Conservatives Embrace a Culture of Fear

Conservatives Embrace a Culture of Fear

In America’s darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” But that was then.

Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”

Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”

Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense?

For one thing, there isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t. And Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 — in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is beyond ludicrous. Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons. But let’s have some perspective, please: we’re talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Sweden’s.

Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn 'unconscionable' detention

Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn 'unconscionable' detention

An American military lawyer and veteran of dozens of secret Guantanamo tribunals has made a devastating attack on the legal process for determining whether Guantanamo prisoners are "enemy combatants".

The whistleblower, an army major inside the military court system which the United States has established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the detention of one prisoner, a hospital administrator from Sudan, as "unconscionable".

His critique will be the centrepiece of a hearing on 5 December before the US Supreme Court when another attempt is made to shut the prison down. So nervous is the Bush administration of the latest attack – and another Supreme Court ruling against it – that it is preparing a whole new system of military courts to deal with those still imprisoned.

The whistleblower's testimony is the most serious attack to date on the military panels, which were meant to give a fig- leaf of legitimacy to the interrogation and detention policies at Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. The major has taken part in 49 status review panels. ...

The latest criticism emerged when lawyers investigating the case of a Sudanese hospital administrator, Adel Hamad, who has been held for five years, came across a "stunning" sworn statement from a member of the military panel. The officer they interviewed was so frightened of retaliation from the military that they would not allow their name to be used in the statement, nor to reveal whether the person was a man or woman.

The Iraqi Defector the Bush Team Used to Sell the War

The Iraqi Defector the Bush Team Used to Sell the War

After four years watching the disastrous consequences of the invasion of Iraq unfold, it's easy to forget the atmosphere of panic in which the war was sold to the American public. All the talk of clandestine meetings in Prague, dubious connections between Iraq and 9/11, aluminum tubes and yellowcake from Niger is becoming a memory; it seems ages since we were warned that the "smoking gun" that proved Saddam's deadly intent might be in the form of a mushroom cloud rising from one of America's cities.

Yet it's important to recall that after all the rhetoric about Saddam Hussein's monstrous legacy and Colin Powell's flashy charts and honey-smooth presentation at the UN, the heart of the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq -- or at least for its claims about massive stockpiles of biological weapons being driven around the country in high-tech mobile labs to avoid detection -- was an Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball."

In CURVEBALL: Spies, Lies and the Con Man Who Caused a War,veteran Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Drogin, who originally broke the story, paints a picture of a desperate refugee who, while trying to gain asylum in Europe, began feeding claims about Saddam's supposed weapons programs to an intelligence community that was under intense pressure from the top to come up with a case for war.

Curveball, who claimed to be an Iraqi chemical engineer with knowledge of even the country's most secret weapons programs, spilled the beans in a big way when debriefed by German intelligence officials. But, as Drogin would later report, he was a twitchy, possibly mentally disturbed drunk who was prone to rapid mood-swings and whose story tended to shift according to what he thought investigators wanted to hear. But despite that fact, and with only the "corroboration" of a few ex-patriots associated with convicted fraudster Ahmed Chalabi, Curveball's claims passed through several layers of often skeptical intelligence professionals and became 'Exhibit A' in the administration's case for war.

American Christianities

American Christianities

If you've wondered whether Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was right when he said recently that America was founded as a "Christian nation," whether other Republican presidential candidates' views on evolution are electorally relevant, what effect Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Methodism has on her social views or whether a candidate's stand on abortion must determine your vote, then this is your book.

Wills' argument is that American history has been marked by an oscillation between Enlightenment and Evangelism -- between head and heart. He contends that the fruitful tension between these two poles contributed directly to the U.S. Constitution's single wholly original contribution to the political tradition: "disestablishment of the official creed and separation of church and state." It is precisely this innovative separation, Wills contends, that has allowed religion to flourish in America as it does nowhere else in the developed world. It's also why he finds the hostility toward separation evinced by George W. Bush and the religious right so alarming.

