Saturday, January 16, 2010

Those scheduled Iraqi elections

"We're not going to boycott because our candidates were disqualified," said one of them, Suheil Najm. "We'll boycott because the elections won't be legitimate."

The above is from Anthony Shadid's "Political Turmoil Follows Barring of Hundreds From Iraq Ballot" in today's New York Times about the fall out from the banning of Nouri's political rivals. Most accounts try to pretty it up but the reality is that this is about protecting Nouri. Anyone seen as a threat must be banned. They can have run in elections since the US invasion but suddenly they're 'Ba'athists!' and must be purged. Nouri refused to join a variety of political blocs last year and, we know (because they talked about), at least one group lost out because they refused to promise that, if their slate was successful, Nouri would be prime minister. Now he eliminates his rivals. And everyone works overtime trying to pretend like it's not happening, that Little Nouri isn't attempting to be the New Saddam. Nada Bakri's "Iraqi Politicians Form New Secular Coalition" (New York Times) notes a new development:

Prominent Iraqi politicians on Saturday announced the formation of what might emerge as the country’s most powerful secular coalition in parliamentary elections in March, a group that includes a vice president, a former prime minister and a leading Sunni lawmaker who was barred last week from taking part in the vote.
Many here view the coalition, which includes Sunnis and Shiites, as the biggest competitor to the State of Law Coalition, led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. But the decision to bar some of its members from running in the March 7 elections, including the Sunni lawmaker, Saleh al-Mutlaq, could weaken its performance.



al-Mutlaq is quoted in the article declaring to the crowd, "If they succeed in eliminating Mutlaq, I tell them that there is a Mutlaq in every one of you." Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times) adds:

The commission's chairman, Ahmad Chalabi, and its executive director, Ali Lami, are on the Iraqi National Alliance slate, the Shiite grouping of mostly religious parties that is aiming to win enough seats to claim the prime minister's job.
The two men were on the De-Baathification Commission set up by former U.S. Administrator L. Paul Bremer III, and they kept their jobs when the commission was renamed because efforts to form a new one failed in parliament.
"This is totally a political decision," said Maysoon Damluji, a legislator with the secular coalition led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, which is believed to have had "many" candidates disqualified. "This is one way to get rid of your political opponents, by de-Baathifying them," she said.

For those who have forgotten or never knew, Ahmad Chalabi is the liar supreme who should be sitting behind bars. Chalabi was top dog among the Iraqi exiles who spent over two decades agitating for illegal war. Chalabi was a 'source' (usually unindentified) for many journalists. AP notes him today in another story: " . . . Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi exile group whose discredited WMD claims had been the main justification for the invasion." From SourceWatch's Chalabi entry:

Dr. Ahmed Chalabi (also spelled "Ahmad") is part of a three-man leadership council for the Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which was created at the behest of the U.S. government for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Chalabi, a secular Iraqi Shiite Muslim and mathematician by training, previously served as chairman of the Petra Bank in Jordan, where he engaged in various cloak-and-dagger operations that ended abruptly in August 1989 when he fled the country "under mysterious circumstances" and in 1992 was convicted in absentia for embezzlement, fraud and currency-trading irregularities, sentencing him to 22 years' hard labour. [1],[2]

In August 2003 a petition was circulating among Jordanian deputies to hold a special session soon in the 110-member house to demand the government take legal steps to seek Chalabi's extradition from Iraq. [3]



Al Jazeera covers the announcement here and doesn't bother to run interference for Nouri. Iran's Press TV notes:

At the time of his premiership, Allawi was widely known as a US ally and operative in the initial American-installed government in Iraq. His attempts to win back his position in the next two elections soundly failed.
The coalition is also joined by the incumbent Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, who complicated the passage of an electoral law last year by using his veto power to bar an earlier version of the law.
Both Allawi and Hashemi are notably opposed to current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. "He (Maliki) has failed to create a state of citizens to replace a state of (religious) communities," Hashemi told candidates and onlookers at the launching ceremony of his election campaign at Al-Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad.

Violence continues in Iraq with Reuters noting 2 police officers shot dead in Baghdad, 1 Trade Ministry employee shot dead in Baghdad, while a Baghdad stick bombing injured three people and an al-Zab sticky bombing claimed 1 life.



Canada's CBC reports 28-year-old Iraq War resister Cliff Cornell has been released from military pison and quotes him stating, "If I had to do it again I would, because I'm not killing innocent people. I still stand behind my decision 100 per cent. I am going to spend a few months with my family and then try to head back to Canada. I have friends up there and a whole community for me to come back to."

The following community sites updated since yesterday evening:



From Sherwood Ross' "OBAMA FANNING WAR FLAMES TO ENGULF THE MIDDLE EAST" (Bodhi Thunder):

As President Obama steps up the war that is inflaming ever wider sectors of the Middle East, USA continues its rapid slide toward Third World status. The two developments are not unrelated. Spending on war does not boost an economy as does domestic spending---and the Pentagon has been spending trillions on war.
At the start of the last decade, the U.S. was producing 32 percent of the world's gross domestic product. At decade’s end, it was just 24 percent, conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan observed. "No nation in modern history, save for the late Soviet Union, has seen so precipitous a decline in relative power in a single decade," he writes.
Buchanan cites the George W. Bush Republicans for turning a budget surplus into a huge deficit with tax cuts and social spending. He also faults GWB’s two wars, adding, "the huge U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq serves as (al-Qaeda's) recruiting poster."
This is the desperate situation President Obama is compounding by dispatching 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, building up U.S. and NATO forces there to nearly 140,000. To this figure add 100,000 U.S. contractors, making the actual number of military-related personnel about a quarter million. All at the expense of the American taxpayers!
"The war---once mostly limited to Pakistan border---has spread to nearly every corner of the country" and “penetrated" the capital Kabul "with car bombings and spectacular attacks," the AP reported January 10th. Its headline: "Afghans Losing Hope After 8 Years of War."
The AP quotes 19-year-old carpet-seller Hamid Hashimi stating, "The more soldiers they send here, the worse it gets." And the more misguided air attacks that kill civilians, the angrier Afghan civilians get. The raids "have previously killed civilians and inflamed anti-American sentiment among Afghans," Joshua Partlow reported in the Washington Post.


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.















thomas friedman is a great man






oh boy it never ends

Jack Straw before the Iraq Inquiry appearance

A "SECRET and personal" letter from Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, to Tony Blair reveals damning doubts at the heart of government about Blair’s plans for Iraq a year before war started.
The letter, a copy of which is published for the first time today, warned the prime minister that the case for military action in Iraq was of dubious legality and would be no guarantee of a better future for Iraq even if Saddam Hussein were removed.
It was sent 10 days before Blair met George Bush, then the US president, in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. The document clearly implies that Blair was already planning for military action even though he continued to insist to the British public for almost another year that no decision had been made.

