Pay Attention, America

I avoid posting reports that are easy to find in the mainstream media, but today there are two items that I think should be noticed as widely as possible. In any case, it took me some digging to find Cindy Sheehan’s resignation statement, and many of the published accounts leave out her most devastating comments.

I’m publishing the other item, the al-Qaida statement, to illustrate once more how different the actual goals of al-Qaida are from ludicrous Bushisms like, “They attacked us because they hate freedom”, and “If we don’t stay in Iraq and fight them there they’ll follow us here.” I’ve always written, listen to what they’re saying and not to what Bush & Co. and the Zionists tell us they’re saying. . . for example, the truth that the destruction of the twin towers was directly because of U.S. support of Israel and had nothing to do with “hatred of freedom”. It was, in fact, a cry for freedom for the Palestinians.

AL-QAIDA

Here’s the statement by an American al-Qaida member, which essentially says, “Leave Islamic countries alone and stop supporting Israel in its murderous, unlawful oppressions and rampages.” It says nothing about Americans giving up anything of their own – especially our freedoms. G.W. Bush is depriving us of those without any help.

‘CAIRO, Egypt - An American member of al-Qaida warned President Bush on Tuesday to end U.S. involvement in all Muslim lands or face an attack worse than the Sept. 11 suicide assault, according to a new videotape.
Gadahn demanded that Bush remove all U.S. military and spies from Islamic countries, free all Muslims from U.S. prisons and end support for Israel. He said a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq alone would not satisfy al-Qaida.’


CINDY SHEEHAN

Here are what I feel are the most important parts of the resignation statement by the great antiwar leader, Cindy Sheehan. To me, this sentence is the heart of it: ‘CASEY DIED FOR A COUNTRY WHICH CARES MORE ABOUT WHO WILL BE THE NEXT AMERICAN IDOL THAN HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL BE KILLED IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS WHILE DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS PLAY POLITICS WITH HUMAN LIVES.’

Mon May 28, 2007 http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/28/12530/1525

CindySheehan's diary

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike.

I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others. I have spent every available cent I got from the money a "grateful" country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. . . . I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people. However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children’s children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system. George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity.

Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.

Dishonest Terms

I’m quoting the following not just because the President of Iran routinely speaks more truth in one sentence that G.W. Bush does in a year, but primarily to point out the Associated Press article's choice of words used create bias in favor of Israel. Please see my comments at the end.


USAToday May 25, 2007

‘TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday warned Israel it would be uprooted if the Jewish state attacked Lebanon in the coming summer.
‘"If you think that by bombing and assassinating Palestinian leaders you are preparing ground for new attacks on Lebanon in the summer, I am telling you that you are seriously wrong."
‘‘"If this year you repeat the same mistake of the last year, the ocean of nations of the region will get angry and will cut the root of the Zionist regime from its stem," added Ahmadinejad, speaking live on state television.
‘Referring to the history of Israel, Ahmadinejad said that "60 years of invasion and assassination is enough. If you do not cease invasion and massacre, soon the hand of power of the nations of the region will rub you criminals with earth."’
‘Ahmadinejad's comments came as Israeli troops in the West Bank arrested more than 30 senior Hamas members early Thursday, including a Cabinet minister, legislators and mayors.’

First, why “hard-line”? That term not only gives the impression of one who is unwholesomely inflexible and intractable, but also implies one who clings to an erroneous belief. President Ahmadinejad is “hard-line” because he doesn’t hop when Israel or Bush say “frog”, while some other Middle Eastern leaders are “moderate” because they submit to Zionist/U.S. orders and bribes and keep their servile heads in the sand.

Next, the word “arrest” is misused in order to create the false impression that the Zionist Jews have some legal right to snatch and lock up people whose land they choose to occupy (all expenses paid by the U.S.A.). “Arrest” means “to take or keep in custody by authority of law.” Repeat: “by authority of law”. Thus the word “arrest” is often wrongly used by American writers to lend a phony air of legitimacy to Israel’s kidnappings. Here the dishonesty is magnified because the cabinet ministers, legislators, and mayors whom Israel has snatched and unlawfully imprisoned were legitimately elected to govern the land where they were kidnapped!

