Rus Thompson posted this today, and naturally I had to click through and see whether or not the Los Angeles Times had, in fact, declared that Bush didn’t lie about WMDs in Iraq back in 2002 and 2003. One would expect to see a piece written by the editorial board of the LA Times, given such a declaration.

Instead, we have an op-ed submission written by an author for the New Republic. It argues that Bush didn’t lie - he merely got bad intelligence.

Two words: Hans Blix.

The problem with the “bad intelligence” meme completely ignores reality - UNMOVIC’s efforts in late 2002 to verify every piece of alleged evidence the US said it had about WMDs. Hans Blix and his inspectors checked up on every lead the Bush Administration deigned to release to him, and UNMOVIC found nothing. Maybe the intelligence was bad, but UN inspectors verified its falsity at the time, so the attempts to legitimize our attack on Iraq under UN auspices were knowingly false.

Whether you define “knowingly false” as equal to “lie” is a semantic issue I leave up to you, dear reader.

Yesterday was Mission Accomplished day. The day 5 years ago when President Bush triumphantly landed on an aircraft carrier and declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over, and that the US had prevailed.

In recognition of that day, I invite you to read the words of disgraced and reviled neoconservative “thinker” Richard Perle:

Relax, Celebrate Victory
Richard Perle

From start to finish, President Bush has led the United States and its coalition partners to the most important military victory since World War II. And like the allied victory over the axis powers, the liberation of Iraq is more than the end of a brutal dictatorship: It is the foundation for a decent, humane government that will represent all the people of Iraq.

This was a war worth fighting. It ended quickly with few civilian casualties and with little damage to Iraq’s cities, towns or infrastructure. It ended without the Arab world rising up against us, as the war’s critics feared, without the quagmire they predicted, without the heavy losses in house-to-house fighting they warned us to expect. It was conducted with immense skill and selfless courage by men and women who will remain until Iraqis are safe, and who will return home as heroes.

In full retreat, the war’s opponents have now taken up new defensive positions: “Yes, it was a military victory, but you haven’t found Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.” Or, “Yes, we destroyed Saddam’s regime, but now other dictators will try even harder to develop weapons of mass destruction to make sure they will not fall to some future American preemptive strike.”

We will find Saddam’s well-hidden chemical and biological weapons programs, but only when people who know come forward and tell us where to look. While Saddam was in power, even a hint about his concealment and deception was a death sentence, often by unimaginable torture against whole families. Saddam had four years to hide things. We have had a few weeks to find them. Patience — and some help from free Iraqis — will be rewarded.

Are you relaxing and enjoying it? This trillion-dollar exercise in futile nation-building that it’s become? This overthrow of a kleptocratic dictator with a sectarian civil war to show for it, while myriad other kleptocratic dictators remain in power, unimpeded?

In April 2008, 52 American servicepeople died in Iraq.

Yesterday, Jon Powers commemmorated the 5th anniversary of Bush’s ridiculous, premature speech by reflecting on what he was doing then. He was getting ready to go to Iraq. He writes:

There was no plan for securing. There was no plan for reconstructing.

Lieutenant Colonel Alan King recalls, in What Was Asked of Us, that as he rolled into the Baghdad Airport “they told me I had twenty-four hours to come up with a reconstruction plan for Baghdad.” You read that correctly. A Lieutenant Colonel on his way to Iraq, was given 24 hours to “come up” with a plan.

Unfortunately, the mission was far from accomplished. The mission was never defined. How can an army accomplish a mission when no one decides what the mission really is? This is failure of leadership on the largest scale imaginable.

We mark the fifth anniversary of that publicity stunt, with the following;

April marks the highest death total for US Troops in 2008.

Over 4061 American fatalities

Hundreds of thousand Iraq casualties

Over 300,000 troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with MAJOR PTSD

Estimates put the war cost at over $3 TRILLION.

NY-26th, the district where I am running for Congress, continues to pay over $1.9 Billion alone.

As a direct result of the war, oil and gas prices have skyrocketed, pinching families and pushing our economy toward recession.

These numbers are where we stand now. You know they will continue to grow.

Our brave men and women in uniform have done everything we have asked of them over the last five years. They struggled to do their jobs in a war with no strategy for success. They continue to serve with inappropriate equipment, insufficient training for the situation, and a lack of leadership coming from Washington. They have even returned for 3 or 4 tours of duty, only to suffer through more of the same.

