January 2004 Archives

Well, well, well. What an interesting pickle I've gotten myself into. In order to delete the 835 spam comments that were so thoughtfully posted to my blog, I took the draconian and ill advised measure of deleting the comments via SQL. I just simply dropped all the comment rows which matched my new best friend's email address. Obviously, some other data needs to be adjusted as my recent comments on the left, as well as the number of comments under each post is now broken.

<sight>

I hate trundling through databases.

Update: Well, that was simple. Still have a server internal error when rebuilding, but that was there before my slash n' burn job on the comments table. Error log says "premature end of script headers in mt.cgi".

Hmmm. Maybe those magic beans they've been spamming me about could be of help here.

The three stooges

The direction that all this is taking is that U.S. President George W. Bush and Blair did not lie when they said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but they were misled by their own intelligence services. This is not what many people want to hear. Judging by the email we received on our Jan. 26 Geopolitical Diary, there is a deep-seated belief -- scatological in some emails -- that Bush and Blair simply lied to justify the war. The problem with that theory has always been this: Even assuming that Bush is an idiot -- which some of our readers guarantee us is the case -- Blair isn't. Only an idiot would lie about WMD because, once the war was over and no WMD were found, the world would see the lie. So, even if Bush were a complete dunderhead, why would Blair launch a war knowing that he would be caught in a lie a few months later?

Before inundating us with emails calling us apologists for the Republican Party and Enron, please bear in mind that Bush and Blair can and should be held responsible for an even deeper failure. The Sept. 11 attacks caught the United States by surprise. It was a complete intelligence failure. Bush had ample warning that the intelligence agency he had inherited was seriously flawed -- but not only did he not fire its leadership and shake up the entire intelligence community, he continued to rely uncritically on their intelligence. So did Blair. They both chose to rely on the same intelligence managers who failed to grapple with al Qaeda for their views of Iraq. The failure of Bush and Blair was their extraordinary negligence in not revamping their intelligence organizations after Sept. 11, and even more extraordinarily, continuing to rely on the same people and the same organizations when going to war with Iraq.

The intelligence community's greatest failure, we continue to insist, was not about WMD, serious as that was. The greatest failure was the complete miscalculation on Iraq's plans for fighting the war. U.S. and British intelligence both believed that the destruction of the Iraqi military and the fall of Baghdad would end organized resistance. The failure to provide an accurate analysis of the Iraqi war plan was an inexcusable failure: You can explain Sept. 11 or the WMD, if you want, but there is no explanation for the failure to identify a war plan that hundreds, if not thousands, in Iraq were privy to via training, the establishment of arms caches, regional commanders and communications nets. Even Stratfor wrote that Saddam Hussein seemed to be developing some plan for postwar resistance, although we weren't sure what it was. The intelligence failure about the guerrillas should have resulted in a massive overhaul in the intelligence community. Yet nothing has happened -- they are all still there.

But am impressed at how people are backpeddling and shucking and diving.

David Kay keeps coming out with better and better stuff, though.

Just deleted 835 comments shilling online gambling.

It's getting so you can hardly spit without hitting a stinking pile of spam.

Auto Rant # 534

By "Bob's" beard. I think I've finally had it "up to here" with these well meaning people wanting to sell me magic beans which will either enlarge my member or allow me to become engorged in under three minutes. As my email is all over the net, I'm now at 75% spam in my accounts. There has to be something that can be done. I shudder to think that the internet will be destroyed because of this marketing to men's insecurities. But maybe it would be fitting end to this information processing experiment of our species.

I try not to think about it too much because it depresses me.

Being unplugged from fire hoses of information gives one a lot of time to think. Circuits normally devoted to harvesting information and crunching it into tasty bite sized treats are longing for work - anything to keep themselves occupied. It's a rather entertaining state to maintain. I'm not sure what the name of the yoga practice, but there is this discipline where you work up to the point where you are about to join with a god/ess and then you switch to a new one. A constant state of frustration, but then you transcend (hopefully) to the point where you see each god/ess as simply an aspect of the whole.

But back to penis enlargement.

I simply can't believe that there are still apologists for the Iraq war. Really. What are they defending? Even David Kay has left in a huff, salvaging the shreds of his reputation in his "tell all" exposé of what he didn't find and how he didn't find it. Ye gods! Talk about money for nothing! David Kay spent 1 Billion Dollars (well, just under it) ensuring what we actually suspected all along.

A Billion Dollars! What a frickin' sweet job! It's like every academic's research grant wet dream rolled into one. A Billion Dollars! I just can't get over that figure. Even more mind boggling is that they're not done yet. David Kay made the wise decision to get out while the getting is good, but now they have a new stooge to make doggone sure that there isn't any shred of evidence that Iraq had anything remotely resembling Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Another Billion Dollars slushes through the system. A tribute to the crony capitalism that is inherent in operational basis of the gilded age in which we live.

And gilded it is! Penis enlargement pills? Is this truly the age of miracle and wonder? Imagine! I can enlarge my penis by just popping a pill.

Still can't feed everyone. Still can't give everyone basic health care and a roof over their head. But I can finally swing a big stick. And get that stick up in a respectable amount of time so as to not spoil the mood.

Geesh.

And so I'm kind of disappointed that the Deanster didn't keep it up. I really can't blame the man, though. It's really a blood supply problem. Not enough voters. And since it's voters that count, it didn't matter what kind of staying power Dean had, it was the Dean machine that didn't pull through.

A lack of will is a hard one to explain, with a long history of dead bodies of philosophers trying to explain it. It seems to my observation that pretty much everyone is rejoicing that the "angry" liberals didn't win. Seeing as how we appear to be about 1/3 of the liberals who actually manage to do something, I would say that we're not really something to be ignored, either.

Still, I'm surprised. I actually thought that people would be angry about the 500 or so people who have died in pursuit of this boondoggle called the Iraq war. And if 500 seems like a small number, how about the 10,000 or so that are injured for life? Nothing like losing a leg to make the next forty years of your life a manly experience, eh?

Wonder if they're going to make leg replacement pills any time soon. . .

In any event, I am rather disappointed that there isn't more passion about people who put their life on the line for us. When idiots call on them, they still do their job and pay for it the rest of their lives.

