new powers the government has to spy on us, because they are part of the government and could be beneficiaries.  Ellsberg has said "No congressman is going to cover his ears and say, 'no no I don't want to hear these things about my primary opponent, or that journalist.'"  He says if Bush and Cheney are not firmly reprimanded for breaking the FISA law through impeachment, the new NSA powers will stay, and "democracy is dead."  This, he says, is the main argument against just waiting these idiots out to the end of their terms.

If you are from NH, find your legislator.

If you are not, list of targeted legislators and their phone numbers, pick at random.

Full list of NH legislators (pdf.)

LETTER FROM NH STATE REP. JIM SPAINE

The Impeachment Resolution -- NH State Representative Betty Hall Is An American Hero
by: Rep. Jim Splaine
Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 23:11:34 PM EDT

One of my most golden memories of the New Hampshire State Legislature was in 1973, when I stood with just about two dozen other House members -- we stood in those days on "division" votes since roll calls before push button machines took 45 minutes or so to run through -- in favor of a resolution to call for the impeachment of President Richard "I Am Not A Crook" Nixon.

It was clear the President had lied, and had covered up his lie, and had participated in wrongdoing that put America's democracy in harm's way.  I have to admit that as a young pup that term, and being one of the younger members of the House as opposed to now when I'm close to "average" age (scary, huh?), I was shaking a bit while standing to be counted.

I won' be shaking (because I'll be sitting down just pushing a button) nor will I have any doubt about it being the right thing to do when I vote this coming Wednesday in favor of Representative Betty Hall's resolution calling for the United States Congress to begin an investigation regarding the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney.

Why?  Because just like President Nixon, the current occupant of the White House has lied, had tried to cover it up, and has participated in wrongdoing that has put American's democracy in harm's way.  And HIS lies have resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of other men, women, and children.  The horror of it all.

Yes, this man and his alter ego will be put out of the White House in January.  But neither deserve to journey into history without the asterisk that there were efforts in various states to encourage Congress to impeach them.  As they leave the White House, the past has shown us that former Presidents usually go onto even richer lives and fame.  This one doesn't deserve it. Nor does his partner.  Their legacy should be shame.

The resolution appears in full below.  It is being recommended to be killed by the State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs Committee by a vote of 10-5.  NH State Representative Betty Hall, to me and many others, is an American hero.  She seeks to impeach two people who are not.
---------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------

The vote was before the Senate.  The Majority Leader was leading the floor vote.  The issue was whether or not to reward China with increased trade so soon after a major political repression.  Something you missed in the news about Tibet?  No this was the first time, what made Tibet possible, and told the Chinese government that shooting unarmed protesters and running over them with tanks was okay.  Tiananman Square, 1989, and I remember it like it was yesterday.  

See, no one thought that with the eyes of the world's media upon it, the Chinese could do such a thing. We know violent repressions are nothing new in this world, in fact it's a way of doing business in many places.  This was different.  ABC, NBC, the New York Times and every other paper in the world was working with the idealistic Beijing University students who had organized the mass demonstration for a more equitable distribution of the recent economic boom, which was being stolen by party bosses, the business class connected with the party bosses, and the upper-level bureaucracy.  There were rumors of the army about to be called out to "restore order," but they wouldn't dare.  These students were the next generation, the promise that the Chinese government might someday join the ranks of civilized governments.  They quoted Thomas Jefferson, they built a statue reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty.  Democracy was on the march in places like Berlin and Romania.  They believed we lived in a new day in which the world would not let this happen.  Would take care of them and erupt in outrage if the Chinese government tried to do things the old-fashioned way.

Which they did.  They threw the foreign press out, abruptly sealed off the city, brought in tanks and truckloads of soldiers', and told the students to disperse or else.  

I still have the moving photos from the book "Children of the Dragon," showing students pleading with soldiers in their trucks not to fire on them, to join them as comrades, handing them flowers.  I can see in my mind perfectly the haunted looks in some of the soldiers faces.  

They were mowed down with machine guns and run over with tanks.  I held a picture of a crushed bicycle once before the motorcade of Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who came to power in the wake of Tiananman, when he was welcomed many years later by the president of Harvard Larry Summers, as it passed through Harvard Square and a crush of human rights protesters.  Zemin was in town at the end of a state visit with Bush Senior.  Bill Clinton outdid Bush when he was in power, and gave Zemin a state visit which included the honor accorded only to the fewest international leaders, a 21-gun salute.

But most especially I remember the year just after the Tiananman Square Massacre, when it was being debated whether to grant China Most Favored Nation trade status, in the US Senate.  It was still unclear whether or not the Chinese government would be welcomed into the ranks of civilized nations so soon after Tiananman Square.  Most of the Democrats were against it or had serious qualms, and the Bush Senior administration was pushing for it.  Many people couldn't believe we were even talking about this so soon after the pathetic images of bodies in Tiananman Square and flattened tents had exited the country through brave protesters using the new technology of the fax machine, so that the world knew what was happening.

