was accompanied by a promise to the Palestinians of an international conference to solve their problems (the Madrid Conference), which however produced nothing for them; and the 2003 attack was preceded by the famous Bush promise of a sovereign contiguous state for the Palestinians by 2005. In other words, these promises are attempts to rally Arab support ahead of major wars.

Missing Links

It comes to me that this platform might be used by a group of BLOGGERS who have temporarily shut out by Bloggers lack of functionality. Anyone with interest, suggestions or other ideas is invited to post same, below.

Comments on the day will be most welcome below:

Cross-Posted on Hillblogger

. . .the possibility that it might be a good idea to suggest some policies that would reduce the number of abortions by more than a fraction. Better access to contraception, more money and welfare services for vulnerable mothers and so on. But I suspect that’s too much to ask for.

Yes, it is too much to ask for.

In the USA, abortion has attained a much wider and more prominent status than the actual numbers of Americans affected. That's because it is used as a wedge issue by one end of our spectrum to polarize our politics. As such it has become a symbolic mountain in our political topography: whoever controls its heights establishes a relative hegemony. The battle has gone on so long between the anti-abortion clique and their pro-choice (notice I did not use the term, "pro-abortion") opponents that the mountain has been chiselled down such that conditions and stages of pregnancy have been added as caveats.

I feel (always) compelled to state my personal and unchanging position on women's reproductive rights. Bill Clinton was close when he said something like abortion should be legal, professionally performed and rare (or words to that effect). What I say is that is that I am unalterably opposed to abortion excepting in those instances when a woman determines, in absolute privacy with her physician, that she wishes one, for whatever reason.

Conclusion: Abortion vs. Choice is but one mountain in the American cultural civil war. If it weren't there, we would be contesting over the flag on some other summit. It's really that trivial: a metaphorical flag.

. . . .All I read were critcisms, many of which were harsh but no alternatives to the current Elephant plans in place. The Elephant plans are without a doubt flawed and big mistakes have been made in Iraq. On the other hand the Donkeys don’t really have a plan from what I’ve concluded. I have the impression they’re only focused on withrdrawing from Iraq. If they do withdraw before Iraq is stabalized then I must honestly say that I’ll consider it as a defeat. . . a very bad defeat and a second Vietnam. Here comes the question: Which one is better having no plan or having a flawed plan?

At the risk of slapping up the most presumptuous comment ever, Drima, I have to say that the tragedy is that you are too young (perhaps) to realize that Bush's un-provoked, unnecessary, largely unilateral invasion and unplanned occupation of Iraq (UULUIUOI) has amounted to and continues to be a major departure from the American tradition in foreign policy. Neocons are not just an ultra conservative administration: they represent a militarist mutation of conservatism which tracks its origins only back to Leo Strauss, not to settled American traditions or political thought. As such, they are alien.

If they were only a 'very conservative' Republican administration, there could be room for confidence in a belief that the merciful pendulum of history would swing back naturally in a couple of years. In which case, we could say, suck it in, manage the mess in Mesopotamia as best we can, honor Bush's commitments as if they were our own, etc.

But this is not the case. Bush and Cheney and Rove represent the worst American can be and, left to cycle out in 2008, will yet become. After 2008 they will not be long gone. They'll be back, metastasized in an even more virulent form.

All this is to say, there are stakes bigger than Iraq involved here. In foreign policy alone, the doctrine of preventive war, preemptive war, or whatever - in hell - you want to call it, has to be repudiated and banished from our American lexicon. Until we do this, we can accomplish nothing of value for Iraqis or for ourselves. This has to be accomplished by 2008. If not, it will be done by future historians which is to say, too late.

Bush and Cheney have to be forced to eat their war before they're excused from the table.

Cross-Posted on The Sudanese Thinker

Chucky however, is a Republican first, and an American second. That's why he never before came clean on his reservations about the political mutations that have been of late passing as conservatives. Why did it take an electoral defeat to get him to fess up? Was he just hanging on to Bush's and Rove's coat tails, hoping they could fool everybody one more time?

