Disappointed in the mindless endorsement given to Chris Shays by The New York Times, I have sent the following letter to Clark Hoyt -- the paper's Public Editor:
Dear Clark Hoyt,
In A Congressional Endorsement two years ago [October 25, 2006], The New York Times supported Diane Farrell for the seat in Connecticut's 4th District saying: "Mr. Shays may be a beacon of integrity, but if he is re-elected he will vote to continue House control by a party that has repeatedly sold out the country to special interest lobbyists. . . .[and] if he is re-elected he will support a Republican leadership that has refused to question even the most ruinous decisions . . . about the conduct of American foreign policy."
Disappointed in the mindless endorsement given to Chris Shays by The New York Times, I have sent the following letter to Clark Hoyt -- the paper's Public Editor:
Dear Clark Hoyt,
In A Congressional Endorsement two years ago [October 25, 2006], The New York Times supported Diane Farrell for the seat in Connecticut's 4th District saying: "Mr. Shays may be a beacon of integrity, but if he is re-elected he will vote to continue House control by a party that has repeatedly sold out the country to special interest lobbyists. . . .[and] if he is re-elected he will support a Republican leadership that has refused to question even the most ruinous decisions . . . about the conduct of American foreign policy."
Many of us here at MLN tried to prevent the Iraq war, writing to our Congressional representatives, participating in demonstrations, writing letters to the editor. A pithy slogan at that time was "No Blood for Oil." Of course, with the discovery of Saddam's huge cache of WMDs, that conspiratorial canard has been discredited.
Not.
Despite the morass that the Iraq war has become, it is unlikely to be the end of military adventurism in pursuit of black gold, Baghdad/Tehran/Caracas tea. Michael T. Klare, a preeminent authority on resource geopolitics, is coming to New Haven on Saturday, September 27th to discuss how increased competition for diminishing energy resources is re-shaping the world's economic and political landscape leading to both new opportunities and great danger. More after the jump...
A couple of quick bits from Chris Shays' appearance on Where We Live with John Dankosky.
Talking about the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, Shays stated,
"We have to define what 'leave' means."
This from a guy who in August 2006 told voters that he was in favor of a timeline and was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that most of our troops could be withdrawn by the end of 2007. This from a guy who told voters that he was more anti-war than was Diane Farrell, because he favored a "timeline" for withdrawal.
Both Ways came out with this perfect nugget that really captured the essense of our two-decade congressman:
"Our economy is stronger than people realize. But in my opinion, we are in a recession."
Priceless!
And what about off-shore drilling from the guy who has touted his vote against drilling in ANWR?
"We have to have drilling in our coastal regions."
He was asked why we should trust him to defend Social Security when he had co-sponsored two bills in the 1990's to privatize Social Security, and was one of Bush's earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of Bush's private accounts scheme to dismantle the system. Shays' response?
It's a distortion. He wants to divert one-third of all Social Security receipts to private accounts, but that doesn't mean he's in favor of dismantling the system. Does anyone think that the imminent retirement of the mass of Baby Boomers could be accomodated if we are taking away a third of all receipts from those paying in? Does Shays?
In front of constituents earlier this spring, Chris Shays couldn't have stated his position on Iraq any more clearly:
Before the start of the discussion, Mr. Shays explained that he recently returned from his 20th trip to Iraq since the war began five years ago. He said progress is being made and he believes Iraq can find unity, despite years of violence. “I support the President on Iraq,” Mr. Shays said.
He acknowledged that polls claim two-thirds of Iraqis want Americans to leave. But Mr. Shays said he has never gotten that sense from any of his visits.
Q: If it’s working, senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?
McCAIN: No, but that’s not too important.
One day before Chris Shays is scheduled to co-host a John McCain fundraiser in CT, Jim Himes released this statement about the importance of bringing our troops home:
"John McCain's comments this morning are not only sorely out-of-touch, they are also hurtful to the families of troops serving in Iraq for whom nothing is more important than knowing when their loved ones will come home.