It was the United States which most loudly supported democracy and free elections in Palestine – and then, with Israel, promptly tried to reverse the results of the election when it didn’t like the results.

Borrowing Your Way to World Domination

I wonder if the United States is the first country in history to pay for the weapons it uses to dominate the world by borrowing the funds from the rest of the world?

The Roman Empire and the British Empire just marched around the planet grabbing things and enriching themselves by wringing taxes from the subject lands. The United States is different: It gets the money to bomb you by selling you bits of paper. People! Have you noticed that you're financing your own subjugation?

Yet Another Sign of Decline

BYE, BYE DOLLAR


The following story by Wanfeng Zhou illustrates the erosion of the importance of the United States dollar in the world economy discussed in my previous post – a symptom and harbinger of U.S. decline generally. To me events of this kind are the advance rumblings of the real avalanche – the refusal of nations to lend America more and more money through purchase of U.S. Treasury bonds, etc., which are nothing more than IOUs repayable in dollars. In view of Bush’s inflationary policies, buying Treasury IOUs from the U.S. is like accepting an IOU from someone promising to repay $1000 in five years when you know that $1000 will be worth $500 in buying power by the time it’s repaid. I’m not an economist by any means, but I understand that when a debtor nation like the U.S. loses its sources for borrowing, it tends simply to print more and more money in order to preserve its previous status and avoid a depression, with the result that inflation impoverishes its citizens. . . in particular those who have retired.


‘NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The Central Bank of Kuwait's decision over the weekend to untie its currency from the U.S. dollar might signal a growing trend among global central banks, especially those with large foreign-exchange reserves, to more actively manage their currencies.
‘And such a shift is likely to put the U.S. dollar under increasing pressure, analysts said.
‘The significant drop in the exchange rate of the American dollar against most other major currencies had a negative impact on the Kuwaiti economy over the past two years," Sheikh Salem Abdel Aziz Al Sabah, governor of the central bank, told the official Kuwait news agency.
‘"In the Middle East, it's a story of dollar-concentration risk," said Stephen Roach, chief economist of Morgan Stanley. Kuwait's just-announced decision "may well be the first step in a regional diversification strategy that attempts to temper such risks," he said.
‘Global central banks' ongoing reserve diversification has been a main factor weighing on the U.S. currency and Treasury market in recent years. Many people argue because foreign central banks have played a vital role in financing U.S. borrowing by buying U.S. debt, a diminished appetite for dollar-denominated reserves could have a significantly negative impact on the dollar and the U.S. economy.’

More Signs of Decline

THE U.S. IS PROVOKING OTHER COUNTRIES AND REGIONS TO FORM ALLIANCES AGAINST IT

I’ve written before about the certainty that the bellicose U.S./Israel axis and the U.S. “Grand Imperial Strategy”, which induces perpetual war, will cause a drawing together of other nations in protective alliances.

In February I wrote in “Defending Against a Supertyrant”, ‘Nations which feel threatened will increase their strength not only by adding muscle to their own military, but also by forming alliances. The main area of alliances which I see in the making is that part of the Earth which includes Russia, China, and Iran. Afghanistan and Pakistan are in the same geographical area, which includes the potential power of the “Heartland” of Geopolitical theory.

‘Another area for natural alliances for defense against U.S. abuse of power is Latin America. The seeds are visibly sprouting now.’

I’ve also warned that the arrogant U.S. policies and aggressions will hasten the decline of the U.S. from “last remaining superpower”. Already the U.S. has lost the respect of most nations and is considered more a threat than a potential ally. As a result, U.S. political influence is dwindling. Its economic strength is also shrinking, and when creditor nations decide to stop supporting America by lending it money, the beggar nation will be revealed in its true rags. The only “superpower” attribute which the U.S. has left is its military might – which is the major factor in causing other nations and regions to pull together in self-defense . . . protecting themselves until the day U.S. military superiority vanishes along with its other former strengths. All can see that the foundations are rotten; it is only a matter of time before the colossus collapses into mediocrity.

