What I think, why I think it
A few of us have put together the new blog of the Minnesota Democratic Party, DFLers. We hope to create a home for Minnesotans passionate about progressive politics.
Care to contribute or comment? Stop on by...http://www.dflers.org.
The 9/11 Commission has released its report on how the 9/11 hijackers were able work their evil. The executive summary begins this way:
Ten Commissioners—five Republicans and five Democrats chosen by elected leaders from our nation’s capital at a time of great partisan division—have come together to present this report without dissent.
We have come together with a unity of purpose because our nation demands it. September 11, 2001, was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United States. The nation was unprepared.
The commission identified a large array of intelligence failings of both the Clinton and Bush administrations. However, the one failure most responsible for the attack in the first place is the one least likely to be fixed. That failure is a transparency in government. According to Lee Hamilton, the commission's vice chair,
The U.S. government has access to vast amounts of information, but it has a weak process, a weak system of processing and using that information. The need to share must replace need to know.
It is most unfortunate for the country that Bush and his entire administration are ideologically opposed to such transparency. That is why we are unsafe with them in office. Given the choice between dropping a veil of secrecy over government and fostering open, clear communication between citizens, the government and the world, Bush will choose to keep the secret. That's a bad choice because the road to an end to terrorism leads through increased transparency.
Evidence of Bush's fetish for secrecy is seen in his utter and complete opposition to the 9/11 report, the emerging scandal of a system of secret prisons primarily established to use torture to interrogate terror suspects, his continued refusal to release documents related to Cheney's energy task force, and his habit of exacting immediate revenge on all who oppose him.
Under this administration, there is no chance that our disconnected and uncommunicative intelligence agencies will become less so. The ideological climate is risk averse. A potential whistle blower knows in advance that messengers get killed for bringing bad or ideologically contrary news. Under this administration, there is no chance that Al Qaeda will become smaller. Bush's successes in the war on terror are dwarfed by his failures. Yes, Iraq is Saddam-free, but it never had a material link to terrorist activity in the US. It does now, though, thanks to the unrelenting, festering chaos precipitated by Bush's ill-advised invasion. Yes, the US toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan but Bush quickly turned his attention to Iraq. Now the Taliban is resurging; the warlords are perhaps a greater threat than the Taliban; opium production is once again at record highs. To top it all off, imagery of American soldiers torturing Arabs is now ubiquitous in the Arab world. That's a direct result of the culture of secrecy practiced by Bush.
Oh sure, Bush is spinning now. Talk about a flip-flopper: back in May of 2002 Bush opposed the formation of the commission. Now, he's welcoming the "constructive recommendations" of the report. But his actions speak louder than words. Ours should also. Vote Kerry 2004. It's important.
London's Telegraph is reporting that Donald Rumsfeld not only knew about onofficial prisons established to torture Afghans, he approved them. Several mercenaries are on trial in Kabul for hostage taking and torture, including Jonathan "Jack" Idema:
"The American authorities absolutely condoned what we did; they supported what we did. We have extensive evidence of that. We're prepared to show e-mails and correspondence and tape-recorded conversations," Idema said before the trial. "We were in contact directly with Donald Rumsfeld's office."
As this scandal continues to develop, reasonable citizens should rightfully sound the constitutional alarm. Acts that qualify as war crimes are being approved at the highest levels of American leadership. I know there is an argument for going to extremes in the pursuit of knowledge that can save American lives. I just don't think there is a justifiable use for sodomy in Abu Ghraib or hanging prisoners upside down by their feet as some of the captives in Kabul apparently were. In brief, the extreme should stop short of outright torture. The extreme should always stop short of constitutional gymnastics. It is imperative, for the future of the country and the future of our children, that we take the high road.
At this stage of the game, all voters should imagine themselves making the same decisions Bush and Rumsfeld made. They are willing to use torture, suspend the rule of law, and roll back civil liberties in the pursuit of the enemy and to consolidate power. Are you? Or more importantly, are you willing to give the power with your vote? When Bush puts out an ad that touts his values, such as "Priorities," (which I debunk here,) or "Family Priorities", which advances his slate of social issue positions, please refer back to the values that lead him to approve of the torture we see splashed across the Arab world in glorious color.
Let's all give a gigantic hand to Bill Timmins, the General Manager of the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas, for his majestic over reaction to Linda Ronstadt's on stage endorsement of Fahrenheit 9/11.
Linda's dedicated her encore, Desperado, to Moore's film. Half the audience supposedly booed and got rowdy. Timmon's reaction? He evicted Ronstadt from the property immediately.
Michael Moore rightly questions his sanity.
No really, Mr. Timmins, are you INSANE? The film is popular among soldiers because as one puts it:
I want to see another point of view on Bush. It never hurts.
Get it? Free speech, open discourse, a free exchange of ideas...radical concepts I know, but try an keep up, won't you?
Just so we are all clear on the fact...El Presidente still has the ear of the Lord. Speaking to an group of Amish in Pennsylvania last Friday, He reportedly said:
I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.
Yikes. If that's true, God has some 'splainin to do. Maybe He will still Hear My Prayer.
I was sitting around watching the news last night when a Bush ad came on called, "Priorities." It was the one that says Kerry missed two-thirds of the Senate votes but still found time to against the Laci Peterson Bill. You know, as if Kerry put down the donut he was eating in California, hopped on his special John Kerry Jet and winged it back to D.C. just so he could vote to make it ok to kill pregnant women. Here’s the script:
Leadership means choosing priorities. While campaigning, John Kerry has missed over two-thirds of all votes. Missed a vote to lower health-care costs by reducing frivolous lawsuits against doctors. Missed a vote to fund our troops in combat.
Yet Kerry found time to vote against the Laci Peterson law that protects pregnant women from violence. Kerry has his priorities. Are they yours?
Where’s the lie? I suspect most viewers will miss the whopper in this ad, even pundits like Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post.
The truth is, Kerry found time to vote against the bill, but the so-called Laci and Conner’s Law doesn’t protect pregnant women from violence. The bill, literally, has nothing to do with the protection of pregnant women. We already have plenty of laws that protect people, pregnant or otherwise, from violence. Laci and Conner’s Law does something different. It makes killing or injuring a fetus during the commission of an act of violence against the mother a separate crime. For the first time, according to the law, “…a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb” is now protected. From zygote to birth, from the moment the strip turns blue to the momenet the head crowns, whether the criminal knows the woman is pregnant or not, Laci and Conner's Law makes the interior of a woman's body covered by law.
Depending on which side of the abortion rights debate you fall, that can be good or bad. I think it's a dangerous intrusion on individual liberty. Either way, defining a fetus as a homicide victim has deep ramifications. That’s why the pro-life crowd, lead by the Christian Coalition lobbied hard for this narrow victory. It realized the bill was much less about law-enforcement than it was an effort to marginally reduce abortion rights.
Kerry supported an amendment to the bill that would have re-structured the language to preserve a woman's right to choose. Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade stated the Kerry postion:
The ad, and the bill itself, are classic Bush lies. The real intentions and messages are carefully hidden beneath a blanket of lurid, emotional language impossible to resist if one has even a single patriotic bone in his body. And the message one finally receives is poison.John Kerry strongly supports making it a federal crime to commit an act of violence against a pregnant woman. He agrees with the vast majority of Americans who want tough punishment for anyone who would commit such heinous crimes and knows we can do so without undermining a woman's right to choose.
As for priorities, if resisting the urge to use real-life soap operas and emotionally laden language to erode civil liberties is a priority - then yes, I share Kerry's priorities.