The above is from Michael Smith's "Revealed: Jack Straw's secret warning to Tony Blair on Iraq" (Times of London) and Jack Straw is scheduled to appear before the Iraq Inquiry next week (Thursday). Friday, the Inquiry went behind closed doors at the request of a witness who apparently was allowed to dictate procedures. The BBC explains:

The Iraq Inquiry met behind closed doors to hear evidence from the general who ran the British operations in the conflict, it has emerged.
Gen Sir John Reith said he should be allowed to appear without the press and public present "for personal reasons".

Chris Ames (Guardian) focuses on another witness from this week, Alastair Campbell:

Last week, I wrote that "showing how, when and why [Alastair] Campbell said something that was false is very easy". It has become easier as Campbell has now taken to contradicting himself. It remains to be seen whether the Iraq inquiry noticed.
Although the inquiry members certainly upped their game on Tuesday and showed considerable scepticism over Campbell's evidence, they still didn't quite nail him down over the involvement of his fellow spin doctors in what former cabinet secretary Lord Turnbull described this week as the "granny's footsteps" process of strengthening the September 2002 Iraq dossier from one draft to the next.
Spin doctors such as John Williams, who produced the first full draft, Daniel Pruce of No 10 and Paul Hamill, who was responsible for the February 2003 (really) "dodgy dossier", were involved throughout the process, as this letter from intelligence chief John Scarlett to Tony Blair shows.
Campbell gave evidence to the Hutton Inquiry before the letter was handed over and published, so Tuesday's session was the first time he has been questioned publicly about it and other evidence of spin doctor involvement. This allows us to compare what Campbell told Hutton with what he said this week. The two versions of the story could not be more different.



Next week the Inquiry is scheduled to hear from: Jonathan Powell (Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, 2001 - 2007), Geoffrey Hoon (Secretary of State for Defence, 2001 - 2005), Mark Lyall-Grant (Director General Political, FCO, 2007 - 2009), David Omand (Permanent Secretary Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator, 2002 - 2005), Jack Straw (Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, 2001 - 2006), Suma Chakrabarti (Permanent Secretary, DFID, 2002 - 2007) and Nicholas Macpherson (Permanent Secretary, HMT, 2006 - 2009).

Meanwhile, in the US, the disgusting cadre that supported Barry O gets a little bit of exposure. This is from Daniel Tencer's "Obama staffer wants ‘cognitive infiltration’ of 9/11 conspiracy groups" (Raw Story):


In a 2008 academic paper, President Barack Obama's appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated "cognitive infiltration" of groups that advocate "conspiracy theories" like the ones surrounding 9/11.
Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, co-wrote an academic article entitled "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures," in which he argued that the government should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine" those groups.
As head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is in charge of "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs," according to the White House Web site.
Sunstein's article, published in the Journal of Political Philosphy in 2008 and recently uncovered by blogger Marc Estrin, states that "our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a 'crippled epistemology,' in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources."


Oh, look, it's little fat ass Cass. The ugly piece of s**t that a functioning society would have shunned along with his War Pushing wife Samantha Power.

Neither of them like democracy or the citizens of a democracy. That's the real key to who put Barack in power and at some point a large number of people self-presenting as 'independent' are going to have to answer for the pimping they did.

And you need to grasp that the slogans of the campaign were all about deceit and trickery. The country got punked. Took a lot of liars to ensure that and people need to start asking who's doing it? Is it by accident that lying sack of s**t goes on KPFA and starts boo-hooing about Samantha Power in June of 2008? Can't talk about Sammy Power telling BBC that Barack's not going to keep his Iraq 'promise' he's making on the campaign trail. But ___ can lie through his teeth about how wonderful and caring Sammy Power is? As if the Carr Center were a convent and Sammy the next Mother Teresa?

Those who treat citizens like people to be duped and lied to, people to be experimented on and tested do not deserve applause in an open society. They deserve scorn and condemnation. The inability, even at this late date, of so many on the left to call out Sammy Power and her ilk goes to a deep problem and the desire to promote Sammy Power goes to the fact that a number of 'independents' are actually on payrolls. By their pimping you will know them.

This is from Marc Estrin "Got Fascism? : Obama Advisor Promotes 'Cognitive Infiltration'" (The Rag Blog):

Put into English, what Sunstein is proposing is government infiltration of groups opposing prevailing policy. Palestinian Liberation? 9/11 Truth? Anti-nuclear power? Stop the wars? End the Fed? Support Nader? Eat the Rich?
It's easy to destroy groups with "cognitive diversity." You just take up meeting time with arguments to the point where people don't come back. You make protest signs which alienate 90% of colleagues. You demand revolutionary violence from pacifist groups.
We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI. There the agents are called "provocateurs" -- even if only "cognitive." One learns to smell or deal with them in a group, or recognize trolling online. But even suspicion or partial exposure can "sow uncertainty and distrust within conspiratorial groups [now conflated with conspiracy theory discussion groups] and among their members," and "raise the costs of organization and communication" -- which Sunstein applauds as "desirable." "[N]ew recruits will be suspect and participants in the group's virtual networks will doubt each other's bona fides." (p.225).


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.









Friday, January 15, 2010

Iraq snapshot

Friday, January 15, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, a witness testifying before the Iraq Inquiry reveals either extreme ignorance or a wilful desire to lie, tensions continue to flare over the efforts to ban Sunnis from running for office, and more.
 
Starting with the second hour of NPR's The Diane Rehm Show when Iraq was addressed by Diane and Karen DeYoung (Washington Post), a little bit by James Kitfield and who the hell knows what David Wood was smoking, but he's not just stupid, he's ass stupid.  Let's check in.
 
Diane Rehm: And Iraq also, large portions of Baghdad, shut down earlier this week. Why David?
 
David Wood: Well there was an incredible plot that was uncovered this week -- uhm -- i-in-in which there were going to be bombings of Iraqi government ministry buildings and then followed by a wave of political assassinations which clearly would have ignited a huge violent uhm situation. The Iraqi police intercepted the bombers on the way to the government -- to bomb the government buildings -- and to sort of stop the plot cold but clearly it's a real tinderbox in Iraq with the uh elections coming up in March and uh we saw just this week even more political struggle as the official government elections commission uh struck about 500 people off the elections list because of ties -- alleged ties to Ba'athist organizations.
 
Diane Rehm: So what is that going to do to those kinds of sectarian tensions?
 
David Wood: I-I can't imagine that they wouldn't inflame them.
 
Diane Rehm: Well exactly.
 
