AlterNet: A Different Take on Disengagement

Disengagement was all a show folks. They just did it to make the likelyhood of leaving the West Bank look impossible to the Israeli majority.

AlterNet: A Different Take on Disengagement: "If Ariel Sharon had been willing to negotiate a genuine peace agreement with the Palestinians in which Israel withdrew to the 1967 border (with slight border modifications along the lines suggested by Yossi Beilin in the Geneva Accord of 2003), one part of that agreement could have allowed all settlers to stay in their homes in Gaza and the West Bank as long as they agreed to be law-abiding citizens of the Palestinian state that would be governing that area. If they were not willing to give up their Israeli citizenship and live in peace with their neighbors, they could voluntarily leave their homes and return to Israel. That is the same choice that Arabs faced once Israel was established in a land that they once governed. It should have been the choice offered to Israeli settlers as well.

There never had to be the horrible scene of people being dragged from their homes.

So why did it happen? Because Ariel Sharon's entire plan -- as explained to the Israeli public by his assistant, Dov Weisglass -- was to sacrifice the settlers of Gaza precisely in order to have the painful images that dominated the media, so that Sharon could argue 'Of course no one can ask us to do this kind of thing to the 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, given the pain everyone has seen us go through in Gaza.'

As Sharon's aides tried to tell the settlers, the Disengagement was intended to preserve the Occupation, not undermine it. And so, Sharon is moving ahead to finish construction of the Separation Wall and cut off from the West Bank the 150,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem (not to mention many other Palestinians living in proximity to the Wall), expropriate more and more Palestinian land, and 'create facts' on the ground that will be hard to change.

There are some who celebrate this Gaza withdrawal as the first step in the process of dismantling settlements. Rabbi Lerner asks them the following: 'At what point, how many years from now, while the Occupation continues of much of the West Bank, will you acknowledge that this was simply another part of the scheme that Sharon has--to hold on to close to 50 percent of the West Bank while offering Palestinians a state that will be neither economically nor politically viable, a state that, when they refuse it, or when they accept it and then ask for more, will be used as 'proof' that nothing will ever satisfy them?' So, Rabbi Lerner argues, we should understand that all the pain was part of an elaborate ruse--and though the immediate victims are the Gaza settlers, the real victims are all the peoples of Israel and Palestine who will have to endure the ongoing suffering that the continuation of the Occupation guarantees."

The only problem for Sharon is that it isn't working. Most of the Israeli public supports more disengagement from the West Bank settlements. They were also offended by the behavior of the settlers, because of the way they exploited their kids and because of their harassment of the soldiers.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Britain heads for clash with US

Britain rebels against our hired asshole at the UN John Bolton. As documented in yesterdays diary he also intends to derail the nuclear non proliferation treaty and work to stop global warming.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Britain heads for clash with US: "A draft of that plan had included a review of progress on the UN's millennium development goals - poverty eradication targets set in 2000 for completion by 2015 - and the introduction of reforms aimed at repairing the damage done to the UN's reputation by Iraq, Rwanda and the Balkans.

Article continues
But it was revealed this week that Mr Bush's new ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, was seeking 750 changes to the 36-page draft plan to be presented to a special summit in New York on September 14 to 16. Mr Bolton's amendments, if successful, would leave the plan in tatters......

The concern in British and other international circles is that the American objections, if adopted, would severely undermine the UN summit, the biggest-ever gathering of world leaders......

A source close to the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan said it was too early to declare the UN plan dead. "Bolton wants to knock down the plan and start from scratch," the source said. "He will find that his opinions are not shared by most of the rest of the world."

The president of the UN general assembly, Jean Ping from the Gambia, has been working on the draft, covering issues of poverty, climate change, genocide, small arms, the creation of a permanent UN peacekeeping capability and reform of the UN management structure, for the past year.........

U.S. Wants Changes In U.N. Agreement

News of our hired asshole at the UN John Bolton!

U.S. Wants Changes In U.N. Agreement: "The United States has only recently introduced more than 750 amendments that would eliminate new pledges of foreign aid to impoverished nations, scrap provisions that call for action to halt climate change and urge nuclear powers to make greater progress in dismantling their nuclear arms. At the same time, the administration is urging members of the United Nations to strengthen language in the 29-page document that would underscore the importance of taking tougher action against terrorism, promoting human rights and democracy, and halting the spread of the world's deadliest weapons..........

