The rule of law trumps Cheney's yapping

The Obama administration opens the manacles of the US criminal justice system and accomplishes something the Bush administration couldn't do by wiping its feet on the US constitution.

"Without a doubt, this case is a grim reminder of the seriousness of the threat we as a nation still face," Attorney-General Eric Holder said in a statement.

"But it also reflects what we can achieve when we have faith in our criminal justice system and are unwavering in our commitment to the values upon which the nation was founded, and the rule of law."

Ali al-Marri, who was the last remaining "enemy combatant" held on US soil, faces a maximum of 15 years in jail after admitting he conspired to provide material support to al-Qa'ida. He will be sentenced on July 30. It was not clear how much credit he would be given for time already served.

"He asked for his day in court, and he got his day in court with all the constitutional protections," Marri's lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, said. "It's all he wanted."

And then listen to Rachel Maddow as she underlines the most significant point of Ali al-Marri's criminal prosecution. (Once the obnoxious little ad is over slide forward to minute 7)

As Michael Isikoff points out, the guilty plea of Ali al-Marri opens the doors for other prosecutions, not through the Bush/Cheney manufactured military commissions, but within the criminal justice system; Not with dubious confessions obtained through torture, but from the testimony of eyewitnesses.

While the volume keeps getting cranked up in some quarters demanding that Obama prosecute members of the Bush administration for knowingly and intentionally engaging in illegal acts, (not to mention immoral at a hundred different levels), everyone needs to be aware that it's probably far too early to go wading in that pool.

Obama is no idiot. As the memos continue to be released and the facts continue to accumulate, Obama will continue to hold off until such a time as the evidence is overwhelming, any defence would be ineffective, and screeching remnants of the Bush cargo culture (Limbaugh, Malkin, et al) have so completely impeached themselves that the demand for prosecution of Bush administration principals will suit both the popular need for cleansing and occur in a favourable political climate.

There will be prosecutions. Just, not now. They will happen when the current cheerleaders of those who perpetrated crimes have no audience, and instead of energetically defending their Bush/Cheney heros they are forced to hang their heads and mutter in their own defence, "We didn't know."

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

NYTimes :

"A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay."

.

Guardian :

"The officials named in the case include the most senior legal minds in the Bush administration. They are: Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defence; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon's general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers.

.

If Garzón ... issued arrest warrants against the six, it would mean they would risk detention and extradition if they travelled outside the US. It would also present President Barack Obama with a serious dilemma. He would have either to open proceedings against the accused or tackle an extradition request from Spain.

.

The 1984 UN Convention against Torture, signed and ratified by the US, requires states to investigate allegations of torture committed on their territory or by their nationals, or extradite them to stand trial elsewhere."

.

This may have a better chance than going directly after Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld.

It's a start.

Bungling Border Bullies . . . .

Crossing the land border between Canada and the US is typically not a pleasant experience. The long lines are a fairly regular thing. Fortunately, we have never had the following experience.

Per CBC News this morning:

Canadian accused at U.S. border of 'stealing American jobs'
Sales representative from B.C. denied entry to U.S. to meet with suppliers

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - Kathy Tomlinson CBC News

A B.C. sales representative who markets equestrian products in Canada was barred from crossing the U.S. border to attend a trade show last month by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer who accused him of trying to steal American jobs.

"He looked at me, and in a yelling voice he said, 'You're friggin' stealing jobs away from American citizens,' and I tried telling him that I wasn't," Joel Borsteinas told CBC News.

Borsteinas, a Canadian citizen, said he's been in business for 15 years, acting as a middleman between U.S. and Canadian suppliers of western wear and equestrian products and Canadian retailers who want to stock the products.

_______________


Borsteinas said the border officer who refused to allow him entry to the U.S. was the supervisor on duty at the time, at the Sumas crossing in southwestern B.C.

"I said, 'Well I don't actually bring the products in. I just write the orders. It's all in Canada,'" said Borsteinas.

"He says, 'Oh you are a consultant then.' I says, 'No — I'm just a salesman. I sell to Canadian stores.' And he says 'Nope, you are a consultant,'" said Borsteinas. "Once again, he says 'You are stealing jobs away from us.'"

