Booman Tribune

If You Elect Me to Congress...

Hey, I promise that if you elect me to Congress that I won't ever take language from any lobbyist and use it on the House floor or enter it into the Congressional Record. I can think and speak for myself. In fact, I don't see much reason to accept advice or even talk to most lobbyists at all. The only exception might be local groups from my home district (concerned citizens) who have banded together over some issue. If I'm going to vote on something I don't understand that well, I have a staff to help me out. I don't want them taking talking points from lobbyists. What goes on DC is just a joke.

Quote of the Day

Why not just call them bedwetters, Jerry? "I invite any of my colleagues who say that they are afraid to bring detainees into the United States to face trial to come to New York and see how we handle them." - Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Ground Zero) Crazy Steve King (R-Iowa) wants Nadler to share a bunk with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Upon learning of the Judiciary panel's Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties subcommittee chairman's approval, King retorted, "Well, then take [KSM] over and bunk him with Jerry Nadler.� I don't think Nadler wants to shack up with KSM. He's just not a giant coward like Steve King.

Learn the Lessons of Vietnam

While working as Hau Nghia province representative for USAID in 1965, retired Lt. Col. John Paul Vann wrote the following letter to General Robert York: If it were not for the fact that Vietnam is but a pawn in the larger East-West confrontation, and that our presence here is essential to deny the resources of this area to Communist China, then it would be damned hard to justify our support of the existing government. There is a revolution going on in this country--and the principles, goals, and desires of the other side are much closer to what Americans believe in than those of GVN [the Saigon Government]. I realize that ultimately, when the Chinese brand of Communism takes over, that these "revolutionaries" are going to be sadly disappointed--but then it will be too late--for them; and too late for us to win them. I am convinced that, even though the National Liberation Front is Communist-dominated, that the great majority of the people supporting it are doing so because it is their only hope to change and improve their living conditions and opportunities. If I were a lad of eighteen faced with the same choice--whether to support the GVN or NLF--and a member of a rural community, I would surely choose the NLF. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, by Neil Sheehan, pg. 524. Vann was one of the few Americans who were clear-eyed about the situation on the ground in Vietnam as our forces started arriving in huge numbers during the escalation of 1965. But even he suffered from erroneous assumptions. He believed that we had a strategic imperative to deny South Vietnam to the Chinese. We didn't. And the North Vietnamese had no intention of allowing the Chinese to dominate them. We were escalating to save a government that wasn't worth saving, and for strategic purposes that didn't even exist. We now face a similar choice in Afghanistan. We know that Karzai's government is undeserving of Afghans' loyalty. We know that they are corrupt. We know that their army is a paper tiger. The question, then, is if we have some overriding strategic imperative to prop up this government and train this army. It seems to me that we need to reexamine our assumptions about the enemy there. If the following is true, we need to be honest with ourselves about it. Indeed, the intelligence reports say the Taliban movement that harbored the Al Qaeda terrorist network before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is responsible for only a small share of the rising attacks - mostly in southern Afghanistan, according to the officials... ...US commanders and politicians often loosely refer to the enemy as the Taliban or Al Qaeda, giving rise to the image of holy warriors seeking to spread a fundamentalist form of Islam. But the mostly ethnic Pashtun fighters are often deeply connected by family and social ties to the valleys and mountains where they are fighting, and they see themselves as opposing the United States because it is an occupying power, the officials and analysts said. In 1965, US Commanders and politicians often loosely referred to the resistance in Vietnam as pawns of Communist China. They were wrong. And, because they were wrong, we were making a major commitment to prevent something that was never going to happen. Our national security was never threatened by Ho Chi Minh. Also in 1965, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, John McNaughton, wrote the following memo for Bob McNamara, explaining the justification for escalating the war. 70%--To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputations as a guarantor) 20%--To keep SVN (and the adjacent territory) from Chinese hands. 10%--To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life. That was a depressingly candid assessment of our priorities, and helps explain why we were willing to destroy villages in order to save them. What's interesting is how high a priority our establishment put on saving face. We didn't want to let South Vietnam go down the drain because it would lead other countries to question our ability to guarantee their security. As Vann had asserted, Vietnam was just a pawn in a larger East-West confrontation. The parallel for our own times is in the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf. If we abandon Afghanistan, what conclusions will Kuwait, or Qatar, or Oman, or Bahrain, make about our security arrangements with them? There could be similar implications for our relationships with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. This is the kind of stinking-thinking that got 58,000 Americans killed in Indochina. During the Cold War, we could at least comfort ourselves with the belief that this kind of neo-imperialism was saving people from communist-domination. In the post-Cold War era, the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is a thin reed to cling to in justifying what is more accurately described as a desire to sell advanced weaponry and service contracts to new client states. If we are not really fighting fundamentalists in Afghanistan, then we can't cite that as our reason for escalation. We have to realistically, and honestly, assess our national security interests. We are in danger of failing to do that. We cannot afford to make the same mistake twice.