The proposed changes, submitted by U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton, touch on virtually every aspect of U.N. affairs and provide a detailed look at U.S. concerns about the world body's future. They underscore U.S. efforts to impose greater oversight of U.N. spending and to eliminate any reference to the International Criminal Court. The administration also opposes language that urges the five permanent members of the Security Council not to cast vetoes to block action to halt genocide, war crimes or ethnic cleansing.

These changes are so hypocritical. Where to start. For one thing you can't seriously want to halt the spread of WMD then halt provisions that call for greater progress to be made dismantling nukes. If you are serious about tackling genocide, why in the world would you want to kill the ICC? They were the one that tried Milosevic. This is all meant to support American Unilateralism and exceptionalism.

The Bush adminstration neoconservatives hate the ICC because it might take a look at Abu Ghraib for instance, and because it has taken issue with the wall and the settlements in Israel. They also want to halt the dismantlement nuclear weapons because they are trying to rebuild America's arsenal. In fact they are testing them again after Kennedy banned nuclear testing. In this spirit they have rejected the nuclear non proliferation treaty. This is one of the reasons we have no leverage over the Iranians, who have signed it. Putting the millenium goals, foreign aid to poor countries, and the global warming issue on hold is just a way to be venial and extra stupid, arrogant and assholish. Neocons consider meaness a virtue. That is what unilaterism is in essence, being an asshole and getting away with it.

Bolton would have been refused the position at the UN if this were a sane and responsible administration. He is one of the guys that lied us into the Iraq war.

The Blog | Max Blumenthal: Hitchens Tries S&M | The Huffington Post

Max Bluenthal gives the most thorough run down, of Christopher Hitchens and his hypocracy that I have ever seen.

The Blog | Max Blumenthal: Hitchens Tries S&M | The Huffington Post: "Take hitching July 12, 2001 column for the Nation magazine eulogizing Israeli peace activist Israel Shahak. Here, Hitchens makes practically the same points he condemns Sheehan for supposedly making (sentiments that I don't necessarily disagree with, but which are nonetheless hypocritical for Hitchens to now denounce):

Only the other day, I read some sanguinary proclamation from the rabbinical commander of the Shas party, Ovadia Yosef, himself much sought after by both Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. It was a vulgar demand for the holy extermination of non-Jews; the vilest effusions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad would have been hard-pressed to match it. The man wants a dictatorial theocracy for Jews and helotry or expulsion for the Palestinians, and he sees (as Shahak did in reverse) the connection. This is not a detail; Yosef's government receives an enormous US subsidy, and his intended victims live (and die, every day) under a Pax Americana.


Hitchens' expressed his opinion of Zionism more explicitly in a barely coherent November 14, 2001 op-ed for the Guardian, called 'Ha, ha, ha to the pacifists.' Accusing 'the peaceniks' of harboring a conciliatory attitude towards radical Islamic terrorists, Hitchens wrote:

Come Yom Kippur I tend to step up my scornful remarks about Zionism. Whatever happened to the robust secularism that used to help characterise the left? And why is it suddenly only the injured feelings of Muslims that count?


Hitchens criticism of Sheehan is, of course, rooted in his role as a Hoover Institute-funded cheerleader for the failed policies of his newfound neocon fantasist friends. If we harken back to the days of the Clinton administration, however, we'll see how Hitchens took a decidedly different tack on US foreign policy."

Raw Story: Exclusive: Downing Street reporter dissects pre-war Iraq intelligence

How Tony Blair stovepiped and misinterpreted intellegence analysis to scare the shit out of Britons!

There was of course nothing sub-conscious about the way in which the 45-minute claim was hardened up. The source did not specify the precise context for this timing and no-one in either British spy agency MI6 or the JIC Current Intelligence Group on Iraq seemed to know.

But among military intelligence experts on artillery and missile systems, the figures rang some very loud bells. They appeared to be straight out of the old Soviet artillery and rocket troops manual. The most likely systems the Iraqis would use to deliver chemical or biological weapons were all Soviet-made mortar, artillery and missile systems.

