Read about Ahmadinejad’s visit to Iraq…please.

I’m sure this means we’re in for another bout of saber-rattling from Dick Cheney’s lunatics, to whom peace means war and war means peace.

Robert Scheer:

Are the media dumb or just out to lunch? Sorry to be intemperate, but how else can one explain the meager attention paid to the truly historic visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Iraq? Not only is he the first Mideast head of state to visit the country since its alleged liberation, but the very warm official welcome offered by the Iraqi government to the most vociferous critic of the United States speaks volumes to the abject failure of the Bush doctrine.

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How interesting that Ahmadinejad, unlike a U.S. president who has to be airlifted unannounced into ultra-secure bases, was able to convoy in from the airport in broad daylight on a road that U.S. dignitaries fear to travel. His love fest with Iraq President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who fought on Iran’s side against Iraq and who speaks Farsi, even took place outside of the safety of the Green Zone, adding emphasis to Ahmadinejad’s claim that while he is welcome in Iraq, the Americans are not.

Nor did the Iraqi leaders take exception to Ahmadinejad’s insistence that the U.S. has brought only terror to the region and that the continued American presence is the main obstacle to peace. On the contrary, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pronounced his talks with fellow Shiite Ahmadinejad “friendly, positive and full of trust.” Video of Talabani, who asked that Ahmadinejad call him “Uncle Jalal” after holding hands and exchanging kisses with the Iranian president, was broadcast throughout the region.

How Bush, Rice and Abrams started the war in Gaza

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According to Dahlan, it was Bush who had pushed legislative elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006, despite warnings that Fatah was not ready. After Hamas—whose 1988 charter committed it to the goal of driving Israel into the sea—won control of the parliament, Bush made another, deadlier miscalculation.

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

British will release minutes of 2003 Iraq war discussions

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“There is a widespread view that the justification for the decision on military action in Iraq is either not fully understood or that the public were not given the full or genuine reasons for that decision,” Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said in his ruling on a request made under the British version of the Freedom of Information Act.

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The Cabinet Office had argued to him that public disclosure of minutes would inhibit free and candid debate about sensitive issues in future cabinet sessions.

Thomas, who was allowed to inspect the minutes as part of his deliberations, said that while he respected the government’s position, “arguments for the withholding of the information are outweighed by the public interest in its disclosure.”

Wow, So that’s how they do it in a democracy. Simply amazing. Just think, there actually was a day when we had the democracy on this side of the pond and Britain had the king. (or, was that a dream?)

The United Arab Republics: Bush’s idea of paradise

If you want to know what kind of “democracy” George Bush has been trying to spread, read smintheus at dkos.

…bizarrely, Bush described the Emirates – an oligarchy where government officials are appointed rather than elected – as a model society for others to emulate ….

Well, Bush’s flattering portrait does apply at least to a small minority of the Emirates’ population. However some 80% of residents, immigrants who make up nearly the entire workforce in the U.A.E., have few rights, no chance to become citizens, and virtually no opportunity for improving their lot.

Quite the opposite, immigrant construction workers (who built the opulent hotel Bush spoke in) are routinely cheated out of wages, restricted in their movement, and forced to toil in dangerous conditions. Death and injury are common. Domestic workers are treated worse, if anything. The abuse is so pronounced that it sparked rioting in 2006. Meanwhile those who try to defend human rights in the country are harassed by the government.

On top of that, many immigrants to the U.A.E. are essentially slaves, as the U.S. State Dept. reported last June….

Ron Paul: no wonder Fox News didn’t want to include him

watch him.

Where your kids’ savings are going

NY Times

Nonstop Theft and Bribery Are Staggering Iraq

Jobless men pay $500 bribes to join the police. Families build houses illegally on government land, carwashes steal water from public pipes, and nearly everything the government buys or sells can now be found on the black market.

“Everyone is stealing from the state,” said Adel Adel al-Subihawi, a prominent Shiite tribal leader in Sadr City, throwing up his hands in disgust. “It’s a very large meal, and everyone wants to eat.”

Corruption and theft are not new to Iraq, and government officials have promised to address the problem. But as Iraqis and American officials assess the effects of this year’s American troop increase, there is a growing sense that, even as security has improved, Iraq has slipped to new depths of lawlessness.