David Wood: Already you have people, where there have been protests -- and people uh really getting pretty angry.  Saw one Iraqi quoted as saying "The Iraqi street is boiling" which I think is a very good summation. [C.I. note: That quote is from Nada Bakri's report last week for the New York Times.]
 
James Kitfield: It's very bad news when you start -- the whole idea of this election -- it's only the second major election -- general election -- since the invasion -- 2003. The first one was boycotted by the Sunnis. It just sort of totally disenfranchised a major element of Iraq. The hope for the Americans was this would sort of -- that the Sunnis were going to take part and uhm so this electoral commission decision is very unhelpful. There's three days to appeal. I still have hope that we'll have some kind of influence to get an appeal of this so not so many parties and so many candidates are uhm are excluded. I also noted this week there was suicide bombings in Najaf very close to the Iman ali shrine which is sort of the most revered shrine in the Shia religion. That's kind of scary. Najaf has been very quiet for about three years. It reminds me of the Golden Dome attack. Once they took a very serious Shi'ite mosque and holy place they really almost ignited that civil war a couple of years ago so it's clear that this Sunni-Ba'athist, you know, irreconcilables are still out there  and the question is who has the upper hand and they have so far not been able to ignite the kinds of sectarian violence we saw in 2006 and 2007. But they're still trying. 
 
Diane Rehm: But US troops are withdrawing from Anbar [Province] at the end of this month.  Isn't that correct?
 
Karen DeYoung: That's right. This is part of the gradual withdrawal. They're supposed to have all what they call "combat forces" out by August leaving about 50,000 troops. I think it's a little disingenuis to distinguish between combat forces and other forces. There will still be 50,000 US troops after August until the end of next year in Iraq. But I think this -- the next several days will be fairly critical in seeing whether this ban on about 500 senior politicians is lifted. I mean, it includes the head of the National Dialogue Front which is the biggest Sunni alliance and it basically means that-that if it's allowed to stand the Sunnis have really no chance of capturing a significant portion of power there and kind of opens the door to the continuation of sectarian strife and obviously there are certain elements, presumably in the Sunni community, that-that are interested in promoting this kind of backlash on both sides.
 
Diane Rehm: And one other point, David Wood, on Thursday a Baghdad court sentenced 11 Iraqis to death. Why was that case so important?
 
David Wood: Well because, again, it's-it's -- you know -- Iraq is such a tinderbox and there's so -- such a struggle going on for power between the various sects that anything like that is a -- is a major excuse uh to take revenge.
 
Most of the time, I either know the guest or know of the guest on Diane's show.  So when a friend with the show called to note Iraq was covered, I asked, "Who the hell is David Wood?"  He writes for Politics Daily and, no, they don't have an Iraq correspondent.  They don't cover Iraq.  Everything the IDIOT said was never covered at the website. (It was never covered period because it's not factual.) Sweet Baby Dumb Ass  writes 'pithy' little articles like "Taliban Cause Most Civilian Deaths, but U.S. Gets the Blame."  Can we get that Debbie Downer sound in here? 
 
Let's go through his nonsense:
 
Well there was an incredible plot that was uncovered this week -- uhm -- i-in-in which there were going to be bombings of Iraqi government ministry buildings and then followed by a wave of political assassinations which clearly would have ignited a huge violent uhm situation. The Iraqi police intercepted the bombers on the way to the government -- to bomb the government buildings -- and to sort of stop the plot cold but clearly it's a real tinderbox in Iraq with the uh elections coming up in March and uh we saw just this week even more political struggle as the official government elections commission uh struck about 500 people off the elections list because of ties -- alleged ties to Ba'athist organizations.
 
There is no proof of a plot.  And there was no "interception." What supposedly happened is a tip -- and most reporters in the region believe the tip came in as a result of the fact that Nouri's now paying for tips -- and the tip may have been accurate, may not have been.  Supposedly 25 would be criminals were arrested.
 
 
But the big news will probably be the ongoing crackdown in Iraq's capital. Waleed Ibrahim, Jim Loney and Janet Lawrence (Reuters) report Baghdad is under curfew with at least 25 people arrested.  What's known?  Damn little.  So you know the New York Times is all over it, pressed up against it, breathless and heavy panting.  Today's groper is Timothy Williams. It's always cute when the paper goes weak knee-ed over claims instead of stating outright, "The following are claims by an installed government desperate to remain in office and we cannot verify any of what follows."  So Nouri's image took a beating and now he claims he has stopped at least 4 -- count 'em, 4 -- suicide bombings today.  You know what?  The moon didn't crash into the earth today either.  Maybe Nouri should claim credit for that as well.  I'm sure the New York Times would breathlessly repeat it.  The same Timmy that gushes today of how "the plot discovered by the Iraqi government on Tuesday would have been devastating if carried out."  Much more devastating, of course, if it were a real plot.  But Timmy can't verify that and why do reporting when there are so many fewer rules in 'reporting.'  Besides, it's fun too!  Watch: Timothy Williams denies rumors that he is pregnant with Nouri al-Maliki's child insisting that thus far, they've just done a half-and-half (mutual jackoff), government sources say.  See!  Fun!
 
An Iraqi correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers explains that the curfew lasted for two hours and that rumors flew like crazy:
 
["]The rumors today reminded me with those during Saddam regime when Saddam's followers used to spread rumors to control Iraqis and they strongly succeeded . Rumors are the most powerful weapons in Iraq an unfortunately, my people are very easy victims for this weapon.["]
 
Poor Timmy, from headline to text, Chip Cummins (Wall St. Journal) does a much better job establishing what's known and what's claimedXinhua adds, "A police source told Xinhua that the Iraqi forces mainly focused their search operations on eastern Baghdad neighborhoods, including the Shiite bastion of Sadr City, which has long been the stronghold of Mahdi Army militia, loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr."
 

Whether the alleged plot has been fully thwarted is open to question, however.
The quantities of explosives uncovered would barely equal that of one of the recent bombs. The government did not specify whether the security forces had found the bombs purported to be circulating.

Get it?  David Wood doesn't.  What an idiot.  James gets a lucky break because I don't have the time to dissect him. (However, non-Iraq related, he got off a howler and we'll address that at Third.) We will know that only Karen DeYoung appears to grasp what an allegation is while the men were happy to fling very serious allegations -- none of which they can prove -- at Sunnis.