With the fate of the bill unclear, I remember, Senator Kerry, that you stepped forward with a compromise deal to grant China MFN, rather than fighting like hell against these butchers getting away with this.  The movement against MFN might have picked up steam and a statement might have been made to the Chinese government: No, this is not okay.  Instead, I remember very clearly, you said a compromise bill with a few conditions, like periodic review, was better than the Republicans getting the whole enchilada, since you said they had the votes.  But we didn't know that.  Instead of digging in and making the Republicans explain to outraged Americans why China was being rewarded, keeping them on the hot-seat since the Republicans' own constituents found this revolting, you bailed them out.  It had to be a Democrat who broke ranks, to give political cover, and you were it.  I remember just how it went down.

I passed out flyers in front of your office in government center asking people to call you in protest, and one guy said he walked right into your office and slapped it on your receptionists' desk.  Did you ever get that?

I worked for your campaign before that, and much, much later, I supported your campaign against Bush because it was my patriotic duty to dislodge the man who made premeditated war on Iraq.  

So I guess I came around, eventually.  But I remember.  Oh yes, I remember.  We wore black armbands that day, June 5th, 1989, and I saw some women crying listening to the news reports and the radio.  They were killing the students.  The young beautiful, people we saw dancing in Tiananman Square celebrating their ability to bring good change to their nation, and out of sheer youthful exuberance.  

Now China does whatever it wants to Tibetans, and still gets the Olympics.  Because long ago, they were told it was OK.  
 

Excellent and thought provoking article which must be circulated widely.  Before reading this, I felt that McCain couldn't win the election, but the Democrats were fully capable of losing it. Now I see how McCain can actually win unless the Dems dismantle the circular firing squad.  Full and open impeachment hearings with subpoenaed and sworn witnesses is the only way. Go to the powerpoint book at the end, http://coldtype.net/

Democrats: Impeach, or Face Humiliation in November |

   By Richard W. Behan

   If the Democrats persist in stonewalling the impeachment of George Bush and Richard Cheney, they invite a humiliating defeat in the presidential election this fall.

   For more than a year, the Democrats have gamed the system of Constitutional democracy, refusing to impeach--"It would be too divisive"--in order to assure a Democratic victory in 2008. But the year produced some surprises, and now their scheme stands an excellent chance of backfiring.

   A year ago, John McCain's candidacy languished. Today he is the Republican nominee and a formidable opponent. A year ago, Hillary Clinton's nomination was "inevitable. Today she clings to a miniscule possibility of succeeding in her vitriolic campaign against Barack Obama, who holds a commanding lead in pledged delegates.

   The savage nature of the contest is polarizing the Democratic party--to Mr. McCain's considerable benefit.

   And the Democrats' refusal to impeach has now become a grave liability: it adds enormously to Mr. McCain's advantage.

   Failing to impeach leaves unchallenged and intact the manufactured, distorted "reality" the Bush Administration has imposed on the country--of a perilous and fearful world, necessary warfare, and unending militarism. This is the result of seven years of conscious and effective propagandizing by the Administration, to justify its monstrous deceit: the so-called war on terror. But this bizarre "reality" of fear is now the base-datum of political discourse.

   The fear-mongering has succeeded. "Keeping America safe in the war on terror" remains a slogan of great power, and it bolsters Mr. McCain's stature--and his campaign--with political potence.

   Current tracking polls show the general election tilting slightly toward Mr. McCain. Can he sustain and widen this advantage, and win in November?

   Start with the pall of fear and a decorated war hero, and add a Bush Administration announcement, say two weeks before voting day, of a red-alert terrorist threat; a Democratic victory is far from certain. Now add the full court press of a Republican presidential campaign--spin, hype, smear, attack ads, deception, Swiftboating, and voting fraud; a Democratic victory is in greater jeopardy still.

   Finally, add the Fox television network, which Mr. McCain can reliably include as part of his campaign staff. A recent AP story reported the Fox network is now the most popular in the country, averaging two million more viewers per week than its closest rival.

   In an election drama staged by the Bush Administration and produced by Fox television, a Democratic success is remote.
    The point of major vulnerability here is George Bush' staging: the base-datum of fear, militarism, and warmaking.
    If this staging can be deconstructed, the way is clear for a Democratic victory, and for desperately needed new trajectories in both foreign and domestic policy, as well.

   But the staging is deeply embedded. Not a murmur of protest was registered when President Bush said in his State of the Union speech, "The advance of liberty is opposed by terrorists and extremists--evil men who despise freedom, despise America, and aim to subject millions to their violent rule."

   Following along faithfully, Mr. McCain decries the Democratic candidates' pledge to bring the troops home. "I believe that would have catastrophic consequences," Mr. McCain said. "I believe al Qaeda would trumpet to the world that they had defeated the United States of America, and I believe that therefore they would try to follow us home."

   Worldwide, al Qaeda numbers some 18,000 operatives in 60 different countries, according to the UK's International Institute for Strategic Studies. Suppose in fact they "try to follow us home."