I guess it's no big deal to the people who still defend the war. Sure, eggs need to be broken to make the occasional omelet. . . No argument from me on that point. But I do have to wonder what the whole point was? 20 years from now they'll be a stable democracy and the world will be a better place for that?

Yea, good thing. Thumbs up on that!

But what's the cost? If you pay $500 a $20 dollar bowling ball, you didn't get a bargain. Even if the $500 was in the form of a donation to the Boy's and Girl's club association of America (a wonderful group, I might add). You can say it was for a good cause, but geez. . . If you're going to donate to charity, then why the "carry a big stick" routine? What? You have to beat the shit out of everyone on the playground to prove a point?

But back to the penis ads.

It's my contention that the entire prosecution of the Iraq war should be viewed as a year long penis ad. The entire exercise was one of base appeal to the part of the male (and female) psyche that believes such blatant idiocy. The lizard brain (if you'll excuse the term) that simply reacts on the level of survival and safety. Big == safe. Firm == strong. Virility == moral righteousness. It's like a Freud fest-o-thon.

So, if we do all go the way of the dinosaurs, I'll know why. It wasn't because of our devastating military weapons. It wasn't because of the diabolical plans of a few evil individuals.

Nope.

It's because penis ads have taken over the gestalt that is the United States. We've all collectively lost our minds and have succumbed to the blessed slumber of a world where you can simply take a pill to solve your most pressing problem. Only now we're acting this out with the most sophisticated and mind bogglingly effective military on the planet.

And boy do the chicks dig it.

Or so I hear. . .

Is Social Software Bad for the Dean Campaign?

Shirky comes up with an excellent column that crystalized some thoughts that have been swirling around in my head recently.

The Dean campaign has brilliantly conveyed a message to its supporters, particularly its young ones, that their energy and enthusiasm can change the world. Some of this was by design, but much of it was a function of people looking for something, finding it in Dean, and then using tools like MeetUp and weblogs to organize themselves. The story of the bottom-up and edge-in style adopted by Dean’s staff has been told a thousand times, and it’s a good one.

But what if this style has also created a sense of entitlement or even inevitability about the change, and a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes from participation in the effort, but hasn’t created a sense of urgency or threat? What if Dean supporters believe that believing is enough, and what if the Dean campaign’s brilliant use of tools to gather the like-minded both online and off fed that feeling?
. . .
When I was 19, I remember seeing a bunch of guys in a parking lot in New Jersey absolutely rocking out to Twisted Sister at top volume, “Oh we’re not gonna take it, No, we ain’t gonna take it, Oh we’re not gonna take it anymo-o-o-o-ore” and I remember thinking the song was using up the energy that would otherwise go into rebellion.

Just rocking out to Twisted Sister so hard, and feeling so good about it, made those guys feel like they’d already stood up to The Man, making it less likely that they would actually do so in the real world, when the time came. And I’m wondering if the Dean campaign has been singing a version of that song, or, rather, I’m wondering if the bottom-up tools they’ve been using have been helping their supporters sing that song to each other.

Just saw this. Kind of interesting reading this after the SOTU. . .

The Intelligence on Iraq's WMD: Looking Back to Look Forward

via Steven Aftergood's secrecy news

Saddam Hussein's Iraq was engaged in "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities," President Bush declared awkwardly in the State of the Union address on January 20, without acknowledging that he was again redefining the magnitude of the former Iraqi threat.

The President should have confronted the clear disparity between the pre-war intelligence on Iraq and the post-war findings, said Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

"If 9/11 was a failure to connect the dots, it appears that the Intelligence Community, in the case of Iraq's WMD, connected the dots to the wrong conclusions," Rep. Harman said in a speech last week.

"If our intelligence products had been better, I believe many policymakers, including me, would have had a far clearer picture of the sketchiness of our sources on Iraq's WMD programs, and our lack of certainty about Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities," she said.

State of the Union

No conclusion can be drawn from Iowa, save that the major media is absolutely clueless about what is going on in the country. What little can be drawn is this: The winner was John Kerry, whose position is not opposition to the war, but that, as a decorated combat veteran, he understands the prosecution of war better than Bush. The loser was Howard Dean, whose absolute opposition to the war was not clearly the reason for his defeat, but certainly hurt the absolutist anti-war position.

Should Iowa presage the collapse of Dean, the major remaining Democratic candidates would be Kerry, Wesley Clark and John Edwards, with Edwards unlikely to sustain his drive. None of them are simply anti-war. It is not clear what their position is at any given moment, but should any of them be elected, we would not expect a massive shift in U.S. foreign policy. The main thrust would remain in place, although the details might shift. Certainly there would be no shift on the order that a Dean victory would bring.

Thus, over the past 24 hours, the world has found out something extremely important. Between Dean's collapse in Iowa and Bush's unyielding repetition of his principle, it is highly unlikely that 2005 will bring a major shift in American foreign policy. This is going to sink into the calculations of foreign governments, which will begin pondering this question: Are they better off negotiating with the U.S. government before the election, or waiting until afterward?

In other words, anyone waiting for a massive change in U.S. policy is probably going to be disappointed, even if Bush loses.

Dean Lags Far Behind Edwards; Gephardt Finishes Fourth

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts won the Iowa caucuses here Monday, brushing aside the insurgent candidacy of Howard Dean with an appeal that he would be the strongest candidate the Democrats had to beat President Bush.

Senator John Edwards of North Carolina came in second, captapulting him into the first tier of contenders in a showing that ended up pushing Dr. Dean into third place.

Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri appeared headed for fourth place in his second bid for the presidency, a devastating showing that Democrats said would almost certainly force him out of the race.

I guess the Iraqis didn't get the memo that the Bush Administration doesn't listen to people marching. Considering we had ten times this number marching before the war and the events fell on deaf ears. . .

Iraqis march ahead of U.N. meeting

Sunni and Shia Muslims joined Monday for a massive, peaceful demonstration in Baghdad, marching in favor of a prominent cleric's demand for direct elections.

But the U.S.-backed coalition -- and its handpicked Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) -- say there is no time to pull together an electoral infrastructure before the scheduled handover at the end of June.