Let's turn the continuing story of the banning of Sunni politicians (made all the easier when 'journalists' bandy about charges as if they're facts).  Marc Lynch (Foreign Policy) notes:
 
The story, of course, is the Committee's surprising decision to disqualify some 500 politicians, including the Sunni leader Saleh al-Mutlak and the current Minister of Defense  Abdul-Qadir Jassem al-Obeidi,  from contesting the upcoming Parliamentary elections on the grounds of alleged Baathist ties.   The Higher Election Commission disappointed many observers by accepting the recommendation;  the issue now goes to appeal.   Mutlak's list -- which includes such figures as former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and current Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi -- is talking about boycotting the election, which many fear could have a major negative impact on the elections and on longer-term prospects for Iraqi political accommodation. Not bad work for a zombie!                     
I say that it's the work of a "zombie" because the Accountability and Justice Committee, a relic of the Bremer era rooted in the conceptually flawed and badly politicized De-Baathification Commission, should be dead.  It is basically continuing to operate because the early 2008 legislation establishing its replacement never got off the ground, so the old team just stayed in place.   It's most unfortunate that such a relic has thrown more fuel onto the fire of mistrust and institutional dysfunction... but hardly a surprise in the thinly institutionalized and still deeply polarized and hotly politicized Iraqi scene.
 
 
In a piece entitled "Iraq's witch hunt continues" (Al Jazeera), Hoda Hamid notes the bulk of those targeted with bannings are "surprise, surprise" Sunnis and that Saleh al-Mutlaq's National Dialogue Front is "broad based, non sectarian party . . . unheard of in the new democratic Iraq" and that Sunnis are being prevented from participating due to a witch hunt. Dale McFeatters (Scripps Howard News Service) offers, "In any case, the chance of a Baath renaissance is increasingly remote. The threat of renewed sectarian violence is not. There is still time for the commission to reverse its ban and al-Maliki, the U.S. and United Nations should persuade them to do so."  Al-Ahram explains, "It is widely believed that it is this alliance with Allawi that has prompted the present ban. Shia groups that control both the parliament and the government fear that even a moderate success of the "Iraqi List" formed by Al-Mutlaq and Allawi last November could bring the Shia-controlled government down."  Martin Chulov (Guardian) quotes  Sunni politician Osama al-Najafi stating, "There has been a drastic change in the political situation in Iraq. There will be a severe public backlash to this, reconciliation will end, and the election will fail. Any results will clearly be seen as illegitimate." Anthony Shadid (New York Times) offers, "Western officials and some Iraqi politicians have questioned whether the decisions by the Accountability and Justice Commission are even binding, and critics have acused its director, Ali Faisal al-Lami, of carrying out agendas of various Iraqi politicians and of Iran. A former chairman of the De-Baathifcation Comission, now disbanded, Mr. Lami spent a year in American detention on suspicion of aiding Iran."  Waleed Ibrahim (Reuters) notes Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council member Mohammad al-Haidari claims, "The Baath party is worse than the Nazi pary."  NPR's Quil Lawrence reported on the situation for All Things Considered today and noted that al-Mutlaq has his supporters including a man who "draws a distinction between al-Mutlaq -- who never left Iraq -- and exiles -- many of them Shi'ites -- who returned with the American invasion."  He also has his detractors including an adviser to Nouri al-Maliki who sees al-Mutlaq as a Ba'athist and part of an effort to return to power.
 
Turning to London where the Iraq Inquiry heard from Maj Gen Graham Binns and Lt Gen John Reith -- link goes to video and transcript option -- sort of.  Reith demanded to testify in private and his wish was granted -- they did publish a transcript of Reith's testimony.
 
Chair John Chilcot: There are, as you see, no members of the public in the hearing room for this session and it is not being recorded for broadcast. However, after the session, we will be publishing a transcript of the evidence you give, so that, at that stage, your appearance before us will become publicly known. Before the New Year, we heard from a number of military officers involved at senior levels in the planning of operations against Iraq, including the Chief of Defence Staff at the time, Lordy Boyce, and one of your deputies, General Fry. So this session will cover 2002 up to and beyond the invasion, covering the period of your tenure as Chief of Joint Operations.  I remind every witness that he will later be asked to sign a transcript of evidence to the effect that the evidence they have given is truthful, fair and accurate.  With that, I will hand over to Sir Lawrence Freedman.  Sir Lawrence?
 
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: Sir, I think the easiest way to start is perhaps if you could just take us through how you became aware of the potential need for planning in -- for military action in Iraq, and your awareness of the American plans. It would probably be best if you just take us through from the start.
 
Gen John Reith: May I just start by giving you sort of mood music at the time and our situation with the Americans at the time, so you get a better understanding, if that would be helpful?
 
So he gets to demand that he testify off-camera and he gets to decide how he'll start his testimony?  Some call the Iraq Inquiry "the Chilcot Inquiry" -- apparently it should also be called "the Reith Inquiry."
 
He prattled on and on about his special relationship with US Gen Tommy Franks ("So I forged quite a good relationship with him, and, in fact, he jokingly used to call me his deputy commander, and I was very much seen by the Americans as the UK's global combatant commander.")
 
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: Can I just pull you back a bit on that? Because there is a meeting at Chequers, I think just before the Prime Minister goes to Crawford, where Alastair Campbell, in fact, reports in his diaries about Tommy Franks' view from "our military man based in Tampa", which I think was Cedric.
 
Gen John Reith: It would have been Cedric at the time, yes.
 
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: And CDS was there and I think Tony Pigott as well. So what were they reporting on?
 
Gen John Reith: Cedric never gave me anything relating to Iraq. I presume that Cedric, again, had credibility with Tommy Franks, [redacted] and he may have given an opion, but it would have been a personal opinion, but he never actually raised it at as an issue with me.
 
The redacted portion is 36 spaces.  For all the world knows, he was describing a deep, soul kiss with Tommy Franks.  He was obsessed with Tommy Franks.
 
Gen John Reith: I tended to be very candid with Tommy Franks and I made it clear that there was no commitment from the UK. He used to rib me regularly that he was having to produce two plans, one with and one without the UK, but that he couldn't conceive that America's closest ally wouldn't go with them into Iraq if they went. That was his perspective. So, as we were developing plans --
 
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: How did you respond to that?
 
Gen John Reith: I responded to it. I mean it was all done in a very jocular way, but I responded to it that nothing in this life is certain.
 
And, yes, that is accurate portrayal of the entire hearing.  He did not know about the Crawford, Texas meeting between Bully Boy Bush and then Prime Minister Tony Blair "until somebody mentioned it to me yesterday."
 
The jaw should drop at that one.  Now some may rush to Gen Reith and say, "Well of course he knew his prime minister was in the US at that time.  He just means that, until yesterday, he had no idea it was at this meeting that Blair told Bush England would give whatever needed to the Iraq War" (one with no UN approval at that point and that would never get UN approval).  You can say that.  It's not very likely, but you can say that.
 
Reality: The Crawford meeting has been big news, BIG NEWS, in England throughout the Inquiry.  Don't say, "Oh, yes, yes, with Alastair Campbell this week."  No.  Not just this week.
 