More of Cheney's 9/11 Lies Exposed

I know this is probably not a great surprise to many of us who were never Bush worshipers, but a new book by John Farmer, The Ground Truth, offers further proof that President Cheney lied about the events of 9/11 and that the FAA and NORAD altered critical documentary evidence to support the lies that Cheney told about the role he and other senior administration officials played on the day that "changed everything." As senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, Farmer, who was the attorney general of New Jersey and is the dean of the Rutgers School of Law, investigated the derelict conduct of the national security apparatus. [...] But the commission�s efforts to reconstruct the tragedy itself were, at best, resented and, at worst, impeded by the sprawling defense bureaucracy and the Bush administration, both of which had much to hide. Even two reports by the inspectors general of the Defense and Transportation Departments, released in 2006, whitewashed government failures. Now that numerous transcripts and tapes have been declassified, however, Farmer draws on them to assail the government�s official depiction of 9/11 as so much public relations flimflam. Perhaps nothing perturbs Farmer more than the contention that high-ranking officials responded quickly and effectively to the revelation that Qaeda attacks were taking place. Nothing, Farmer indicates, could be further from the truth: [...] it was the ground-level commanders who made operational decisions in an ad hoc fashion. [...] [B]oth Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided palpably false versions that touted the military�s readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington. Planes were never in place to intercept it. By the time the Northeast Air Defense Sector had been informed of the hijacking, United 93 had already crashed. Farmer scrutinizes F.A.A. and Norad rec�ords to provide irrefragable evidence that a day after a Sept. 17 White House briefing, both agencies suddenly altered their chronologies to produce a coherent timeline and story that �fit together nicely with the account provided publicly by Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney.� Farmer further observes that the Bush administration wrongly asserted that the chain of command functioned on 9/11; that President Bush issued an authorization to shoot down hijacked commercial flights; and that top officials at F.A.A. headquarters coordinated their actions with the military. Farmer�s verdict: �History should record that whether through unprecedented administrative incompetence or orchestrated mendacity, the American people were misled about the nation�s response to the 9/11 attacks.� As I said no surprise. And the fact of the matter is that in order to spare themselves political embarrassment, crucial lessons about why our government and military failed to protect us on September 11th from a handful of mostly Saudi and Egyptian born terrorists have not been corrected. Farmer contends that this conspiracy to cover up the mistakes that were made in order to paint a false picture of competence, both by Bush administration officials and members of the Defense establishment, have prevented necessary changes that need to be made in order for our government to effectively respond to catastrophic events, both man made disasters such as 9/11 and natural catastrophes. Clearly, the same failures of leadership and preparedness shown by the Bush administration on 9/11 were also evident in the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. Indeed, the lies and attempted cover up about the government's response to Katrina were all the more evident in 2005, because by that time the American public, and some media figures (though not all, unfortunately), we were no longer willing to give the Bushies the benefit of the doubt since its record by that time of massive corruption, incompetence and a continuous campaign to to mislead the public to advance its agenda had become so nakedly apparent that it was no longer possible for any objective observer to ignore. This book should give the lie to the myth of the Republican Party's preeminence on matters of National Security. Because any ideology or political party which views government as the problem, and privatization of government functions in order to funnel tax payer dollars to "friendly corporations" as rewards for campaign contributions, cannot be expected to understand, much less respond competently, the real threats we as a nation face. For all our complaints about Obama and the Democrats, at least they haven't yet displayed the same level of sheer mendacity, corruption, ideological blindness and incompetence that the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress displayed every single day during the years 2001-2009.

WSJ Editorial Staff: Bedwetters

I thought the WSJ might be different. Maybe they would be strong and full of courage like the city they work in. Nope. They saved it for the very end, but they wet their bed anyway. Terrorists also love a big stage, and none come bigger than New York. Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, made his civilian trial a spectacle. Not even the best judge can entirely stop KSM and others from doing the same. And Mr. Holder has invited grave and needless security risks by tempting jihadists the world over to strike Manhattan while the trial is in session. Boo-fucking-hoo. You know who has faced grave security risks ever since 9/11? Our armed forces, that's who. So, stop whining. You want the typical response from New Yorkers? Here it is: briane on November 13th, 2009 2:00 pm Jeez, it�s a good thing the trial�s gonna be in NYC. Let us deal with the terrorists. It�s personal. All you in the rest of the country can go lay down on the fainting couch until you grow a pair. All of the rest country can stay on the fainting couch if they agree with this, from the WSJ editorial board: Most Americans, we suspect, can overlook the legal niceties and see this episode through the lens of common sense. Foreign terrorists who wage war on America and everything it stands for have no place sitting in a court of law born of the values they so detest. Mr. Holder has honored mass murder by treating it like any other crime. I don't care whether terrorists detest our values or rely upon them; that has nothing to do with me. I want my country to uphold its values, not surrender them to the assholes who attacked us. But, then, I'm not a bedwetter.

