Thank You Molly!

Stand Up And Be Counted!

Humorist (and Bush critic) Molly Ivins will be sorely missed. Her astute and acerbic observations on the foibles and felonies of George W. Bush in particular, and American political life in general helped pull back the curtain and expose the charlatan,for a broad class of Americans, to understand how deeply flawed our leaders can be.

In her writing, she managed with humor and common sense, to cut to the heart of politics. She knew right from wrong and was unafraid to expose both. Her own words best describe her world view, "Tell them that we had fun!"

Congress' War Powers

The Congress Has The Power To End The War, They Merely Lack The Will To Do So

What happened to the Democrats? Very few dispute the election’s meaning: we want them to end the war. We do not want posturing, politicizing, and predicting. We do not want bipartisanship. If we wanted bipartisanship, we would have voted for moderate republicans, such as Lincoln Chafee. We voted for change. The politicians are worried about getting re-elected; otherwise, the war would be over.

The Republicans worry about insulting the President. George Bush showed remarkable ability to raise money. The Texas oilman has been better connected than any modern politician in modern history. The forces of big Pharma, oil, and finance together with the staggeringly wealthy have been richly rewarded for their investments in this administration. The Bush team managed to dismantle the regulators that had checked the rapaciousness of these groups since the New Deal. Bush spent more money than any candidate ever. His receipts for the 2004 election amounted to $367,228,801. (had he relied on government funding the figure would have been a still staggering $74.6 million in government funding for the general election). Bush demonstrated that he can bring the goods. With no heir-apparent, the Republican who can get Bush on board will have a real advantage; they have no edge in making him angry with protest votes now.

The Democrats worry about not showing “support for out troops”. No one wants to be shown as “soft on terror.” Even with a majority opinion that Bush has recklessly proceeded in Iraq, the Dems fear positioning themselves as losing the war.

Do the trappings of Washington power really have mind control forces? It would seem so. It seems to be one thing to complain about Washington in Minneapolis, and another to complain in DC.

The Congress has the power to end the war in two ways. Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution vest war making powers in the Congress, a part of the often voiced “checks and balances’ genius of the document:

The Congress shall have the power... To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress...

This power includes not only the intent to begin war, but also the extent of the war. In giving Congress the power to declare war, the Constitution gives it authority to make decisions about a war’s scope and duration. The Founders, including James Madison, who is often called “the father of the Constitution,” fully expected Congress to use these powers to rein in the commander in chief. “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it,” Madison cautioned. “It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.” The Congress may also end the war by not funding the war-the so-called “power of the purse.”

In other words, the Democrats have the power to end the war, they merely lack the will to do so. With the election on the horizon, too many Senators running for office are in key positions and will not do the right thing.

May God have mercy on us all.

What Now In Iraq?

It Was Always About The Oil (And Natural Gas)

The Military

The Iraqis who could have accomplished unification, ordinary educated middle class citizens have abandoned the country. The Iraqis remaining are the poor, too stupefied by psychological response to violence to prevent further victimization, and the young idealists, alienated under the old regime and now ready to die for the last group, the religious zealots who envision a fundamentalist Islamic state free of any non-conformers conditioned by years of war to believe that horrifying levels of violence against anyone fully justified by the desire for a perfect state.

We cannot just leave the region, but we must obviously disengage. At this point we only inflame the radicalism of both Shia and Sunni. We must stop arming the populace under the name of “training Iraqi forces” this has degenerated into merely training combating sides. Also, we have national interests at stake, the very reason Bush attacked in the first place. (No not WMDs which was always a red herring) but vast oil and natural gas reserves that would otherwise have gone to the French or Russians. Iraq contains 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world. According to the Oil and Gas Journal, Iraq contains 110 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven natural gas reserves, along with roughly 150 Tcf in probable reserves. After all during the prewar build up, Vice President Cheney intensley focused on Iraq's energy reserves. Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” "




Iraq is important to world energy markets because it holds more than 112 billion barrels of oil - the world's second largest reserves. Iraq also contains 110 trillion cubic feet of gas."[ US Government's Country Analysis Brief on Iraq, December 1999. ]



"No matter what decision the president makes [on Iraq], the United States will always be better off with a policy that provides more energy independence"(Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman)[ Miami Herald (from Reuters), "White House: No Link Between Iraq Policy, Oil Price", 6 September 2002 ]



The most blunt statement comes from former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, a leading advocate of U.S. military action against Iraq: "France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them." Woolsey also said, "If they throw their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them."



