Cheney ‘may be guilty of war crime’

Vice-president Dick Cheney’s burden on the Bush administration grew heavier yesterday after a former senior US state department official (Larry Wilkerson) said he could be guilty of a war crime over the abuse of prisoners.

Lefti runs down why the ‘opposition’ party response to Bush’s speech yesterday on Iraq is anything but opposition, rather it’s just more timid, muddled, squeaking from the Dems. Yes, Virginia, during the Vietnam War there were actual Democratic Senators who thundered opposition to the war from the floors of Congress. Where are they now?
 
Is this alleged opposition in Congress attacking Bush over the al-Jazeera bombing threat or the CIA using European airports to transport prisoners to be tortured? Well, of course they aren’t. And they should be.

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From BOPnews

Chris Floyd argues that Iraq is being deliberately turned into a failed state. I think this is a bit behind the curve, Iraq has been allowed to sink into long term conflict status for a very long time. The reality is that simply not making extreme effort to stabilize it is enough to turn it into a failed state. But he is right that there was a depraved indifference in our policy to the results of our actions.

It could also be that, given the US is losing in Iraq and that hegemony over the Middle East has been a stated US foreign policy goal for decades, that the neocons want chaos and the country splitting so they can grab and control the oil-rich southern part of Iraq. In other words, they want Iraq to fail, to split into pieces. Then they can grab some of those pieces.

Or try to grab them, that is. The populace, the insurgents, will still oppose them. This is something US warlords never grasped during Vietnam and isn’t grasping now. That’s why they’re losing.

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For mentioning Politics in the Zeros today in your Blogging L.A. article in the Around the Blogosphere sidebar. There’s so many excellent political LA blogs that, to put it mildly, I wasn’t expecting this!

They said (in the print version), that Polizeros is "A leftist view, from international relations to South Los Angeles grass-roots fundraisers"  

Here’s a few other political LA blogs with liberal/progressive views.

Crooks and Liars. Run by my friend John Amato. He was the first to post news show videos. Analyzes what’s happening on the talk shows, media bias, corruption in DC, and more. Watching political talk shows for hours a day would make me run screaming from the room. John does it well, often skewering the right with his humorous posts.

Brad Blog. Diebold Voting fraud investigations, lots more. Good stuff. (But hey, toss the garbled green and yellow layout, ok?)

Lean Left, from Douglas Kellner, UCLA professor. Anti-Bush, anti-war

Firedoglake

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo

Information Clearing House. Much news you won’t find elsewhere.

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More on the many tentacles of Jack Abramoff, including those with his pal, Tom De Lay.

Where to begin examining the extraordinary career of Jack Abramoff? His work trying to secure a visa for the great Zairian kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko, perhaps, or the bilking of an estimated $66 million out of Native American tribes, clients he described as "monkeys," "troglodytes," and "idiots"? Or his leadership of a 1980s think tank financed, unbeknownst to him apparently, by the intelligence arm of South Africa’s apartheid regime?

No, the chapter of our man’s story that matters most at the moment begins with a toast given by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay during a New Year’s trip they both took to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands in 1997. "When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and reform you have made," DeLay said before an audience of Abramoff’s clients in the islands’ garment industry—whom, upon his return to Washington, he helped win an extended exemption from federal immigration and labor laws. 

And here’s a quote from another pal

"What the Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs. Then this becomes a different town."

— Grover Norquist, quoted by the National Journal, July 29, 1995. 

I suspect by now De Lay and Norquist are getting downright twitchy at the mere mention of Abramoff’s name, especially as it relates to them, rather than saying what a swell guy he is. The fear of indictment will do that to you.

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 From someone experiences in negotiating with insurgents and who has been trying to bring peace  to war-torn areas for decades. There’s some practical, hard-earned observations here.

A lifetime in peace negotiations has given me considerable exposure to insurgency movements.   The past never fully predicts the future, but it often offers useful pointers.   Here is what we can say about those fighting against the United States in Iraq and what patterns of the past suggest we can expect:

• The majority of those fighting the American forces see themselves as patriots and lovers of their homeland, fighting for the future of their sons and daughters.
• The doctrine of resistance is guerilla warfare, whose aim is never to engage and defeat a standing army
• Guerilla warfare succeeds not by defeating an enemy militarily but rather by turning the broad population against the enemy.

If these patterns hold true in Fallujah and other locations of pitched battle in Iraq, the outcome is likely to look like this:

• Just enough resistance will be invested in a given hotspot to attract heavy attack and serious damage from the Americans.
• It will be discovered in the days following "victory" that most of the insurgents fled prior to or during battle and are continuing their struggle from multiple other locations
• Enormous attention will be given in Iraq and abroad to the damage caused by the Americans and the suffering imposed by them at the site of battle.
• The extremist wing of the resistance will retaliate against any persons thought to have cooperated with the invading Americans.
• Voices of moderation will fall silent.
• Internal conflict among Iraqis will increasingly become a major factor.
• It will be deemed necessary by American leaders to throw yet more soldiers, weapons, and money into the fray
• Return to step one, at a more murderous and destructive level than ever.

Read the whole thing.

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Fears of big freeze as scientists detect slower Gulf Stream

The ocean "engine" that helps to drive the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and keeps Britain relatively mild in winter has begun to slow down, say scientists.

This is due to global warming, to the melting of Greenland glaciers.

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From Alan Chartock via Rock & Rap listserv 

During the Vietnam War, Scruggs, the Southern bluegrass banjo player, stood up at the largest gathering of protesters in history in Washington and played for the assembled throng. To understand how gutsy that was at that time in our history, move forward in time a bit and see what happened to the Dixie Chicks when one of their number dared to open her mouth about George Bush and his policies.

When I asked Scruggs whether he was afraid his Vietnam protest might have hurt his career, he only said, "I didn’t give a damn." When I asked him why he did it, he said, "I was afraid they’d take my kids." When I asked him whether it hurt his career, he said that, in fact, his bookings went way up. What a man.

There are a few rare people who are great musicians and who are there when their country really needs them. It would appear Earl Scruggs is one of them.

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