Beginning with the Puritans, whose views and turbulence he outlines with great clarity -- and at great length -- Wills moves through the Great Awakening of the early 18th century and the Enlightenment backlash that followed it. Speaking indirectly to the assertion of McCain and others about the Constitution's purportedly Christian origins, Wills points out that at the time of the founding, historians estimate that only about 17% of Americans professed formal religious adherence, a historic low point. The framers were deists, who believed in a divine providence knowable only through reason and experience and not prone to intervene in the affairs of men.

The reaction of the Great Awakening provided an American Unitarian boost that made Deism the religion of the educated class by the middle of the 18th century. Legal scholar William Lee Miller writes that the chief founders of the nation were all Deists -- he lists Washington, Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and Paine, though many more leaders of the founding era could be added (Benjamin Rush, John Witherspoon, David Rittenhouse, Philip Freneau, Joel Barlow, Aaron Burr, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, Tench Coxe, to name some). Their agreement on the question of God crossed political and geographic lines. Federalist and Republican, North and South, an Adams and a Jefferson, a Hamilton and a Madison -- all were professed Deists.

Wills agrees with Perry Miller's contention that the founders were of a "liberality of spirit which must forever and properly remain a scandal to the rank and file of professing American Christians."

He points out that "[b]elievers in America as a Christian nation do not much like Jefferson the Deist. But they like his Declaration of Independence because of its reference to 'the laws of nature and of nature's God.' Though this was not a legislative document, it is more useful to them than the supreme legislative document of the United States, the Constitution, which . . . does not mention God at all."

Glen Beck Is Going To Hell

Glen Beck Is Going To Hell

Here's some rightwing gibberish that will make your hair stand on end:


When I say on the air, and I've said it a lot lately, that we need to come together and we need to get back into the center, we're being pushed on to the edges -- I want you to understand, that is not on policies. I don't mean that we come in the center on policies. We come to the center on principles. We come back to the center of the melting pot, that we're all one America, that just because I disagree with you doesn't mean you hate America, and I love America. We all love America. We just disagree on how we should function, what we should do, big government, small government. It doesn't mean you hate America. I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.



I just heard that Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter is now calling for the National Guard to be involved in helping out his constituents suffering from the fires. I wonder if he agrees with Beck on this? Or Ken Starr, who has an endowed chair at Pepperdine University which was evacuated yesterday.

The Republican Nanny State

Outsourcing Government

'We didn't want to get stuck with a lemon." That's what Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said to a House committee last month. He was referring to the "virtual fence" planned for the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada. If the entire project goes as badly as the 28-mile prototype, it could turn out to be one of the most expensive lemons in history, projected to cost $8 billion by 2011.

Boeing, the company that landed the contract — the largest ever awarded by the Department of Homeland Security — announced this week that it will finally test the fence after months of delay due to computer problems. Heavy rains have confused its remote-controlled cameras and radar, and the sensors can't tell the difference between moving people, grazing cows or rustling bushes.

But this debacle points to more than faulty technology. It exposes the faulty logic of the Bush administration's vision of a hollowed-out government run everywhere possible by private contractors.

According to this radical vision, contractors treat the state as an ATM, withdrawing massive contracts to perform core functions like securing borders and interrogating prisoners, and making deposits in the form of campaign contributions. As President Bush's former budget director, Mitch Daniels, put it: "The general idea — that the business of government is not to provide services but to make sure that they are provided — seems self-evident to me."

The flip side of the Daniels directive is that the public sector is rapidly losing the ability to fulfill its most basic responsibilities — and nowhere more so than in the Department of Homeland Security, which, as a Bush creation, has followed the ATM model since its inception.

For instance, when the controversial border project was launched, the department admitted that it had no idea how to secure the borders and, furthermore, didn't think it was its job to figure it out. Homeland Security's deputy secretary told a group of contractors that "this is an unusual invitation. … We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business."

Private companies would not only perform the work, they would identify what work needed to be done, write their own work orders, implement them and oversee them. All the department had to do was sign the checks.