Strange Bedfellows

Al-Sistani certainly wants to be the dominant force in Iraq. At the same time, the explosion drives home the point that there is an active jihadist movement in Iraq that will not only destabilize the country, but will actively target Shiites along with Americans. This movement will not be suppressed until the Sunnis take steps to deny them sanctuary. Al-Sistani certainly is hostile to the Sunni community and therefore wants to minimize its role in a post-war government, but al-Sistani also badly wants to suppress the jihadists. On the simplest level, he knows that he personally can become their target. On a broader level, they may be able to destabilize the Shiite community.

In this context, al-Sistani actually needs the Sunnis to come on board. This is not a point that he will willingly concede, but it is a point that Paul Bremer will make to him in the negotiations that are now underway. Al-Sistani does not seriously believe that elections can be held next month. What he wants are assurances that Shiites will dominate the Iraqi government after July 1. Bremer will emphasize that the Shiites will certainly constitute the dominate force in the government, but that completely isolating the Sunnis is not in the Shiites' interests. Al-Sistani and Bremer both want to crush the jihadists, and excluding the Sunnis would work against this goal.

Thus, the suicide bombing could represent an important punctuation mark in the negotiations between the United States and al-Sistani. Al-Sistani does not want the transfer of power on June 30 to fail, and he does not really believe that three or four months will make much difference. He will get what he wants -- an election to confirm Shiite power and a handover that already recognizes that reality. But the explosion strengthens Bremer's negotiating position. The United States, at this point, really doesn't care when the handover takes place so long as it is orderly and doesn't interfere with the U.S. military presence in Iraq. But it wants Iraq to be more, rather than less, stable after the handover. So does al-Sistani. The suicide bombing is a reminder to al-Sistani that the jihadists are still out there. Of course, al-Sistani is too shrewd not to know this, but the bombing does allow Bremer to make the point that the United States knows it as well.

    SAzaell we lose ourselves for a reason
    SAzaell we burn ourselves for the answer
    Have we found the place that we're looking for
    Someone shouted 'open the door'
    Lookout

Over the past month, the Borg has been pumping information into my head with a battery of fire hoses. Got all the standard implants plus a few new ones installed with cool super powers. On Friday, my head felt like it was about to explode. So I've slept quite a bit this weekend, trying to get the overstuffed folds of my cerebrum to rearrange and accommodate the bruising input rate. In between my bouts of coma like sleep, I've been watching the first season of Twin Peaks, as well as a couple of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films. Add to that two dental appointments (more Borg implants), and needless to say I haven't been paying attention to the rest of the world in such a condition.

Not that the world is in any better condition than I. The headlines of 25 killed in a Baghdad suicide bombing greeted me before I warmed up the television to watch Tim Russert on Meet The Press. Obviously, things are still the same in Iraq despite having captured Saddam Hussein. Well. . . the same and not the same. Apparently Sistani is turning out to be quite the tick under our skin, forcing the U.S. to come up with yet another plan for what's going to happen in Iraq. Plan 9 (from outer space) is literally right around the corner now, and pretty soon life will imitate my fictional snarking.

Speaking of fictional snarking, it's quite amusing to hear (via Silber) that my main man Tom Delay has such a strong understanding of the constitution

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told a meeting of conservative Christians July 10 that the notion of church-state separation is not constitutional. Speaking at a luncheon for congressional staff organized by the Center for Christian Statesmanship, DeLay asserted: "I don't believe there is a separation of church and state. I think the constitution is very clear. We have the right and the freedom to exercise our religion no matter what it is anywhere we choose to do it."

I know it's an old quote, but it's one that I hadn't heard. And kind of timely given the conclusion of Juan Cole's excellent post up at antiwar.com

Mass Demonstrations by Women, Others, Against Sudden Islamization of Iraqi Law

The US is now in the position of imposing on the Iraqi public, including the 50% who are women, a theocratic code of personal status. The question is whether this step is just the first in the road to an Iraqi theocracy.

Wow. Despite the DOW jumping over the 10,600 mark this week, it appears that the economy is still not out of its three year long rut.

Jobless claims in Georgia jump sharply

New jobless claims in Georgia climbed back to recession levels in December, despite months of hope about an improving economy, the state Labor Department said Thursday.

Applications for unemployment benefits leaped 65 percent from November to 59,206 --- better than a year earlier, but still proof of a tough labor market, said Georgia Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond.

"The problem is job creation," Thurmond said. "The declaration of victory over recession may have been premature."

And speaking of blaming the Democrats for everything, yesterday I read the most hilarious article over at the Washington Post: Hopes for Civility in Washington Are Dashed. The article starts off by claiming the usual line: Democrats blame Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats. We report, you decide. But if you read the article, you'll find this shorter version of mine more accurate:

Democrats: we have a list as long as our arm regarding the times we've been bitch slapped, beaten and threatened into doing things the Republican way.

Republicans: The problem is we aren't strong enough to get the Democrats to do what we want. If the Democrats were in proper awe of our divine power, there wouldn't be any problems at all.

But hey, that's the standard for fair and balanced consultation between peers and the process of consensus these days.

Speaking of fair and balanced, I can't believe how much face time Richard Perle and Toady Supreme^tm, David Frum, have been getting. Been meaning to listen to the Terry Gross interview, but The Poor Man has the condensed version of their little road trip for me

• France is really more an enemy than an ally of the US and that European nations must be forced to choose between Paris and Washington
  
• Muslims living in the US must be given special scrutiny by US law enforcement and other Americans
  
• The US must overthrow the regimes in Iran and Syria, and impose a blockade on North Korea
  
• Palestinians must not be allowed to have a state
  
• All Americans must carry a government issued identity card
  
• The US must explicitly reject the jurisdiction of the United Nations Charter.
  

"Uh, have you stopped taking your meds?"

It simply boggles the mind.

But then, I would have thought that carrying a 500+ Billion dollar deficit trailing forward as far as the eye could see would have some fiscal conservatives worried. You see, I would have thought that this alone would have stopped the Medicare boondoggle of 2003. Another 400+ Billion? Since it came on the heels of a multi trillion dollar tax bonanza, I guess anyone with any sense of fiscal responsibility had long since been thrown to the floor in a bloody heap - powerless to do anything to stop it.

Still as touch stones go, the drunken sailor like spending over the last three years has really shown me the value of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Right now, the center that is backing Bush is doing so because they are scared shitless. Somehow, they seem to really buy the argument that we have to be ruthless and vicious so that we gain the respect back we lost during the Clinton and Carter years. People really seem to buy the line that "they hate us because we're so good".