"If Chris Shays was serious about bringing our troops home, he wouldn't be co-chairing John McCain's campaign in Connecticut. Just like his party's standard-bearer, Chris Shays is deeply confused and out-of-touch when it comes to Iraq. In 2006 he promised voters he would support timelines, only to vote against them three times in 2007. Now, in 2008, he says he supports President Bush on Iraq and is working hard to elect an administration that clearly intends to keep American troops in harms way in Iraq for years if not decades.
"Connecticut families know we cannot afford a third term of the Bush-McCain-Shays policy on Iraq. It is long past time to give the Iraqi government a clear timeline for the full redeployment of American troops so we can start focusing on the challenges that face us here at home."
The Chairman's responsibilities and Jurisdictions will include real oversight concerning failures of the Bush administration in providing security to our nation during times of war, illegal invasions, ongoing occupations, and natural disasters, as well as overseeing the bloated budget and operations of the largest branch of government ever to be created in the US governments' history through legislation authored under the Republican controlled Senate and House, and signed by the Republican pResident of the time.
Your main and immidiate responsibilities will include holding the needed hearings, directing sub-commitees and legislation needed to avoid repeating the previous disasters, corrupt practices, and failures that will be found with the propper direction and oversight of a NON-PARTISAN and ethical Senate leader.
(1)Minorities such as moderate Republicans having no ties to far-right-wing radical organizations like the Neoconservative movement, the American Enterprise Instute, The Heritage Foundation, Energy Corporations, or the Bush administrations most recent policy proposals that are doomed to failure, are encouraged to apply to Senator Harry Reid for any consideration concerning this soon to be available position.
(2)Note to applicants: Please mark the subject of the Email as "Homeland Security" and refer to this x-posted Blog diary in the opening paragragh of the application. You will be contacted shortly before I post an "I told you so!" diary covering the flawed positons, election statement lies, and propaganda of the far-right-wing radical Neoconservative Joe Lieberman.
When it comes to getting U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sen. John McCain was for the idea before he was against it.
Three years before the Arizona Republican argued on the campaign trail that U.S. forces could be in Iraq for 100 years in the absence of violence, he decried the very concept of a long-term troop presence.
In fact, when asked specifically if he thought the U.S. military should set up shop in Iraq along the lines of what has been established in post-WWII Germany or Japan -- something McCain has repeatedly advocated during the campaign -- the senator offered nothing short of a categorical "no."
"I would hope that we could bring them all home," he said on MSNBC. "I would hope that we would probably leave some military advisers, as we have in other countries, to help them with their training and equipment and that kind of stuff."
Host Chris Matthews pressed McCain on the issue. "You've heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I've heard it from the hawks. They say, keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7th Fleet in Asia. We have the German...the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?"
McCain held fast, rejecting the very policy he urges today. "I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence," he responded. "And I don't pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be."
The January 2005 comments, which have not surfaced previously during the presidential campaign, represent a stunning contrast to McCain's current rhetoric.
They also run squarely against his image as having a steadfast, unwavering idea for U.S. policy in Iraq -- and provide further evidence to those, including some prominent GOP foreign policy figures in the "realist" camp, who believe McCain is increasingly adopting policies shared by neoconservatives.
This needs to be pounded home repeatedly. The MSM will continue their current course of meaningless, hero-worshipping McCain stories (along with cookie-cutter liberal elitist stories on the Democratic nominee) if they are left to their own devices. Democrats have to get ahead of this because the media won't do it - NBC must have had this footage and just not bothered to check when McCain made his 100 years statement.
Last night by a vote of 13-2 the New Britain Common Council passed a resolution condemning the occupation of war in Iraq. The vote broke along party lines, with the Council's two Republicans, Louis Salvio and Mark Bernacki, ensuring they lose their next reelection voting nay.
"The Iraqis," said Shays, before briefly threatening to end the interview on the subject, "are starting to like us, and that's a fact."