The committee members and witnesses have raised it repeatedly.  David Manning testified November 30th (see that day's snapshot).  In his testimony, he noted:
 
The first evening, the President and the Prime Minister dined on their own, and when we had a more formal meeting on Saturday morning, which I think was the 6th, it was in the President's study at the ranch.  There were, as I recall -- and I may be wrong about this -- three a side.  I think it was the President, his Chief of Staff, Andy Card, and Dr [Condi] Rice and on our side, as I recall, it was the Prime Minister, his Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, and myself.  We convened about half past nine, after breakfast, and began with the President giving a brief account of the discussion that he and the Prime Minister had had on their own the previous evening over dinner. He said that they had discussed Iraq over dinner. He told us that there was no war plan for Iraq, but he had set up a small cell in Central Command in Florida and he had asked Central Command to do some planning and to think through the various options. When they had done that, he would examine these options.  The Prime Minister added that he had been saying to the President it was important to go back to the United Nations and to present going back to the United Nations as an opportunity for Saddam to cooperate.
 
 
That was the take-away from Manning's testimony and the press (the British press) were covering it like crazy.  You can refer to Ruth Barnett (Sky News -- link has text and video), Jason Beattie (Daily Mirror)Kevin Schofield (Daily Record), Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian)David Brown (Times of London)Gordon Rayner (Telegraph of London) and Jonathan Steele (Guardian) just to start with.  And this wasn't the first time it dominated the news cycle for the Inquiry.  That was the week before when Christopher Meyer testified about Blair and Bush's agreement "signed in blood" (it really wasn't signed in blood, he was using that expression) and that got a huge amount of attention from the press.
 
Where has Reith been throughout all of this?  If he's not even able to follow the headlines in the last weeks, how on the ball is he?  It's just as likely -- some might say more likely -- that he's being dishonest.  I don't know but it doesn't make sense and those who feel he may have been less than honest can refer to his exchanges with Committee Member Roderic Lyne where even the most basic questions (Lyne lays his questions out very clearly) were met with evasions and stumbles.  Lyne would have to repeatedly clarify after a respone (usually in this form, "But . . . ") and the question he'd just asked was completely clear.
 
Maj Gen Graham Binns was much more straighforward and forthcoming with his answers.  We'll note this passage on Basra.
 
Maj Gen Graham Binns: The security situation was difficult for us. Every move outside our bases required detailed planning and was high-risk. I thought that we were having limited effect on improving the security situation in Basra. 90 per cent of the violence was directed against us, politically there was no contact between us and the local provincial government, and coaltion-sponsored reconstruction had almost ceased.
 
That was how things were when he arrived but he credited his predecessor with putting  in place a plan that allowed for some improvements.  How much of an improvement?  Asked how things were when he left, he replied, "So -- but I think it is fair to say that the security situation was such that we spent a lot of our time protecting ourselves."
 
Turning to US politics and the decade ended.  A friend asked that we note Katha Pollitt -- a friend at The Nation --  from part one of her two part piece.  From Part one:
 
 
Sonia Sotomayor joined the Supreme Court. Before that, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin showed how far we've come--and how far we haven't. Between them they normalized forever the idea of a woman running for president and withstood a ridiculous amount of sexist garbage, from nasty cracks (from both sexes) about Clinton's legs, clothes, voice and laugh to tinfoil-hat accusations that Palin's baby was actually her daughter's.
 
Good for Katha for decrying the sexism aimed at Palin -- a first for The Nation -- and for bringing up the nasty and disgusting rumors about Trig.  Better if she'd named the pig who glommed on them in the fall of 2008 and continues to repeat them to this day -- at The Atlantic.  What she won't scrawl across the women's room stall, we will: ANDREW SULLIVAN.  That's the pig.  For many years Anne Kornblut worked for the New York Times, she's now at the Washington Post. She has a new book out Notes from the Cracked Ceiling: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and What It Will Take for a Woman to Win and she weighs in on the campaigns at wowOwow:
 
Covering the 2008 campaign day-to-day, it rarely felt as if Clinton or Palin was having a harder time of it than the male candidates Рwho were also under constant scrutiny. I was as skeptical as anyone of Clinton's claim, after one of the Democratic debates, that all the male candidates were engaging in the "politics of pile-on." Really? She was a woman under siege? She had been the frontrunner for nearly a year, raising record-breaking amounts of money. Later on, I was among the reporters who challenged the McCain campaign's complaint that Obama was referring to Palin when he talked about putting "lipstick on a pig." Really? Wasn't he using a common clich̩ to describe a policy proposal?
When I went back after the campaign was over, however, and read through all the transcripts, columns and stump speeches, interviewing dozens of campaign
aides who advised the candidates and prominent women who watched the race from the sidelines, there was just too much evidence pointing to the influence gender had on the race to pretend that it had been otherwise. Clinton was often reluctant to talk about being a woman, and worked so hard to compensate for the perceived shortcoming of being female that she came off looking, to many, too tough. "She didn't get there on her own," was a refrain I heard repeatedly, which although factually true failed to take into account the fact that she had, just a decade earlier, been criticized for not being enough of a housewife. Here she was taking heat for being too much of one.      
Palin failed to prepare for the extra layer of questions that women get – as mothers, as wives, as candidates who are sometimes perceived as being less qualified – and was shell-shocked after her daughter's pregnancy was revealed, and when critics called her inexperienced despite her tenure as governor. She shouldn't have been so surprised; female candidates across the country had been through similar ordeals. But Palin and the McCain team learned the hard way that crying "it's not fair" is not a winning political strategy.            
 
No offense to Anne but what women cried sexism -- or men for that matter -- with either campaign? While the campaigns were going on?  Give me some names.  Because as I recall it, sexism was fine and dandy and no one objected.  Bill Moyers, for example, willfully and happily engaged in sexism on the tax payer dime and PBS airwaves (which, thankfully, he's now leaving).  As I recall the same Bill Moyers couldn't stop screaming "racism!"  One ism was to be called out, the other to be ignored or (in Moyers' case) added to.  I appreciate what Anne's saying and I think her book's a strong read that many will enjoy but the above excerpt does not fully capture the landscape (which is difficult to capture in so short a space) and this goes to what we value and what we don't (see last night's entry) and how a pedophile can be busted twice and still be treated as a 'good guy' and trusted voice.  His third bust? Strange, Amy Goodman couldn't stop bringing the pedophile on her show but she hasn't found time in her headlines to note he Pig Ritter just got busted a third time.  Or take FAIR -- allegedly Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting -- allegedly a media watchdog.  One that didn't bark at sexism in 2008.  Every week, the hosts of FAIR's radio show (Counterspin) noted real and imagined racism in the press that was harming St. Barack.  Every damn week.  Let's go to May 25th when Ava and I noted Counterspin's finally noting sexism against Hillary Clinton:
 
 Last week, we noted that FAIR's radio program CounterSpin is happy to ignore sexism and, at the top of Friday's show, they appeared bound and determined to prove us wrong.