Over at Salon they have an interesting book review up entitled How Satan is propping up Bush's war on terror (subscription, sorry). But there's this one funny bit about the Onion's spoof of Harry Potter spreading satanism in youngsters

But as Ellis discusses in "Lucifer Ascending," fundamentalists took the story at face value, and it spread through Christian anti-occult circles like an unstoppable virus. A chain letter containing the text of the Onion piece was forwarded from one believer to another (usually with the obscene quotation redacted), along with appended messages urging recipients to "forward to every pastor, teacher and parent you know ... Pray also for the Holy Spirit to work in the young minds of those who are reading this garbage that they may be delivered from its harm."

What Ellis may not have noticed is that even now, more than three years after the hoax article was first spread (and then widely debunked), and despite Rowling's frequent avowals that she herself is a believing Christian, fundamentalists on the Internet have not quite abandoned the cause. At the evangelical Web site Greater Things, pseudo-damning quotations from Rowling are assembled ("Death and bereavement and what death means, I would say, is one of the central themes in all seven books"), and the site's author explains that the Onion article itself was yet another diabolical machination: "One of the tactics of Satan is to make fun of those who cry 'evil' or 'foul,' by creating parody designed to make the concerned Christian look foolish."

It's an air tight defense, ain't it?

Thus, I'm really dreading this year's political season. The nation is spit and one side is fighting Satan. The other side is being portrayed as being followers of Satan. It's not always clear to the average person which side is which. Logic is a dimly remembered ritual of the past. Reason has no meaning in this magical realm of belief.

Dean Leads 'Superdelegate' Count

Heading into the Iowa caucuses on Monday, January 19, Howard Dean leads in the CBS News count of Democratic superdelegates -- the members of Congress and party officials who are automatic delegates to the national convention, and are not pledged to one candidate by virtue of a caucus or primary.

There are 801 superdelegates, about one-sixth of the 4,321 total delegates who will participate in this year's nominating convention in Boston in July.

In any event, Steven has the latest pop tarts served over at his blog. He's sticking with the coronation narrative, contrary to the trash talk about the Deanster.

Despite the polls, however, I am sticking with Dean to win. I think the intensity issue is quite important, and I still maintain that Harkin would not have endorsed Dean if Harkin thought he would lose the caucus, an if anyone know Iowa Democratic politics, it’s Tom Harkin. Plus, Harkin himself said on Hardball on 1/18, that he personally called various precinct-level types to ask for their support. In other words, he has attempted, and I suspect suceeded in large part, to tap into the existing Iowa Democratic Party apparatus to aid Dean.

Dean and I recently had a small, pretty silly public dustup over a couple of misunderstandings here in public. We're not going to get into who started it or who acted worse. We have shaken hands and it's all over now. We hope you enjoyed our juvenile silliness. We have agreed to strongly disagree on certain issues, but not to let this sort of thing get out of hand again. Maybe we'll even have a beer together some day.

Phil Carter asks Could the rotation of units be more than just a rotation?

In Summary: Thousands of troops have already started moving to training bases to prepare for Iraq, or to Iraq itself. The largest unit movement since WWII is now underway (although that was a 1-way move so it was simpler in many respects.) At the peak of this move, American commanders will have nearly 250,000 pairs of boots on the ground in Iraq. American commanders continue to fight a bloody counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq, against a force they estimate in the low thousands. Even today, some areas in Iraq remain lawless, and in need of pacification. If you were one of those commanders, and you were about to get 100,000 more troops for a while, what would you do?

Via Brian Leiter, A gripping letter from a U.S. solider about the real situation "on the ground" in Iraq

With permission, I'm printing below a lucid and gripping account from a U.S. solider with a reserve unit of the 82nd Airborne in the vicinity of Fallujah. (This came via a colleague, though I touched base with the solider directly to secure permission. Identifying references have been removed.)

Incidentally, soldiers here become indignant when they hear politicians on television (we purchased satellite TV off of some folks in Baghdad and get lots of US and British news stations--see www.orbit.net) describe the insurgency as "terrorists, killers, or thugs." That's bull$hit, they're a very well organized, smart insurgency. Their strategy is brilliant, and it's like a carbon copy of what we did with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, of course adjusted for the nuances of the current situation (like going after any potential ally, like Spain, Turkey, and now Italy, and of course the NGOs like the Red Cross and to some extent the UN). The Soviets tried to dismiss the Afghan insurgents as terrorists, killers, and thugs, also (see Pravda, 1986-89). The Soviet troops never quite figured out who the ghosts were who were attacking them, much like we're not sure who these guys are.

Amazing what we have reduced ourselves to, isn't it? Via Brad DeLong, who has a rather good suggestion for dealing with this crap our government is carrying out.

Torture by proxy
How immigration threw a traveler to the wolves

So, they put Arar on a private plane and flew him to Washington, D.C. There, a new team, presumably from the CIA, took over and delivered him, by way of Jordan, to Syrian interrogators. This covert operation was legal, our Justice Department later claimed, because Arar is also a citizen of Syria by birth. The fact that he was a Canadian traveling on a Canadian passport, with a wife, two children and job in Canada, and had not lived in Syria for 16 years, was ignored. The Justice Department wanted him to be questioned by Syrian military intelligence, whose interrogation methods our government has repeatedly condemned.

The Syrians locked Arar in an underground cell the size of a grave: 3 feet wide, 6 feet long, 7 feet high. Then they questioned him, under torture, repeatedly, for 10 months. Finally, when it was obvious that their prisoner had no terrorist ties, they let him go, 40 pounds lighter, with a pronounced limp and chronic nightmares.

Why was Arar on our government's watch list? Because "multiple international intelligence agencies" had linked him to terrorist groups. How many agencies? Two. What had they reported? Not much.

The Syrians believed that Arar might be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because a cousin of his mother's had been, nine years earlier, long after Arar moved to Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that the lease on Arar's apartment had been witnessed by a Syrian- born Canadian who was believed to know an Egyptian Canadian whose brother was allegedly mentioned in an al Qaeda document.

That's it. That's all they had: guilt by the most remote of computer- generated associations. But, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft, that was more than enough to justify Arar's delivery to Syria's torturers.

Er... Whatever. Newsweek has a new poll out.

Re elect Bush - 48% say yes, 49% say no.

