Jane, you ignorant slut!**In case you don't remember (and nobody under 45 will) this is how Dan Aykroyd would reply to Jane Curtin during their weekly SNL debates.
My Airman friend has done three tours in Iraq so far, and he wants to go back. He’s proud of what he’s done. He’s an engineer, and engineers build things. They make things work. And they take pride in making them work and building things to last. They would understand the Bridge on the River Kwai.The photo Scarecrow ran with his piece is this one, of the new US embassy in Iraq:
. . . we are building a huge, permanent infrastructure in Iraq. We are putting in the latest equipment, and it is not there to support some temporary military presence. What’s going up is not something to be taken down and removed when our troops withdraw or respond to some uncertain Congressional appropriation . . . We’re spending billions upon billions on this, and it’s not slowing down. My friend has been there three times, and each time he goes back, he marvels at the tremendous change — in how much more there is now than there was last time. Much more sophisticated; more permanent.
We did not talk much about the violence; where he worked, and what he did, did not require him to face that. He knew Iraqis but these were Iraqis who had essentially “joined us,” in the sense that once they were inside the US infrastructure, they stayed there. They were helping to building this American infrastructure in their country. Their families were there, “inside,” and no one talked about going “outside” because it was too dangerous. There are two different worlds: the Iraq we see on our televisions each night, with scores of people being blown to bits and pools of blood under devastated cars and buildings - and the American one “inside” the US infrastructure. A country within a country. America inside Iraq.
I could tell that my friend did not want to talk about the politics here, or the violence there. He gave no indication that it might all have been a waste of time, lives and money. There was no moral judgment. There was only the pride in what he had built, and the desire to go back and keep building it.
The $592 million embassy occupies a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington's National Mall, with desk space for about 1,000 people behind high, blast-resistant walls . . . The embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget . . . The 21-building complex on the Tigris River was envisioned three years ago partly as a headquarters for the democratic expansion in the Middle East that President Bush identified as the organizing principle for foreign policy in his second term. . . The compound will have secure apartments for about 615 people.And how about Balad airbase, north of Baghdad:
The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that’s now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a “heli-park” as good as any back in the States.Here are the maps from that article. This one shows the bases in Iraq:
At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq’s western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.
At a third hub down south, Tallil, they’re planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.
Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.
“I think we’ll be here forever,” the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.
. . . Officers at Al-Asad Air Base, 10 desert miles from the nearest town, say it hasn’t been hit by insurgent mortar or rocket fire since October.
Al-Asad will become even more isolated. The proposed 2006 supplemental budget for Iraq operations would provide $7.4 million to extend the no-man’s-land and build new security fencing around the base, which at 19 square miles is so large that many assigned there take the Yellow or Blue bus routes to get around the base, or buy bicycles at a PX jammed with customers.
The latest budget also allots $39 million for new airfield lighting, air traffic control systems and upgrades allowing al-Asad to plug into the Iraqi electricity grid — a typical sign of a long-term base.
At Tallil, besides the new $14 million dining facility, Ali Air Base is to get, for $22 million, a double perimeter security fence with high-tech gate controls, guard towers and a moat — in military parlance, a “vehicle entrapment ditch with berm.”
Here at Balad, the former Iraqi air force academy 40 miles north of Baghdad, the two 12,000-foot runways have become the logistics hub for all U.S. military operations in Iraq, and major upgrades began last year.
Army engineers say 31,000 truckloads of sand and gravel fed nine concrete-mixing plants on Balad, as contractors laid a $16 million ramp to park the Air Force’s huge C-5 cargo planes; an $18 million ramp for workhorse C-130 transports; and the vast, $28 million main helicopter ramp, the length of 13 football fields, filled with attack, transport and reconnaissance helicopters.
Turkish builders are pouring tons more concrete for a fourth ramp beside the runways, for medical-evacuation and other aircraft on alert. And $25 million was approved for other “pavement projects,” from a special road for munitions trucks to a compound for special forces.