The truth is that Chucky is a ditto head following his leader Rush Limbaugh, carrying the water for incompetent toads who have mislead America down the road to (costly) perdition. If he - and millions of Republicans like him - had put America first, party second and had spoken up against Bush sooner, we would not be where we are today.

Chucky, this politics is not some football game after which you can walk across the field at the 50 yard line and think you can shake hands.

Why would you think you could? Rush has been on drugs. What's your excuse?

Cross-Posted

Reading the Rose article, and reading through the indignation of the incriminated, I am even more persuaded of the wisdom of Congressional investigations into how the UULUIUOI came about. These architects of the UULUIUOI are unreconstructed, unapologetic, unrepentant and incorrigible ideologues committed to remaking the Middle East through force of arms. Not to subject them to the scrutiny of sworn testimony before Congressional committees leaves them unrestrained and unchained to resume or enlarge further their misadventures vis-a-vis Iran or Syria.

At the very least, this means in the House that Congressman Henry A. Waxman will be able to lead his Committee on Government Reform into taking up his short list of overdue subjects. In the Senate, that means - at the very least - dusting off Phase II of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the UULUIUOI's marketing. Actually, what remains covered up is the final phase of Phase II.

The argument of some that we should look forward and not backward is based on their own complicity in supporting Bush's UULUIUOI. It's their pretense that we all are to blame for believing in a Hussein-bin Laden connection, in Saddam's Nukes, in Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) and thus in Bush's obsession. In fact, that is not the case. In fact we were all not all wrong on Iraq. In fact, we were just not heard.

But comforting the consciences of those fooled by Bush and Cheney is beside the point. What's at stake is that we wrench the truth out from the most clandestine, secretive, and fallible administration in the American experience. We cannot relegate for historians what it is our job to know as an informed citizenry, in time to do something about it. Severe and real problems face our nation domestically and internationally, now. We simply cannot go forward without trusting in our leaders' competency, honesty, and motivation.

Announce the hearings. Issue the subpoenas.

Today, Let me back off my hubris-laden agenda posted in the upper right-hand corner of my site. Once you acknowledge that the chain of succession implies Dick Cheney becoming president, your ardor for impeachment cools. So, impeachment is not at stake in tomorrow's election.

Neither is Bush's un-provoked, unnecessary, largely unilateral invasion and unplanned occupation of Iraq (UULUIUOI) at stake tomorrow. However, unquestionably, the continuance our Anglo-American occupation just to referee a free-for-all Iraqi civil war is highest on voters' list of grievances.

Still, on Tuesday's ballot there are no specific policy recommendations alternatives to Bush's entrenched and unpromising stay-the-course. You have your solution and I have my solution, and each Member of - or candidate for - Congress has his or hers. If Democrats seize one or both houses of Congress, policy in Iraq will not immediately change.

What's at stake tomorrow is Oversight. As Howard dean has said,

The election is broader than just a referendum on George Bush. It is a referendum on the Republican Party, its honesty and its competence.

In an important new book, Broken Branch, Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution focus on the loss of the House of Representatives' institutional identity as a source of the Bush administration' excesses. Members act more like field representatives of their party than as members of the first branch of government. As Howard Baker used to say, congressional leaders of a president's party are supposed to work with the president, not for him. The Constitution gives both houses congress powers of oversight over executive agencies and of the budget, but the Republican majority has not shown any interest in using them. As a result, Congress members spend more time raising money and running for re-election than holding hearings on, or reading the print of, legislation on which they vote.