   By what means of transportation will 18,000 terrorists reach the homeland of 303 million people--who are protected by the mightiest military in history? Also unexplained is how, thereafter, we might be made "subject to their violent rule." But the imagery and the words are now widely accepted--rarely scrutinized--and they can't be quickly deconstructed.

   Successful deconstruction can be done only with an abrupt, even explosive eruption of truth, done in full view of the mass media.

   The Congressional Democrats have a unique institutional ability to do this. George Bush and Richard Cheney must be impeached. There is no other forum where their hideous violations of law and the public trust can be displayed--and their staging collapsed--with such immediacy, visibility, and integrity.

   The Bush Administration distorted reality to justify and rationalize its signature violation: their so-called "war on terror." The Administration's true priority, however, was not counterterrorism but Middle East energy assets, according to countless news stories, books, and testimonials (shamefully few of which appeared in the U.S. mass media). They were all written by people constrained by libel laws to tell the truth.

   Truth about a standing offer from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden, awaiting President Bush when he took office. Truth about the Bush Administration spurning the offer three times before September 11, 2001, and twice thereafter. Truth about the Bush Administration meeting repeatedly with the Taliban in early 2001, unsuccessfully negotiating a pipeline route in behalf of the Unocal Corporation. Truth about the Administration notifying Pakistan in July of 2001 "...military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October." Truth about the Administration finally telling the Taliban, "Accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we bury you under a carpet of bombs"--five weeks before 9/11. Truth about repeated written proposals to invade Iraq, spanning the two Bush Administrations and made by four people who served in both--prominently including Richard Cheney. Truth about their triumph when the National Security Council, seven months before 9/11, formalized the commitment to invade Iraq. Truth about Richard Cheney's Energy Task Force studying maps of the Iraqi oil fields in March of 2001. Truth about the Administration designing the privatization of Iraq's nationalized oil industry, fully a year before Congress authorized military action. Truth about the Bush Administration rejecting a peaceful regime change in Iraq--by denying Saddam Hussein's offer to leave the country for exile in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Truth about former consultants to the Unocal Corporation serving as the president of Afghanistan and the second US ambassador there; the first ambassador was a Unocal vice president. Truth about the Bush Administration's readiness in 2003 to finance a pipeline across Afghanistan and station troops permanently to defend it. Truth about Exxon/Mobil, Conoco/Phillips, Shell, and BP/Amoco poised today to profit immensely from 81% of Iraq's undeveloped crude.

   The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are territorial wars for energy dominance, not acts of counter-terrorism. At George Bush's sufferance, the arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden remains free, but Afghanistan and Iraq are administered today by puppet governments and dotted with permanent military bases.

   The Congress has finally confronted the Administration's duplicity. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 expressly prohibited the permanence of military bases in Iraq, and denied funds "to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq." President Bush nullified both provisions with a signing statement.

   The "war on terror" is the mega-lie, from which all the other lies flowed--about weapons of mass destruction, aluminum tubes, mobile laboratories, Nigerian yellowcake, and Saddam Hussein harboring al Qaeda. The mega-lie brought torture, suspension of habeas corpus, domestic spying, cronyism and no-bid contracts, destruction of video tapes, outing an undercover CIA agent, "rendition," murder and rape by contract U.S. mercenaries, and so on beyond counting. 34,000 young American men and women dead or wounded; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis killed; millions of refugees fleeing their homes; economies and cultures in shambles; infrastructure in ruins; sectarian violence; a destabilized region; a half a trillion dollars squandered; America' prestige destroyed and her citizens defamed.

   Mr. McCain, the Fox network, and most Republicans reject such truths as the manic rantings of "liberals." They accept the Bush Administration staging instead, and all the consequences as justified. No amount of journalism or literature will persuade them otherwise, but they cannot escape proof.

   In a situation so severe the Democrats should seek no less, and it is in their power to provide it.

   Proof can be developed in our set of public institutions only in venues of jurisprudence, through legally admissible evidence and sworn testimony, and then declared by a jury's decision.
    Impeachment is such a proceeding. There is no other way to show as well or as quickly the "war on terror" to be the Bush Administration's monstrous deceit--and to prove it, with legally admissible evidence and sworn testimony in the House of Representatives and a jury's declaration in the Senate.

   Aside from maintaining the sanctity of the Constitution--and holding accountable a criminal Administration--three immediate benefits will accrue:

   � Exposing and proving the truth will lift the veil of fear the Bush Administration has imposed.

   � The proven fraudulence of the war will mandate its immediate termination.

   � John McCain's candidacy will be destroyed. No one has been a more enthusiastic champion for George Bush's "war on terror" than Senator McCain. When it is displayed as appalling deceit, Mr. McCain will be shown a willing accomplice--or a tragic fool--and wholly unfit to be president.

   But time is short, and the Democratic party is engaged in a civil war. With their demonstrated genius for losing elections, Mr. McCain might well stroll to the presidency. Unless he is proven to be unfit.

   Democrats, impeach. Or expect to be humiliated.