Borsteinas said he was then fingerprinted and sent back into Canada. The border officer warned him if he tried to enter the U.S. on business again, he should expect to be prosecuted.

_______________

"The wagons get circled pretty quick when there's a downturn like this," said Craig Williams, vice-president of the B.C. division of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME), Canada's largest trade and industry association.

Williams said CME members tend to encounter more difficulties at the U.S. border when there is an economic slowdown. He said the current discussion in Washington about "Buy America" provisions doesn't help.

"I think it is part of an undercurrent of 'Buy America' that is happening in the United States right now," said Williams.

"Unfortunately, it seems to be some of the sentiment that's coming out of the average guy on the street down there — as their family members are losing jobs or they are having cutbacks or they read the newspaper every night. It's very discouraging — and I think it sets a tone of fear."

"I just hope its not a precursor for more," he added.

One more bit of the bush economic "legacy": Border tension between the largest trading partners in North America.

Good job, george* . . . .


* Yeah, we still blame him for everything. He's so deserving . . . .

Year End Cleanup . . . .

Some end of the year cleanup is in order, and how fitting it is to feature the bush administration.

From Bob Herbert of the New York Times we get:

Add Up the Damage
By BOB HERBERT - December 30, 2008

Does anyone know where George W. Bush is?

You don’t hear much from him anymore. The last image most of us remember is of the president ducking a pair of size 10s that were hurled at him in Baghdad.

We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is thrashing the Palestinians in Gaza. And the U.S. economy is about as vibrant as the 0-16 Detroit Lions.

But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd.

When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.

This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.

_______________


The catalog of his transgressions against the nation’s interests — sins of commission and omission — would keep Mr. Bush in a confessional for the rest of his life. Don’t hold your breath. He’s hardly the contrite sort.

He told ABC’s Charlie Gibson: “I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it.”

The president chuckled, thinking — as he did when he made his jokes about the missing weapons of mass destruction — that there was something funny going on.

Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel prize in economics, also of the New York Times now weighs in:

Looking for a word
December 31, 2008

Unusually, I’m having a vocabulary problem. There has to be some word for the kind of person who considers his mild discomfort the equivalent of torture, crippling injury, or death for other people. But I can’t think of it.

What brings this to mind is this from Alberto Gonzales:

"I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

This reminded me of Laura Bush’s remark on carnage in Iraq:

"And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this."

Remember this. And remember, too, that for long years these people were considered heroic patriots, defenders of the nation.

And now it is time for them to go away . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

"Goodbye George" from McClatchy . . . .

McClatchy's Washington Bureau bids an early farewell to george bush today.

Commentary: Bush makes a farewell tour. Good riddance

Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

December 18, 2008

We've been treated to a real spectacle this week as President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney limped into the home stretch of their Magical History Tour, employing distortions, half-truths and untruths in a final, desperate attempt to pervert or somehow prevent history from judging them accurately.

_______________

The great gray eminence himself, Dick Cheney, of no known address, went on national television pleading guilty to committing a war crime. Yes, Cheney said, he participated in the White House discussions on the use of torture in the interrogations of suspected terrorists. Yes, he said proudly, he approved the use of such outlawed practices as water-boarding, the simulated drowning of bound and helpless prisoners to make them talk. So what?

Photo credit: Kevin Seirs of the Charlotte Observer

_______________

Over in the White House, the president was busy signing a flood of executive orders opening the gates to oil drilling on massive chunks of previously protected public lands in the West; protecting big corporations from lawsuits in state courts when their products harm or kill innocent Americans, and generally giving his fat cat friends one last shot at looting a national Treasury of any remaining table scraps.

The president and his spinmeisters keep talking about how, with the passage of time, historians will come to judge his presidency a huge success, much as history has come to judge the administration of Harry S. Truman.

Balderdash. Or as I much prefer to say in situations like this: Bullshit!

_______________


Bush told his War College audience that of all the things he loved about the job, he was proudest of all of his role as their commander-in-chief.

Why then did he and his minions oppose virtually every attempt to reinforce their numbers and shorten the time they spent in Hell? Why did they oppose virtually every attempt to increase their pay and their benefits, and those of millions of American veterans of these and other wars?

How could so proud a commander sit idly by while soldiers and Marines were sent off to war without the armored vehicles and body armor they so desperately needed in this new kind of war?