The chief Air Force engineer here, Lt. Col. Scott Hoover, is also overseeing two crucial projects to add to Balad’s longevity: equipping the two runways with new permanent lighting, and replacing a weak 3,500-foot section of one runway.
Once that’s fixed, “we’re good for as long as we need to run it,” Hoover said. Ten years? he was asked. “I’d say so.”
Away from the flight lines, among traffic jams and freshly planted palms, life improves on 14-square-mile Balad for its estimated 25,000 personnel, including several thousand American and other civilians.
They’ve inherited an Olympic-sized pool and a chandeliered cinema from the Iraqis. They can order their favorite Baskin-Robbins flavor at ice cream counters in five dining halls, and cut-rate Fords, Chevys or Harley-Davidsons, for delivery at home, at a PX-run “dealership.” On one recent evening, not far from a big 24-hour gym, airmen hustled up and down two full-length, lighted outdoor basketball courts as F-16 fighters thundered home overhead.
Forget conspiracy theories and ideological agendas, just contemplate one fact: The USA spends more on military and intelligence funding in 2004 than it has spent at any one time in history. Fourteen carrier groups to defeat the two remaining countries of the axis of evil, N. Korea and Iran? 750 and counting military bases outside the USA? However, the government tells us it is powerless to defend the country against an attack from a terrorist group with WMD??? So, the next time you watch television and the commentator tells you why we need another aircraft carrier, more tanks, more F-16's, etc., ask yourself: Who are we defending ourselves against?750 military bases worldwide and they STILL don't feel safe? What is the matter with these people? Johnson suggests an enraged public should throw out the neocons and the empire buildiers, with step one to leave Iraq:
When Ronald Reagan coined the phrase "evil empire," he was referring to the Soviet Union, and I basically agreed with him that the USSR needed to be contained and checkmated. But today it is the U.S. that is widely perceived as an evil empire and world forces are gathering to stop us. The Bush administration insists that if we leave Iraq our enemies will "win" or -- even more improbably -- "follow us home." I believe that, if we leave Iraq and our other imperial enclaves, we can regain the moral high ground and disavow the need for a foreign policy based on preventive war. I also believe that unless we follow this path, we will lose our democracy and then it will not matter much what else we lose. In the immortal words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
A very large number of right wing legal scholars seem to have the unusual view that a president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors if he lies about a sexual affair, but he has ultimate authority to do anything he chooses in his role as president.Oh, and don't forget this one:
I think Rudy won it. These people don’t care if he’s wearing a teddy under his suit and sleeping with the family schnauzer as long as he promises to spill as much blood as possible.And then there's....oh, just go read them all.
New Democrat Libby Davies said the manual explodes the Tories' contention that opposition parties are to blame for the parliamentary constipation.The manual was apparently distributed to Tory committee chairs, and somebody leaked it. Not having heard of that new invention, the xerox machine, the PMO tried to hunt down the leaker:
"So much for blaming the opposition for the obstruction of Parliament," she said.
"Now we learn, in fact, that the monkey wrench gang have had a plan all along and not just any plan, a 200-page playbook on how to frustrate, obstruct and shut down the democratic process."
The government was so embarrassed and annoyed by the leak, that, according to a source, it ordered all committee chairs to return their copies of the handbook, apparently in a bid to determine who broke confidence.I'll bet someone in the PMOs office is now hard at work on some foolproof way to ID leakers -- like in Tom Clancy novels, where each person's copy secretly has one word changed in some key paragraph.
The handbook reportedly advises chairs on how to promote the government's agenda, select witnesses friendly to the Conservative party and coach them to give favourable testimony. It also reportedly instructs them on how to filibuster and otherwise disrupt committee proceedings and, if all else fails, how to shut committees down entirely.Of course, CP does the obligatory "rowboat" paragraph to forestall accusations of that ole Librull bias:
Some of those stalling tactics have been on display this week.
Tory MPs on the information and ethics committee stalled an inquiry into alleged censorship of a report on the treatment of Afghan detainees. They debated the propriety of the witness list for more than five hours while two critics of the government's handling of the matter cooled their heels in the corridor.