These included the al-Hussein surface-to-surface missile. This was an Iraqi version of the Scud missile, which was the Soviet army-level surface-to-surface missile system. In common with all other Soviet workers, Red Army troops were given 'norms' for the time it should take them to perform particular tasks. The 'norm' for the time it should take for warheads to be moved from a forward storage site to the missile firing point and the missile to be ready to fire was 45 minutes.

more......

t is not clear whether the Prime Minister spotted the 45-minute claim when it first landed on his desk in the shape of the original CX report from MI6. But it had certainly caught his eye in the days following its first mention in a draft of the dossier circulated on Sept. 9, 2002. At this stage it was only mentioned twice and, since it was not qualified, couched in very cautious terms. The Sept. 9 draft said the intelligence merely 'suggested' Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.

But amid the confusing, and often uncertain, intelligence reports on Iraq it was a detail that Mr Blair and his advisers, not least Alastair Campbell, his Director of Communications, knew the public would understand. Despite the conclusions of the Intelligence and Security Committee, there is no doubt that as far as Campbell and Blair were concerned, it was the sound bite that would sell the war to some of the many people who remained unconvinced, not least a large number of backbench Labour MPs. It would only take Saddam 45 minutes to fire his chemical or biological weapons.

Put at its simplest, as Campbell knew the tabloid headline writers would, British bases in Cyprus were '45 minutes from doom.'

Blair got a boost in the polls since the recent bombings in London. People approve of this deportation of radical clerics, but this hasn't translated into approval for the war, so this boost is likely temporary. In the meantime there is still an impeachment movement going on.

No Proof Found of Iran Arms Program

Bolton fabricates evidence of WMD against Iran!

No Proof Found of Iran Arms Program: "Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.


'The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions,' said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.........

Iran has long contended that the uranium traces were the result of contaminated equipment bought years ago from Pakistan. But the Bush administration had pointed to the material as evidence that Iran was making bomb-grade ingredients........

John R. Bolton, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, served as the administration's point man on nuclear issuesduring President Bush's first term. He suggested during congressional testimony in June 2004 that the Iranians were lying about the contamination.

"Another unmistakable indicator of Iran's intentions is the pattern of repeatedly lying to and providing false and incomplete reports to the IAEA," Bolton said. "For example, Iran first denied it had enriched any uranium. Then it said it had not enriched uranium more than 1.2 percent. Later, when evidence of uranium enriched to 36 percent was found, it attributed this to contamination from imported centrifuge parts.".......

Bolton was also central to the frabrication of evidence against Iraq! From the famous report "The Stove Pipe" by Seymour Hersh

A few months after George Bush took office, Greg Thielmann, an expert on disarmament with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR, was assigned to be the daily intelligence liaison to John Bolton, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control, who is a prominent conservative. Thielmann understood that his posting had been mandated by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who thought that every important State Department bureau should be assigned a daily intelligence officer. “Bolton was the guy with whom I had to do business,” Thielmann said. “We were going to provide him with all the information he was entitled to see. That’s what being a professional intelligence officer is all about.”

But, Thielmann told me, “Bolton seemed to be troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear.” Thielmann soon found himself shut out of Bolton’s early-morning staff meetings. “I was intercepted at the door of his office and told, ‘The Under-Secretary doesn’t need you to attend this meeting anymore.’ ” When Thielmann protested that he was there to provide intelligence input, the aide said, “The Under-Secretary wants to keep this in the family.”

Eventually, Thielmann said, Bolton demanded that he and his staff have direct electronic access to sensitive intelligence, such as foreign-agent reports and electronic intercepts. In previous Administrations, such data had been made available to under-secretaries only after it was analyzed, usually in the specially secured offices of INR. The whole point of the intelligence system in place, according to Thielmann, was “to prevent raw intelligence from getting to people who would be misled.” Bolton, however, wanted his aides to receive and assign intelligence analyses and assessments using the raw data. In essence, the under-secretary would be running his own intelligence operation, without any guidance or support. “He surrounded himself with a hand-chosen group of loyalists, and found a way to get C.I.A. information directly,” Thielmann said.