How could his administration pinch pennies when it came to funding and manning the military hospitals that treat the thousands of wounded troops flowing home from his wars?

How can this man talk about making the world a safer and freer place by his actions when so much innocent blood has been shed by civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan? When millions have been turned into homeless refugees inside and outside Iraq? When America is left with far fewer friends and allies among the nations of the world?

The only good news left to us this gloomy, cold December is that we only have to put up with this wretched spectacle for another 30 days or so.

George W. Bush should make a hurry-up call to his architect and see if it's not too late to substitute firing slits for the ground floor windows in his new Presidential Library in Dallas.

Good-bye George, and good riddance.

Well done, Mr. Galloway.

Well done . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

The Truth Shall Set You Free . . . .

Looks like there's a bit of financial friction between Germany and the US.

Just in from Reuters:

Era of U.S. financial dominance at an end: Germany
Thu Sep 25, 2008 12:16pm EDT
By Noah Barkin and Kerstin Gehmlich

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany blamed the United States on Thursday for spawning the global financial crisis with a blind drive for higher profits and said it must now accept more market regulation and a loss of its financial superpower status.

In some of the harshest criticism of the United States since the crisis threw Wall Street banks into financial disarray this month, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said the turmoil would leave "deep marks" on both sides of the Atlantic, but called it primarily an American problem.

"The world will never be as it was before the crisis," Steinbrueck told the Bundestag lower house of parliament. "The United States will lose its superpower status in the world financial system. The world financial system will become more multi-polar," he said.

_______________


Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, a partnership of her conservatives and Steinbrueck's Social Democrats (SPD), pushed the G8 to agree measures to boost financial market transparency during Germany's presidency of the club last year.

But their drive collapsed amid opposition from Washington and London. Merkel's party and the SPD are keen to claim credit for Germany's G8 push ahead of a federal election next year.

U.S. ON DEFENSIVE

German criticisms of Washington were echoed by leaders of governments from around the world meeting this week at the United Nations in New York. Many criticized the financial record of President George W. Bush's administration and warned that U.S. financial mistakes now threatened the global economy.

The crisis has put the Bush White House, which has long advocated a hands-off approach to markets, on the defensive and forced it to rethink its financial policy.

At the same time it has emboldened voices in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, who are uncomfortable with American-style capitalism and who want tighter regulation of markets.

It appears the groping/massage georgie gave Angela didn't work out quite as he had planned . . . .







(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

This has the smell of the man Bush didn't capture

From the New York Times:

Heavily armed militants opened fire on the United States Embassy in Sana, Yemen, on Wednesday and detonated a car bomb at its gates, in an attack that left at least 16 people dead including six of the attackers, Yemeni officials said.

Not just a moron. A deadly moron. And what Tristero said.

It's Constitution Day in the US

And George W Bush has issued a proclamation:

Americans are united by the ideals of equal justice, limited government, and the rule of law. On Constitution Day and Citizenship Day and during Constitution Week, we remember the vision and determination of the Framers to build a free society, and we celebrate the historical document they created to achieve that goal.

Vision. Right. Except they never saw Bush coming, did they?

The Constitution forged the American creed of liberty and equality and has lifted the lives of countless individuals. Whether they are citizens by birth or by oath, Americans share a great tradition of enjoying liberty protected by a constitutional government of their choosing.

Unless the US Supreme Court chooses it for you.

I encourage Federal, State, and local officials, as well as leaders of civic, social, and educational organizations, to conduct ceremonies and programs that celebrate our Constitution and reaffirm our rights and responsibilities as citizens of this great Nation.

And please, just ignore the illegal wiretaps on your phones, the interception of your email, the No-Fly lists, the firemen taking notes about a book they saw on your coffee table while supposedly checking your smoke detectors and the suspension of Habeus Corpus in cases where it becomes inconvenient.

Today, (and for the rest of the week), Bush wants you to decorate the town, maybe even have a parade. Just ignore this.

The problem on Wall Street won't only affect small businesses and investors. It will also effect state, county and city governments. Its not uncommon for them to borrow money as well.

Maybe have a bake sale or something.

Welcome to the America George Bush made for you. Where the Constitution was an inconvenience to be ignored, major corporations are sucking of your tax-teat and you're retirement funds are sitting in the offshore bank accounts of former CEOs who, after their failing companies boards led them to the door, received massive "severance" packages.