The official languages committee has been shut down all week after Tory chair Guy Lauzon cancelled a hearing moments before witnesses were to testify about the impact of the government's cancellation of the court challenges program. All three opposition parties voted to remove Lauzon from the chair but the Tories are refusing to select a replacement, leaving the committee in limbo.
Tories have also launched filibusters to obstruct proceedings in the Commons agriculture and procedural affairs committees and a Senate committee study of a Liberal bill requiring the government to adhere to the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions.
The previous Liberal regime also tried to control the conduct of committees. Former prime minister Jean Chretien even faced a mini-rebellion during his final months in office from backbenchers who chafed at being told what to say and do at committee. They demanded the right to choose their own committee chairs.CP doesn't mention this, but it was Paul Martin who led this reform movement and who, when he was prime minister, continued to allow committees the right to select their own chairs -- even when opposition MPs repaid his democratic largesse by setting out to embarrass him in any way they could through committee hearings. But for Martin, a basic belief in democracy trumped PMO control. Not so, with either Chretien or, now, Harper:
But Davies, a 10-year parliamentary veteran, said the Tories have taken manipulation to extremes she's never seen before.If they keep up these kind of tactics, they will end up proving to voters is that its a government led by Steven Harper that doesn't work.
"They've codified it. They've set it down. They've given instructions."
Both Davies and Goodale agreed that the recent dysfunction may be part of a long term Tory strategy to persuade voters that minority Parliaments don't work, that they need to elect a majority next time.
But Goodale predicted the ploy won't work because Canadians will realize that the Tories are the "authors of this stalemate."
Goodale said the manual also demonstrates that the government is in the grip of an "obsessive, manipulative mania," run by a prime minister who has "a kind of control fetish" in which there can't be "one comma or one sentence or one word uttered without his personal approval."
Flight 182 was considered at high risk of attack by Sikh extremists.Yet according to Canadian Press, the RCMP at the Montreal airport thought there wasn't any particular danger:
...it appears from documents tabled Wednesday that D'Souza never consulted the RCMP. Sgt. J.N. Leblanc, the watch commander at the airport, later told investigators he learned of the three suspect bags only after the plane took off.From previous testimony, it appears there was actually plenty of information about Air India threats -- but apparently it wasn't passed on to the people who might have acted on it:
Leblanc said he decided not to recall the flight to Mirabel since "no other information had come to our attention that there could be any danger whatsoever to the plane."
The RCMP's former head of airport security was not told that a group of Sikhs were plotting a suicide attack on an Air India jet leaving Montreal on June 16, 1984. . .Sadder still, a tragic series of coincidences allowed the doomed flight to take off with a bomb on board:
. . . Flight 182 wasn't held at Mirabel to have all the baggage unloaded and matched up against passengers. If that had been done, the unaccompanied bag that contained the bomb would likely have been discovered.So it all makes me wonder.
. . . the X-ray machine used at Pearson broke down, and a hand-held electronic detector used in its place had been shown to be unreliable in tests conducted six months earlier.
Moreover, no sniffer dog was available in Toronto because all the RCMP's explosives-detection canine teams were on a training course that weekend.
Fontaine has always preferred peaceful diplomacy over the risk of alienating public support.Railways apparently have involved themselves now in the land claims disputes.
"But First Nations people are beginning to question the so-called rational process," he said during a luncheon speech Tuesday to the Canadian Club of Ottawa.
"At this point you must realize we have a right to be frustrated, concerned, angry," he told the well-heeled luncheon crowd of business, political, academic and cultural leaders.
They filled the gilded ballroom of the Chateau Laurier hotel,? sipping coffee and finishing dessert as Fontaine described 28 people living in two-bedroom houses on the Pukatawagan reserve in Northern Manitoba.
Vicious murders of native women go all but unnoticed, he said. And federal spending hasn't kept pace with inflation or population growth for years.
. . . Chief Terry Nelson of Manitoba's Roseau River First Nation, says he'll follow through on rail blockades included in a resolution passed by chiefs at an Assembly of First Nations meeting last December.It could be a long, hot summer if protests escalate:
It calls for a 24-hour disruption (from 4 p.m. next June 29 to 4 p.m. June 30) "to reaffirm the need for the Canadian government to establish a reasonable time-frame for settlement of Indigenous rights."