A Democrat could do a better job - 41% say yes, 42% say no.

Elect Howard Dean or George Bush - 43% say Dean, 51% say Bush.

Incentives Lure Many to Quit, Starting Tough New Job Hunt

Fortified with big pension payouts and promises of health benefits, these early retirees are gambling on the devil they don't know rather than sticking with the devil they do.

Until a year or two ago, exit packages drew fewer takers. Now they are more carefully aimed at employees in operations that are shrinking. Although no national statistics are kept, companies that offer these packages say that the response is greater than they had anticipated.

"What people are doing more than in the past is laying themselves off if they get what amounts to a big enough package," said Deborah Hart, a principal at Towers Perrin, a consulting firm that designs exit packages for corporate clients.

Bush Seeks Ways to Create Jobs, and Fast

Unable to do much more to stimulate the economy, administration officials have stepped up their arguments that the three tax cuts over the last three years have made the economic slowdown and job losses shorter and smaller than they might otherwise have been.

"Without the passage of the president's plans, by the second quarter in 2003, the unemployment rate would have been nearly one percentage point higher," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said earlier this week. "As many as 1.5 million fewer Americans would be working, and real G.D.P. would have been as much as 2 percent lower."

So maybe the BushCo patented supply side economics has popped its cork prematurely. Maybe not. Apparently there's another slug of salty good tax cuts for "us".

President Bush may also have an ace in the hole. Last year's tax cuts are expected to produce another big bulge of tax refunds and lower tax bills between now and June - about $40 billion in extra cash flow to households, according to economists at Goldman Sachs and Macroeconomic Advisers.

Can anyone explain to me the Administration's policy on classifying POWs? I mean, Hussein Given P.O.W. Status! I guess the Supreme Court wants the Administration to answer to the same question. I'm sure that whatever the Administration says regarding the policy, it will be simply incomprehensible to mere humans like me.

Speaking of reclassifying prisoners, I heard that the recent prisoner release in Iraq was less than a well planned event. According to the commie pinko public radio station I listen to, both the US soldiers involved and the Iraqis were rather pissed off with the whole chaotic process. One just has to wonder at the scale of incompetence required to piss off everyone in the staged event. And by "staged", I mean "choreographed". After all, this was a "planned" event for the sole purpose of winning hearts n' minds.

Still, even putting a happy face on the whole prisoner release event, one has to really wonder at hearing "Those released appeared to include those loyal to Saddam — as well as people who said they were simply in the wrong place when U.S. troops were attacked." And I bring this up because there was much made of the rounding up of the usual suspects after we "got" that hobo Saddam. The idea being that we caused enough damage to the guerrilla organization and consequently the movement would be crippled with morale problems and it would therefore just be a matter of time before we mopped everything up.

Who the heck knows? I mean, what kind of mind thinks that because we captured a hobo living in some hole in the ground that things are going to take a dramatic turn for the better? In any event, I'd really like to know if the prisoners being released were the ones that they were crowing about just a few short weeks ago. I'm sure those statistics would be easy to find.

Discovering statistics from the most sophisticated military IT system on the planet isn't easy. I heard Daniel Zwerling's piece on the number of wounded in Iraq. And by "wounded", we're not talking about someone with a boo-boo on their shin. Daniel's number - about 9,000 - are people who have been evacuated from Iraq because of the seriousness of the injury/sickness/infection/whatever. I was bemused to hear the response of Rumsfeld to Republican Senator Chuck Hagel's formal request for information. Either the famed military IT structure is simply a pile of shit, or they're scared to release the information for political reasons.

And speaking of releasing information for purely political reasons, I was chuckling as I read Colin Powell's latest screed on why he didn't technically play the part of Brer Rabbit in the little morality play put on for the U.S. citizenry culminating in that spectacular scene before the UN when he swore he didn't want to be thrown into the briar patch of Iraq. I guess we should take the man seriously when he says the WMD game is "still unfolding".

I'm simply stunned by the sheer number of former democrats that populate the right wing of American politics. If you want your eyes to bleed, you should read this stinky loaf over at the fair and balanced Tech Central Station. And as if that wasn't enough, it would appear that Godwin's law pretty much has been invoked over at that wacky bastion of well researched information known as TCS. If your eyes aren't bleeding from the first post, give the second one a read.

If the dancing "former democrats"doesn't sway your centrist vote with their kick line and high heels, there's a legion of self proclaimed "reasonable republicans" willing to jump into the fray and tell you all about how the democrats are self destructing by nominating Howard Dean. Or Wesley Clark. Anyone but Lieberman seems to be a losing proposition these days. But the Liberal Oasis had a very good post on why this incoherent bluster on the right about Dean and Clark is likely because they're scared shitless of what's happening with the democrats.

I'm certainly willing to believe the democrats could self destruct with Dean or Clark at the helm. But "Tsk, Tsk, Tsk" as the democratic campaign theme for 2004 just doesn't seem to capture the feeling needed to win an election. Call me an angry liberal, but I just don't think you can win against an incumbent simply by wagging your finger and looking pious. Well, unless Leiberman's strategy is running in the Republican primary.

Regardless of whether the Democratic party self destructs by not choosing Lieberman, it certainly appears that we're laying the ground work for an explosive situation between the Kurds (our friends) and Turkey (also our friends). I'm sure a Kurdish "mini-state" will be well received by all. It's truly a pity that we couldn't have pulled off the "mini-me" Kurdish state in a more reasonable context. I just hope Bush offers Turkey enough money to keep them from blowing their lid and invading Northern Iraq.

I don't know what the heck to make of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's characterization of George Bush: The president "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people". But somehow I get the feeling that this is the smoking gun that explains a lot what has been going on over the past three years. Hey! What about that anemic jobs market? NO PROBLEM. Let's not mention the fact that most people have more credit card debt than they have in the 401Ks. I'll bet that is a frightening, real world statistic for most of America. Not to mention the 48 million of us who don't have health care, or the fact that 15% of our GDP is now spent on health care. We are now officially the stupidest country in the world when it comes to taking care of our most basic needs.

In the end, what I really loathe about Bush n' Company isn't that they are Republicans. Nope, what I really loathe about BushCo is that the Administration seems to be populated entirely with the worst kind of DotCom CEOs, CFOs and COOs. You know, Enron type captains of industry. People who glad hand you while filling their dump trucks up with gold bars newly minted from the previous value of the company they are destroying. They fill up the trucks with every scrap of value they can vacuum out of the place and then trundle off to the Cayman islands when the whole thing collapses.