Perhaps you could go window shopping.

The legacy of Dubya

This probably never crossed your dessert plate, but here it is anyway. A few of you will remember George W Bush deciding that Southern Methodist University would be the site of his Presidential Library. (It would presumably include works other than The Pet Goat.)

The George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation today announced that SMU in Dallas has been chosen as the site of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, consisting of a library, museum and institute.

President Bush said in a letter to SMU President R. Gerald Turner: “I look forward to the day when both the general public and scholars come and explore the important and challenging issues our nation has faced during my presidency—from economic and homeland security to fighting terrorism and promoting freedom and democracy.”

Meeting Feb. 22 in Dallas, the SMU Board of Trustees unanimously approved an agreement with the Foundation to locate the Center at SMU.

“It’s a great honor for SMU to be chosen as the site of this tremendous resource for historical research, dialogue and public programs,” said SMU President Turner. “At SMU, these resources will benefit from proximity to our strong academic programs, a tradition of open dialogue, experience hosting world leaders and a central location in a global American city. We thank President Bush for entrusting this important long-term resource to our community, and for the opportunity for SMU to serve the nation in this special way.”

That's so... touching, in a Bush kind of way.

However, Bush just doesn't have the traction and he may end up situating his "library" in Uncle Fred's ice cream truck if he doesn't watch it. Apparently, SMU has another body that is none too happy with Dubya and his performance over the last eight years.

At the United Methodist General Conference Meeting in Fort Worth, TX, an overwhelming majority of the membership (844-20) rejected the idea of siting the Bush Library on the grounds of a Methodist university (SMU).

In other words, just to be clear about this: the President of the United States was just told in no uncertain terms by the legal body of his own supposed church that he can’t put his library where he wants to put it.

Oopsie!

This rolls the project back further than Square One. The Bushies, by trying to use their political clout in Texas to sidestep the national UMC membership in effect and if for no other reason, pissed them off. The General Conference has the power to reject the project, and they just have.

Jeez, George. Ain't democracy and payback a real bitch?

Yes, YeSS, YeSSS, oh, YESSS!!!

Which would be taken from the script of any number of productions from companies like this.

When George Bush agreed to the Economic Stimulus Plan cheques went out across America in amounts up to $600 per single person and up to $1200 per couple accompanied by the Bush statement, "This plan will boost our economy and encourage job creation." And one might think that Americans would use that money to, oh, say, make a mortgage payment, make an extra payment on the Hummer or maybe even buy a new Chinese-made refrigerator from Wal-Mart.

And as for job creation, I guess that would depend on where people were spending their money. With sudden consumer demand for a product, a corresponding increase in labour should follow. So the kinds of jobs being created would depend on your particular skill set. And sure enough, the Economic Stimulus Package is having an effect.

An independent market-research firm, AIMRCo (Adult Internet Market Research
Company), has discovered that many websites focused on adult or erotic
material have experienced an upswing in sales in the recent weeks since checks
have appeared in millions of Americans' mailboxes across the country.


According to Kirk Mishkin, Head Research Consultant for AIMRCo, "Many of
the sites we surveyed have reported 20-30% growth in membership rates since
mid-May when the checks were first sent out, and typically the summer is a
slow period for this market."

I wonder if this company's latest campaign was in any way related to the sudden surge in porn sales? Experience the .... no. You go read it.

This deserves a delicious graphic and sure enough, here it is.

The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency

Brad Reed, of Sadly, No! has produced a short version of the last 7+ years focusing on the 10 most awesomely bad moments which floated to the surface of the Bush presidency.

Essentially, I tried to rate each Bush disaster by two main criteria: its body count and its damage to the country's reputation. So while Bush's awkward groping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be personally humiliating to everyone, it doesn't have the same heft as, say, the Iraq War.

