Month: October 2005

this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.

image and poem below the fold

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Finally – someone speaks out!

The following is by “T.J. Snodgrass II,” for my blog:

I know we all have a variety of views on the many machinations of the UN; however, this time they are on the mark. The January Iraqi elections were a farce and did not meet international standards as will be the case with the October referendum.

Of course, no one on the US side has condemned this facade — in fact, some US apparatchik probably gave the Shia and Kurds the idea.

From the Oct. 4, 2005 story at BBC NEWS (PDF version):

The United Nations has criticised changes to Iraq’s electoral law that make it harder for Iraqis to reject the draft constitution.

The two-thirds majority needed in three provinces to defeat the constitution will now be counted from all registered – as opposed to actual – voters.

On Sunday Shia and Kurdish members of parliament pushed through the changes in the referendum rules on 15 October.

Sunni Arabs reacted angrily to the amendments on Monday.

They believed many registered voters may not show up at the polls because of violence.

Pat Lang

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
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Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)


“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
 

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[From the diaries by susanhu. Right on, sister.]

I read Pat Lang’s story, and watched the glorious video of O’Reilly and Wes Clark at Crooks and Liars and I’m humming to myself today.

At a time when our military in many ways has become tarnished, untrusted, and seems to be giving off a foul odor that smells distinctly like just plain evil, Clark reminds us all about the military that we once had under different Commanders and Chiefs.

He reminds us of how following the Geneva Convention and sticking strictly to our standards made our military once the envy of the disorderly unethical world.  That was awhile back though.

I will agree with one thing that Bush said lately and that is that the leadership sets the tone … he said that pertaining to racism and poverty but in the real world it pertains to everything really in some way.

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There is a group of people who are very important to the national economy that speak often but never receive adequate press coverage.  There people are the various heads of regional Federal Reserve Banks.  Over that last month, their message has been consistent: they are concerned about inflationary pressures in the economy.

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“Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules.

• “First, it is not important that she be confirmed.

  
  

• “Second, it might be very important that she not be.
  

• “Third, the presumption — perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting — should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.
  

  
  

• “It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court’s tasks.
  

• “The president’s ‘argument’ for her amounts to: Trust me.

• “There is no reason to, for several reasons.

  
  

• “He [President Bush] has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. …
  

  
  

• “Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers’s nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. …
  

  
  

• “In addition, the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. …”

Who wrote this today? Answer below:

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