Sleazy. Stupid. And devastating.

Worse is the mindless corporate hordes of Toadies who worship at their feet in a pseudo religious fervor. They fall in love with the stern father figures and grant them the ability to carry on the raping and pillaging of the place. <sigh> Morons.

Worshippers Blown Up in Iraq Blast

An explosion ripped through a busy Iraqi street today as worshippers were streaming out of a Shiite Muslim mosque after midday prayers, killing up to five people and wounding dozens

Wailing women tried to cover body parts, wounded people wandered in a daze and a man screamed his anguish as he knelt before two bodies.

An Iraqi police lieutenant and the owner of the Sadiq Mohamed mosque in Baqouba both said the blast was caused by a gas cylinder.

But businessman Raad Sadek, who built and owns the mosque, said his brother saw the cylinder leaning against the door of the mosque and, after becoming suspicious, moved it to the middle of the street, where there was a large crater.

A police investigator said officers defused a car bomb in front of another Shiite mosque less than two miles away, and that it appeared a coordinated attack.

He said the car was rigged with three artillery shells and 330 pounds of TNT wired with a complex remote-controlled trigger. He said faulty wiring prevented the bomb from going off.

U.S. Companies Added Few Workers in December

The nation's unemployment rate dropped to 5.7 percent in December to the lowest level in 14 months, but employers finished the year without many help wanted signs for the holidays, adding just 1,000 new jobs.

The 0.2 percentage point drop in the jobless rate occurred because fewer people were looking for work, the Labor Department said Friday. More than 300,000 people gave up their search for jobs and dropped out of the pool of available workers.

``The rate is going down, but it is going down for the wrong reasons,'' said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services, noting that it fell not because people were finding work. ``That doesn't make you feel really good about the state of the jobs market.''

Ah, the beauty of a "free" market solution, eh?

Health Spending Rises to Record 15% of Economy

Health spending accounts for nearly 15 percent of the nation's economy, the largest share on record, the Bush administration said on Thursday.

The Department of Health and Human Services said that health care spending shot up 9.3 percent in 2002, the largest increase in 11 years, to a total of $1.55 trillion. That represents an average of $5,440 for each person in the United States.

Hospital care and prescription drugs accounted for much of the overall increase, which outstripped the growth in the economy for the fourth year in a row, the report said.

Complete data on health care spending in 2003 are not yet available, and some experts say the rapid growth of the last few years may be slowing.

Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no "smoking gun" proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda.

"I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection," Mr. Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. "But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."

Mr. Powell's remarks on Thursday were a stark admission that there is no definitive evidence to back up administration statements and insinuations that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, the acknowledged authors of the Sept. 11 attacks. Although President Bush finally acknowledged in September that there was no known connection between Mr. Hussein and the attacks, the impression of a link in the public mind has become widely accepted — and something administration officials have done little to discourage.

Waiting for the Saddam bounce

It would seem to us, therefore, that on current evidence, we are seeing a small, hard kernel of Baathist guerrillas generating activity as intensely as it can west of the city. There are a number of reasons the Baathists might be doing this. First, they want to demonstrate that they are still capable of inflicting losses on the Americans. Second, with their northern command completely disrupted, they could be trying to shift U.S. attention away from there while northern command tries to recover. Finally, as Sunni leaders start redefining their position away from Saddam Hussein and the Baathist guerrillas, they want to give them a moment of pause, lest they be written off completely.

We are struck by the relative quiet in Baghdad. There was an incident in southeastern Baghdad that killed Iraqis, but apart from that the capital has been extremely calm. We are comfortable with the idea that the United States has paralyzed the guerrillas to the north of Baghdad, but the idea that the guerrillas inside Baghdad are done for is harder to believe. Urban guerrillas are not taken down that easily, and a small handful could generate attacks. We are also struck by the relative quiet of the jihadists. There have been no suicide bombings or compound operations -- suicide missions plus commandos -- since Karbala a few weeks ago.

So we have relatively intense operations west of Baghdad, relative quiet inside the city and minor action to the north. Plus the jihadists haven't been heard from for a time. We are now to Friday, the Muslim Sabbath and the day of the week on which the most intense activity usually begins. In the past, this activity has carried over into Saturday and Sunday as well. The next 24-48 hours are extremely significant in our mind. If the guerrillas don't mount significant operations in Baghdad over the weekend, and activity remains confined to the Ar Ramadi-Al Fallujah-BIA area, we might be able to conclude that the guerrillas' capabilities have been so degraded that this is the only area they are still operational. On the other hand, if Baghdad is swept with massive attacks and the north starts to light up, then the Al Fallujah offensive of this week was simply a placeholder while the guerrillas completed regrouping.

We don't know the answer to that question. We find it extremely difficult to believe that the jihadists have been broken. Therefore, if we had to bet, we would bet that this would be a violent weekend. On the other hand, the Baathist guerrillas are badly hurt and the jihadists might be prepared to maintain a much more intermittent tempo of operations, as they have done elsewhere.

It is one of those unpleasant places in the intelligence business where you actually have to wait for reality to play itself out. Things will be clearer on Monday.

U.S. Plays Down Withdrawal of Iraq Weapons Team

The White House on Thursday played down the withdrawal from Iraq of a 400-member military team specializing in the disposal of weapons of mass destruction.

Scott McClellan, spokesman for President Bush, said that even though the disposal team was leaving, the group focused on hunting weapons was remaining in Iraq.

"The Iraq Survey Group continues to do its work," McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One. Bush was en route to Tennessee for an event on school reform and a fund-raiser.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that the departure of the team was "a sign that the administration might have lowered its sights" and viewed it as less likely that chemical and biological weapons would be discovered.

The administration had cited the threat of illicit weapons as a principle reason for launching war on Iraq in March of last year.

McClellan said, "We already know from (the Iraq Survey Group's) interim report that Saddam Hussein's regime was in serious violation" of United Nations disarmament demands.

In a potential setback to the so far fruitless hunt for banned weapons, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, told administration officials last month he was considering leaving his job.

Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper

What a bunch of paranoid morons.