And as one former top Homeland Security official put it: "If it doesn't come from industry, we are not going to be able to get it."

Put simply, if any given job can't be outsourced, it can't be done.

This philosophy, so central to the Bush years, explains statistics like this one: In 2003, the U.S. government handed out 3,512 contracts to companies to perform domestic security functions, from bomb detection to data mining. In the 22-month period ending in August 2006, the Homeland Security Department had issued more than 115,000 security-related contracts.

If government is now an ATM, perhaps the war on terror is best understood not as a war but as a sprawling new economy, one based on continued disaster and instability.

Big Brave Republicans Smear Children

Sliming Graeme Frost

Two weeks ago, the Democratic response to President Bush's weekly radio address was delivered by a 12-year-old, Graeme Frost. Graeme, who along with his sister received severe brain injuries in a 2004 car crash and continues to need physical therapy, is a beneficiary of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Mr. Bush has vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have expanded that program to cover millions of children who would otherwise have been uninsured.

What followed should serve as a teaching moment.

First, some background. The Frosts and their four children are exactly the kind of people S-chip was intended to help: working Americans who can't afford private health insurance.

The parents have a combined income of about $45,000, and don't receive health insurance from employers. When they looked into buying insurance on their own before the accident, they found that it would cost $1,200 a month — a prohibitive sum given their income. After the accident, when their children needed expensive care, they couldn't get insurance at any price.

Fortunately, they received help from Maryland's S-chip program. The state has relatively restrictive rules for eligibility: children must come from a family with an income under 200 percent of the poverty line. For families with four children that's $55,220, so the Frosts clearly qualified.

Graeme Frost, then, is exactly the kind of child the program is intended to help. But that didn't stop the right from mounting an all-out smear campaign against him and his family.

Soon after the radio address, right-wing bloggers began insisting that the Frosts must be affluent because Graeme and his sister attend private schools (they're on scholarship), because they have a house in a neighborhood where some houses are now expensive (the Frosts bought their house for $55,000 in 1990 when the neighborhood was rundown and considered dangerous) and because Mr. Frost owns a business (it was dissolved in 1999).

You might be tempted to say that bloggers make unfounded accusations all the time. But we're not talking about some obscure fringe. The charge was led by Michelle Malkin, who according to Technorati has the most-trafficked right-wing blog on the Internet, and in addition to blogging has a nationally syndicated column, writes for National Review and is a frequent guest on Fox News.

The attack on Graeme's family was also quickly picked up by Rush Limbaugh, who is so important a player in the right-wing universe that he has had multiple exclusive interviews with Vice President Dick Cheney.

And G.O.P. politicians were eager to join in the smear. The New York Times reported that Republicans in Congress "were gearing up to use Graeme as evidence that Democrats have overexpanded the health program to include families wealthy enough to afford private insurance" but had "backed off" as the case fell apart.

In fact, however, Republicans had already made their first move: an e-mail message from the office of Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, sent to reporters and obtained by the Web site Think Progress, repeated the smears against the Frosts and asked: "Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?"

And the attempt to spin the media worked, to some extent: despite reporting that has thoroughly debunked the smears, a CNN report yesterday suggested that the Democrats had made "a tactical error in holding up Graeme as their poster child," and closely echoed the language of the e-mail from Mr. McConnell's office.

All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a Republican war, they're "phony soldiers"; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he's faking his Parkinson's symptoms; if an injured 12-year-old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he's a fraud.

Meanwhile, leading conservative politicians, far from trying to distance themselves from these smears, rush to embrace them. And some people in the news media are still willing to be used as patsies.

Politics aside, the Graeme Frost case demonstrates the true depth of the health care crisis: every other advanced country has universal health insurance, but in America, insurance is now out of reach for many hard-working families, even if they have incomes some might call middle-class.

And there's one more point that should not be forgotten: ultimately, this isn't about the Frost parents. It's about Graeme Frost and his sister.

I don't know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period. Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children.