The congressman grew animated when asked if that was not an anecdotal judgment, explaining that he had gauged the opinion of Iraqis by going "outside the umbrella of the military" on his frequent visits to the country.
It is a bit of a sore spot, I suppose. In 2008, on the five year anniversary of the invasion, Shays says he regrets his vote on the IWR because we didn't find any WMD in Iraq:
"Knowing what I know now, I would not have voted (for it), on two accounts," said Shays, of the 4th District in Fairfield County, in a phone interview. "One, there weren't weapons of mass destruction. But the second count is if I had known how poorly we would fight the war the first three and a half years. So, you know we made horrendous mistakes."
Yet way back in 2006, when the war was a mere three and a half years old, Shays said we should have gone into Iraq "sooner" and "not for WMD":
Note to reporters and constituents who may plan to ask their Congressman about this discrepancy: be prepared for another "animated" response.
I am not saying what this soldier did was or was not wrong, but I am saying that the prosecution of this particular soldier is hypocritical and wrong. In my view, if this one soldier should be prosecuted for killing a civilian under direct orders in the middle of the battle field, then there are many in our government should be prosecuted for starting this unjust war and calculating the killing of thousands of Iraqi civilians from their high horses sitting in their air-conditioned offices.
I've been wrestling with this diary for a day and a half... basically as Iraq has moved into the background, I've spent a bit less time thinking about it, but then I saw something on TV that I had to write about. Here goes...
The horserace narrative has swung back into full tweety ahead over the weekend. But more troubling to me than the Clinton/Obama back-and-forth (and let me say, pretty much all of the Democrats running for Prez are equally complicit in Iraq in my eyes) was what Clinton repeated over and over during her interview on Meet the Press on Sunday. Her rationalization for her vote on the 2002 AUMF was 1) it was her understanding that the vote was not for actual use of force but rather for the threat of force 2) she thought inspectors would go back in 3) she found out later Bush was deceiving Congress (and the American people) by going in unilaterally on an inflated / fabricated case for war. In this characterization, Bush is the one who bears the full responsibility for the war. Here's what she said on the transcript:
Well, I have said that obviously, I would never do again what George Bush did with that vote. He misused and abused the authority that was given to him, in my opinion. And we can't turn the clock back. I've taken responsibility for it.
...
I, I would not have given President Bush the authority if I knew he would deliberately misuse and abuse it.
...
It became clear in retrospect, Tim, once people started writing books and information came out of the administration, the president had no intention of letting the inspectors do their job. That's not what I was told by the Bush White House. That's not what we were told in constant briefings from high-level Bush administration officials. That's not what the president told the country in his speech in Cincinnati shortly before the vote. If you remember, he said this vote was the best chance to avoid some kind of confrontation.
Clinton is saying that Bush abused the power of war under false pretenses, and deliberately misled the country by lying about his intentions. Okay, I think we all can agree with that.
But this begs what should be a very obvious question, one that Russert did not ask.
Trips number seventeen and eighteen didn't result in any unearthed ponies. So now Chris Shays is embarking on his nineteenth - nineteenth - trip to Iraq in the past five years:
WASHINGTON - Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, departed Sunday evening for his 19th trip to Iraq since U.S.-led coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003....
Shays claims to have visited Iraq more often than any other member of Congress. The frequent visits, he says, give him an opportunity to gauge progress there over time. After visiting Iraq in July and August last year, Shays recommended that the United States set firm time lines for Iraqi security forces to replace American troops.
(Update: Of course, after returning from Iraq in July and August last year, and winning re-election, Shays voted multiple timesagainst such timelines.)
Meanwhile, Shays has kept busy since trip number eighteen scrambling to cover for Bush, Condi, and Blackwater in the House Oversight Committee... racking up frequent flyer miles to the fertile crescent while doing everything in his power to prevent meaningful oversight of the Bush Iraq mess back in D.C. Looking back over the long history of Shays's ever-shifting and incomprehensible positions on Iraq, it's obvious that these constant trips haven't done much to elucidate matters for him (or to help him elucidate those haphazard positions to his constituents).