In a subsequent interview, Bolton acknowledged that he had changed the procedures for handling intelligence, in an effort to extend the scope of the classified materials available to his office. “I found that there was lots of stuff that I wasn’t getting and that the INR analysts weren’t including,” he told me. “I didn’t want it filtered. I wanted to see everything—to be fully informed. If that puts someone’s nose out of joint, sorry about that.” Bolton told me that he wanted to reach out to the intelligence community but that Thielmann had “invited himself” to his daily staff meetings. “This was my meeting with the four assistant secretaries who report to me, in preparation for the Secretary’s 8:30 a.m. staff meeting,” Bolton said. “This was within my family of bureaus. There was no place for INR or anyone else—the Human Resources Bureau or the Office of Foreign Buildings.”

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Robertson Calls for Chavez's Assassination

As the dailykos version of the story read: Radical Cleric issues fatwa to kill the President!

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Robertson Calls for Chavez's Assassination: "VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson (search) suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (search) to stop his country from becoming 'a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.'

'We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,' Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's 'The 700 Club.'

'We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator,' he continued. 'It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.'

Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush (search), accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have called the accusations ridiculous.

'You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,' Robertson said. 'It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.'"

There are several problems with this proposal.

1)One Chavez isn't a dictator. He has been elected three times already. The last time was a recall election monitored by the Carter Center, which Jimmy Cater himself declared legimate. He won by close to 60% of the vote. Unlike Ohio 2004 and Florida 2000, the devices used in this election left a paper trail.

2)The coup wasn't popular. If it was, Chavez wouldn't have won the recall that occured after the coup. Also isn't is stupid to have a coup when you can just recall someone who is unpopular? Maybe the reason they had a coup was because they knew the people weren't really on their side?

3)Chavez has only threatened to stop oil shipments if there is an attempt on his life. His successors are actually the ones that vowed to do this. By threatening Chavez, you are making this event more likely. You are also proving him absolutely right in his fear that the US is trying to kill him.

4)Isn't Robertson suppose to believe in the 10 commandments. You know, "Thou shall not kill! Though shall not steal! Though shall not lie!" Looks to me like you have broken several here Pat! You are killing Chavez, just because he wants to govern his own country and because you want to take his oil instead of having to buy it lawfully, and you are lying to justify it. You are nothing but a big time thug Pat!

Because of this argument you Pat, have actually convinced me of the necessity of putting the 10 commandments up in the classrooms of all the red states!

43 service women have died for Islamic theocracy.

Spc. Carrie L.French, 19

That's right 43 lost their lives for rule by the clerics. We will install "Iranian style Democracy".  Islam will now be the primary source of law in the Constitution as oppose to a source. The clerics will dominate family law, divorce, inheritance and child custody.  Women won't have a secular alternative.  All laws in Iraq can be nullified by the Clerics under the Constitution. The administration is twisting arms for this atrocity.

According to the Guardian

There are currently 138,000 US troops in Iraq, including 25,000 marines. President Bush has repeatedly denied that the US intends to "cut and run", leaving Iraq to the insurgents. "Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," the president said yesterday in his weekly radio address.

Conservative Shias, dominant in the Iraqi government, had clashed with Kurds and other minorities who wanted Islam to be "a" rather than "the" main source of law.

According to Kurdish and Sunni negotiators, the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, proposed that Islam be named "a primary source" and supported a wording which would give clerics authority in civil matters such as divorce, marriage and inheritance.

If approved, critics say that the proposals would erode women's rights and other freedoms enshrined under existing laws. "We understand the Americans have sided with the Shias. It's shocking. It doesn't fit with American values," an unnamed Kurdish negotiator told Reuters. "They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state."

Dozens of women gathered in central Baghdad yesterday to protest against what the organiser, Yanar Mohammad, feared would be a "fascist, nationalist and Islamist" constitution. "We are fighting to avoid becoming second class citizens," she said.

A Bush supporter had this to say on MTP.

GERECHT: I think it's important to remember that in the year 1900, for example, in the United States ... women did not have the right to vote. If Iraqis could develop a democracy that resembled America in the 1900s, I think we'd all be thrilled. I mean, women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they're there. I think they will be there. But I think we need to put this into perspective.

Excuse me, but the American constitution was changable because it was not beholden to religious law. The founders were 18 century secularists, with 18th century views on women but they were secularists, never the less. Iraqi women will have to arm themselves and overthrow the government to get change.