Second, we need to avoid a regional war. As the Sunnis, Shia, or Kurds appear to gain the other hand, no doubt Iraq, Saudis, and the Turks will feel compelled to intervene. In addition to the horrors of such a war. A regional broadening of the war would destroy the oil-dependent global economy.

Third, if in fact a genocide begins, as many Sunni predict, would America standby as we did in Rwanda and are doing in Darfur. In other words, if had no military in Iraq and witnessed genocide, wouldn’t we want to try to intervene as a matter of humanitarianism.

Fourth, our war created a refugee crisis of unimaginable proportions. The military can be very good at the logistics of moving food, medicine, supplies, and portable housing where it needs to go, in cooperation with neighboring states.

The State Department

The time long passed for turning this war over to the state department. Regional diplomacy remains the best way to end the secular, sectarian, psychotic violence we loosed in Iraq. The only goal now is an end to fighting, a mere cease fire. Get the people to lay down their arms and then work out what kind of government they want. We must ignore President Bush’s uninformed, paternalistic desires to impose a western style democratic republic. Obviously that will not happen. But we need not abandon our desire to help Iraqis shape their own government. We must have a role in insisting on civil rights, the protection of ethnic minorities, and equal status for women, as well as all the other benefits modern government, in it’s varieties of compositions can provide.

These goals lie fully within the State Departments mandate and not in the Pentagon. Our military will always win on the field, but they will always loose if they must fight the entire population.

What We Must Do

Prevent the disunion and partition of Iraq. Look at the disaster that followed the partition of India. The Viceroy Lord Mountbatten viewed the ethnic strife between Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh populations which exploded after the plan to keep India unified but ruled by ethnic provinces. He persuaded the British Parliament to abandon this plan after the rioting became full-blown civil war. The India Independence Act caused the migration of over 15 million Indians as the new countries exchanged populations. Millions died during riots, civil war, and migration.

After division, the region saw continued wars, in 1965, the Indio-Pakistan War, in 1971 again Indio-Pakistan but also the division and birth of Bangladesh. The 1971 war includes the genocide of Bengalis, by 1972 Newsweek reported over 10 million Bengal refugees. The Kargali War of 1992 witnessed conflict between nuclear armed neighbors. Tensions between the new countries continue today, with a nuclear armed Indian and Pakistan still fighting over Kashmir. India continues to be tormented by Kashmiri separatist terrorists, including attack on the India Parliament building by separatist gunmen.

The division of India should inform military planners in Iraq. The massive population displacement, the millions dead from secular fighting, and the continued regional tensions do not bode well for similar response in Iraq.

Millions dead, many more millions displaced, and generations of violent tension. Is that what America hopes to duplicate in the Middle East? While division does seem to be where the inertia at work in Iraq seems headed, the British might be of even more help in planning than they have proved so far. After all, they have India, Afghanistan, and Israel experience before us. They tried and filed and now we have tried and failed. The lessons of Colonialism seem to be revisited on the world wherever our "national interests" demand. Division of Iraq may prove equally explosive, after all, the British planned the India partition.

The military should disperse from the cities of Iraq. We should stop training and arming the Iraqis, as they stand up: they seem to be fighting one another as well as us. It is time to disarm as many of them as we can. Protect the frontier entry points and patrol to prevent infiltration from neighboring states. We should defend the oil infrastructure that both Iraq and the world depend. We should move north to work with the Kurds and help avoid invasion by their historical enemy the Turks. We need to stay in theater in case of genocide, but out of the way to try to reduce the simmering tension felt from our mere presence on Iraqi streets. Let the process of negotiation by the statesmen try to proceed.

Paper's Readers "Too Stupid" To View Photograph

St. Francis High School in Anoka.

When I first heard the story I immediately began a First Amendment analysis. The next morning I read the story in the Strib and saw a copy of the picture. The incident, although it implicates free Speech rights, does not even rise to that level.

The Strib quotes the superintendent as citing the image’s potential “as offensive by community standards”. The school system's superintendent insults the community more by his view that the newspaper’s readers would be too stupid to understand what the story covered, a school play.

Even assuming for he sake of argument that some idiot might be offended because he only saw the picture and did not read the caption or article explaining the image, does this justify the school's decision? Absolutely not. These students do not surrender their constitutional rights at the school door. The newspaper in no way disrupts the school's purpose.

"Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble. Any variation from the majority's opinion may inspire fear. Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the views of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take this risk; and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom-this kind of openness-that is the basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputatious, society." Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969).

The time long passed in which our high schools should be debating the Iraq War. They are the great pool from which the military draws.