Republicans are planning to use lies about kidnapping and murder to justify further erosion of the Constitution

Republicans are planning to use lies about kidnapping and murder to justify further erosion of the Constitution

Subscription-only Roll Call sez:

Republicans are planning to use the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three U.S. soldiers in Iraq earlier this year to put a "human face" on the issue, the House staffer explained. According to this aide, while Democrats' arguments about privacy may resonate with some voters, Republicans believe using real-world examples of how a weak FISA has put U.S. troops in danger will help galvanize public support for their position.

FISA put U.S. troops in danger? For the "story" on that, we have to turn to the incomparably stupid and in-the-tank NY Post:

In the early hours of May 12, seven U.S. soldiers - including Spc. Jimenez - were on lookout near a patrol base in the al Qaeda-controlled area of Iraq called the "Triangle of Death."

Sometime before dawn, heavily armed al Qaeda gunmen quietly cut through the tangles of concertina wire surrounding the outpost of two Humvees and made a massive and coordinated surprise attack.

Four of the soldiers were killed on the spot and three others were taken hostage.

A search to rescue the men was quickly launched. But it soon ground to a halt as lawyers - obeying strict U.S. laws about surveillance - cobbled together the legal grounds for wiretapping the suspected kidnappers.

Thank God they had the presence of mind to preserve the integrity of the evidence! We look forward to the suspects' trial on federal kidnapping charges!

Meanwhile, look at Post's own timeline, which says the incident took place:

In the early hours of May 12

...but that the legal wrangling began:

Starting at 10 a.m. on May 15, according to a timeline provided to Congress by the director of national intelligence

And when it finally did begin, look what really happened:

"[I]nternal bureaucratic wrangling," and not court-based restrictions, were responsible for the lag time. "To get an emergency warrant, you just have to believe the facts support the application that someone is an agent of a foreign power," the source says. "That takes approximately five seconds to establish if you're going after an Iraqi insurgent."

Why did so much time elapse before the surveillance? Top Justice Department officials needed to approve the emergency order. But according to the source, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was out of town; Deputy AG Paul McNulty had resigned already; Solicitor General Paul Clement "had left the building"; and the other responsible official, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein was not yet authorized to approve the emergency order.

That's right, everyone. It was the unprecedented level of corruption and idiocy in the United States Department of Justice that ground things to a halt. Everyone who hadn't yet been drummed out of government for their crookedness was just plain AWOL. And George W. Bush wants you to believe what was at fault was the only arm of government still at its post: the law itself. (Though they're trying to kidnap that in the pre-dawn hours, too.)

That's yer tuff-on-terrah pretzelnit for ya, ladies and gents. Unitary executivin' to th' max! Unless a lawyer shows up. Yikes!

And so, yet again on the FISA issue, total b.s. that has nothing to do with anything will be used to try to wrangle out a spineless surrender of everything the rule of law is supposed to mean.

Andrew Sullivan Is A Dishonest Twit, Why Does Everyone Keep Pretending Otherwise?

Andrew Sullivan Is A Dishonest Twit, Why Does Everyone Keep Pretending Otherwise?

He attacks Ezra Klein for his age at the time of Clinton's health care reform, because God knows nobody can ever write about a historical event that they didn't actually see (time for Sullivan to throw down all his comparisons of Bush to Churchill down the memory hole). The guy is an absolute twit without an honest bone in his body. Like with Malkin, why do we keep pretending that we should be getting better from people on the right? What's the reason to keep up this pretense?

Rudy's Dirty Money

Rudy's Dirty Money

Bracewell & Giuliani presents a host of potential sore spots, on the left and the right. Operatives from rival GOP campaigns were quick to exploit the fact that the firm represented Citgo, the state oil company of Venezuela, one of the current bêtes noires of the right wing. Bracewell helped Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. block "indecency" laws on television, thwarting a pet issue of Christian conservatives. The firm provided counsel to the defense fund of disgraced former House majority leader Tom DeLay--at the same time that it was lobbying DeLay and Congress to grant immunity to the makers of the toxic gasoline additive MTBE, which faces hundreds of lawsuits for contaminating drinking water. Clients abroad have included repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan (Bracewell has two offices representing American oil companies in Kazakhstan; Rudy's Bracewell supporters recently held a campaign fundraiser there). A few years ago its biggest client was Enron.