If Shays stays in office, we can look forward to trips numbers 20, 21, 22... maybe even 50, if, as he hopes, the United States builds the permanent bases in Iraq that Bush wants and Shays supports:
That's why I happen to think we need a timeline so both realize we're not going to cut-and-run and we're not going to be there forever in a military way, except for this point: We are going to have, I think, permanent bases in the area, maybe in Iraq, to maintain stability in the region.
On Monday I attended an Edwards event at Exeter Town Hall in NH. It was NH Retail at its very best.
The Edwards stump has taken a major step forward since I saw him two weeks ago, the content has changed and the tone has shifted to that of an urgency in his current speech. The distinctions are now razor sharp between John Edwards and the rest of the field, "you have choices in this election and you need to be aware of them." The reality of where we are as a country today and the vision for where we all want to be as a people are now painted in excruciating and moving detail on one issue after another: universal health care; corruption; disenfranchisement of the citizenry; economic fairness; our two unequal school systems; global warming and conservation the list goes on ...
And it's only about 23 minutes so you can imagine, man. Follow me below the fold for the full video and the antidote.
Bush's war is costing us $315 billion at last count. A staggering amount, of money, but people have a hard time contextualizing large numbers. (This is part of the reason the public has a hard time understanding things like astronomy and evolution, but that's for another topic). Once you get past everyday numbers (mortage payments, taxes, yearly salary) sums of money above a million can be hard to relate to each other. I stumbled across a great presentation that gives you a sense of the scale (hat tip to Crooks and Liars) by using stacks of dollar bills. Here's just a taste:
The stack for billions of dollars dwarfs the above images, as you can imagine, but you have to see it for yourself.
On a related note an artist by the name of Chris Jordan makes giant images of waste material with a unique approach:
This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. My underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
You may have seen Jordan on Moyers or Colbert recently. As one example of his work, this is an image of 60,000 plastic bags:
Each one of those little tiny colored squares is one plastic bag. here's a zoom view:
and another zoom:
The top image, again, represents 60,000 plastic bags. The vast majority of those go to landfills (or wind up blowing around and stuck in a tree somewhere). What is the meaning of 60,000? That is the number of bags consumed in the US - not weekly or hourly or each minute - but every FIVE SECONDS. Scary, scary stuff - in the time it takes to, say, dial a phone number or write your signature in cursive, it's that many bags used.
On Thursday's Hardball Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) talked with Chris Matthews about the strong push from Dick Cheney and some members of the Senate - namely Kyl and Lieberman - to move closer to invading Iran. Matthews gets it, by passing amendments condemning Iran, they're tying to get other legislators on the record so they can come back later and use it to make the case for war.
Matthews: "…But these guys, Kyl - Kyl and Lieberman are not diplomats, they're hawks.
Webb: "Well, the Cheney element of the administration is well represented in the United States Senate."
A dedicated, life-long Democrat, I am not alone in being thoroughly disgusted with my Party. We won the 2006 elections but might as well have lost: Congress continues to enable the Bush-Cheney crime family in all of its worst endeavors; and, increasingly, it appears that Democratic voters may fall into line and nominate the right-wing's first choice (and best hope) for our standard bearer in 2008. How dumb can we get?
As I wrote earlier [in "Not Hillary"], Republicans are licking their chops at the chance to batter Hillary Clinton a second time around; in fact, they aren't even waiting until she's been nominated. The Republican debates already have produced numerous examples of the stampede to beat up the presumed Democratic front-runner; and the media, predictably, has followed suit by beating up on her Democratic challengers. When I mentioned recently to a largely apolitical friend - and registered Republican - that Rupert Murdoch has been making large contributions to Hillary's campaign, he said: Well, her candidacy represents Republicans' best chance of retaking the White House in 2008.