Here are a few indications of the way the world is responding in various ways to the American bully:


CHINA AND LATIN AMERICA

From the BBC a year ago: ‘ Chinese influence in Brazil worries US’

‘Under the slogan of "peaceful rising", China is selling itself to the developing world as an alternative model for ending poverty. The spectre of an encroaching China is made worse by a string of elections which has produced populist and US-sceptic, left-wing leaders. In Brazil itself, the view is very different. It is about two developing countries, the giants of their regions, forming a natural alliance.
‘The flurry of China-Brazil business began less than two years ago after an exchange of visits between Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Chinese President Hu Jintao.
‘Since then China's influence can be seen everywhere in Latin America: oil, gas, railways, ports, steel and - worryingly for the US - defence.
‘"Everything I do is with China now," says one student Priscila Marques, who runs a Brazilian freight forwarding company. "It's Brazil-China; nowhere else."‘


CHINA AND AFRICA

AP, May 17, 2007:
‘BEIJING - A Chinese rocket blasted a Nigerian communications satellite into orbit on Monday, marking an expansion of China's commercial launching services for foreign space hardware, state media said.
‘The official Xinhua News Agency said it was the first time a foreign buyer has purchased a Chinese satellite and its launching service.
‘The launch coincides with the opening of the African Development Bank's annual board meeting in Shanghai this week, reflecting growing African-Chinese ties.’


WOLFOWITZ DOWNFALL A SIGN OF WORLD REBELLION AGAINST U.S. ARROGANCE

‘The end of empire: Wolfowitz on the ropes’
By Andrew Leonard (Salon)
‘[Wolfowitz’] ouster will symbolize far more than just the gotcha of Wolfowitz's personal misdeeds as contrasted with his campaign to fight corruption in the developing world. There's far more at stake here: The presumably successful effort by Europe, Latin America and other regions to dislodge Wolfowitz represents a profound recalibration of global realpolitik.
‘Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has reigned alone as the supreme superpower. The absence of any countervailing force enabled and encouraged the Bush administration to pursue its spectacularly self-destructive foreign policies. The very appointment of Paul Wolfowitz, key architect of the Iraq war, as president of the World Bank, reeked of imperial arrogance.
‘But for every action there is a counterreaction. The rest of the world is fed up. As economic power in the world becomes more diffused across the globe, the ability of any one nation to call all the shots will progressively weaken. Understanding that fact will be a key prerequisite to successfully negotiating future global challenges.


THE "MIDDLE EAST" BECOMES "WEST ASIA"

The following article from the Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2007, shows how American support of Israel and consequent alienation of Muslim countries are driving the Muslim countries (“West Asia” rather than “Middle East” in their terminology) into closer ties with East Asian economic powerhouses. The catastrophic consequences of U.S. pro-Zionism are hinted at in euphemistic statements like these: The ties between East and West Asian countries stand “in potential contrast to tensions that have flared occasionally between the Middle East and Western consuming nations.”