Unfortunately, Washington continues to fail our troops by insisting there is a military solution to this all too political problem. They are failing to address the real issues; pressing religious, economic, and social solutions that could help stabilize the region and return a sense of pride and productivity to the lives of every day Iraqis.

In short, the mission needs to finally be defined.

Our new mission is to bring our troops home safely, securely, and soon…[addressing]

The tragedy of hundreds of thousands of veterans coming home to a broken Veterans Administration

Engage the millions of moderate middle-class Iraqi refugees who have lost their homes and are at risk to becoming recruited by radical elements

Reform our approach to national security so that our military is not the only tool we use to solve political problems

Bring accountability to the war profiteers and criminals who have fleeced our taxpayers and stolen from our troops

Begin a diplomatic surge to engage the entire region of interested parties to help solve centuries old ethnic resentments and struggle

During Vietnam, returning soldiers were not always treated as heroes who had done their duty. During Iraq, it is the government - not the people, but its government - that is mistreating our returning servicemen and women.

Mission Accomplished? Not by a long shot.

Dick Cheney sums up the Bush Administration’s attitude towards the American people’s opposition to just about anything they do:

Reminds me why the Imperial Cruiser in the opening shots of Family Guy’s “Blue Harvest” sported a Bush Cheney ‘04 sticker.

Mike Hudson responded in comments to my earlier, Kunzian, jab at his weekly column.

thanks for the traffic alan! i think i got two clicks already!

…

by the way, i didn’t call obama “uppity,” hardly mentioned clinton at all, merely stated that irish, italians and jews have been voting their own for years so why shouldn’t blacks too? and, after pennsylvania, i’ll hold you to the importance you place on the popular vote, alan.

the column was not directed towards obama, who i will vote for if he makes it to the general election, or to his black supporters. it was directed against upscale white suburban twits whose support he would be better off without. you know who you are.

and as for mike, who wants to use a column item about eigth street i wrote two weeks ago to brand me some kind of racist, that’s my neighborhood, buster, and if you want a second opinion you ought to ask (the overwhelmingly black and decent) members of the block club who will tell you the same thing.

So, Mr. Hudson is a kind of free-tabloid, latter-day version of Tom Wolfe, providing biting commentary on white elites pandering to radical revolutionaries. Only with crappier suits.

Let’s begin with the article itself, which claims that Obama has built a unique coalition of:

poor, inner-city blacks and well-to-do white suburban liberals who fled the cities in order to get away from the poor inner-city blacks.

Taken within the context of the entire rest of the piece, Hudson is basically saying that black people are, by definition, poor inner-city denizens. The premise, evidently, is that there are no poor rural black people supporting Obama in places like Mississippi or Georgia. Nor must there by any middle or upper-middle class black people supporting - well, anyone.

After a brief lesson on the all-too-familiar concept of identity politics, Hudson goes after his pet peeve, limousine liberals.

The term “limousine liberal” is always a handy epithet to hurl when one supposes he has the moral high ground. If class struggle is your thing, then go for it. But the revolution is not coming, and if it does, it will be televised.

On Fox News.

Interestingly, and bringing it back to the presidential race, the term “limousine liberal” is now most often used by the right as an epithet against the left. Now, Mike, I thought you were a good anarcho-socialist who lives amongst decent black people, and I therefore figured that your anachronistic epithets towards me would be more current. I mean, they used that one against Lindsay in the 60s. It’s 2008. “Limousine liberal” is now thrown around by the likes of Limbaugh and Krauthammer. And Ostrowski, evidently.

On top of that, I’ve only ridden in a limousine I think 3 times in my entire life.

Although Hudson says the piece was more about ridiculing Obama’s white supporters (which is sort of sickening in itself), he does indeed decry the fact that Obama has mucked it up for Hillary:

Over the past six months, these vermin have combined to turn what was a certain Democratic victory in November into a question mark. The party itself is so badly fractured that the likelihood of everyone forgetting about what was said and done in time to unite against John McCain seems remote.

That’s the Obama coalition and, except for the black people, I don’t think I want any part of it. It’s about enough to make me support McCain myself, as a matter of fact.