But for those of you who insist on seeing your least favorite moment get its due, here is list of every honorable mention I could come up with: warrantless wiretapping; Valerie Plame; Scooter Libby's sentence commuted; Bush believes Rafael Palmeiro is innocent; soldiers face neglect at Walter Reed; signing statements; the Kyoto treaty ripped up; loyalty oaths; the fake turkey; a staged teleconference with troops, staged FEMA press conference, extraordinary rendition, support for junk science; endorsement of neo-creationist "intelligent design"; inaction against global warming; record oil prices; record budget deficits; record trade deficits; record number of Americans without health insurance; two recessions; no-bid contracts; bin Laden still at large; the Federal Marriage Amendment; stem cell research vetoed; waterboarding ban vetoed; "Last throes"; "Old Europe"; "It's hard work"; "Bring it on"; "Yo, Blair!"; "I'm the decider"; "I'm the commander guy"; "I'm a war president"; "This is the guy who tried to kill my dad"; "So?"; "Let the Eagle Soar"; John Bolton; Kenny Boy; Harriet Miers; John Roberts; Sam Alito; Blair talks Bush out of bombing al-Jazeera; Cheney shoots some guy in the face; the Military Commissions Act; Jose Padilla arrested and held without charge or access to counsel; endless tax cuts for the rich; let's waste a shitload of money by sending people to Mars and let's hire some Heritage Foundation staffers to rebuild Iraq.

Those are the ones that didn't make the list.

Go read. It's well worth it.

Good Grief . . . .

Per Reuters this morning:

Bush contemplates writing his memoir
Sun Jun 15, 2008


LONDON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, scrutinized in books by former colleagues including a blistering critique by his ex-spokesman, is considering writing a memoir of his own.

Bush has been silent on former spokesman Scott McClellan's book, which said the White House shaded the truth and conducted a propaganda campaign to make its case to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Asked if he planned to pen his own book after leaving office in January, Bush said it was a possibility.

"I'm going to think about that, yes -- writing a book," Bush said in an interview with Britain's Observer newspaper published on Sunday.

Can't you just hear the jokes spinning around in people's minds already?

The late night comedians are going to have a field day with this one . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

U.S. plans for Iraq

Fortress America in Baghdad : a 21 building embassy on 104 acres with a $1M projected annual budget just for upkeep of the shrubbery.

From today's Independent :
Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control
Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors

"Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

"The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down. The influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to demonstrate every Friday against the impending agreement on the grounds that it compromises Iraqi independence.
The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through."

Immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors?
Over half the Iraqi parliament have signed a letter sent to the US Congress :

"The majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq."

Well we've been hearing for weeks about this deal to finally give the US a legal basis for being in Iraq but today the US ambassador to Iraq attempted to quell fears about the permanence of a US military presence in Iraq, denying the bases would be permanent :

"It is not going to be forever," he told reporters at the State Department.

Apparently there is some kind of sliding scale of permanence with 'forever' at one end and 'continuing' at the other.

That law degree is... quaint.

Via Liliana Segura and LuLu, it seems Alberto Gonzales, the former US Attorney General who never met a law he couldn't just ignore, is still unemployed after having slithered out of the Bush bunker a half a year ago.

Maybe this is a sign of things to come. Even John Ashcroft, that great defender of liberty...

Following his tenure as attorney general in post-9/11 America -- a time that brought us the Patriot Act and saw career lawyers at the DoJ replaced by cronies and conservative Christians -- he founded his own consulting firm, and was swiftly hired as "distinguished professor of law and government" by Regent University, the pretend- (but politically influential) law school founded by Pat Robertson.

What do you think of Bush's legacy now, Gonzo?

Give us another smirk and (one more time!), I can't recall.

Since, apparently, that Harvard law degree is just a piece of paper, you might have to consider a new career path. Start practicing: Would you like fries with that?

The Awakening

About seven years too late. Via Opinions you should have this New York Times/CBS poll:

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll. In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed that “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2003. [...] A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say that the United States is headed in the wrong direction.

Yeah. What was that thing Bush said in November 2004? Oh yeah. This:

And it's one of the wonderful -- it's like earning capital. You asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That's what happened in the -- after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I've earned capital in this election -- and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on, which is -- you've heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.

He reacted like someone who has just been handed a checkbook and doesn't bother looking to see if there's any money in the bank. As long as there are checks in the book, the bank balance is irrelevant.

And then there's this.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.

Of course it would be impossible to impeach someone that unpopular. That would be like kicking a moron when he's down.

Academy Award Performance . . . .