MyDD :: Second Bowers Blogopshere Memo to the Democratic Establishment

Being against the war plays well with the Democratic base. Remember these people actually vote in primaries.

MyDD :: Second Bowers Blogopshere Memo to the Democratic Establishment:

"However, while I don't have a blanket answer, like many others who spend their days amongst the netroots, I have known for some time exactly how a prospective Democratic nominee could move his or her numbers without running a single ad of any kind. Actually, it is rather simple: offer a real plan to get out of Iraq.

Don't believe me? Look at three candidates from the first two Dailykos community 2008 straw polls, Clinton, Feingold, and Edwards, who have been battling it out for a distant second behind Clark. You can find the June poll here and the July poll here.

June July
Clinton 36.8% 37.0%
Feingold 35.6% 35.5%
Edwards 27.6% 27.5%

(Note: Percentages reflect the percentages of votes each candidate received from the combined total of Clinton, Feingold and Edwards votes)

Clinton, Feingold and Edwards had nearly identical, and static, support among the netroots in these two polls. Now, look at the numbers in the August straw poll, one day after Feingold declared that he supported a timeline with fixed dates and a real plan for withdrawal:

August
Feingold 53.0%
Clinton 25.0%
Edwards 22.0%

(Note: numbers as of this writing)

Now that is what I call moving numbers. One single policy proposal completely altered the way the netroots saw these three candidates in relative terms. And that is in one day, with one policy. There is, quite simply, nothing else a candidate could do to move support in the netroots as quickly as this, period.

* * *"

The Blog | Cenk Uygur: The War Against Fundamentalism | The Huffington Post

It's fundamentalism stupid!

The Blog | Cenk Uygur: The War Against Fundamentalism | The Huffington Post: "have a simple answer – fundamentalism. Muslim fundamentalists believe it is their moral duty to fight a jihad against the West. They are guided by their strict, literal reading of the Koran (helped along by hateful imams who select the worst parts of the Koran).

But we are not just aligned against Muslim fundamentalists. The problem is broader than that. It is Jewish fundamentalists like the Gaza settlers and Christian fundamentalists like Tom DeLay who want to drive us further into this conflict. They also rely on their absurd interpretations of their religious texts.

The Jewish settlers who are being removed from the Gaza Strip this week believe God promised them that piece of land over two thousand years ago. Because of this belief they are not concerned by the 1.3 million Palestinians who happen to live there. People who are willing to walk all over the rights and property of other people because of their own religious beliefs are dangerous, not just to the people they oppress – but to all of us.

They drive us deeper and deeper into wars with no end. How can the Palestinians stop fighting if they are occupied by people who think they have no rights because God is not on their side? Of course, this will lead to conflicts that spiral out of control.

The problem is we are too polite and we are not willing to call people what they are – crazy. If you think Santa Claus, Barney the Purple Dinosaur or Yahweh promised you some land over two thousand years ago because you were specially selected by him as his chosen people – you are nuts!"

There is one fundamentalism this author doesn't recognize though.

I’ll go further. A culture that does not promote democracy where citizens are empowered to make their own decisions is wrong. A culture that is opposed to science and evolution is wrong.

Now, that sounds like I’m saying American culture is better than most of the other cultures in the world. That is mostly right. The neocons think the United States can dominate the world if we impose our democracy on other countries through invasion. I think we can prosper together in a world where we fight to impose our culture on others. Not through bloody invasions but through the power of our ideas.

There isn’t a country in the world that can withstand invasion by Levi’s, Nike, McDonald’s, American movies and Paris Hilton porn. The neocons think we can bomb Iran into a democracy (I honestly have never heard of a dumber and more counterproductive idea). I think we flood young Iranians with cell phones, laptops and television dishes, then sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Imposing low wage McDonalds and Wal-Mart on the rest of the world will make fundamentalism worse by making it more ignorant and poor. Paris Hilton porn is only acceptable because she is rich and really had a choice about it. Many poor women, are more or less forced into porn and prostitution by poverty, and debt slavery. Market Fundamentalism wants to view women's body parts as a commodity, and that isn't a good thing either.