Peter Hart: One of the most disturbing features of the media coverage of the Democratic presidential race is the way racism and sexism have been expressed. CNN viewers were treated to one pundit explanation that people might call Hillary Clinton a bitch because well isn't that just what some women are. Not everyone's so out in the open. MSNBC host Chris Matthews opened his May 18th show wondering how Barack Obama would connect with regular Democrats? Obviously code for working class Whites. This would seem to make the millions of Obama voters so far irregular. But then consider the May 14th op-ed by Washington Post Writers Group Kathleen Parker. She wrote about 'full bloodness' and the patriot divide between Obama and John McCain offering that there is "different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines through generations of sacrifice." This makes Obama less American than his likely Republican rival and his success part of a larger threat "There is a very real sense that once upon a time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity." Well thanks to The Washington Post, Parker's rant appeared in newspapers around the country including the Baltimore Sun and Chicago Tribune. We're not sure what those papers used for a headline but one blogger suggest [nonsense] would do. Parker's attack wasn't even new. Before in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan wondered if Obama had ever gotten misty thinking about his country's rich heritage. John McCain by contrast "carries it in his bones." There's an appetite in corporate media for such repellent ideas as Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell recalled, Noonan's column was praised by NBC's anchor Brian Williams as Pulitzer worthy.

 
And that was it.  25 words.  Counterspin's ENTIRE 'coverage' of the sexism aimed at Hillary during her lengthy campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.  Even when they finally noted sexism (one example of it), notice that (a) they didn't tell you who made the remark, (b) they didn't tell you what program it was made on and (c) when they finally give (limited) time to sexism, they offer 25 words while providing -- in the same news item -- over 230 words on racism.  But you do that and you note who said it and where when it's something that actually matters to you.  When it doesn't really matter to you, you just toss out 25 words and pretend like you did a damn thing worthy of note.  To provide some more context, if Keith Olbermann had said someone needs to take Barack into a room and only one of them comes out alive, FAIR would have screamed their heads off, but when he said about Hillary?  Not a peep.  Not a protest.  That's how it went. Over and over throughout 2008.  The sexism never ended, many of the 'left' took part in it and media watchdogs repeatedly looked the other way.  Repeatedly?  Maybe, like Barack, I should say "periodically"?  Barack:  "I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal." Or when he said "the claws come out"?  One of the strong women (there were a few) in 2008 was Marie Cocco and we'll make the time now to note how she wasn't silent.  Marie Cocco "Misogny I Won't Miss" (May 15, 2008, Washington Post).
 
"I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign."
 
Marie Cocco's "Obama's Abortion Stance When 'Feeling Blue'" (Washington Post Writers Group July 8, 2008).
 
Obama says that these women should not be able to obtain a late-term abortion, because just "feeling blue" isn't the same as suffering "serious clinical mental health diseases." True enough. And totally infuriating.                   
During the recent Obama pander tour -- the one in which he spent about a week trying to win over conservative religious voters -- the presumptive Democratic nominee unnecessarily endorsed President Bush's faith-based initiative, a sort of patronage program that rewards religious activists for their political support with public grants. Then in a St. Louis speech, Obama declared that "I let Jesus Christ into my life." That's fine, but we already have a president who believes this was a qualification for the Oval Office, and look where that's gotten us.Obama's verbal meanderings on the issue of late-term abortion go further. He has muddied his position. Whether this is a mistake or deliberate triangulation, only Obama knows for sure.                                 

One thing is certain: Obama has backhandedly given credibility to the right-wing narrative that women who have abortions -- even those who go through the physically and mentally wrenching experience of a late-term abortion -- are frivolous and selfish creatures who might perhaps undergo this ordeal because they are "feeling blue."                    
 
And when the sexism was aimed at Palin, Cocco didn't play dumb or didn't go silent.
Marie Cocco, "Sexism Again" (September 16, 2008, Washington Post Writers Group):
 
This has a lot to do with a graphic image of Palin I just saw in which she is dressed in a black bustier, adorned with long, black gloves and wielding a whip. The image appeared in the Internet magazine Salon to illustrate a column titled: "The dominatrix," by Gary Kamiya. Kamiya calls Palin a "pinup queen," and says she not only tantalized the Republican National Convention with political red meat, but that her "babalicious" presence hypercharged the place with sexual energy, and naughty energy at that. "You could practically feel the crowd getting a collective woody as Palin bent Obama and the Democrats over, shoved a leather gag in their mouths and flogged them as un-American wimps, appeasers and losers."                                      
That's some sexual mother lode. Dare I point out that I have never -- ever -- in three decades of covering politics seen a male politician's style, even one with an earthy demeanor, described this way?                        
Salon editor Joan Walsh says she agrees the "dominatrix" piece had a "provocative cover,'' and that her columnists enjoy great freedom. "One day Gary (Kamiya) called Palin a dominatrix, the next day Camille Paglia called her a feminist." The magazine exists, Walsh says, to "push the envelope."
No sooner did Walsh give me this explanation than another Salon contributor, Cintra Wilson, pushed that envelope again. Wilson described Palin as follows: an "f---able ... Christian Stepford wife in a 'sexy librarian' costume" who is, for ideological Republicans, a "hardcore pornographic centerfold spread." That is, when Palin is not coming across as one of those "cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms."                        
What is it about a woman candidate that sends the media into weird Freudian frenzies?               
 
 
Related, at Women's eNew, Lisa Nuss calls out the bad makeover that turned high powered attorney and board member Michelle Obama into June Cleaver:
 
During Barbara Walters' interview with Michelle Obama last month, I never heard Walters say why she chose the first lady as the most fascinating person of the year.                  
I dug up the transcript, watched the video and confirmed that Walters never said why.
Michelle Obama did a lot that was fascinating before 2009.             
After bootstrapping her way to an elite college and law school where she was outspoken about racism, she left corporate law for high-profile policy work in politics and health care and won a powerful corporate board position.        
All the while she battled her husband to pick up his slack on the parenting and insisted on her own demanding career after his election to the U.S. Senate. She told Vogue in 2007, "The days I stay home with my kids without going out, I start to get ill." She said she loved her work challenges "that have nothing to do with my husband and children."              
Am I the only one who misses that formidable woman?                  
 