‘RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A gathering here of Asian and Middle East energy ministers has cast a fresh spotlight on how rapidly the petroleum-rich Persian Gulf and energy-hungry East Asia are intertwining their economies, with potentially significant consequences for the international balance of power.
‘The 16 ministers at the meeting -- jointly hosted by Saudi Arabia and Japan -- represent the huge oil exporters of the Persian Gulf region, dubbed West Asia by the group, and such major consumers from East Asia as China, South Korea and India.
‘The growing ties have broad implications for Western nations as the Mideast and East Asia gain oil-market clout. State-controlled oil companies, particularly in the Persian Gulf region, have taken the lead in developing major new reserves, while major Western oil producers find access to new supplies increasingly limited. Where companies and decision makers once focused on events in Western energy capitals such as Houston, New York and London, these same players are increasingly concentrating their efforts in places like Dubai.
‘Rising East Asian investment in the Middle East could prompt burgeoning powers China and India to take a more active interest in trying to stabilize the region, while also encouraging Middle Eastern leaders to look East, not just to traditional powers such as Washington and Moscow, as players in the volatile region's diplomacy. In Middle Eastern capitals, decisions made in Beijing and New Delhi could ultimately gain the same heft as decisions made in Washington.
‘The meeting yesterday paves the way for more conciliatory ties between the nations on either end of the Asian continent. That stands in potential contrast to tensions that have flared occasionally between the Middle East and Western consuming nations.
‘The increasing links between the Gulf and Asia could have deep geopolitical ramifications. The Middle East-Asian romancing at these roundtable conferences . . . contrasts with the hostility and suspicion between OPEC and the West in the oil-crisis-ridden 1970s.’


HOW THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE SUGAR COATS THE PILL: WHY "WEST ASIAN" OIL PRODUCERS HATE AMERICA

I'll close with a comment on the WSJ article: “The oil-crisis-ridden 1970s” is verbiage designed to obscure the facts: In 1973 the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC, consisting of the Arab members of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria) announced that they would no longer ship petroleum to nations (primarily the United States) that had supported Israel in its "Yom Kippur War" with Syria and Egypt. The oil embargo caused inflation and economic hardship in the U.S.

The U.S. had unquestionably earned the OPEC retaliation through actions such as “Operation Nickel Grass”:

‘Operation Nickel Grass was a strategic airlift operation conducted by the United States to deliver weapons and supplies to Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The Military Airlift Command of the U.S. Air Force shipped 22,325 tons of tanks, artillery, ammunition, and supplies in C-141 Starlifter and C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft between October 12 and November 14, 1973. This rapid supply mission was critical to Israel's ability to recover from early losses in the war, and the operation is sometimes called "the airlift that saved Israel."’ Wikipedia.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. government and communications media did not explain to Americans waiting in long lines for high-priced gas that that situation was due entirely to U.S. support for Israel, any more than the media have explained that the same cause brought about the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Inside Iraq

I recommend that anyone interested in what the United States has done to Iraq read this article, ’Iraq; A Hell on Earth Made in Washington D.C.’, by Marshall Adame. According to his biography Mr. Adame is a retired U.S. Marine who became an aviation management/logistics consultant who has had considerable experience in Iraq. He “personally attended and participated in many high level Coalition, State Department and DoD meetings and briefings in Iraq from 2003 until late 2006.”

The theme of his article is summarized in its second paragraph:

“From my personal experiences of living in Iraq for three years, I have concluded Americas leadership is solely responsible for the entire country of Iraq becoming a living hell of suffering, poverty, starvation and depravation, unimaginable to either Iraqi or U.S. citizens just prior to our arrival in Iraq in 2003.“

While I do not agree with all of his views, I found his article full of unique and fascinating “insider” facts about the disgraceful situation in Iraq.


I wish that I could draw well enough to create this cartoon that I imagined, and which would be a fitting illustration for Mr. Adame's article:

A vast,dark landscape of smoking ruins, populated only by distant dead bodies and emaciated children, stretches as far as we can see from left to right. Above the jagged horizon looms the huge head of G.W. Bush filling most of the sky, reminiscent of the screen images of Big Brother and the Wizard of Oz. He is saying, "Where can we bring democracy next?"

A Real Opportunity to Influence U.S. War Policy

Readers from outside the U.S. often ask why we Americans don’t do more to influence our government. One reason is that we don’t know what to do that will have any effect. A few days ago I came across a useful article in the New York Times which reveals some contacts for Americans who want to make their opposition to the Iraq war felt by Congress, and particularly by the Democrats who were elected with a demand to end the war:
‘Antiwar Groups Use New Clout to Influence Democrats on Iraq’

The article points out that the failure of the Democrats in Congress to take genuine action to end the Iraq war – primarily from fear of being accused of failing “to support our troops” when they run for reelection – has brought about great frustration among those who voted the current herd of Democratic sheep into office. That frustration has resulted in the formation of numerous antiwar groups, many of which have now banded together under the umbrella of Americans Against Escalation in Iraq.

