Who we?

For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously," Dick Cheney said in an interview that aired Monday night on CNN's "Larry King Live."

"Guantanamo's been operated, I think, in a very sane and sound fashion by the U.S. military. ... I think these people have been well treated, treated humanely and decently," Cheney said. "Occasionally there are allegations of mistreatment.

"But if you trace those back, in nearly every case, it turns out to come from somebody who has been inside and been released ... to their home country and now are peddling lies about how they were treated."

(Amnesty International President) Schulz responded to Cheney's comments: "It doesn't matter whether he takes Amnesty International seriously.

"He doesn't take torture seriously; he doesn't take the Geneva Convention seriously; he doesn't take due process rights seriously; and he doesn't take international law seriously.

"And that is more important than whether he takes Amnesty International seriously."

UPDATE - It turns out that Guantanamo is scheduled for an upgrade, and the contractor is Halliburton, and we know that we have an administration headed by businesspeople, so there's your answer. My economics professor loves to say - follow the money....

Maybe it takes a Brit to call someone a 'Lick-spittle, crazed Neocon'

I got a big laugh reading the following story. A British lawmaker has taken umbrage at being accused by the US Senate for Iraqi wrongdoings. Here, you can laugh yourself (or, if the case may be, get upset by it).

WASHINGTON - British lawmaker George Galloway said Tuesday he would reject charges at a U.S. Senate hearing from a “Republican lynch mob” that he profited from the Iraq oil-for-food program.

Pursued by a crowd of British journalists, Galloway arrived at the hearing just minutes before it began reviewing testimony aimed at exposing corruption in the now-defunct U.N. program.
“This group of neocons (neoconservatives) is involved in the mother of all smokescreens,” he said of the committee. “I want to turn the tables on this neocon, pro-Israel, pro-war, Republican lynch mob.”

He earlier told Reuters that he had "no expectation of justice from a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neocon (President) George Bush who is pro-war.”

“I come not as the accused but as the accuser,” he added.

Galloway had similar words for Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who chairs the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which called Tuesday's hearing.

“It’s Mr. Coleman who’s been all over the news and he’s a lick-spittle, crazed neocon who is engaged in a witch hunt against all those he perceives to have betrayed the United States in their plan to invade and occupy Iraq,” Galloway told Associated Press Television News.

Galloway is a witness at the hearing on how ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein used oil to reward politicians, particularly from Russia, France and Britain, under the humanitarian oil-for-food program.

Newsweek

This Newsweek stuff really gets me. Aside from the obvious comparison with the US administration, which has failed to take any responsibility at all for invading a country by using false claims, it is obvious based upon the sequence of events that nobody in the government even cared about the item until it becamse an embarassing problem for it. Here is some original reporting:

japantoday > asia
Pakistan complains to U.S. over Koran desecration, cartoon

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 at 00:39 JSTISLAMABAD — Pakistan has conveyed its deep concern to the United States over the reported desecration of the Koran at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a cartoon carried by a U.S. daily newspaper that slighted Pakistan, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
The ministry said in a press release that the Pakistani concerns have been conveyed to U.S. authorities through the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and by the Pakistani Embassy in Washington. (Kyodo News)

You see that it took at least 4 days until any US government official had any complaint. When Newsweek broke the story (which actually was only a small part of a bigger story) on Monday of last week, the US government had no complaint with it.

I believe they are just seeing this as an opportunity to smash down another part of the US media that in doing their journalistic job exposes things that our government would rather be kept quiet, as they did with Dan Rather and CBS news.

Blix Blames U.S. for Nuke-weapons Stalemate

Ever since the Bush administration including Don Rumsfeld took over, I have had the thought expressed by Hans Blix (click on above headline to read the story) in my mind, but I was unable to voice it properly. One of the first things the new administration did was to disown international treaties (unsign them), as well as plan for the militarization of space and of new types of nuclear weapons, including 'bunker busters.' They have discussed restarting nuclear testing. All of this before the excuse of 9/11.

My feeling then and now expressed by Hans Blix who should know, is what would other countries think about the hypocrisy of forcing smaller countries to abide by laws that we, the larger country hold in disdain. It doesn't make any sense unless you believe that might makes right.

