May 9, 2008...12:07 pm
OpEd’s of note..
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
From Glenn Greenwald today:
CNN, the Pentagon’s ‘Military Analyst Program’ and Gitmo
The Pentagon has posted to its website the roughly 8,000 pages and audio tapes it was forced to provide to the New York Times regarding its “military analyst” program. Anyone who reads through them, as I’ve now done, can only be left with one conclusion (other than being extremely impressed with David Barstow’s work in putting together this story): if this wasn’t an example of an illegal, systematic “domestic propaganda campaign” by the Pentagon, then nothing is. Read on…
From Helen Thomas:
People Can Handle the Truth About War
Some readers resented The Washington Post for publishing an Associated Press photograph of a critically wounded Iraqi child being lifted from the rubble of his home in Baghdad’s Sadr City “after a U.S. airstrike.”
Two-year-old Ali Hussein later died in a hospital.
As the saying goes, the picture was worth a thousand words because it showed the true horrors of this war.
Neither side is immune from killing Iraqi civilians. But Americans should be aware of their own responsibility for inflicting death and pain on the innocent. More…
This was a really important subject to write about. Perhaps if more Americans had to look into the face of war, they would fight harder to reject it.
From Russ Feingold:
The Yoo memo is just one example of Bush’s hidden laws.
The Bush administration recently announced it will allow select members of Congress to read Justice Department legal opinions about the CIA’s controversial detainee interrogation program that have been hidden from Congress until now. But as the administration allows a glimpse of this secret law - and it is law - we are left wondering what other laws it is still keeping under lock and key.
It’s a given in our democracy that laws should be a matter of public record. But the law in this country includes not just statutes and regulations, which the public can readily access. It also includes binding legal interpretations made by courts and the executive branch. These interpretations are increasingly being withheld from the public and Congress.
Perhaps the most notorious example is the recently released 2003 Justice Department memorandum on torture written by John Yoo. The memorandum was, for a nine-month period in 2003, the law that the administration followed when it came to matters of torture. And that law was essentially a declaration that the administration could ignore the laws passed by Congress. More…
From The New York Times:
Congress is finally moving to shut one of the more egregious forms of Iraq war profiteering: defense contractors using offshore shell companies to avoid paying their fair share of payroll taxes. The practice is widespread and Congressional investigators have been dispatched to one of the prime tax refuges, the Cayman Islands, to seek a firsthand estimate of how much the Treasury is being shorted.
No one will be surprised to hear that one of the suspected prime offenders is KBR, the Texas-based defense contractor, formerly a part of the Halliburton conglomerate allied with Vice President Dick Cheney. According to a report in The Boston Globe, KBR, which has landed billions in Iraq contracts, has used two Cayman shell companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions in payroll, Medicare and unemployment taxes.
Unfortunately right now there is nothing illegal about this. The House has approved legislation to plug the dodge by treating foreign subsidiaries of defense contractors as what they are - American employers required to pay taxes. The Senate must quickly follow suit and not buy the contractors’ line that listing American workers at offshore companies is a cost saving passed on patriotically to the war effort. No less insulting, the Cayman dodge has been blocking Americans from the protection of labor and anti-discrimination laws.
The House has taken on another shamefully common abuse: voting to deny future government contracts to any company that fails to pay its corporate taxes, including an estimated 25,000 defense contractors keeping billions due the Treasury. The Senate should approve that legislation as well.
Companies enriched by taxpayers in the war boom should not be able to compound their profits by not paying their fair share of taxes. Congress must do far more to bring them to a full accounting.
From Brent Budowsky:
As part of her continuing campaign for the 2012 nomination and her campaign to elect John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton is closing her sad campaign acting like a right-wing Republican with the latest and most offensive example of race-card attacks.
Possibly because she is tired and letting her guard down, possibly out of sheer desperation combined with blind ambition, Hillary Clinton openly talks about “white people.” Bill Clinton speaks to white audiences about “voters like you.” Paul Begala says Democrats can’t win with only intellectuals and African-Americans. Paul Krugman graces The New York Times with his wisdom about the white vote.
This is an incredibly low road end to an embarrassing and failed campaign that began when the coronation of the Clintons ended, and they sent forth surrogates such as Billy Shaheen in New Hampshire and a lineup of others with a succession of low-road, low-ball, low-content attacks.
It has failed, it will fail, and the real story of 2008 is how Barack Obama has maintained his dignity, his honor, his calmness and his leadership in the face of such an intense, organized, systematic campaign of personal destruction of the kind I cannot remember any major Democrat running against other Democrat for president.
Listening to the rhetoric of Team Clinton in the last 48 hours, we are witnessing a sad throwback to the politics of the pre-New South South. What is amazing is how thoroughly it has been rejected.
Soon, this ends. Soon, we turn the page. Soon, there will be talk of historic voter registration with the new campaign that begins this Saturday. Soon, there will be talk of 2 million Obama donors that will become 3 million. Soon, there will be talk of possible Obama vice presidents and a new chapter in American history.
For now, let us say of this last sad stand of the bad loser in this interminable campaign what Shakespeare wrote: Out, damned spot.
From Eugene Robinson (Washington Post, Truthdig):
From the beginning, Hillary Clinton has campaigned as if the Democratic nomination were hers by divine right. That’s why she is falling short—and that’s why she should be persuaded to quit now, rather than later, before her majestic sense of entitlement splits the party along racial lines.
If that sounds harsh, look at the argument she made Wednesday, in an interview with USA Today, as to why she should be the nominee instead of Barack Obama. She cited an Associated Press article “that found how Senator Obama’s support … among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.”
As a statement of fact, that’s debatable at best. As a rationale for why Democratic Party superdelegates should pick her over Obama, it’s a slap in the face to the party’s most loyal constituency—African-Americans—and a repudiation of principles the party claims to stand for. Here’s what she’s really saying to party leaders: There’s no way that white people are going to vote for the black guy. Come November, you’ll be sorry.
How silly of me. I thought the Democratic Party believed in a colorblind America.
And this one is from May 6th, 2008.
From Bob Herbert (The New York Times):
At the top of the list of no-brainers in Washington should be Senator Jim Webb’s proposed expansion of education benefits for the men and women who have served in the armed forces since Sept. 11, 2001.
It’s awfully hard to make the case that these young people who have sacrificed so much don’t deserve a shot at a better future once their wartime service has ended.
Senator Webb, a Virginia Democrat, has been the guiding force behind this legislation, which has been dubbed the new G.I. bill. The measure is decidedly bipartisan. Mr. Webb’s principal co-sponsors include Republican Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John Warner of Virginia, and Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey.
(All four senators are veterans of wartime service - Senators Webb and Hagel in Vietnam, Warner in World War II and Korea and Lautenberg in World War II.)
Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are on board, as are Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House.
Who wouldn’t support an effort to pay for college for G.I.’s who have willingly suited up and put their lives on the line, who in many cases have served multiple tours in combat zones and in some cases have been wounded?
We did it for those who served in World War II. Why not now?
Well, you might be surprised at who is not supporting this effort. The Bush administration opposes it, and so does Senator John McCain. More…
1 Comment
May 10, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Excellent op-eds, muse. I finally had a chance to read them.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.