Oh, and then there's this: Report Criticizes U.S. on Iraq.

More logical, the Carnegie report said, is the possibility that terrorists could get such weapons from "poorly guarded stockpiles in Russia and other former Soviet states" or countries such as Pakistan and North Korea, where "instability, corruption or a desperate need for cash could allow terrorist groups to gain access to nuclear weapons or materials."

You pro-war types rock! Woo hoo!

One of my new year's resolutions is to get my snarking done early before the tax season. I don't have enough energy for the full 12 months, and the crystal ball is cloudy after July anyway.

January: the Administration's dam starts showing more cracks. On the day of the state of the union, a spectacular offensive by the Iraqi guerrillas underscores the message that everything is fine in Iraq. Coming 2 days after the 4th attempt on Musharif's life, Bush's crowing about American being more safer with the capture of Saddam will be hailed as the best speech of his political career. In the showcase of the speech, GW calls for a new tone in Washington. The RWAP will agree and proceed to eviscerate Howard Dean with moronic catch phrases. Dean rises in the polls.

February: We all ignore the primary because some celebrity (maybe an M, maybe a J. Definitely a "B" person involved) will do something extremely embarrassing. The entire media vacuum is consumed ogling the accident. The Plame scandal will significantly increase in temperature when Bush has all his staff say "I did not leak Plame's name to Robert Novak. Cross my heart and hope to die" in an interview with Barbara Walters. Cheney will suffer another heart attack, although minor, right after the filming of the interview. Musharraf has now survived his sixth attack and Ann Coulter is starting to refer to the Pakistani president as "The Immortal One".

March: No one can still bring themselves to acknowledge the existence of the democratic primaries. Joesph Lieberman is screaming something about a recount but the only thing on the public's mind will be the escape of Saddam Husein. On the first anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war, he will slip out of capture with the help of some friendly Saudis, in a plan arranged by Grover Norquist. The RWAP will laugh childishly and call for more tax cuts to be passed by July 4.

April: Warmth starts to return to the northern hemisphere and we still haven't paid any attention to the democratic primaries. Karl Rove is revealed to be the single largest contributor to Howard Dean's campaign, causing a minor scandal. Joesph Lieberman is screaming something or other about a spider hole in an attempt to direct more attention to his campaign. Unfortunately for him, Osama bin Laden is captured ALIVE! The entire RWAP has a combined orgasm and we'll be cleaning up the sticky mess for months afterward. The liberal press focuses on the fact that Saddam Husein is still at large after escaping from captivity. Howard Dean says we're not any safer.

May: Nobody can even remember that there's a democratic primary any more. The universal opinion of the blogosphere is that GW has the election sewn up. More popular religious figures claim god has told them Bush will win in a land slide. Saddam is spotted in a trendy café in New York city and he quickly becomes a cult hit like Elvis. Osama is starting to "crack" and massive arrests are rounding up "high level" Al Qaeda personnel. No one notices that consumer confidence is plummeting because worker's haven't participated in the capital recovery driven by the supply side economics.

June: Several scandals break simultaneously. Cheney loses his bid to keep his energy task force documents a secret. Karl Rove is fingered by Novak for outing Plame in a fitful display of pique on CrossFire. Cheney suffers another minor heart attack. Musharraf is now starting to be revered as a god for surviving his 9th assassination attempt. Ann Coulter is now visibly aroused when talking about the man. The dollar continues to plummet in value. As the only thing America is exporting is jobs, this does not have the desired effect on the economy. Iraq is now universally ignored in the media along with Afghanistan.

July: Something happens at the Democratic convention. It turns out the "Osama" we captured was the clone created in a secret lab operated by the Raelians. A verified video tape of Osama and Saddam having coffee with Musharraf discussing current events, is played on Al Jazeera. Ann Coulter claims to be pregnant with Pervez Musharraf's love child. Andrew Sullivan declares that the scandals of the previous month are "really no big deal" and Glenn Reynolds agrees. Everyone stops paying attention to them. David Brooks comes out with another Oped decrying the Bush Administration but seeing no viable democratic alternative - he can't remember who the nominee is. As more and more troops start returning home due to rotation, the entire RWAP will agree that this locks in Bush's reelection in November now that the stock markets are approaching Dot Com boom numbers while the dollar plummets to record lows. Paul Krugman explodes. Donald Luskin dies in an auto erotic asphyxiation accident.

It was only yesterday I was saying that what TV really needs is more porn stars hitting on aged televangelists.

Tammy Fay Baker and - get this - Ron Jeremy. Together at last. Last year's show was pretty lame even though it had Cory Feldman. This year's show promises to be a pretty spectacular train wreck with the sleaziest porn star of all time living in close quarters with Tammy Fay. I can see the KY flying already.

Ye gods.

Oh, hey! Make sure you get your Ron Jeremy AIM buddy icon!

It's subscription only, but Salon's 2004 predictions are worth the read

Bin Laden Captured -- Investigators Cite Terror Mastermind's Addiction to Friendster

"It's not easy living in a cave," Osama bin Laden explains to U.S. interrogators moments after he's captured early in 2004. "You might learn to put up with the cold, the bugs, the lumpy bed, but it's the social life that hurts the most. So you go online for a few hours to keep up with your friends. Where's the harm in that?"

But Friendster, the popular online social networking tool, proves to be OBL's undoing. Through a series of unlikely relationships -- which folks like Michael Moore have long been whining about but which were not quite clear until Friendster graphically demonstrated them -- George W. Bush turns out to be connected to bin Laden.

See, Bush knows this guy (an acquaintance, not a friend) from his DKE days, and this guy's wife has a sister who knows this dude with great hair who once, when he was young and very drunk, spent the night with this woman who is a huge fan of the MTV show "Cribs."

Small world! Bin Laden's second wife also loves "Cribs"! FBI investigators, who now routinely use Friendster in their searches for terrorists, piece together these connections and hit the jackpot -- Osama bin Laden's profile complete with an e-mail address, OBLbKickin@aol.com. Investigators initiate a virtual romance with the terrorist leader, and he invites what he believes to be his virtual paramour up to the cave for drinks. Sadly, none of OBL's 49 Friendster friends -- although many give him glowing testimonials on the Internet -- spring to his defense in the real world.