Nelson has since said that such action could escalate if rail companies persist in suing demonstrators for related economic chaos. He argues that the rail company has access to traditional native territory because a related historic treaty wasn't properly honoured by Ottawa.
Compensation for commercial use of claimed land is a major snag in several cases. CN sued after a splinter group of Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte near Deseronto, Ont. blocked freight and passenger traffic for more than a day on the busy line between Toronto and Ottawa last month.
Fontaine says there's still time to avoid all-out conflict.If things get bad, the Harper government may yet regret having stiffed Canada's Aboriginal communities by bailing out of the Kelowna Accord -- and after promising during the election campaign that they wouldn't do that.
"But what's incumbent upon us is to put out a proposition that's so compelling it actually gives First Nations hope."
That's increasingly tough, he said, under a Conservative government that gutted the $5-billion Kelowna Accord to improve First Nations health, housing and education, before virtually excluding new spending for cash-strapped reserves in the last federal budget.
Still, he met with [Indian Affairs minister] Prentice on Monday and is willing to keep trying.
"In spite of all of the resistance we've encountered in the last while, we've made it very clear that we're still committed to engaging with the government in a process that will bring about good results for First Nations people and Canadians."
. . . "it's an intolerable situation" on many of Canada's more than 600 reserves, most of which are denied any share of lucrative resources on their traditional lands.
"There's no reason why First Nations people should be as poor as we are."
He's convinced that most Canadians want that black mark erased.
Until then, said Fontaine, "we're still committed to do the right thing."
Now that Padilla's finally going on trial - an eventuality the government worked very, very hard to render impossible - the restrictions on reporters are unprecedented. Washington claims security concerns. Almost certainly, what they're really afraid of is embarrassment. If George Orwell and Franz Kafka had a love child, it would look like the Padilla case.Emphasis mine.
The public mood hardened against foreign forces in the southern city of Kandahar after British troops fired on civilians while driving through the streets after a suicide bombing last year, and Canadian soldiers have repeatedly killed and wounded civilians while on patrol in civilian areas.Really? Our troops have developed a reputation for repeatedly killing civilians? Now, I don't comb the papers for Afghan news every day, but I don't remember getting the impression that Canadian solders are "repeatedly' firing on civilians.
. . . our most respected media went to considerable lengths to avoid negative portrayals of our military role and that of our NATO allies, even to the point of completely ignoring certain shocking and disastrous events which are of vital importance in understanding the role of our military in Afghanistan and its effects on the people of that country.Here's some of the stories you didn't hear about:
At around 2am on October 18, NATO helicopters firing on houses in the village of Ashogo in Kandahar killed between nine and thirteen civilians, including women and children. Almost simultaneously, in neighboring Helmand province, another NATO air strike killed a reported thirteen civilians. Additionally, NATO revealed that just one purported Taliban insurgent was killed in the attacks. In fact, during the attack on Ashogo, there were no Taliban whatsoever in the village, according to local officials. NATO blamed the botched attacks on intelligence failures.And here's another one:
. . . an Afghan father's accusations that during the Kandahar attack NATO troops had executed his wounded son when the soldiers had entered their house . . . NATO later announced that they had exonerated themselves on the matterAnd a week later:
Before dawn on October 24 -- and on the cusp of Eid celebrations -- NATO air strikes in the Panjwaii district of Kandahar, ostensibly aimed at Taliban insurgents, claimed the lives of numerous innocent civilians. Estimates at the time ranged from 30 to 90 dead villagers; NATO initially conceded only 11 civilian deaths while claiming 48 dead insurgents. Survivors told of their homes being bombed and of fleeing across fields with their families, while NATO planes strafed them. Reportedly, over 50 homes were destroyed.We are also creating refugees:
. . . at the end of November, Amnesty noted that NATO operations in Afghanistan had contributed to the displacement of up to 90,000 people . . .Here's another incident:
On December 12, a Canadian soldier on guard duty shot and killed an Afghan senior citizen in Kandahar City. The man, 90 year-old Haji Abdul Rahman, had approached the provincial governor's palace on his motorcycle. A frequent visitor to the palace, the elderly former teacher had come to pay a visit to his old pupil: Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai. Afghan soldiers in charge of an outer checkpoint, evidently familiar with the locally famous man, had let him pass without questioning him. Upon seeing this, the Canadian soldier became suspicious or alarmed and commenced verbal warnings aimed at the elderly motorcyclist. When these signals did not have the desired effect (a common occurrence, it must be noted, in this conflict as well as the one in Iraq), the soldier fired a warning shot which ricocheted and killed the man, according to a Canadian Forces spokesperson.And there were three more incidents in February:
Maj. Dale MacEachern, a spokesman for the Canadian Forces, said the group of Canadians signalled for the approaching vehicle to stop, but troops opened fire when the civilian driver proceeded . . . The Afghan driver was killed and a passenger was wounded . . . On Feb. 18, Canadian soldiers killed an Afghan civilian and a member of the Afghan national police following an attack on a Canadian convoy. The military said the civilian approached Canadian Forces soldiers while they were engaged in a gun battle with insurgents and did not heed repeated warnings to move away.While reporting on other civilian deaths in Afghanistan in early May, due to US bombing, the BBC provides this statistic:
A day earlier, Canadian troops also shot and killed an Afghan civilian.
About 4,000 people were killed in Afghanistan last year, about a quarter of them civilians.This Wikipedia article provides more detail about all of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan, including the ones attributed to US soldiers.
As a person of whiteness, I've always been astounded by the level of care and professionalism the brown hordes bring to their jobs. Considering how we've treated them, spitting in our soup is the least we deserve from them.
The problem is the use of simple as a synonym for easy; and hard as a synonym for complicated.And I can't really give you the gist of it with any more excerpts -- just go read it.
In our society, at least in most of it, the word 'orthodoxy' comes with at least a loose negative connotation. We're open-minded, tolerant people. So to call one of a political party's bedrock issues an 'orthodoxy', as the Times does here, is at least to slightly prejudice the question . . . But why do Republicans need to give up these 'orthodoxies'...Why shouldn't they organize their voting around these issues that mean so much to them?Emphasis mine.
It reminds of the predictable-as-the-seasons articles you'll read every few years in the Post and other papers asking whether Democrats are going to give up their hidebound orthodoxies of supporting Social Security or the progressive income tax or civil rights. For many of us those are precisely the reasons we're involved in politics, so why should we give them up because some frivolous oped writer who doesn't know the first thing about public policy thinks it's the hip new thing to do?
How many Democrats would support a flat-tax, pro-privatization, anti-gay rights candidate for president? And why should they? Washington's beautiful people, the froth at the top of the politico-cultural mug, look down on everybody, right and left, who's really committed politically. It's a mild embarrassment, like loud clothes or poor table manners.
* You may find yourself lying in bed at night beside your husband thinking, "Is this all?" It isn't, sister. With a cup of corn starch in your sheet laundry, you can achieve those perfect hospital corners.
* The only way for a woman to know herself as a person is through creative work of her own. Cut grilled cheese sandwichces diagonally and let your spirit soar!
* Power that pan clean with Girl Power! The same goes for counters, collars, rugs, curtains, tile, grout, duvet covers, venetian blinds, and problem areas.
* When you open yourself to the abundance of the universe, anything is possible... even getting a clean toilet with NO SCRUBBING! Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the toilet, let it sit for one hour, and then flush it clean. You can use that extra sixty minutes of free time to believe, breathe, dream, laugh, or CELEBRATE what makes you UNIQUE!
* Do you often find yourself wishing there were more hours in the day? Juggling a career, a home, and a relationship can be hard, but you can't let any one of those things go, or you will be a failure as a woman. Taking a regular dose of methamphetamine will give you the energy to successfully manage all three and spare you the inconvenience of sleep.
* Liberate yourself from household chores: Have children!