First, We Kill All The Lawyers

Assistant Secretary of Defense Cully Stimson told Federal News Radio that the nation’s major corporate CEOs ought to pressure their law firms not to represent “terrorists”:

"I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out."

Mr. Stimson is a lawyer and ought to know better, he graduated from George Mason Law School and worked for the Navy. He is the top Pentagon official in charge of detainee detention. I would like to think that one could not graduate from law school without a firm understanding of the American legal system. Fundamental to the process is the notion that the defendant enjoys a right to a lawyer. John Adams (our second president) represented the British troops responsible for the Boston Massacre.

No wonder that he Bush Administration has so long run afoul of basic legal rights, it’s lawyers are so stupid. The other possibility of course is that Bush lawyers are merely craven and they do no better. I don’t know which possibility is worse. Is the attitude of Mr. Stimson a function of the 9-11 attacks, or was the attitude merely given cover by the attacks? I wonder whether the evidence against the detainees is so weak that no possibility exists of proving a case in any adversarial forum.

Bush Demonstrates His Contempt For Diplomacy

I am surprised he waited. Mere hours after declaring war on Iran, US soldiers raided an Iranian consulate in Iraq. Now we have six Iranians personnel held hostage and the circle is complete. The helpful White House PowerPoint presentation lists attacking Iran right up front, as a Key Tactical Shift: "Increase operations against Iranian actors"

Under International law and practice, embassy grounds may not be entered by the host country without permission. That after all is the whole point of refugee asylum in embassies. Even the North Koreans respect this, that is why North Korean nationals in China flee to third-party embassies.

Lawlessness in Iraq now being spread by the United States. What other country would President Bush dare to attack an embassy? Can even Prime Minister Blair tolerate standing with the President on this one? The governments of the world will condemn us.

The President's action demonstrates the contempt with which he holds diplomacy. Unless the military quickly exposes the facility as a bomb producing plant, we have some explaining to do.

Division Of Iraq

History, that wicked wretch, sneaks up, extend it’s palm and begs for alms. History meets us at the airport chanting “Hare Krishna.” History arrives in the post, “You may already have won!” Try as we might, never will history shake itself loose.

In his editorial Making the Surge Work, which started appearing on the 7th, David Brooks advocates using President Bush’s miliary escalation in Iraq to divide the country in ethnic parts.

"Perhaps, in other words, it’s time to merge the military Plan B — the surge — with a political Plan B — flexible decentralization. That would mean using adequate force levels (finally!) to help those who are returning to sectarian homelands. It would mean erecting buffers between populations where possible and establishing order in areas that remain mixed. It would mean finding decentralized governing structures that reflect the social and psychological facts on the ground.

"The record shows that in sufficient numbers and with sufficient staying power, U.S. troops can suppress violence. Perhaps more U.S. troops can create a climate in which decentralized arrangements can evolve.

"We can’t turn back time. But if the disintegration of Iraqi society would be a political and humanitarian disaster, perhaps we should finally commit military resources, and create a political strategy, commensurate with the task of salvaging something. "

Brooks should take a look at India's experience in Partition. The Viceroy Lord Mountbatten viewed the ethnic strife between Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh populations which exploded after the plan to keep India unified but ruled by ethnic provinces. He persuaded the British Parliament to abandon this plan after the rioting became full-blown civil war. The India Independence Act caused the migration of over 15 million Indians as the new countries exchanged populations. Millions died during riots, civil war, and migration.

After division, the region saw continued wars, in 1965, the Indio-Pakistan War, in 1971 again Indio-Pakistan but also the division and birth of Bangladesh. The 1971 war includes the genocide of Bengalis, by 1972 Newsweek reported over 10 million Bengal refugees. The Kargali War of 1992 witnessed conflict between nuclear armed neighbors. Tensions between the new countries continue today, with a nuclear armed Indian and Pakistan still fighting over Kashmir. India continues to be tormented by Kashmiri separatist terrorists, including attack on the India Parliament building by separatist gunmen.

The division of India should inform military planners in Iraq. The massive population displacement, the millions dead from secular fighting, and the continued regional tensions do not bode well for similar response in Iraq.

Millions dead, many more millions displaced, and generations of violent tension. Is that what America hopes to duplicate in the Middle East? While division does seem to be where the inertia at work in Iraq seems headed, the British might be of even more help in planning than they have proved so far. After all, they have India, Afghanistan, and Israel experience before us. They tried and filed and now we have tried and failed. The lessons of Colonialism seem to be revisited on the world wherever our "national interests" demand.