There are loads of examples of very heated primary campaigns resulting in the ultimate uniting of the party behind the ultimate nominee, and there’s no question that will happen this year. In fact, Obama and Clinton are in headlines daily, getting their messages out there, while McCain is an afterthought deep in the national section of the paper. And to think all those disingenuous white people have the nerve to support Obama. Hypocrites! [/sarcasm].

Hudson’s allusion to a 40+ year-old short story where the protagonist is alleged to be prejudiced towards black people, instead of against is something I’m not comprehending.

I have my reasons for supporting Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, and the word “black” or “African-American” or whatever the fuck people would like to pin as my motive for said support is not even remotely on the list.

Perhaps I am rather shallow, easily swayed by a good speech and gullible in matters politic. Perhaps I am foolish to believe that a candidate might be able to transcend decades’ worth of idiotic political, racial, and gender cleaves to bring the country together after 8+ years of division so that we work together for a common good.

Perhaps I am naive not to support the wife of the former president, a woman who is despised by half, and adored by the other half. Perhaps she is whom I should support, lest I have too-cool-for-the-room tabloid publishers accuse me of being a reverse-racist hipster tool.

Luckily for everyone, I suppose, I trust Hudson’s judgment as little as he trusts mine. I value his opinion as little as he values mine. Because, as the old adage goes, opinions are, indeed, like assholes.

The moment someone touts his competence to bear witness to the plight of black people because he lives near black people, and that black people “love him”, it’s game over. Unless, of course, that person is, himself, black. Mike, last I checked, you’re as white as I am.

But back to the issue at hand. This blog began as a paean to a Presidential candidate from 2004. It has morphed into the garbage it is today because I like to write things about things that I find interesting. However, I have been finding political candidates who inspire me, or anger me, and I then write down what I think about all that. It’s what I’ve done time and time again for the past 4+ years.

Hudson continues:

[Obama’s] supporters have pointed to his opposition to the war in Iraq back when it started in 2003 as evidence of his great wisdom. I opposed it too, wrote a bunch of columns about it and everything, but I wouldn’t vote for me for president. Opposing a war, or anything bad, when you’re not in a position to do anything about it really doesn’t amount to much.

Hillary Clinton was in a position to do something about it. FAIL.

Anyway, last Tuesday, after weeks of indignantly demanding that Hillary Clinton do the right thing and drop out of the race, the Obama cultists were shocked and stunned when she beat their man like a rug in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas.

For someone who is such a stickler for facts and accuracy, you may want to revisit the Texas results. They’re still being tallied, and by today’s math, Obama has 98 Texas delegates, and Clinton has 95. My math tells me Obama’s winning Texas. But I’m a rich white kid, so what the hell do I know?

In six weeks she will do the same thing to him in Pennsylvania, and thus will have beaten him in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Nevada and most of the other key Democratic and swing states, while he will have won caucuses for the most part in states like Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and North Dakota, where his “O-Mentum” isn’t likely to prevail against John McCain or any Republican in November.

Perhaps not, but what evidence is there to conclude that Ohio or New York or California would not vote for Obama if he is the nominee come November? None whatsoever. Hudson’s talking out his ass.

I realize Hudson is the coolest, if not the smartest, hep cat in the room at any given time, but this blog doesn’t pretend or boast to be anything except for my opinions about things. I realize full well that I’m the dumbest limousine liberal white boy on the planet. Hudson is free to ascribe to me whatever motives he’d like.

So, to Hudson’s point, if you think I’m supporting Obama because he’s black, and because I’m overwhelmed with white guilt about the black plight because I live in a nice neighborhood that is diverse only in terms of the European and Asian countries represented therein, you are welcome to it.

But you would be wrong. And then maybe give Geraldine Ferraro a call. She holds some similarly anachronistic opinions you might find more palatable. She also agrees with you, being one of Clinton’s top surrogates and higher-profile supporters.

I received an email today from the Independent’s Open House blog, asking me to write about whom I’m supporting for President in today’s primary and why. Here’s what I wrote:

The first time I visited the UK was in 2005, in the midst of a parliamentary election. I envied the fact that the entire race would be resolved in a matter of weeks, rather than months - or years. As our current months-long election season dragged on, I was unsure of whom I would be supporting. The slate of Democratic candidates was quite varied, and for a long time Iraq seemed like it would be the primary issue on people’s minds. I was originally leaning towards New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, whose foreign policy resume is most extensive.