Giuliani has accepted more money from the energy industry--$477,208 through the first half of 2007--than any other presidential candidate. These ties likely won't hurt him with GOP primary voters, who welcomed Bush and Cheney with open arms. But it could arouse the suspicions of moderate and independent voters in a general election, many of whom don't look forward to the idea of Halliburton clones dictating policy in the next White House.

Texas Loves Rudy

After joining Bracewell, Giuliani became a frequent visitor to Texas. He's raised nearly $4 million in the state, more than any other Republican, and as of August recruited thirty-seven of George W. Bush's Pioneers and Rangers (those who raised at least $100,000 and $200,000, respectively, for the Bush campaigns), second only to John McCain. Rudy became acquainted with Texas politics when he launched his aborted senatorial run against Hillary Clinton in 2000. Roy Bailey, a Dallas insurance mogul and former finance chair of the Texas Republican Party, helped him raise money for that race. They struck up a close friendship, and after 9/11 Giuliani told The American Lawyer magazine he "turned over" his postmayoral planning to Bailey, who became managing director of Giuliani Partners. At the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, where Rudy's invocation of 9/11 took center stage, Bailey met Pat Oxford, managing partner of Bracewell & Patterson. Over coffee the next day, Bailey floated the idea of Giuliani joining Bracewell. They clicked, and soon the deal was done.

Oxford himself is a player in Texas Republican politics. He met George W. Bush in the 1970s, worked on his campaigns and became a Pioneer in 2000 for Bush/Cheney. Through Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a law school classmate, Oxford met Karl Rove; they became "fast friends," Oxford told The American Lawyer. In 2000 Oxford formed the Mighty Texas Strike Force, dispatching volunteers from Texas to battleground states. During the 2000 recount in Florida, Oxford said he "ran Broward County" and managed the Bush/Cheney legal defense team, talking with Bush frequently in Texas. In 2004 his twenty-five-person "strike force" in Ohio became a source of contention when hotel workers in Columbus, according to a report compiled by the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee, claimed that the strike team used "payphones to make intimidating calls to likely voters, targeting people recently in the prison system" and alleging that the FBI would send them back to jail if they voted. - ( complete article at link)

Right Wing Nut House Echoes Novak's Lies

More bitter lies and attacks of modern conservatives

Clarence Thomas Whines His Way to the Bank

Clarence Thomas Whines His Way to the Bank

It's useful to watch Mr. Thomas at this moment, 16 years after his riveting confirmation circus. He is a barometer of what has and has not changed since then because he hasn't changed at all. He still preaches against black self-pity even as he hyperbolically tries to cast his Senate cross-examination by Joe Biden as tantamount to the Ku Klux Klan assassination of Medgar Evers. He still denies that he is the beneficiary of the very race-based preferences he deplores. He still has a dubious relationship with the whole truth and nothing but, and not merely in the matter of Anita Hill.

This could be seen most vividly on 60 Minutes, when he revisited a parable about the evils of affirmative action that is also a centerpiece of his memoir: his anger about the "tainted" degree he received from Yale Law School. In Mr. Thomas's account, he stuck a 15-cent price sticker on his diploma after potential employers refused to hire him. By his reckoning, a Yale Law graduate admitted through affirmative action, as he was, would automatically be judged inferior to whites with the same degree. The 60 Minutes correspondent, Steve Kroft, maintained that Mr. Thomas had no choice but to settle for a measly $10,000-a-year job (in 1974 dollars) in Missouri, working for the state's attorney general, John Danforth.