Part of what is at stake tomorrow is the re-leveling of playing field in Washington so that governmental institutions and powers separated in our Constitution resume working autonomously and not like automatons. A Democratic majority in Congress will reinvigorate the use of subpoenas and robust hearings.

lThe 2000 Presidential election was the closest - electoral vote-wise - in history, was it not. If not, it was the first that was decided by a decision of the Supreme Court. By any standard the 43rd President was 'selected' by the slimmest of margins, had to accept the slimmest of mandates. However Karl Rove saw an opportunity to mythologize the attacks of 9-11 into justifying the most extreme and divisive political agenda in history. The most grievous of these should not be subjected to reversal, redress and repeal:

1. Raise the minimum wage. The current federal minimum stands at $5.15 and has not been raised in many years. Republicans did propose a very substantial, two-dollar increase, but tied it to tax cuts for the upper crust, something the Democrats naturally opposed, and the legislation failed. Wage levels are the traditional domain of the Democrats; a Democratic Congress shouldn’t have much trouble working out a reasonable minimum wage increase that President Bush will sign.
2. Investigate. It has been threatened, both by Pelosi and Henry Waxman, who is in line to chair the Judiciary Committee, that the Democrats will launch Congressional investigations of everything from the Iraq War to the Abramoff scandal to 9/11. These investigations are good in moderation-it is important that the American people know the true conduct of the Bush Administration in these anxious times.
3. Implement true oversight in the Iraq War. For much of the late 1960′s and early 1970′s, the Johnson and Nixon Administrations had free reign over conduct in Vietnam, including secret bombings in Cambodia and a fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin ‘incident.’ The Bush Administration, due to the unilateral nature of the war, has been able to conduct the war without much input from Congress at all, which has essentially rubber-stamped all of the spending bills the president has wanted. It is time to restore true Congressional oversight to a war that has grown increasingly unpopular.
4. Restore sanity to discussions of constitutional amendments and related issues. In the past year or so, amendments prohibiting flag-burning and gay marriage came close to passing Congress, and President Bush vetoed an important piece of stem-cell research legislation. While Republicans have effectively used these ‘social issues’ to galvanize their base, a Democratic Congress should restore pragmatism and rationality to these ‘grandstanding issues,’ which have little relevance to the real work of Congress.
5. Restore fiscal discipline to legislation. The federal budget deficit is out of control and deficit projections seem to grow more and more astronomical every year. Because President Bush has never met a spending bill he does not like-his only veto in six years was used on bipartisan stem-cell legislation-spending is out of control. The Republicans have clearly shown an unwillingness to rein in spending, so the task now falls to potentially a Democratic Congress. This is a good opportunity to Pelosi and Reid to show that the Democrats can be the party of financial austerity.
6. Repeal tax cuts for the wealthy.

In short, under Nancy Pelosi, the Congressional agenda has to repeal the 9-11 dividend devised by Karl Rove and restore a level playing field for our American middle class.

Complete the investigation on distortion of intelligence for political goals.

The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a portion of its analysis, labeled Phase I, on prewar intelligence shortcomings in July 2004. But the Republican membership on the Committee has delayed publication of Phase II which purports to deal with how intelligence was "fixed" in order to market the un-provoked, unnecessary, largely unilateral invasion and unplanned occupation of Iraq (UULUIUOI).

The report to be released by the committee tomorrow (always on Friday! right?) focuses on two much-studied issues: the influence of the anti-Saddam exile group Iraqi National Congress in shaping U.S. intelligence estimates, and a comparison of prewar estimates and postwar findings about Iraq's weapons programs and links to terrorism.

400-pages of Phase II were released in September and covered only two of the five topics outlined under Phase II. It's a rehash of the intelligence supplied by the INC and Chalabi and the overestimation of Saddam's WMD threat - has been documented in numerous studies.

A third segment, on the prewar intelligence assessment of postwar Iraq, were issued later in the same month. But of course there is no date-certain for issuing the last two parts of Phase II, which take up the politically divisive issue of whether policy makers manipulated intelligence reports to set the stage for war.

Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, vice-chair of the Senate Committee, says - full truth be known - the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq.

. . . was fundamentally misleading… the administration pursued a deceptive strategy, abusing intelligence reporting that the intelligence community had already warned was uncorroborated, unreliable and in some critical circumstances, fabricated.

If Tuesday's results can end the Republican micro-majority in the Senate, they will no longer be permitted to play DEFENSE to protect its un-American and incompetent White House incumbents who fixed intelligence to fit their policy in Iraq.