Lifting the Censor's Veil on the Shame of Iraq - New York Times
This is for the gentleman who commented below that it is childish to belittle this kind of war. According to Mel Brooks, the only war that was justified was the War of the Roses (they took all the roses and we needed to get them back. We needed them to smell better!). Being absolutist against war is not the worst sin.

The Lying Game, Prominent Gay Microsoft Employee Quits, as More Evidence Emerges That Microsoft Caved to Anti-Gay Minister, by Sandeep Kaushik (05/05/05)
The gays go first after the fundamentalists take over (people like me are next).

KR Washington Bureau 05/04/2005 Lessons from Iraq: Rand offers War 101 textbook

The above links to a Rand report that condemns just about every aspect of our Iraq intervention, putting the blame to top leadership. While one may say that this is written in hindsight, I seem to remember many people making many of these same points before we moved our troops over the border from Kuwait.
My impression of a Republican administration is exactly this - making real plans based upon a rigid ideology without caring to examine the real situation on the ground. In other words, leading as a god rather than as one of the people.

War is Killing

here's another breaking story...

"The U.S. military has cleared a Marine who shot three unarmed insurgents in a mosque at the height of fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, in November."

All this tells me is that the US military takes the position that when a country sends its citizens someplace with guns, it's ok to use those guns to kill people, for pretty much whatever reason.

If you ask me, it's a good reason to point blank call all wars illegal, so then we won't have to have these sham trials, and put a country's citizens in such a position. To me it would have been much more sane to have George Bush fight Saddam Hussein man-to-man in a ring, unless they agreed to work it out some other way. Not to mention such a strategy would save trillions of dollars that could be spent more productively.

Starbucks Becomes IBM

Can you believe this? Starbucks, which has become a formidable cd as well as java outlet, has declined to sell the new Bruce Springsteen cd because of some risque lyrics having to do with what a prostitute does. Asked to comment, some Starbucks executive uttered the following:

"When considering new projects, our primary goal is always to help our customers discover and acquire quality music, Starbucks said in the statement. To that end, Starbucks is currently in discussions with many different artists and labels and therefore, we do not comment on rumors and speculation."

If anybody can still remember the 1980's, whenever there were rumors of a new IBM computer, like for instance a 286 or a DOS 2.1, the IBM mantra was always to the effect that 'we do not comment on unnanounced products." In fact they still say it. I just checked and found this via a google search from last year:

""While IBM cannot comment on unannounced products (either our own or especially those of our clients)," Stein continued, "I think it is safe to say IBM and Apple have a great collaborative relationship and that both companies' products should be positively impacted by this."

I guess the equation is IBM is to Starbucks as Chuck-E-Cheese is to pizza (no, just kidding, but it does sound good!).

Today's Foreign Policy and Reagan
It struck me tonight as I was listening to Condoleeza Rice being bashed on the radio by moderate Iranians as an aggressive war mongerer that our current foreign policy is based less on current events and more upon the Republican view that it was Ronald Reagan's bluster against the Soviet Union that led to the demise of the Soviet system. To most Republicans, Reagan is a tremendous hero responsible for all that is good in America today.

It is definitely arguable that the downfall of the Soviet system was due more to economics than to anything else. The Soviet economy (and the Russian economy that followed it) is an extraction economy, deriving a great majority of it's income from oil and gas sales to other countries. They export relatively little else. Starting in the mid 1980's the price of oil took a calamitous fall, descending at one point to $10 a barrel. I actually remember paying 65 cents a gallon in New Jersey during that time.

This was a disaster for the oil producing regions of the world, including Texas, which suffered greatly from bankruptcies and as we all remember, failed banks. In order to stay in power, Gorbachev was forced to go begging around the world for aid for his people, and was only really successful with Helmut Kohl in Germany, for which he had to promise not to interfere in it's reunification.

These though are inconvenient facts for Republican true-believers, and the price we pay for it are a depleted military, loss of friends around the world, and people like Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Condoleeza Rice representing the United States to our global neighbors. While I think they are all well meaning to a point, I also believe that their strategy is based upon a false assumption, with possibly dangerous consequences that would be unnecessary and counterproductive to a better world for everyone.