What 60 Minutes didn't say was that the post was substantial -- an assistant attorney general -- and that Mr. Danforth was himself a Yale Law graduate. As Mr. Danforth told the story during the 1991 confirmation hearings and in his own book last year, he traveled to New Haven to recruit Mr. Thomas when he was still a third-year law student. That would be before he even received that supposedly worthless degree. Had it not been for Yale taking a chance on him in the first place, in other words, Mr. Thomas would never have had the opportunity to work the Yalie network to jump-start his career and to ascend to the Supreme Court. Mr. Danforth, a senator in 1991, was the prime mover in shepherding the Thomas nomination to its successful conclusion.

Bill O'Reilly may have deemed the 60 Minutes piece "excellent," but others spotted the holes. Marc Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who now directs the National Urban League, told Tavis Smiley on PBS that it was "as though Justice Thomas's public relations firm edited the piece." On CNN, Jeffrey Toobin, the author of the new best-seller about the court, The Nine, said that it was "real unfair" for 60 Minutes not to include a response from Ms. Hill, who was slimed on camera by Mr. Thomas as "not the demure, religious, conservative person" she said she was.

Ms. Hill, who once taught at Oral Roberts University and is now a professor at Brandeis, told me last week that CBS News was the only one of the three broadcast news divisions that did not seek her reaction to the latest Thomas salvos. Mr. Kroft told me that there were no preconditions placed on him by either Mr. Thomas or his publisher. "Our story wasn't about Anita Hill," he said. "Our story was about Clarence Thomas."

The Iraq Money Pit - by James P. McGovern

The Iraq Money Pit - by James P. McGovern

I recently came across a photo of a handwritten sign in a US military facility in Ramadi, Iraq. The sign read, "America is not at war. The Marine Corps is at war; America is at the mall."

The sign reflects a perception among many US soldiers and their families that the American people are not sharing in their sacrifice.

It is a perception grounded in reality. President Geroge W. Bush recently called upon the nation for "more patience, more courage, and more sacrifice." But outside of the military, who is really sacrificing?

Certainly not members of Congress. We will not wake up tomorrow in harm's way in Baghdad or Fallujah. We're often good at talking about sacrifice but lousy at bringing it about.

I propose we change this dynamic by raising taxes on nearly every American in order to pay for the war in Iraq.

So far we have spent $450 billion fighting the war. The president is expected to ask for an additional $150 billion soon. It is reasonable to assume that the cost will approach $800 billion by the time Bush leaves office.

Limbaugh Compares Purple Heart Recipient In Vote Vets Ad To A Suicide Bomber

Limbaugh Compares Purple Heart Recipient In Vote Vets Ad To A Suicide Bomber

In McGough's case, Rush's comments are especially tactless. McGough's injury in Iraq "resulted from a real-life suicide bomber." On DailyKos, McGough responds to Limbaugh:

I can assure you that I am no suicide bomber and that I can think for myself. […]

Rush, your phony soldier comments pissed me off. The audacity of someone like you who never had the courage to stand and fight for what you believe in makes my head spin. That is what made me stand up and state my convictions in front of a camera. I wanted to point out that you are wrong. I am not a phony soldier. […]

n the commercial I just taped, I told you unless you had the guts to say something to my face, stop telling lies about my service. Well you haven't had the guts to say it to my face, but I am waiting and the offer is still on the table.

Bush 'Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing' in Iraq

Bush 'Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing' in Iraq

Spiegel Online: A lot of people have been saying that the US presence there is a big part of the problem. Is anyone in the White House listening?

Hersh: No. The president is still talking about the "Surge" as if it's going to unite the country. But the Surge was a con game of putting additional troops in there. We've basically Balkanized the place, building walls and walling off Sunnis from Shiites. And in Anbar Province, where there has been success, all of the Shiites are gone. They've simply split.

Spiegel Online: Is that why there has been a drop in violence there?

Hersh: I think that's a much better reason than the fact that there are a couple more soldiers on the ground.

Spiegel Online: So what are the lessons of the Surge?

Hersh: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he's talking about it or not. When he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties together. He's not saying that any more. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You're going to have a Kurdistan. You're going to have a Sunni area that we're going to have to support forever. And you're going to have the Shiites in the South.