   Note:
    For a fully documented, detailed history of the "war on terror," see the author's 117-page electronic book entitled "The Fraudulent War." It is available at no cost, in PDF format, at http://coldtype.net/

   Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He has published on the Internet over two dozen articles exposing and criticizing the criminal wars of the Bush Administration. He can be reached at rwbehan@rockisland.com.

Instead of going after Clinton's tax returns, Obama should attack Hillary on her inconsistency on withdrawal from Iraq.  The candidate started to win me over when he had the guts to run, in a $250,000 spot in the middle of the single most testosterone-laden annual event in the world, the Super Bowl, an ad which flashed upon the screen "Getting us out of Iraq."  His string of victories in red states after such a bold, unambiguous statement to the most pumped-up white male audience imaginable told me this was a man of courage, and that America was ready to pull its sons from hell.  

It's clear why the Republicans want Hillary: Her record of statements on Iraq make her perfect for a repeat of the "I was for the war before I was against it" that was used to such devastating effect against John Kerry. The minor modification will be "I was before withdrawal before I was against it."

In 2005, in an echo of a recent Bush statement, she said immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake.  Then she said Bush's pledge to stay "until the job is done" was also a mistake.  So where does she fall?  Obviously she wants to withdraw not right away, but somewhere short of having the job "done."  Great.  Republican strategists are drooling for this ad and, if Obama is the nominee will feel like wolves within reaching distance of 20 pounds of raw elk meat watching it yanked away.

Helen Thomas reports:

On Tuesday, June 19, Clinton told a union audience that she favored keeping some troops in Iraq "to protect our interests" there after a major pullout. But the following day, she told an activist anti-war gathering that she wants U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq...declaring: "We're going to end the war in Iraq and finally bring our troops home."

Jason Easley:

Just when you think that possibly Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has done something to clarify her position on the war in Iraq, she turns around and has a day like she did on Wednesday. Clinton said originally that she would support an amendment that would have established a withdrawal deadline for the U.S. troops in Iraq, but by then she told reporters that she would not support the amendment, but in the end, she ended up voting for the amendment anyway. At first, Clinton was asked if she favored the troop withdrawal legislation before the Senate. She said, "I'm not going to speculate on what I'm going to be voting on in the future. I voted in favor of cloture to have a debate."

Later in the day, she changed her mind and said, "I support the underlying bill. That's what this vote on cloture was all about." He vague answers and mind changing are starting to leave even her fellow Democrats a little confused. A campaign spokesperson for Sen. Chris Dodd said, "We're as confused as anyone on Senator Clinton's position. Frankly, it's hard to know whether it's indecision, miscommunication or simple word games and political gamesmanship we're dealing with.

The issue of Hillary's tax returns and other housekeeping problems should be raised, but not by Obama.  As Hillary's campaign well understands, these kinds of attacks are the job of henchmen.  It is unfortunate that the the Clinton campaign has chosen to go highly negative against Obama, with the possible result that not only will Clinton be unable to beat McCain, but a damaged Obama won't either.  

Go to ObaMO.org!

If there is anything George Bush can rely on to keep us in Iraq, it is the threat that we will be "handing it over to Al Qaeda" if we withdraw, and inviting civil war.  Whether you support the occupation, supported it before but now regret it, or were against it from the start, our options have dwindled to zero.  We can't stop the world's worst humanitarian disaster from unfolding before our eyes - a proportionate number of refugees in the US would equal 50 million people - but we can't pull out.  This is the classic definition of a quagmire.

There is only one problem: What if neither of these Apocalyptic premises are true?

Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said: "I have never been persuaded to believe that whether we stay there six months, a year, or two years, that if we would leave, that somehow Iraq would turn into a haven for terrorists."  The evidence would indicate Hagel is correct.  Al Qaeda in Iraq is roundly hated for targeting civilians.    It is a small foreign force of at most 2000 fighters (the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group puts it at closer to 1300.)  That's about ten percent of those taking up arms against the US occupation.

Al Qaeda consists of Yemenis, Algerians, Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, and other nationalities.  They speak different dialects of Arabic with different accents.  What's clear to Iraqis is they are not Iraqi.  Iraq is above all a tribal society, closely knit by bonds of kinship, intermarriage, and locality.  People know who you are, who your brothers are, and who's new in the neighborhood.  Col. Gary Anderson (USMC, retired) says "the people in Iraq who are going to be most sorry to see us go are Al Qaeda. We're the only rationale for them being around. Absent us, they become foreigners."

I hope to show that not only is our presence in Iraq beneficial to Al Qaeda; they actually need us there to survive.  Al Qaeda is neither wanted nor liked in Iraq.  The sooner we pull out, the sooner the local populations will identify  and expel them, or kill them.

What the occupation has managed to do is to make Al Qaeda the devils the Iraqis will tolerate in their fight against American troops.   The 2006 Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group found that 61 percent of Iraqis favor attacks on American forces.  After the 2006 bombing in Samarra, of one of the Shias' holiest sites, a spokesman for the Sunni insurgent group Al-Sunna said "our people have come to hate Al Qaeda, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists.  Fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy."