On the “Americans Against Escalation in Iraq” website you will find listed the organizations which have banded together. If you click on “Learn more” on the first page, you’ll be taken to a list of links which will give you the particulars about each group. Two of the best known groups are VoteVets.org and MoveOn.org.

The NYT states there there is considerable tension between the Democratic “leadership” and the antiwar groups. It relates that leaders of MoveOn.org, “including Tom Matzzie, the group’s Washington director who also serves as the campaign manager for the coalition, sent a harshly worded warning to the Democratic leadership.”

‘‘“In the past few days, we have seen what appear to be trial balloons signaling a significant weakening of the Democratic position,” the letter read. “On this, we want to be perfectly clear: if Democrats appear to capitulate to Bush — passing a bill without measures to end the war — the unity Democrats have enjoyed and Democratic leadership has so expertly built, will immediately disappear.”

‘‘The letter went on to say that if Democrats passed a bill “without a timeline and with all five months of funding,” they would essentially be endorsing a “war without end.” MoveOn, it said, “will move to a position of opposition.”’

There is no reason for me to list in this blog all of the antiwar activist groups you can find on the links given above, nor to describe the actions and inactions of politicians which are reported in the daily news. If you are on the antiwar side, please have a look at the antiwar coalition and take action.

It’s obvious that individual citizens have little influence on politicians, but if enough individuals gather together in coalitions (for example the NRA and AARP), they will be listened to. If we can swell the ranks of the antiwar groups sufficiently – under Americans Against Escalation in Iraq – we can make a real difference.

Invisible Deaths?

I’m still puzzled by the U.S. news media’s smokescreen over the deaths of American troops in Iraq. In the past 24 hours eight U.S. soldiers were killed, six by a single bomb. That is a lot of deaths, and a very dramatic addition to the recent escalations in group military deaths. It is also a lot of bad news for the Bush administration and the members of Congress who are wiggle waggling over taking real action to end the war as mandated in the November elections. Yet not one of the wire services I follow online -- New York Times, MSNBC, AP, USAToday – or any of the headlines prominently displayed on Google News – mentioned those U.S. deaths this morning. I learned about them by skimming reports under headlines on the deaths of Iraqis, and then reading paragraphs two or three or four. I’m willing to predict that the eight (or possibly more by tonight) military deaths will also get sparse coverage on the evening television news.

We have to assume that the downplaying of military deaths is to the advantage of those Americans who support the war and consider bad news unpatriotic. Is part of “supporting our troops” not only paying the costs of getting them killed but also hiding the fact that they are getting killed? Why not report big news as big news? For one thing, we know that it is not to the advantage of a news service to alienate Congress and the administration. For another, we can be sure that the reporting of U.S. deaths brings a storm of complaints from the Unintelligent Majority.

The worst underlying general assumption in all of this is that war and support of war are patriotic, and that patriotism is not only a virtue but a virtue worth killing and dying for. This mindless human attitude is not so much a form of species-wide insanity as an evolutionary product of the hairless ape’s insatiable lust for fighting and killing, demonstrated from its earliest times. Group cohesion is necessary to survival, but in the case of humans it has taken a bizarre, proudly murderous twist which will not only breed continual war but also an early end to the species as a whole.

Wolfowitz Track Record

We can see from this May 4 AP report on Paul Wolfowitz that the man chiefly responsible for lying the United States into war with Iraq, and for cheating the World Bank by grossly inflating his girlfriend's salary, is only running true to form.



'JAKARTA, Indonesia - The controversy surrounding World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz spotlights a lack of ethics that was apparent two decades ago when he was U.S. ambassador to Indonesia.

Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political economy at Northwestern University, said that Wolfowitz's past career already showed he was ill fit to run the World Bank.