 
As Ava and I observed of Barbara Walters' special, "Michelle Obama was the person of the year. Now that had us wondering because, outside of Lady Gaga and Sarah Palin, we were having trouble grasping what the women did in 2009 that made them fascinating? Gosselin is apparently fascinating because her marriage ended. The wife of a governor was termed fascinating by Barbara Walters because . . . her husband cheated on her? And she lived through it? (Was she supposed to commit suicide? After the special was broadcast, the woman announced she was divorcing the governor.) Silly us, we would have thought a person (male or female) actually had to do something in order to qualify as 'fascinating'." 
 
TV notes and humor! NOW on PBS begins airing on most PBS stations tonight (check local listings) and this week's program explores . . . Let's let them tell it:

Is good journalism going extinct? Fractured audiences and tight budgets have downsized or sunk many of the fourth estate's major battleships, including this very program.
This week, NOW's David Brancaccio talks to professor Bob McChesney and journalist John Nichols about the perils of a shrinking news media landscape, and their bold proposal to save journalism with government subsidies. Their new book is "The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again."

John Nichols? He's an ethical voice? The idiot who said Wesley Clark was only running for the 2004 Democratic Party presidential election because he wanted Bush to win? (That's noted in the 2008 year-in-review with the title of the segment but we're not linking to trash so Google if you want it.) Remember when Barack got exposed for reassuring Stephen Harper's conservative government in Canada that although he was saying he'd do away with NAFTA he wouldn't. Johnny 5 Cents insisted that was a lie! And Barack would do away with NAFTA! And Hillary Clinton was the one behind this nasty rumor! And the one who was really talking to Canada! And he had the proof! And would be writing the expose! Of course, he never wrote s**t because he was lying through his teeth (egged on by Amy Goodman before the show aired -- though the crazy 2004 talk took place on air with Amy in December 2003 and he didn't need egging for that). John Nichols is a liar and an idiot. This is the man who -- when Samantha Power stepped down (she was not fired) from Barack's campaign for telling the BBC that his promise on ending the war in Iraq wasn't a promise -- published fan fiction as fact. One lie after another. (And he avoided the issue of Iraq.) He insisted that Samantha and Hillary were best friends! For years! They'd met once and only once. A fact Samantha herself had already revealed weeks prior on The Charlie Rose Show. But facts be damned, John Nichols had purple prose to produce.

We've covered all the above in real time. We've even covered who he aimed all his anger and rage out for Congress' vote to approve the 2002 Iraq resolution. (Which member of Congress got trashed? Oh, not a member of Congress. It was Barbra Streisand's fault to hear crazy ass John Nichols tell it at The Nation.) [Her 'crime' was in donating her money how she wanted to and not getting permission first from John Nichols.]

NOW ponders, "Should journalism get the next government bailout?" If John Nichols is your example of the heart and soul of journalism, not only should they not receive a bailout but they should also be shut down.

Staying with TV notes, Washington Week begins airing on many PBS stations tonight (and throughout the weekend, check local listings) and joining Gwen are Dan Balz (Washington Post), Helene Cooper (New York Times), Doyle McManus (Los Angeles Times) and Deborah Solomon (Wall St. Journal). Meanwhile Bonnie Erbe will sit down with Linda Chavez, Melinda Henneberger, Irene Natividad and Genevieve Wood to discuss the week's events on PBS' To The Contrary. Check local listings, on many stations, it begins airing tonight. And turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS' 60 Minutes offers:

Haiti
News from the earthquake decimated country.


Football Island
60 Minutes goes to American Samoa to find out how a territory with a population less than the capacity of a pro-football stadium sends more players to the NFL than any similarly populated place in America. Scott Pelley reports. | Watch Video


60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 17, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

 
 
Thank you to Trina and Mike and all the people in their Iraq study group for listening to me on the Iraq Inquiry and then helping me decide which points to hit in the snapshot.  Thank you.
 
 

Merrily, merrily, merrily Iraq is but a bad joke

Campbell revealed that Blair sent secret letters to Bush, in which he declared his admiration, loyalty and undying love for the so-called leader of the free world.
Asked if any of Blair's cabinet Ministers had seen the letters, Campbell said they had not. "It would have been far too embarrassing for Tony," said Campbell, "He really spilled his guts."
In one letter Blair reportedly begged his US counterpart, "Invade Iraq like you invaded my heart."
Campbell said that as Blair's infatuation with the US President grew, his love letters became more lewd and suggestive, culminating with, "I want you in Iraq like I want you in me," - the final message sent before the invasion.

The above is from Hayibo.com's "Blair's lewd love letters inspired Bush to invade Iraq" and is satire. And this entry will address Iraq but also jokes -- due to some people making fools of themselves -- Tony Blair above, others as we work towards the end of this entry. Paul Waugh's "Peter Hain attacks Tony Blair over his secret pledge on Iraq War" (London Evening Standard) is not satire:

Cabinet minister Peter Hain has lashed out at Tony Blair and admitted that he was kept in the dark over secret letters pledging support for George Bush over Iraq.
The Welsh Secretary revealed that he was one of the several members of the Cabinet who did not know of the series of "notes" sent by the former prime minister to the US President in 2002.
The Iraq inquiry was told by Alastair Campbell this week that the tone of the private letters from Mr Blair was that "Britain will be there" in any war against Saddam Hussein if he failed to disarm.

Still on the serious, Iraq's noted in Simon Tisdall's "The wave of anti-Christian violence" (Guardian of England):

In Iraq, the problems facing Christians and other minorities are more deadly. An estimated 1,960 Christians have died there in targeted attacks since the 2003 invasion. The Christmas period saw a spate of church attacks in Mosul in defiance of a long, pre-war tradition of co-existence. Other minorities, such as Jews, have also suffered – although by far the biggest toll has been exacted by clashes between Iraq's Sunnis and the larger Shia Muslim community.
Local factors such as disputes over land, objections to the presence of alcohol, large numbers of unemployed young men with not enough to do, or sheer mutual ignorance and suspicion of "rival" religions help explain some of these tensions. And few would argue that somehow all such incidents are linked.
But analysts and academics suggest common threads do exist, notably the impact of globalisation on conservative communities across the Muslim world and a resulting threatened loss of cultural identity. Violence against Christians as representatives of the "crusader west" is also an aspect of what French author Gilles Kepel has described as the far bigger civil war, or fitna, raging within the Islamic world itself.
Yet hostility also arises, in a fundamental sense, from Muslim perceptions of western aggression against Islam, be it the war in Afghanistan, domineering western economic and cultural behaviour, attempts to ban veils, offensive cartoon caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, airline and immigration profiling, or systemic, unchecked and arguably worsening discrimination and harassment of Muslim minorities living in western nations.