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One recent independent analysis ranked Iraq the third most corrupt country in the world. Of 180 countries surveyed, only Somalia and Myanmar were worse, according to Transparency International, a Berlin-based group that publishes the index annually.

And the extent of the theft is staggering. Some American officials estimate that as much as a third of what they spend on Iraqi contracts and grants ends up unaccounted for or stolen, with a portion going to Shiite or Sunni militias. In addition, Iraq’s top anticorruption official estimated this fall — before resigning and fleeing the country after 31 of his agency’s employees were killed over a three-year period — that $18 billion in Iraqi government money had been lost to various stealing schemes since 2004.

The collective filching undermines Iraq’s ability to provide essential services, a key to sustaining recent security gains, according to American military commanders.

Who’s dumber: Stanford or the Washington Post?

Stanford extends the title Distinguished Visiting Fellow to Don Rumsfeld. The Washington Post pays him to write an article on

The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez

Now, if you’ll stop laughing, this is pretty much a dead heat, as to which institution is dumber. I guess I choose Stanford, because the Post will put out another edition tomorrow.  Besides, we already know what the Post is: a swiftboating Republican hacksheet.

Juan Cole on combatting Muslim extremism

The next election will tell the world whether George W. Bush was an anomaly, or, in fact, that the US intends to pursue a self-destructive and world-threatening course of hostility and war on Muslims. Juan Cole knows more and communicates more about the Middle East than anyone I have encountered (see blogroll).

Link

All the major Republican presidential candidates have bought into George W. Bush’s rhetoric of a central struggle against Muslim extremism and have thus committed themselves to a generational, often self-generating war. By foregrounding this issue, they have ensured that it will be pivotal to the 2008 presidential race. The Democratic candidates have mostly been timid in critiquing Bush’s “war on terror” or pointing out its dangers to the Republic, a failing that they must redress if they are to blunt their rivals’ fearmongering.

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The Republicans are playing Russian roulette with America’s future with their bigoted anti-Muslim rhetoric. Muslims may constitute as much as a third of humankind by 2050, forming a vast market and a crucial labor pool. They will be sitting on the lion’s share of the world’s energy resources. The United States will increasingly have to compete with emerging rivals such as China and India for access to those Muslim resources and markets, and if its elites go on denigrating Muslims, America will be at a profound disadvantage during the next century.

Some Muslim extremist groups are indeed a threat, but they have not been dealt with appropriately. Bush has argued that terrorist groups have state backing, a principle that authorizes conventional war against their sponsor. In fact, asymmetrical terrorist groups can thrive in the interstices of states, and September 11 was solely an Al Qaeda operation. In his speech about the conquest of Iraq on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, George W. Bush announced, “We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding.” It was a bald-faced lie.

Book recommend: How Would a Patriot Act, by Glenn Greenwald.

Not just a great blogger, but a great mind and a great writer, Glenn Greenwald deserves wide attention from all points along the political spectrum.

From the preface:

Over the past five years, a creeping extremism has taken hold of our federal government, and it is threatening to radically alter our system of government and who we are as a nation. This extremism is neither conservative nor liberal in nature, but is instead driven by theories of unlimited presidential power that are wholly alien, and antithetical to the core political values that have governed this country since its founding.

Want some truth? Putin has some for ya…

President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the U.S. war in Iraq was a “pointless” battle against the Iraqi people, the latest jab at Washington from the increasingly confrontational Russian leader.President Putin answered questions about Iraq and the Russian economy among others.

Speaking during an annual televised question-and-answer session, Putin was asked by a mechanic from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk for his thoughts on comments made several years ago by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who suggested that Siberia had too many natural resources to belong to one country.

“I know that some politicians play with such ideas in their heads. This, in my view, is the sort of political erotica that might satisfy a person but hardly leads to a positive result,” Putin responded.

“The best example of that are the events in Iraq — a small country that can hardly defend itself and which possesses huge oil reserves. And we see what’s going on there. They’ve learned to shoot there but they are not managing to bring order.

“One can wipe off a political map some tyrannical regime … but it’s absolutely pointless to fight with a people,” he said. “Russia, thank God, isn’t Iraq. It has enough strength and power to defend itself and its interests, both on its territory and in other parts of the world.”