'"From the very beginning, I felt this was the wrong person for the job," said Winters. He pointed to the radical deregulation of Indonesia's banking sector in 1988, promoted by Wolfowitz's economic team and international lenders. It "opened the floodgates for local crony conglomerates to set up private banks and take in deposits from a trusting public."

'With no rule of law, there was no oversight and no supervision, he said.
"The foxes were running wild in the financial chicken coop and no one, including Wolfowitz, pressured the Indonesians to design safeguards to protect the public's deposits," he said. One result was the 1997-98 financial crisis "that plunged tens of millions into abject poverty."

'Wolfowitz has been arguing that corruption is crippling the world's poorest nations. But that was "the very thing he closed his eyes to" when he served as ambassador from 1986 to 1989 during the regime of the dictator Suharto, said pro-democracy activist Binny Buchori.

'"He's a hypocrite," she said. "He should quit."'

Back Again to More of the Same

After an unplanned and unintended leave of absence from VIEW FROM THE MOON, I find that nothing has really changed in the Wonderland of U.S. news except that, since my last report, Paul Wolfowitz has attained a few headlines on wire services and has even been mentioned on at least one evening television report. Of course he is still a great guy as far as the United States government is concerned, in spite of his having engineered a disastrous U.S. war, for which he was rewarded with promotion to the presidency of the World Bank. I get the impression that although his popularity with the Zionists and the mass of Israel supporters (and therefore most of the American press) is undiluted, the great reservoir of enmity toward him has reached the overflow point. Along with case histories of Jewish malefactors who have been supported by influential Jews, it would be interesting to analyze the rare cases in which someone like Wolfowitz begins to be abandoned by his tribe and the communications media. Has something made Paul Wolfowitz less immune to public criticism than other Jewish men in comparable cases? Whatever the answer, I predict that if Wolfowitz is forced to leave the World Bank he will be provided with a well-feathered nest in another place.


The question of Paul Finkelstein’s tenure is still up in the air as far as I can tell. As I reported, the fanatically Zionist showboater Alan Dershowitz has made every effort to interfere in the affairs of a university with which he has no connection by opposing Professor Finkelstein’s tenure in the most outrageous and inappropriate ways. The reason, of course, is that Finkelstein, even though Jewish, has written books criticizing Israel. If he is refused tenure, he faces – because of his defiance of Jewish causes – the possibility of being fired . . . an avenue down which Dershowitz is sure to lead a loud parade. Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz himself, far from suffering job insecurity, will in addition to his Harvard law professorship be rewarded with a job at an Israeli educational institution. Dershowitz will be joining The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya during the 2007-2008) academic year. (Herzliya is a town in Israel near Tel Aviv.) Dershowitz will teach a special class entitled "Law & Terrorism" at IDC Herzliya's Radzyner School of Law. He will, according to an Israeli newspaper, join some of “the greatest legal minds in Israel”, while the U.S., I venture to add, will lose one of its more feeble legal minds.

I will try to attune myself again to world events and write something interesting for this blog, but meanwhile it does seem that we are in a slow period in which the U.S. news simply repeats the same predictable tales every day: Democrats too cowardly to stop Iraq war funding; Republican administration too dastardly to allow a law which might end the war next year. Court Jester and titular Attorney General Alberto Gonzales still clowning, taking his act to the Senate Judiciary Committee where laughter at his performance could be heard even in the corridors outside the hearing room. Israel continuing to murder, kidnap, and torture Palestinians every day without American publicity or protest. An Iranian diplomat released after being kidnapped by American force in Iraq bearing clear marks of torture, including holes drilled into his feet, but dropping from the U.S. news in about twenty minutes. Iran for some reason being allowed a quiet period, but the Wolfowitz/Bush war in Iraq unfailingly killing large numbers of people every day – including more and more of those American troops we are supposed to “support” by keeping them there to be killed.

Speaking of stopping funding of the Iraq war, which the American voters have said they want ended immediately, how much money can it take to carry out the order, “Turn around the tanks and trucks and head for the nearest border”?