Palin's Stupid Book

Sarah Palin's stupid book isn't even on store shelves yet and it is already getting torn apart by the Associated Press as a load of bullcrap. But, what did you expect? The woman doesn't even have a passing acquaintance with the truth, which became obvious when the first thing out of her mouth after being nominated was that she'd said 'no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere.' That was debunked within eight minutes. Meet the new candidate...she's a bald-faced liar. And it was just downhill from there. Next we learned she was a moran.

NRO Bedwetters

The main reason that supporters of Bush's anti-terror policies are wetting their pajamas is pretty clear from a look at National Review Online: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and � depending on what judge catches the case � they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see � in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us. No doubt the defense attorneys will try to exclude evidence obtained while these defendants were being tortured in black prison sites. But, the DOJ isn't going to rely on any of that evidence. No judge is going to allow a self-defense argument, so our policies are not going to be on trial. The indictments will be based on information obtained legally. The right is afraid that these folks will be convicted and sentenced to death for a crime that can proven without resorting to torture. And, then, what will be left of their justification for despoiling our country's reputation for upholding human rights? Their continued expression of fear at the prospect of having these terrorists present on American soil is pathetic. They ought to spend the rest of their days huddling in their 1950's-built nuclear bombshelters. The only thing they fear more than terrorist attacks is having to face up to the pointlessness of what has been done with their support.

Bedwetters

I am waiting for all the bedwetters who live nowhere near New York City to start crying about how dangerous it is to put al-Qaeda suspects on trial in New York. Also, it is so unfair to put people on trial rather than just endlessly detaining them with no due process of law. Of all the issues facing this country, the one that irritates me the most is this issue of how to deal with Guantanamo Bay. A country that can send young people to die in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan can ask its civilians to accept a small degree of risk to uphold the rule of law. I despise politicians who argue that we are a nation of cowards even as they cheerlead our imperial wars. If this country can't hold these trials, it is unworthy of not only respect, but fear. Is John Boehner right? Are we a nation of bedwetters? The president doesn't think so. I'm not sure. We shall see.

Doing the Right Thing With the 9/11 Plotters

Attorney General Eric Holder will announce today that the five suspects most closely tied to the September 11th attacks will be moved to New York City and tried in civilian courts. The suspects include: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Waleed bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed to masterminding the plot, selling it to bin-Laden, and working out the logistics. Waleed bin Attash is accused of involvement in the 1998 African Embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and of recruiting some of the so-called 'muscle hijackers.' Ramzi Binalshibh was a member of the Hamburg cell who attempted to enter the United States for pilot training but was rejected. He worked as a liaison between Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atta. Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi allegedly financed the hijackers from the United Arab Emirates and facilitated the travel of the 'muscle hijackers.' Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali (aka Ammar al-Baluchi) is accused of providing logistical support for the hijackers, as well as cultural training for their time spent in America. These five detainees are the so-called worst of the worst. Much of the evidence against them is tainted by torture. However, there remains banking, travel, and electronic records that can implicate them. If these men can be tried in civilian courts then it is hard to see why all of the detainees cannot be tried in civilian courts. I hope the Obama administration gets credit for this from the same people who have been justly critical of them on these issues so far. In related news, President Obama's legal counsel, Greg Craig, is being replaced by Anita Dunn's husband, Bob Bauer. Let's see if the Republicans and Harry Reid throw another fit over the horror of bringing al-Qaeda suspects to the United States for trial.

Serious Question

If a Lanny Davis stops writing a column for the Moonie Times, does it make any noise?

Casual Observation

It seems the last places on earth that the Cold War still exists is in the minds of right wing tea baggers and North Korea's government. Both groups see the US Government as their enemy. I wonder why that is?* * That's a rhetorical question, so feel free to answer it or not, though I'd still love to get your answers if you are so inclined.

On Afghanistan, Can We Talk?