We note the above topic frequently and do so because it is news (the targeting of Iraqi Christians). We are not a site that explores religion. I say that in response (the only response you'll be getting) to the idiot objecting to my calling out Nouri's show trials and forced confessions culminating with executions. I don't need your quoting any religious text (the Koran, in this case) to justify executions. I'm not interested. Nouri's a thug. They use forced confessions and there's no justice system. If hiding behind an ancient text helps you pretend Iraq has justice today and that makes you happy, fine. But we don't quote religious texts here or do religious explorations. (Nor do we talk about 'morals.' We will talk about ethics.)

Let's note another joke, Jalal Talabani. The corpulent and highly unhealthy (physically unhealthy) president of Iraq has announced, oh, wait, I do want to be president again. It's the latest ping-pong on the issue. Jalal has no central power left in the KRG and he's been getting very cozy with Tehran so he may see another run as president as the only way to continue flying to the US for health care.

Meanwhile, the song and dance on Don't Ask, Don't Tell continues (see Marcia's "The bad and the really ugly") and Anne Gearan's "AP Exclusive: Lawyers advise wait to lift gay ban" (AP) covers it but the paragraph that should stand out is this:

Joint Staff legal advisers recommended delaying the start of the repeal process into 2011, with the Pentagon sending a proposed replacement law to Congress by late summer of that year. That would be after the White House pledges to begin bringing troops home from Afghanistan, and a few months before all U.S. forces are due to leave Iraq.

The Iraq War does not have to end in 2011 (and it likely won't). Reporters would do well to stick to facts. But that's not why we're emphasizing that paragraph. By Gearan's hopeful predictions, US troops will be out of Afghanistan and Iraq -- and out of Afghanistan first?

TV notes and humor! NOW on PBS begins airing on most PBS stations tonight (check local listings) and this week's program explores . . . Let's let them tell it:

Is good journalism going extinct? Fractured audiences and tight budgets have downsized or sunk many of the fourth estate's major battleships, including this very program.
This week, NOW's David Brancaccio talks to professor Bob McChesney and journalist John Nichols about the perils of a shrinking news media landscape, and their bold proposal to save journalism with government subsidies. Their new book is "The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again."

John Nichols? He's an ethical voice? The idiot who said Wesley Clark was only running for the 2004 Democratic Party presidential election because he wanted Bush to win? (That's noted in the 2008 year-in-review with the title of the segment but we're not linking to trash so Google if you want it.) Remember when Barack got exposed for reassuring Stephen Harper's conservative government in Canada that although he was saying he'd do away with NAFTA he wouldn't. Johnny 5 Cents insisted that was a lie! And Barack would do away with NAFTA! And Hillary Clinton was the one behind this nasty rumor! And the one who was really talking to Canada! And he had the proof! And would be writing the expose! Of course, he never wrote s**t because he was lying through his teeth (egged on by Amy Goodman before the show aired -- though the crazy 2004 talk took place on air with Amy in December 2003 and he didn't need egging for that). John Nichols is a liar and an idiot. This is the man who -- when Samantha Power stepped down (she was not fired) from Barack's campaign for telling the BBC that his promise on ending the war in Iraq wasn't a promise -- published fan fiction as fact. One lie after another. (And he avoided the issue of Iraq.) He insisted that Samantha and Hillary were best friends! For years! They'd met once and only once. A fact Samantha herself had already revealed weeks prior on The Charlie Rose Show. But facts be damned, John Nichols had purple prose to produce.

We've covered all the above in real time. We've even covered who he aimed all his anger and rage out for Congress' vote to approve the 2002 Iraq resolution. (Which member of Congress got trashed? Oh, not a member of Congress. It was Barbra Streisand's fault to hear crazy ass John Nichols tell it at The Nation.) [Her 'crime' was in donating her money how she wanted to and not getting permission first from John Nichols.]

NOW ponders, "Should journalism get the next government bailout?" If John Nichols is your example of the heart and soul of journalism, not only should they not receive a bailout but they should also be shut down.

Staying with TV notes, Washington Week begins airing on many PBS stations tonight (and throughout the weekend, check local listings) and joining Gwen are Dan Balz (Washington Post), Helene Cooper (New York Times), Doyle McManus (Los Angeles Times) and Deborah Solomon (Wall St. Journal). Meanwhile Bonnie Erbe will sit down with Linda Chavez, Melinda Henneberger, Irene Natividad and Genevieve Wood to discuss the week's events on PBS' To The Contrary. Check local listings, on many stations, it begins airing tonight. And turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS' 60 Minutes offers:

Haiti
News from the earthquake decimated country.


Football Island
60 Minutes goes to American Samoa to find out how a territory with a population less than the capacity of a pro-football stadium sends more players to the NFL than any similarly populated place in America. Scott Pelley reports. | Watch Video


60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 17, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.


Radio notes. The Diane Rehm Show begins airing on most NPR stations (and begins streaming online live) at 10:00 am EST. The first hour, domestic hour, Diane's panelists are Melinda Henneberger (PoliticsDaily), Laura Meckler (Wall St. Journal) and David Welna (NPR). The second hour, international hour, her panelists are Karen DeYoung (Washington Post), James Kitfield (National Journal) and David Wood (PoliticsDaily).

The plan was to go out with humor. Someone got lucky, very lucky. Who? Here's your clue: Baby got big and baby got bigger, Baby, baby, baby was a reactionary singer. Yeah, I heard that crap on NPR this morning. So you've wrung out all the attention from your bad marriage (abusive marriage) you can and now you're trying to present yourself as a "couple" with a gay man? As a "romance"? You're very lucky he's dead. And you're very lucky that I'm not tearing you apart for your homophobia (no one makes a choice to be gay), Reactionary Singer. At least not today. Instead, we'll close with the serious by noting this from Rachel Cohen's "Why women need abortion rights" (US Socialist Worker):

THIRTY-SEVEN years after the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, the myriad attacks on its availability has limited access to such an extent that women across the U.S. are turning to so-called do-it-yourself abortions.
No governmental agency or private institution tracks the incidence of self-induced abortions. So it's left to anecdotal reports from health care providers, along with a few recent studies, to hint at what has become a dangerous pattern.
"Our local hospital tells me they see 12 to 20 patients per year, who have already self-induced or had illegal abortions," said an administrator of a women's health clinic in the South. "Some make it, some don't. They are underage or poor women mostly, and a few daughters of pro-life families."
In a 2006 interview with University of California-Davis professor Carole Joffe, the administrator described women risking cardiac arrest by swallowing whole bottles of quinine pills along with castor oil, and women who douche with a variety of dangerous chemical products in an attempt to terminate pregnancies.
The administrator said that other abortion providers around the country also noticed a perceptible rise in the number of patients they were treating for complications from illegal abortions.


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