There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before the summer of 2003, when it burst on the scene with characteristic violence.  Its attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad which killed Brazilian diplomat Sergio DeMello and 21 other UN personnel forced the UN to pull out.  The message was : Don't work with the Americans.    In bombing after bombing Al Qaeda has shown its gift for alienating the local population.  In July of 2007, Ansar Al-Sunna and six other nationalist and Sunni Islamist resistance groups united behind an anti-Al Qaeda platform, opposed attacks on civilians, and called for negotiations with Americans on a full withdrawal.

The fear that US withdrawal will unleash an intractable civil war betrays a misreading of Iraqi history.  While a little knowledge makes it easy to subscribe to the idea that 'Saddam kept a lid on it, now we've got to' and 'they've been at each other's throats for a thousand years,' (and I admit I once subscribed to this fallacy) deeper study shows that the embers of sectarian division have always been fanned by those interested in a strategy of divide-and-dominate.  Whether under the Ottomans, the British, or under Saddam Hussein, the pattern has been to set one tribal or religious faction against another, in order to, as Jonathan Steele writes in his book Defeat, "fragment Iraqi society and prevent opposition coalescing around groups with a potentially national appeal."  

Left to itself, the natural forces in Iraqi society show a remarkable gravitational pull inward, expressed by high rates of intermarriage between Sunni and Shia, mixed neighborhoods, inter-religious cooperation, and the refusal of many Iraqis to identify themselves as members of one sect or another.  During the American offensive against the Sunni stronghold of Falluja in 2004, which most Iraqis view as collective punishment for the killing and mutilation of four American contractors, American journalist Dahr Jamail  reported that he "saw crowds of Shiites at the Abu Hanifa mosque in the heavily Sunni and Baathist Baghdad neighborhood of al-Adhamiya loading trucks with bags of food, blood for transfusions and many young male "humanitarian" volunteers-all ready for shipment to besieged Falluja."  Similarly, after the 2004 Kerbala and Kadhimiya bombings against Shia shrines in 2004, Sunni imams in Falluja used minaret loudspeaker systems to urge people to donate blood, calls which by one account more than 1000 Sunnis answered.  

Many Iraqis take offense at reporters' efforts to identify them as Sunni or Shiite.   A 2004 Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies poll found the largest category of Iraqis classified themselves as "just Muslim."  The journalist Jamail says "on the ground, Sunnis and Shiites are much more intertwined by bonds of tribal affiliation and family than is commonly understood in the United States. Descend from the politically charged worlds of the Shiite imams, Sunni sheiks and mainstream media to the realm of everyday people, and the danger of civil war seems more remote."

The Sunni-dominant, Shiite-subordinate model of Iraq under Saddam is a vast oversimplification which gets in the way of understanding what will happen when we leave.  It's true that under Saddam, the ruling Baath Party was predominantly Sunni, but it's more important to remember that everyone suffered under Saddam, including Sunnis.  Saddam's great skill was to play Sunni against Sunni, Shia against Shia, and of course the two sects against each other.   In 1991, as the U.S. incited Shiites to revolt after Saddam's thrashing in the first Gulf War, he put out propaganda on state television about Shia mobs rampaging out of control, to turn the middle classes against the uprising.  

Saddam co-opted, punished, bribed and tortured Sunni and Shia alike.  During the 2003 invasion, as coalition forces approached the southern city of Basra, US and British forces were surprised to meet resistance from black-clad members of the local Saddam Fedayeen, who were local Shias.   The Saddam Fedayeen along with the Republican Guard were Saddam's two personal elite units.  The invading forces had assumed all Fedayeen were Sunni.   In fact under Saddam there were many Shiite Baath party members.  Lost in the narrative of the Sunni-dominant, Shia-subordinate model is the fact that when Saddam consolidated power in 1979, his first victims were Sunni in his drive to favor his own tribe and clan, the Baijat, and the Albu-Nassir.

The ways of Iraq's clans have proven a source of constant mystery to Middle East observers.  When Lt. General Hussein Kamel, Saddam's cousin and son-in-law, defected to Jordan in 1995 to tell the West about the state of Saddam's biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs, he was promised safety if he would return to Iraq.  He was promptly killed in a 13-hour firefight against other family members.  It is hard to believe Kamel was a naive man who did not know that Saddam's promises of safety were hollow.  A family member said "family honor had been restored."   If Americans are to understand the balance between violence and long-term equilibrium in Iraqi society, the best model is not the Sunni-dominant-Shia-subordinate model, but perhaps the gangland politics of New York.

Sectarian and inter-tribal violence are not inevitable, although it flares up now and then.  As the Turk said in Coppola's Godfather, blood is a big expense.