I don't think Hamid Karzai is a terrible guy. I just think he's incapable of governing Afghanistan. What I don't understand is why we would think we can succeed where he has failed. He gets his hands dirty trying, because you have to get your hands dirty if you want to make a sincere effort to govern Afghanistan. But, why would we want to get our hands dirty? Recent intelligence reports suggest that the majority of insurgents in Afghanistan are more motivated by simple avarice and xenophobia than any religious fundamentalism. Ironically, this leads to non-sequiturs like this: Indeed, the intelligence reports say the Taliban movement that harbored the Al Qaeda terrorist network before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is responsible for only a small share of the rising attacks - mostly in southern Afghanistan, according to the officials... ...It...raises prospects for reconciliation with some of them. For example, two major insurgent groups are believed to have allied with the Taliban to protect their sphere of influence, not to wage a holy war against the West. And, similarly, this: US commanders and politicians often loosely refer to the enemy as the Taliban or Al Qaeda, giving rise to the image of holy warriors seeking to spread a fundamentalist form of Islam. But the mostly ethnic Pashtun fighters are often deeply connected by family and social ties to the valleys and mountains where they are fighting, and they see themselves as opposing the United States because it is an occupying power, the officials and analysts said. The nonreligious motivations give American war planners some hope that they can reduce the power of these militias, and perhaps even co-opt their support with a new set of strategies and incentives. There are a couple of obvious problems with this logic. First of all, the fact that the majority of these soldiers are not religiously motivated means that they represent much less of a threat to us than we might imagine. It also means that a collapse of the central government in Kabul doesn't automatically augur a return of Taliban rule or renewed safe-harbors for al-Qaeda training camps. The latter concern is definitely heightened in any situation where Afghanistan returns to a completely failed state. But there are ways for us to manage that threat short of garrisoning the whole country. Another problem is that determining that the real issue is avarice and xenophobia opens up a irresolvable can of worms. Our presence, then, is the biggest problem, and the only solution is to become the most effective paymaster/sugar daddy. If Karzai's government is only corrupt because corruption is the only effective means of control, then we stand to corrupt ourselves by taking more responsibility for maintaining order. With the world's biggest opium trade, it's inevitable that we'd become compromised in some very nasty business. In fact, we already have been embarrassed, with a recent front-page New York Times article alleging that Karzai's brother is an opium kingpin who has been on the CIA payroll for years. If the game is to be the one throwing around the most cash, eschewing any dealings with the opium trade seems like a losing proposition. Perhaps the problem in Afghanistan is cultural and structural. It seems that there is something about the place that precludes anyone, Afghan or not, for exercising central control. If every mountain valley expresses its own form of xenophobia, there really isn't a national Afghan identity. Sometimes it seems like even terms like Pashtun or Tajik are too broad to really express the kind of cellular and tribal reality on the ground. The international community does have an interest in preventing Afghanistan from returning to the kind of unremitting civil war it endured once the Soviets invaded in 1979. There is an humanitarian interest, if nothing else. But there must be ways to help Afghanistan other than increasing our failed effort to prop up a failed government there. I think Barack Obama is thinking along these same lines, but I get the feeling that he isn't getting the right advice. There's a certain inertia that sets in in our national security apparatus that makes radical change difficult. And, frankly, our national security apparatus has been lying to us for so long that it is difficult for them to stop on a dime and say, like Emily Litella, "Oh, those Taliban? Never mind." But, perhaps, that is what it is time to do. Maybe Obama has to give a speech where he explains that we've been misled about the threat from the Taliban and the nature of the insurgency in Afghanistan. Maybe he needs to reset the bullshit and stop catapulting the propaganda. We do have concerns about what is going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Let's try being honest about that. Maybe then we can have a better discussion about our options.

FUBAR in Afghanistan

Or is the right acronym SNAFU? I'll let you decide after you read this: Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort. In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents. Maybe the right phrase is Catch 22? No wonder Obama doesn't like the options presented to him by his military advisers. More troops = more private contractors = more fraud = more money to Taliban = more dead troops and Afghan civilians. Which would then require a further escalation, because why stop this insane circus ride we're on? Then again, maybe if we just went away and stopped paying all these crooks, rogues and death merchants and focus on simply fixing up our our own house everyone would be better off. Certainly things couldn't get worse. Besides, then Blackwater (excuse me, Xe) could be hired by all the warlords and drug lords and crooks Hamid Karzai's government in Afghanistan to "fight for their freedoms" and we, the people of America, could stop funding a right wing private mercenary army with US taxpayer dollars that no sane person would ever have thought possible just fifty years ago.

Casual Observation

The river they are crying is as big as the Mississippi.

The Morality of Health Care Reform, Pt. 6

(The sixth in of a series of seven.) Nothing in Common If the clich� that a picture is worth a thousand words is true, then a couple of images might sum up the debate of over health care reform, and prove representative of the opposing sides. [Via Preemptive Karma.] [Via Wikimedia Commons.] President Obama also defined it during his speech to the joint houses of Congress: that debate over health care reform is really a debate � and a struggle, even � over the moral character of the nation. In other words, it's another part of the process of choosing what kind of country we want to be.