Daily Kos: Feingold stands apart: Target date for withrawal will work Review of his MTP appearance

Daily Kos: Feingold stands apart: Target date for withrawal will work: "1. It's a false argument to think that a target date for withdrawal is a recipe for failure. In truth, most success in the effort so far has resulted from setting targets: the sovereignty transfer; the elections; and the constitution (which even with the delays, is still part of a timeline)

2. Not setting a target actually makes matters WORSE, since it gives Osama a continuing recruiting tool, augmenting terrorist numbers

3. The Democratic leadership - Reid, Biden, Hillary - have fallen into the same trap they did when the war resolution was first debated (Iraq wasn't one of the 45 listed nations where Al Qaeda had a presence). They are simply intimidated by the White House.

4. In any case, a target isn't a deadline; it's a middle and flexible ground for goal setting. Staying the course is simply unacceptable.
[i]
Whatever one thinks of these opinions, there is no question that Feingold offers a clear alternative to the Democratic leadership."[/i]

Exactly, why do we want a scaredy-pants dem to lead the party. Biden and Hillary are both considered contenders for the Democratic nomination.

The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan - New York Times

by Frank Rich

The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan - New York Times: "The most prominent smear victims have been Bush political opponents with heroic Vietnam r�sum�s: John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry. But the list of past targets stretches from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke to Specialist Thomas Wilson, the grunt who publicly challenged Donald Rumsfeld about inadequately armored vehicles last December. The assault on the whistle-blower Joseph Wilson - the diplomat described by the first President Bush as 'courageous' and 'a true American hero' for confronting Saddam to save American hostages in 1991 - was so toxic it may yet send its perpetrators to jail.

True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a 'crackpot' by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms. Sheehan's 'story is nothing more than forged documents - there's nothing about it that's real.'

But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11 inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an insubordinate plant of the 'liberal media,' we forget the Pentagon's abysmal failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today, eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s."

Let's hope they can't make the shit stick in the American mind, however since the public was turning against the war without Sheehan, I am not sure I wanted this effort. As the great James Wolcott points out.

No one doubts her pain, sorrow, sincerity, and commitment. But I worry that if she insists on staying in Crawford, Texas to meet the president again, Camp Casey might attracts all sorts of "undesirable elements" that could damage her cause and provoke a column from Richard Cohen of the Washington Post arguing she's in danger of losing her "credibility." And I think that we would all agree that when it comes to being the conscience of journalistic liberalism inside the Beltway, no one has a nattier beard than Richard Cohen.

Daily Kos: Feingold on Meet the Press

This should be good.

Daily Kos: Feingold on Meet the Press: "Feingold on Meet the Press
by peacenik23 [Subscribe]
Sun Aug 21st, 2005 at 01:34:43 CST

For the past while, a lot of us have been unhappy with the Dems on sunday morning talk shows. Too much Biden and Lieberman, too little Dean and Feingold. Well that all should change this morning with Senator Feingold appearing on Meet the Press.

'With the casualty count mounting in Iraq and protesters continuing to shadow President Bush, the debate over America's involvement in Iraq has dominated the news. Should the U.S. set a deadline for withdrawing American troops? Yes, says Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), who, in an exclusive interview on this Sunday's 'Meet the Press,' will discuss his decision to be the first U.S. Senator to offer a specific date -- December 31, 2006 -- as the target for the complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.'

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3898804/)"

Finegold is a Presidential hopeful and one the first Senators to offer up a time table for withdrawal.

In a telephone interview from Wisconsin, Feingold said he has heard a wave of public disenchantment at 15 town hall meetings so far during the August recess, leading him to propose a Dec. 31, 2006, deadline.

"There's a deepening feeling of dismay in the country about the way things are going in Iraq," Feingold said. He rejected Bush's assertion that a deadline would make it easier for insurgents to simply hang on. "I think he's wrong. I think not talking about endgames is playing into our enemies' hand."

The White House had no comment, except to point to Bush's past statements rejecting a withdrawal timetable, a position shared by Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "Like other members of the caucus, he's been calling for some benchmarks from the administration to measure progress," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said, "but he is opposed to setting a date certain for withdrawal, concerned that would undercut the troops."

He has true spine, because he has to know he will be attacked for it. Look at what the republicans did to the war protesters, John Kerry and now Cindy Sheehan. I want a President with a spine of steel! I don't think anyone will fall for the wishy washy dem being more electable, dlc line of bull at the next round of Presidential primaries.