Defeat author Steele says: "Occupations are inherently humiliating.  People prefer to run their own affairs.  A foreign army that topples a regime needs to leave within weeks or, at most, months.  Otherwise, suspician will quickly grow that the foreigner's real aims are imperial - to run the country directly or through the locals it puts in charge, and to exploit its resources."  When the occupier overstays, they are "drawn into a cycle of action and reaction, which undermines their initial goals.  Improvisation and short-term crisis control replace strategic thinking.  Insurgency is met with repression.  Those who thought they came as liberators are perceived as murderous outsiders.  Those who work with them are seen as traitors."

Al Qaeda understands that when we leave, it is vulnerable.  This explains its brutal campaign to spark war between Sunnis and Shiites.   But over and over,  and ominously to lesser effect the longer we stay, the leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Sistani and his counterparts in the Sunni community call for a rejection of revenge.  After the 2004 car bombings which killed 200 Shia civilians in Kerbala and Kadhimiya, the Shia cleric Ayatollah Hadi al-Muddaresi said "There are parties and groups that are willing to push Iraq towards civil war, but the material to make it happen isn't there.  We as Shias refuse to be drawn into such a conflict."

Iraqi political scientist Wamid Nadhmi says, "It will take Iraqis something like a quarter of a century to rebuild their country, to heal their wounds, to reform their society, to bring about some sort of national reconciliation, democracy and tolerance of each other. But that process will not begin until the US occupation of Iraq ends."  Division to the point of warfare along class, ideological, religious, ethnic, or national lines has a long and complicated history in human affairs.  At times economic and political forces seem to take hold and propel the sides to the tragic conclusion, as in the American War Between the States.  But at other times embers are skillfully inflamed.  Iraq's history suggests that, like the New York mobs, full-scale war occasionally  breaks out in fits and starts, but the equilibrium tends toward coexistence.

"The Americans are masters at making other people hate them," says Adnan Abu Odeh, former Jordanian ambassador to the UN.  "People used to be ambivalent about America....Until this war they only hated one thing about America, its Middle East policy."  Aside from the thousands of civilian casualties that have taken place so far at American checkpoints and during combat with suspected insurgents, the testimony of our own troops is damning.  Sgt. John Bruhns in a Nation Special Report said: "You go up the stairs. You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall...You'll go into the fridge, if he has a fridge, and you'll throw everything on the floor, and you'll take his drawers and you'll dump them.... You'll open up his closet and you'll throw all the clothes on the floor and basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just hit it....So you've just humiliated this man in front of his entire family and terrorized his entire family and you've destroyed his home. And then you go right next door and you do the same thing in a hundred homes...We scared the living Jesus out of them every time we went through every house..."

Col. Douglas Macgregor says "We arrested people in front of their families, dragging them away in handcuffs with bags over their heads, and then provided no information to the families of those we incarcerated. In the end, our soldiers killed, maimed and incarcerated thousands of Arabs, 90 percent of whom were not the enemy. But they are now."

The so-called Anbar Awakening may provide the best and last window to extricate ourselves from Iraq with a semblance of dignity and honor.  The Shia cleric Moktada al-Sadr has stuck by his temporary ceasefire, which has given the US breathing space.  Success in Anbar Province has been predicated mainly on American troops being confined to bases, a lesson for the rest of the country which should not escape us.  As it is abundantly clear that the present administration has no intention of doing anything but exactly what it has beeen doing in Iraq, we should impeach Bush and Cheney and settle on an unambitious interim Republican president, such as Gerald Ford was for the last of Nixon's term, who will deliver to the world this message: The US declares victory in Iraq, and courtesy of the sacrifices of our brave soldiers they now have their freedom back.  What they do with it now is up to them.  Paying a UN force of Muslim troops from Indonesia, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria (which fields excellent soldiers) and other countries willing to contribute will cost a small fraction of the $250 million per day we now spend in Iraq.  Bremer's 2005 decrees, known as the TLA, Transitional Administrative Law, should be revoked, to return to the Iraqis the oil and the economy that they now suspect the US of having imperial designs over.  

Sami Zubaida, the Iraqi sociologist, argued: "The present sorry state of Iraqi politics, dominated by religious authority and sectarian interests, is not the natural state of Iraqi society without authoritarian discipline.  It is the product precisely of that authoritarian regime and the social forces that engendered it."  The strategy of divide and dominate is an old one in Iraq, and the latest player to understand it is Al Qaeda.  But it won't work.  Non-Iraqis are identifiable.  As Iraqis put their own house in order, pitched battles with Al Qaeda holdouts will occur, as well as, to be sure, some pitched battles between Iraqis to settle the final shape of borders and turf.  

Colonel T.X. Hammes (USMC, retired) says "The Kurds have their area; the Shiites have theirs; the Sunnis have theirs. The ethnic cleansing continues, but at a low level. Things will get much better for the Iraqis, but it's not an explosively violent situation."

The invasion of Iraq was ostensibly intended to uncover weapons of mass destruction, even though evidence and ongoing inspections indicated the programs had been destroyed.  This includes the testimony of Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, the defector, who revealed that he himself had ordered the weapons destroyed.  The reasons for the WMD in Iraq in the first place originate in the Iraq-Iran War, a fact almost always ignored in the media.  The US helped Saddam with chemical agents to help break the human wave attacks of the numerically superior Iranian army.

