And now… News from the Escalation It seems that the Pentagon has overruled the Army on its longstanding policy of not recalling National Guard units that had served in Iraq until they were stateside at least five years… Sorry, guys and gals of the National Guard and Reserves… We know you might prefer to stay here with your families, your homes and your regular jobs… but you’all know that the President’s ego and refusal to admit that he has created a hash (and his, or his Saudi clients’ insistence on squeezing out the last possible ounce of your blood in...

There’s not much to add to the post title when talking about the President’s speech this evening. Good blood and treasure after bad, and trusting that nice PM Maliki after his professional handling of the Saddam execution (and cover-up). This is simply a game to run out the clock. Any possible legitimacy in his pitch (and indeed, any reason not to introduce articles of impeachment) was undermined by his insistence on mentioning September 11th, and fairly early. The “mission” is about Bush himself, whether that means trying to diss Daddy and Daddy’s emissary Jim Baker for trying adult supervision, or...

We’ll let the Dead Kennedy tune referred to in the post heading be our segue to Kennedy in-law and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement that California will, on its own, reduce greenhouse gases emitted from vehicles in the state, by law. While the United States as a whole, the world’s largest economy and by far largest emitter of greenhouse gases leading to catastrophic climate change (the three c’s, or some variation, will have to become the term of art, as “global warming” has an unfortunate positive connotation that does not befit drought, ecosystem collapse, devastating summer heat, crop failure, increased...

Some time ago, I received an e-mail (or was it so long ago that it was a fax?) suggesting that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Such, of course, is precisely what one gleans from the saga of the President’s “big new speech” slated for tomorrow where we will hear his “new and improved Iraq policy“. While specifics are undermined by deliberate disinformation from some of the Republican senators that emerged from the White House (“we’re not talking about a surge of just 20,000 troops”)… that’s more or...

Republican Congresswoman Heather Wilson of New Mexico, a member of the House Intellligence Committee, told a gathering at the National Press Club that she has been advised by military officials that the United States is running what she calls a “catch and release” program for suspected terrorists in Iraq. (It’s kind of the flip-side of what happens when you have a policy of capturing and torturing interrogating completely innocent people: even forgetting the illegality, immorality of it and adverse public relations generated by it, you still manage to waste an awful lot of time and energy that could otherwise have...

That would, in this case, include sending solicitations begging their return to action to over 5,000 Army officers who have already served in Iraq, over 200 of whom were wounded and 75 of whom were killed in action. The Army has duly apologized for its… insensitivity (apparently, an “outdated list” was inadvertently used to send the solicitations). As long as the President continues to insist on using the military as a human meat grinder to achieve the economic goals of the country club set and the Saudi royal family and in so doing to duly pack the military’s leadership with...

That, of course, would be the first time in the nation’s history that a woman has risen to the position of Speaker of the House of Representatives, in this case, Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, who assumes that role as her party finally opened this, the 110th Congress, in the majority. The new Democratic led Senate includes 16 women (and if I’m not mistaken, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada is the first Mormon to serve as Senate Majority Leader). In another first, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison was sworn in as the first Moslem member of Congress, and in...

Digby treats us to the latest sickening details of the sickening saga of American citizen, the Brooklyn born Jose Padilla (who, according to an NPR account I heard this morning, told a Miami court he wishes his name pronounced more in accordance with the usual Spanish pronunciation (rhymes with “tortilla”) as opposed to how his attorney Andrew Patel told me (rhymes with “Godzilla”) in his interview with me here. Needless to say, after asserting the right (a right it still insist it has, and indeed, under which it still holds legal resident Saleh Al-Marri) to just ignore the Constitution on...

In this case, the WaPo gives us this account of FBI reports on detainee abuse at Gitmo, including abuse of the Koran, wrapping detainees in the Israeli flag, the cold rooms, the short-shacklings to the floor… in one case, wrapping a detainee’s head in duct tape after he kept reciting the Koran…in another, a mock Baptism of the Moslem detainee by a mock Catholic priest… All in all… the usual. Nothing you all don’t know already, if you believe some of our interview subjects… you know… the people who were there. Of course… why would you do that?

And so, here we go again… another year shot to hell! For the remaining detainees at Gitmo (the vast majority of whom did nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time), another year of Kangaroo Kourt extensions of their indefinite sentences without any due process, as set forth in this lengthy Grey Lady story. For other pawns of the Bushmen’s machinations, like the families of the nearly 3,000 3,000 American service personnel who have been killed in the Iraq campaign, or the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis… and God knows who else… it won’t even have...