H/T to Bob the Other:





No commentary needed from me . . . .

Just another brick in the wall...

As George Bush waxes eloquent about how romantic it must be to be a combatant in the quagmire formerly known as Iraq the US military crossed another grim threshold on Sunday.

A roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Sunday, the military said, pushing the overall American death toll in the five-year war to at least 4,000. The grim milestone came on a day when at least 61 people were killed across the country.

Rockets and mortars pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone, underscoring the fragile security situation and the resilience of both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups despite an overall lull in violence.

The attacks on the Green Zone probably stemmed from rising tensions between rival Shiite groups and were the most sustained assault in months against the nerve center of the U.S. mission.

The romanticism of Bush's legacy is killing them.

Carpetbaggers, thieves and scam artists...

And Henry Paulson, US Treasury secretary and died-in-the-wool Republican has finally recognized them for what they are.

Paulson spared no one in his criticism Thursday of the excesses of deregulation that has now created the worst global financial crisis in a generation, threatening the health of the U.S. economy, the savings of millions of Americans, and the survival of some of the biggest financial institutions in the world.

Wall Street and Washington both failed big time, he said. Wall Street invented new ways to make money by selling securities so complicated that no one could really follow which shell the pea was under. Fortunes were made on the paper Wall Street sold.

At the same time, Washington's watchdogs were dozing, tranquilized by the false assurance that Wall Street would police its own.

It's been obvious for years now that Wall Street could not be trusted, and finally official Washington agrees. The markets need a tougher cop to make sure that money-center banks, investment banks, credit-rating agencies, hedge funds, mortgage brokers and the rest don't let their own greed and arrogance ruin it for the rest of us.

"Regulation needs to catch up with innovation," Paulson said, and he was backed up by the rest of President Bush's working group on financial markets, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Securities and Exchange Commissioner Chris Cox. Not a commie among them.

The housing bubble wasn't a flaw; it was a predictable outcome of a system that rewarded smart people small fortunes for conjuring up ways to persuade people to borrow more than they could ever hope to pay back. All the profits were taken off the table quickly, but the staggering costs are only now being paid by homeowners, shareholders, builders and the rest of society.

Who knows? Maybe one day Parker Brothers will give us the Bush Legacy Edition of a board game. Just for fun.

Hat tip to reader Stewart

Tilt!

Via BigCityLib... oops!

The candidate chosen in 2005 to run for the Conservatives in Chuck Cadman's Vancouver-area riding said he was never approached about stepping aside to allow the terminally-ill MP to run for the party.

Where I come from that would get you a Not Satisfactory for attention to detail.

Cathie takes a snapshot of Tom Flanagan's Canadian wing of the American Enterprise Institute. That's right! The American blogs have now labeled the Harper government AEI North making them just another arm of the Republican smear machine.

How much has George W. Bush's excellent adventure in Iraq cost? Remember, it was supposed to cost either $1.7 billion, $50 billion, $60 billion or $200 billion depending on which minute of the day you were listening. (The last figure elicited a response from Rumsfeld: "Baloney!"). Apparently, Rumsfeld's assessment, taken alone, may have been accurate. Try $3 trillion... and counting.

How is that surge going anyway?

Lowrey's now famous National Review cover tells a great story. Pictures worth... well, never mind. It did arouse the imagination of the shattered of mind.

The truth is something altogether different. The US has found themselves in a delicate position, because no matter what the Bush administration is telling you, there was no "win". There was a buy-off and it's created a powder keg that is just about ready to blow.

Nir Rosen traveled to Iraq and found that the US solution to the "insurgency" was not to crush the insurgents, but to recruit them. And now they are literally payrolling both sides of a civil war.

Now, in the midst of the surge, the Bush administration has done an about-face. Having lost the civil war, many Sunnis were suddenly desperate to switch sides — and Gen. David Petraeus was eager to oblige. The U.S. has not only added 30,000 more troops in Iraq — it has essentially bribed the opposition, arming the very Sunni militants who only months ago were waging deadly assaults on American forces. To engineer a fragile peace, the U.S. military has created and backed dozens of new Sunni militias, which now operate beyond the control of Iraq's central government. The Americans call the units by a variety of euphemisms: Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias prefer a simpler and more dramatic name: They call themselves Sahwa, or "the Awakening."