The weapons were never found, and the dictator is gone.  But the occupation's damage to US interests mounts daily. It has been argued that Iraq is a magnet for jihadis, a good metaphor but not quite true.  It is more of a factory for jihadis, not just attracting terrorists but causing them to multiply.  A Delta Force soldier once asked on Air America Radio what the political strategy was for reducing the numbers of terrorists.  He was happy to kill them for us in Afghanistan, but he saw that a military approach alone was not adequate.  Those Delta Force liberals.      

Former CIA official Paul Pillar contends: "From the standpoint of all the American interests involved, getting out sooner and more quickly is better than getting out slower and less quickly. There will be more killing as we leave, and that will be true whenever we leave. And there will not necessarily be less killing by leaving later rather than sooner."

Journalist Nir Rosen writes: "When the Jordanian al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi boldly declared war on Shias in a speech, Iraq's radical Sunni leadership reacted quickly to condemn it. The Association of Muslim Scholars announced that Iraq's Shias were not responsible for the crimes the government was committing with the Americans' blessings and that they were innocent of the attacks against Sunnis carried out by the Americans. No religious principle allows one to seek revenge on an innocent person...Meanwhile five resistance groups--the Army of Muhamad, the al Qaqa Battalions, the Islamic Army of Iraq, the Army of Mujahideen and the Salehdin Brigades--also condemned Zarqawi's statements as a "fire burning the Iraqi people.""

What may be necessary in order to firmly legitimize Iraq's government is a new round of post-occupation elections.  After the invasion, the Shiite cleric Al-Sistani gave the Americans one of their many missed opportunities in calling for immediate elections.  This was rejected by the Bush administration until the insurgency had already gathered steam in 2005.  Sistani held that the ballot box was the best way to immediately weed out the "bad" Baathists, which did not mean all Baathists, and to get the country running again.  His reasoning was that the local people knew better than anyone who had done what under Saddam.  New elections which do not automatically exclude all former Baathists will return to Iraq the vital technical and administrative class necessary to start running the country day-to-day, which, with electricity down to an average of two hours per day in Baghdad, is simply not happening.  We should compensate Jordan and other neighboring countries who are playing host to large numbers of Iraqi refugees, again at a fraction of the cost of running a military occupation.  Those Iraqis who wish to leave after the American pull-out should be allowed to do so.  Their reintegration into other Arab communities will require time.

Once the civil war-terror haven myth is debunked, a number of things can start to happen soon.  First, of course, we can begin to win the war on terror.  Afghanistan is clearly the arena where we are needed now, and pulling out of Iraq will free up hundreds, if not thousands, of US Special Operations soldiers to bolster the shaky Afghan mission.  This is the country where we are actually wanted by the general population, which is friendly but badly intimidated.  Withdrawing from Iraq will shut down the most successful recruiting tool in bin Laden's arsenal, as well as the dangerous training ground perfected in Iraq but now being carried over to Afghanistan, as the appearance of Iraqi-style car bombs is showing.    

Secondly, resources become available for whatever action must finally come to close out Al Qaeda's central office in Northern Pakistan.  This may not be possible under a Bush administration, as the delicate international diplomacy required to gain the cooperation of the Pakistani government, or at least gain its non-interference, would be a level of diplomacy similar to that required prior to Nixon's opening of China.  The opportunity must not be lost to make amends to the Muslim world, for the US history of supporting corrupt, undemocratic regimes in order to insure the flow of cheap oil.  In northwest Pakistan, the recent victory by the Awami National Party, which rejects Islamic extremism, was the rarest sort of welcome news for the West.  These opportunities must not be squandered the way so many opportunities to stabilize Iraq were lost by the Neo-Con administration, which had as its goal the planting of permanent US bases from which to control the oil fields and to threaten Iran.  The Neo-Conservative  Project for a New American Century never envisioned the best course after the overthrow of Saddam: a quick US withdrawal after purging the Baath Party's worst elements.

The occupation of Iraq should not, like Vietnam, become a test of the national will when it is clear there is no military solution, as Congressman Jack Murtha declared in 2006.  Now even war-hawk Richard Perle reflects: "The biggest mistake was not turning political authority over to the Iraqis immediately when Baghdad fell....I am not sure the insurgency would have evolved out of that situation.  I think we screwed it up."  And Republic of Fear author Kinan Makiya, darling of the right and a passionate advocate of the invasion, has said "The first and the biggest American error was the idea of going for an occupation."

We should begin saving our soldiers' lives immediately by withdrawing without regard to the pleas of the corrupt government in the Green Zone.  As Zbigniew Brezinski observed, "the people who keep begging us to stay will probably leave with us when we go."  The saving of our soldiers' lives cannot wait for a new administration to be elected.  Their lives take precedence over the nation's electoral calendar.  Zbigniew Brezinski says that Bush "doesn't want to bite the bullet on the difficult decision because in his thinking, any decision to set a date is an acknowledgement of the failure of his policy, and therefore he wants that failure to be attached to whoever is the next president."