Somewhere I'll find a Palm blog client but for now I'm using the web interface. . . not Azaelf bad . No spell check, nor are there any of the nice buttons for entering urls. Not to mention that it seems to be a Herculean task to enter text with the "thumb" keyboard on the PDA. . .

But the web browser is pretty darn nice - and the PDA screen is pretty darn big. I can actually browse the NY Times with absolutely no problems over the wireless connection. I also have an RSS reader for the PDA which works like a charm. Very cool.

Anyways battery is fading. . .

'Croc Hunter' Irwin Won't Face Charges

"If I could have my time again I would probably do things a little differently," he said. "But I would be considered a bad parent if I did not teach my children crocodile savvy because they live here. They live in crocodile territory ... so they have to be croc savvy."
. . .
"It's all about perceived danger; I was in complete control," said Irwin, flanked by his father, his wife and his 5-year-old daughter, Bindi. "People say, 'Well, what if you had fallen?' But for that to take place a meteorite would have had to come out of the sky and hit Australia at 6.6 on the Richter scale like in Iran."
. . .
"I watched children learning to swim at a very young age; they cry, they scream and they have nightmares about the water. Would you rather have a child learning to swim under duress or drowning peacefully in the pond in the backyard? I think teaching children about croc safety is extremely important."

5 point spread. Gotta love this, even if you don't love Dean.

Via Soto over at The Left Coaster.

Don’t diminish for a moment the significance of the Democratic frontrunner being only five points behind the incumbent amongst likely voters at the start of the season. As I said, these results come after negative press against Dean, some of it self-inflicted, most of it not. Yes, Bush will use his surrogates and the $200 million to begin smearing Dean from this point on. But these results are after the “capture” of Saddam and the constant news of our allegedly recovering economy. And still Bush is in a dogfight with Dean as of today.

Bush Aides Face Request To Free Media To Give Names

Federal investigators plan to ask White House officials to release journalists from any pledge of confidentiality given during discussions about CIA operative Valerie Plame, a senior administration official said Friday.

The official said that several aides to President Bush whose names have come up in interviews with FBI agents will be asked to sign a one-page form giving permission for journalists to describe any such conversations to investigators, even if the journalists promised not to reveal the source.

Bush has said he wants his aides to cooperate fully, and the official said that will result in tremendous pressure on them to sign a form. But the official said that even some of the investigators on the case do not expect the document to prompt journalists to break their pledges of confidentiality. News organizations routinely resist subpoenas asking for information about confidential sources, and reporters have gone to jail rather than testify.

The form states that it is the wish of the White House official that "no member of the media assert any privilege or refuse to answer any questions" about the leak, according to a copy of the form obtained by NBC News.

Time magazine reported on its Web site that Karl Rove, Bush's senior adviser, had been sent a copy of the form and that other such requests had been made over the past week.

In a rather nice follow up, Silber tears Tim Blair a new one regarding the rather stinky loaf that he squeezed out in a fit of verbal diarrhea.

The point I want to emphasize is the following: this is typical of the manner in which this debate is conducted -- and the way it has been conducted for the last year. For the most part, the hawks will simply not address the substantive issues, or the substantive arguments of those who disagree with them. They studiously ignore them -- apparently hoping that the arguments, and any facts upon which they might be based, will just vanish if they refuse to acknowledge them.

But that is not enough for many hawks. Oh, no. If you dare to disagree with them, and if you dare to question the idea of "remaking" the globe, and if you further dare to point out all the calamitous consequences which history has repeatedly demonstrated are likely to flow from such an effort, you are "insane." You are a "Saddamite." You "hate America."

"Moral bullies"? "Intellectual thugs"? "The enemies of truth, justice and freedom in a very deep sense"? "The advance guard of the Truth Police"? I was, as usual, too kind. (I made that mistake once before, with regard to the neoconservatives and their fellow travelers, as I analyzed in this essay about Irving Kristol.)

I'll tell you what. I'll stop referring to moral bullies and intellectual thugs when a great number of hawks stop acting like them -- with their crossing of every "t," and their dotting of every "i." And when they begin to address the issues at stake -- issues which may well determine the future of the world, whether they choose to recognize them or not -- then I'll cease using terms which appear to upset people.

But given the nature of the "debate" that has taken place over the past year, and given the terms in which it is still being conducted, I don't expect to see that any time soon -- or probably ever. Hence, my title: I'll stop identifying moral bullies and intellectual thugs for what they are, and I'll stop "upsetting" people -- when hell freezes over.

And not one goddamned second before.

It shines like a shaft of gold when all around is dark.

MORAL BULLIES, PART I: YOU SPEAK OF THE "COALITION OF THE PISSY"? VERY WELL THEN. I PISS ON YOU.

I want to state one thing very clearly and unmistakably for the benefit of any warbloggers who might read this -- particularly those warbloggers and other hawks who strut their self-announced moral superiority and constantly shove it in the face of everyone else, and who act as if any disagreement with their historically ignorant views of the world constitutes some sort of treason. You are the enemies of America -- just as you are the enemies of thought, of history, of ideas, of any conception of what genuine liberty means, and how it is to be achieved.

You are a disgrace to this once-great nation, and if you have your way, this nation will follow many others on the route of total self-destruction in a conflagration of military might strewn purposelessly and mindlessly around the globe, while an increasingly authoritarian government destroys what remains of freedom here in the United States. And I also want to make it clear that there are many of us who are not at all cowed by your moral blustering. Many of us see it exactly for what it is: the phony posturing of a coward who relies on intimidation in place of argument, who feels that shouting mindless slogans will silence any opposing viewpoints, no matter how well-reasoned, and who counts on the reluctance or unwillingness of his opponents to stand up to the taunts of an obviously ignorant bully.

As your hollow and offensive tactics increasingly reveal themselves to be almost entirely devoid of thought, of any kind of historical grounding, and of any basis in principle, I think more and more people will call your bluff -- and finally shame you into silence. You are anti-American in every important sense: you have no understanding of individual freedom or how it is maintained, you have no appreciation of the dynamics of foreign affairs, and you have no grasp of how ideas or a culture of freedom are spread.

So, as I have said before and with a deeply grateful nod to a genuinely great American whose greatness is lost on you, and with regard to your uninformed, incorrect and disgustingly ignorant charges of anti-Americanism and disloyalty, I repeat yet again:

If this be treason, make the most of it.