At least 80,000 men across Iraq are now employed by the Americans as ISVs. Nearly all are Sunnis, with the exception of a few thousand Shiites. Operating as a contractor, Osama runs 300 of these new militiamen, former resistance fighters whom the U.S. now counts as allies because they are cashing our checks. The Americans pay Osama once a month; he in turn provides his men with uniforms and pays them ten dollars a day to man checkpoints in the Dora district — a paltry sum even by Iraqi standards. A former contractor for KBR, Osama is now running an armed network on behalf of the United States government. "We use our own guns," he tells me, expressing regret that his units have not been able to obtain the heavy-caliber machine guns brandished by other Sunni militias.

In the event you think these new "Awakening" groups are anything but mercenaries, think again. Even US forces know that these forces are loyal to one thing - the pay.

The American forces responsible for overseeing "volunteer" militias like Osama's have no illusions about their loyalty. "The only reason anything works or anybody deals with us is because we give them money," says a young Army intelligence officer. The 2nd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, which patrols Osama's territory, is handing out $32 million to Iraqis in the district, including $6 million to build the towering walls that, in the words of one U.S. officer, serve only to "make Iraqis more divided than they already are." In districts like Dora, the strategy of the surge seems simple: to buy off every Iraqi in sight. All told, the U.S. is now backing more than 600,000 Iraqi men in the security sector — more than half the number Saddam had at the height of his power. With the ISVs in place, the Americans are now arming both sides in the civil war. "Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems," as U.S. strategists like to say. David Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. Petraeus, calls it "balancing competing armed interest groups."

Who are these "volunteers"?

Only months ago, members of the Awakening were planting IEDs and ambushing U.S. soldiers. They were snipers and assassins, singing songs in honor of Fallujah and fighting what they viewed as a war of national liberation against the foreign occupiers. These are men the Americans described as terrorists, Saddam loyalists, dead-enders, evildoers, Baathists, insurgents. There is little doubt what will happen when the massive influx of American money stops: Unless the new Iraqi state continues to operate as a vast bribing machine, the insurgent Sunnis who have joined the new militias will likely revert to fighting the ruling Shiites, who still refuse to share power.

And how is all that working anyway?

With American forces now arming both sides in the civil war, the violence in Iraq has once again started to escalate. In January, some 100 members of the new Sunni militias — whom the Americans have now taken to calling "the Sons of Iraq" — were assassinated in Baghdad and other urban areas. In one attack, a teenage bomber blew himself up at a meeting of Awakening leaders in Anbar Province, killing several members of the group. Most of the attacks came from Al Qaeda and other Sunni factions, some of whom are fighting for positions of power in the new militias.

The same militias created by General Petraeus.

Here, street politics trump any illusory laws passed in the safety of the Green Zone. As the Awakening gains power, Al Qaeda lies dormant throughout Baghdad, the Mahdi Army and other Shiite forces prepare for the next battle, and political assassinations and suicide bombings are an almost daily occurrence. The violence, Arkan says, is getting worse again.

So, the US military now arms and pays both sides of the Iraqi civil war and claims to be in control. That's nice, except that the "Awakening" is the same body of people George Bush was calling "The Terraists". And their plans haven't changed.

The problem with all of this of course, is that the purpose of the "surge" was to put down the insurgency - not modify its operational structure. By choosing the latter course of action all the US has done is fuel an even worse situation. Worse though is that the US military role in Iraq is to support the central government. That role has been lost. John Robb describes it as a trashed doctrine.

This situation puts the US military in a difficult position, one that goes deeper than being caught on the horns of dilemma (as in: caught between supporting "former" insurgents or government forces). The improvised theory that led the US military to fund the insurgency (the "Awakening") has transformed the US Counter-Insurgency doctrine (COIN) -- a document was so carefully prepared and announced with such fanfare -- into a mere pile of paper. Why? Because we have abandoned the doctrine's binding assumption: that everything we do in counter-insurgency should increase the legitimacy of the host government. Essentially, the abandonment of our doctrine means that the US military is now completely adrift in Iraq without a counter-insurgency roadmap.

There is no real bright side to this picture, but I suppose you could now say that the US counter-insurgency in Iraq is now operating on the same plane as the Bush administration. Clueless.