Otherwise, Col. Macgregor says "We will postpone the inevitable requirement to get out to the point where we are swimming in a sea of constant hostility, and then we will make a lot of bad decisions."  Macgregor notes that "right now, the Air Force is trying to fly in large quantities of water as well as soldiers and repair parts into the fortresses because they can't land outside of the large fortresses and bases anymore without being attacked. That's how hostile the country has become."  "The longer you wait to make that decision, the tougher the mission of getting out becomes. It doesn't get easier; it gets tougher."

"We've even lost our right to get undressed for bed" says Saad al-Mahdawi, an Iraqi Islamic Party member who had been tortured under Saddam.   He refers to the humiliation of Iraqi men now living with the system of American house raids, which helps generate the hatred which fuels the insurgency, and besmirches the image of the US abroad.  "Saddam's security people used to send a paper saying you had to report to their office.  Of course I complied.  The Americans come to your home.  Under Saddam they humiliated you in their gaols, not in front of our families."  Perhaps saying it best was the Iraqi who approached the author Steele in Baghdad one month after the invasion, in late April of 2003: "Thank you for getting rid of Saddam.  Now goodbye."

Kucinich introduction of articles of impeachment against George Bush imminent on CSPAN (House Session) CSPAN live online here  LET'S BLAST THE MEDIA NOW!  Tell them to pay attention and report this!

Mike Pence (R-IN), Judiciary Committee, hometown papers:
The Anderson Herald Bulletin, INDIANA
The Star Press, Muncie, IN

Howard Coble (R-NC), Judiciary Committee, hometown papers:
The Greensboro News-Record, NC

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Minneapolis Star Tribune form

On July 22, 2005, Special Forces Colonel Patrick Lang said before a congressional committee that, as a result of the exposure of Valerie Plame, our ability to know when terrorists would "carry 10-pound bags of explosive in subway stations" would "go right down the drain."  The media never reported this.  Instead it was busy chasing the White House spin that Plame was not a covert agent.  It was crucial to the White House that Plame's job description be fogged up.  Even on the right, there was speculation that this was one scandal from which the Bush administration would not recover.

Playing hardball with critics like Joe Wilson, Plame's husband, was one thing.  Exposing an undercover informant network was another.     Although many details about Plame's career are still classified, we know her job consisted mainly of detecting the movement of weapons of mass destruction.  If she was only a bureaucrat, why would a Special Forces Colonel, Middle East specialist, and professor of Arabic like Lang sit before a committee and say that Plame's unmasking was an "assault" on our ability to prevent terrorist attack?

So how about a replay of that scrimmage?  After all, it only involves our safety from attack, according to Colonel Lang.  The focus in the Plame Affair was always political payback to Wilson and all the Nigerian yellowcake stuff.  So what?  This is Washington.  Payback is everything.   The focus was never how, within hours of her exposure, every hostile intelligence service in the world had run Plame's name through its databases.  That would include Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, which we know is shot through with Al Qaeda sympathizers.

The snap!  Plame betrayed by someone in Cheney's office, maybe on orders from Cheney, as payback to Wilson for exposing a lie.  Fumble: Plame's job turns out to be weapons of mass destruction.  Spread the word that Wilson gave John Kerry a campaign donation, and that Plame had an office at CIA headquarters.  She was a paper pusher!  At all costs make people forget she spent nearly 30 years as the most secret kind of operative, a non-official cover (NOC), which basically means the government can deny your existence if you are killed.

Recovery.  That was very, very close.

The White House spin machine is good at seizing on something which, in logic, is called "irrelevant."  Like a campaign donation to Kerry, and building it into something that has nothing to do with the price of eggs in China.  Why are we talking about John Kerry?  Did Plame have undercover networks, yes or no?

Special Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald referred to "national security" no less than three times in his first press conference on Plame.  Inexplicably, he settled on the lower charge of violation of the Intelligence Identity Act, rather than the higher charge of treason.  

Colonel Lang spoke of a violation of "trust" which spread like a "shockwave" among the foreigners who had worked with Plame.  When she was exposed, they were exposed too.  The message to those who would help us against our enemies was: the Americans cannot be trusted to protect their informants.  How can you help people like these?  

Bush's pardon of Libby sent the bigger message: partisan politics trumps everything for Americans.  It even trumps their own safety.  The Founders pondered outlawing political parties.  They feared that parties could blind people to the difference between what's good for the party, and what's good for the country.  

The pardon of Libby means old Scooter has no incentive to talk about really happened, to save his own rear end.

Now that powerful Florida congressman Robert Wexler has called for impeachment hearings to begin "immediately" against Cheney, let's hope people start to see the difference between party and country.  And that Cheney's chickens have come home to roost.  By its inaction on impeachment, Congress is rapidly becoming complicit in the crimes of Dick Cheney.