As if the prospect of a Republican victory in 2008 were not enough, there are many more reasons for Democratic voters to hold their representatives accountable for the jobs they were elected to do. In this context, it should be reasonable to expect any Democratic Presidential candidate to demonstrate a willingness to address the country's most important challenges. After two terms of Bush-Cheney, the country's "To Do list" has become a very long one - including numerous intractable problems. I have generated a Starter List below, which includes just a few of the most serious challenges we face; it is by no means comprehensive . . .
Over 11% of new enlistees needed a "character waiver" in fiscal 2007, up from 7.9% the previous year and more than double the percentage in 2003, the year Bush and his Neocon cohorts took us into this godforsaken war.
While the head of Army recruitment states that 87% of those waivers are for "youthful indiscretion" offenses like joy riding, the number of recruits with felony arrests and convictions has almost tripled, from 459 in 2003 to 1620 in fiscal 2007.
Perhaps almost as worrying, given the technological requirements of the modern armed forces, is that the number of recruits without a high school diploma has also risen dramatically. Fewer than 80% of new recruits in fiscal 2007 had a high school diploma - this is the fourth straight year that the number has been below 80%.
The Department of Defense goal is for 90% of recruits to have achieved a high school diploma. Guess that ain't happening any time soon, especially since the DOD plans to increase the size of the standing Army from 512,000 to 547,000 by 2010.
With the Army stretched to the breaking point by extended deployments, is it any wonder that they're having to lower the standards in order to keep the numbers up?
Killingworth (WTNH) _ A 25-year old soldier from Killingworth is the latest Connecticut casualty of the Iraq War.
Jason Lantieri was killed early this morning in Baghdad, Iraq. The Department of Defense has not yet released the details of his deaths, but News Channel 8 has learned that he was on active duty and in the Army Airborne Division. Lantieri graduated from Haddam-Killingworth High School in 2000. Killingworth Today reports he graduated from Western New England College in 2004. First Selectman Martin Klein says the news of Lantieri's death will be difficult for the small community to accept."For a small town like Killingworth it's a very traumatic thing for us to lose someone," said Klein.
Lantieri is the 39th person with ties to Connecticut to die in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Last night's debate brought the issue of residual forces in Iraq to the front and center Democratic presidential campaign. The candidates presented their differing views on whether or not they would have all us troops out of Iraq by the end of their first term in office -- 2013 -- six years from now.
Sadly, there was little difference between the "top tier" candidates, as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards all said they will not have ended our involvement in Iraq by 2013.
The top-tier candidates all agreed last night that the Iraq war is only half over--that if elected President, each will continue the U.S. occupation and U.S. combat operations inside Iraq until at 2013. This means that the official Democratic position is now that the Iraq war will be a ten-year war.
Now, I strongly disagree with Feldman that waiting until 2013 is the "official Democratic position." It is only the consensus position held by the three front-running candidates.
It is not Chris Dodd's official position. Nor is it the position of millions of Democrats and anti-war activists who are fighting to end the war today.
Dodd made his stance crystal clear in this exchange with moderator Tim Russert:
Tim Russert: I want to put you on the record. Will you pledge as Commander in Chief that you have all troops out of Iraq by January of 2013?
Last night's debate made it abundantly clear that while there exists a consensus among the "top tier" of Democratic presidential that they won't be committed to end the war by 2013, there is an alternative: Chris Dodd. Dodd is the only candidate who's fighting to pass legislation to cut off funding for the war now while committing to get our troops out of Iraq in his first term in office if he can't succeed legislatively before then.
If you want to end the war in Iraq and if you have been a supporter of Barack Obama, John Edwards, or Hillary Clinton, I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to join the Dodd Squad. You'll have a candidate who stands with you in your desire about ending the war and you will never, ever have to apologize for him pledging to keep US troops in Iraq for six more years.
On Monday I attended an Edwards event at Exeter Town Hall in NH. It was NH Retail at its very best.
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