In January, the race started in earnest and it quickly became evident that Richardson was running for Secretary of State or Vice President. The field narrowed to Barack Obama, and my state’s Senator, Hillary Clinton.

What struck me about Obama was his earnest call for change; not just change as typical political pablum, but real, stark change. He is the first political figure in a generation who can truly say that his appeal transcends identity politics, and promises real unity across racial, ethnic, religious, and party lines. Read the rest of this entry »

At the regular monthly meeting of the Clarence Democratic Committee last night, the members heard from the two candidates for the 26th Congressional District seat now held by Tom Reynolds (R-Clarence).

Alice Kryzan spoke first, touting her legal experience - particularly having represented the town in past litigation - and took questions ranging from desired committeeships to No Child Left Behind.

Jon Powers spoke next, and the young Iraq War vet from Clarence underscored his campaign theme of leading by example. He reminded everyone of his campaign kick-off picnic at the Clarence Town Park last June when about 250 - Democrats and Republicans alike - came out to wish him well. That sort of bipartisan support was telling, and since then he’s been traveling all throughout the district, talking to suburbanites and farmers, students and businesspeople, young and old, about his vision, why he’s running, but more importantly listening to them and their concerns.

After hearing the candidates, and a lively discussion about their various merits, the committee voted unanimously to endorse Jon Powers for Congress. They join Wesley Clark, Bob Kerrey, and the Democratic Committees of Livingston, Genessee, and Orleans Counties.

The problems affecting Western New York are, frankly, not particularly unique to our region. They’re far more widespread, and his voice won’t be alone in the wilderness when he gets to Congress.

The elephant in the room nowadays is two-time loser Jack Davis. In a recent Buffalo News article, he was quoted thusly:

…he feels compelled to continue to highlight the issue and will again commit at least $2 million of his own funds to the effort should he decide to run….

…Davis said he is aware of his two possible opponents in a Democratic primary but said he has no doubt that his considerable wealth would enable him to defeat both.

“If he wants to run a primary against me, it’s a free country,” he said of Powers. “But I don’t think I will have any trouble beating him.”

Davis built his fortune over a long career as an engineer and owns I Squared R Element Co. in Akron. He spent $2.25 million of his own funds against Reynolds in 2006, only to lose by 52 percent to 48 percent. He lost by 12 percentage points in 2004 against Reynolds, a major figure in the state and national GOP, after spending about $1.2 million of his own money.

In 2006, Davis was handed a gift called “Mark Foley”. Reynolds’ sloppy handling of his role in that fiasco is what brought Davis within striking range of winning. All his money couldn’t make up for the fact that he refused to do any actual campaigning. Shaking people’s hands and looking them in the eye - that helps people win. He ignored much of Monroe County, including the Town of Greece - Rochester’s answer to Williamsville and Amherst. Reynolds was then bolstered by FEMA’s response to the October Storm, and we know the rest of that story.

Davis has run twice and lost twice. On the surface, that shouldn’t be an impediment to someone making a third try. The difference this time is that we have two qualified candidates who are already in the race. I believe that Jon Powers is the better candidate, and has a better shot at defeating Tom Reynolds in November. But for Davis to waltz around with his singular issue of trade, and expect his millions to do for him now what they’ve twice already failed to do, is simply arrogant. Not only doesn’t he meet & greet voters, he’s not even a good enough debater. He does not deserve anyone’s endorsement, and should. not. run.

He should instead devote his money and effort into supporting the candidate who is running a broader campaign of issues and vision, who goes out and listens to people rather than dictating to them.

This is a winnable race.

But not with Jack Davis.

Jon Powers has earned the respect and admiration of voters throughout the district. He’s been campaigning hard, and readily admits that it’s a learning process for him. He’s got the integrity and the smarts to go to Washington and not fall into the trap of big money and shady influence.

He’s the kind of guy who remembers that, no longer whether you’re “red” or “blue” on the political spectrum, both of those colors coexist quite happily on our flag.

Keith Olbermann is the only one of cable news’ talking heads I can stomach for more than a few minutes. Geek posted a recent “Special Comment” pertaining to Bush’s chest-thumping flip-floppery on Iran. Olbermann closes these occasional pieces with “Good Night & Good Luck”. In doing what he’s been doing, he’s the only one of the cable news set who can say Murrow’s iconic words with a straight face.