McCain’s Warped Worldview

Robert Scheer | TruthDig | August 19, 2008

Republican presidential candidate John McCain laughs as he is introduced at a rally at the Virginia Aviation Museum in Richmond, Va. on Feb. 11, 2008. Behind him is an A-4 Skyhawk fighter jet like the one he was flying when shot down over Vietnam. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The world according to John McCain is one in which America is triumphant at home and abroad thanks to the Bush legacy, rolling to victory internationally and mastering its domestic economic problems. If daily news, like reports of the 10 French soldiers killed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and the U.S. government’s imminent nationalization of much of the American mortgage-lending industry, would seem to deny such a rosy scenario, then that only shows skeptics lack the courage that sustained McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

There you have it encapsulated, the McCain campaign for president, an irrational mélange of patriotic swagger and blindness to reality that is proving disturbingly successful with uninformed voters. How else to explain the many millions of Americans who tell pollsters they prefer a continuation of Republican rule when so many of them are losing their homes to foreclosure and the nation is devastated by out-of-control military spending?

The economy is in a downward spiral, the national debt is at an all-time high, the dollar is an international disgrace and inflation in July had the steepest rise in 27 years, driven by oil prices fivefold higher than when George W. Bush invaded the nation with the world’s second-largest petroleum reserves.

Russia Never Wanted a War

By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV | NYT | Published: August 19, 2008

THE acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us. But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves?

Russia did not want this crisis. The Russian leadership is in a strong enough position domestically; it did not need a little victorious war. Russia was dragged into the fray by the recklessness of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He would not have dared to attack without outside support. Once he did, Russia could not afford inaction.

The decision by the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, to now cease hostilities was the right move by a responsible leader. The Russian president acted calmly, confidently and firmly. Anyone who expected confusion in Moscow was disappointed.

The planners of this campaign clearly wanted to make sure that, whatever the outcome, Russia would be blamed for worsening the situation. The West then mounted a propaganda attack against Russia, with the American news media leading the way.

The news coverage has been far from fair and balanced, especially during the first days of the crisis. Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader’s deceptive statements.

CRISIS IN THE CAUCASUS. WHAT WERE THEY SMOKING IN THE WHITE HOUSE?

Eric Margolis | Archives | August 18, 2008

WASHINGTON DC- The Bush administration appears to have pulled off its latest military fiasco in the Caucasus. What was supposed to have been a swiftly and painless takeover of rebellious South Ossetia by America’s favourite new ally, Georgia, has turned into a disaster that left Georgia battered, Russia enraged, and NATO badly demoralized. Not bad for two days work.

Equally important, Russia’s Vladimir Putin swiftly and decisively checkmated the Bush administration’s clumsy attempt last week to expand US influence into the Caucasus, and made the Americans and their Georgian satraps look like fools.

We are not facing a return to the Cold War - yet. But the current US-Russian crisis over Georgia, a tiny nation of only 4.6 million, and its linkage to a US anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe, is deeply worrying and increasingly dangerous.

Afghanistan: Where Empire Goes to Die

Michael Scheuer | Taki’s Magazine | August 17, 2008

For nearly thirteen years between 1979 and 1992, the Central Intelligence Agency managed the U.S. government’s largest-ever covert action program in support of the Afghan mujahedin’s war to rid their country of Soviet occupiers and Afghan communists. The CIA learned many lessons from this experience, the most important also being one of the simplist: Money is much appreciated by the Afghans you work with, but it will not get them to do what you want done. Despite the billions of U.S. and Saudi dollars expended in support of the mujahedin, there was almost no occasion when the Afghan insurgents took orders from U.S., Saudi, or Pakistani officials as to the pace of combat, targets to be struck, or efforts toward political unification. Ever polite, the Afghans would take your money, offer thanks, and then do exactly what they wanted to do with no regard for your wishes. The idea that U.S., Saudi, or Pakistani intelligence officers “ran” the mujahedin is a fantasy; if anything, it was much closer to the other way around.

And that was acceptable. The U.S. objective in Afghanistan was clear and simple: to paraphrase Admiral Halsey, the goal was to kill Soviets, kill Soviets, and kill more Soviets. What has come to be known as “Charlie Wilson’s War” had little or nothing to do with Afghan self-determination and democratic nation-building; it had everything to do with exacting revenge from Moscow for the role it played in defeating America in Vietnam. In this context, the CIA-run covert action program was a significant success: the Red Army withdrew in defeat in 1989; the Afghan communists were annihilated in 1992; the USSR suffered high casualties which caused societal problems; and Moscow’s Afghan war sped the bleeding of the already dying Soviet economy. The clear lesson for Washington was that the U.S. got what it paid for: dead Soviets, the Red Army’s defeat, and the USSR on the road to implosion. But the money it expended bought no control of the mujahedin, and no influence on how the postwar Afghan environment unfolded.

Who Started Cold War II?

Patrick J. Buchanan | Taki’s Magazine | August 18, 2008

The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO.

Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow’s superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.

If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.

Speaking for the silent majority

Nixonland by Rick Perlstein

I asked Henry Kissinger recently whether he had been to see the hit play Frost/Nixon. He told me that he made it a rule never to see plays that included characters he knew in real life, which I guess must mean that he hasn’t seen much post-war political theatre. He also said that he doubted whether any actor could capture the psychological complexity of Richard Nixon, the man whom he flew into the unknown with to talk to Mao Tse-tung and the man whom he had prayed side-by-side with on the night before the final resignation.

Kissinger poses but does not answer the question in his memoirs: ‘What would have happened had the Establishment about which he [Nixon] was so ambivalent shown him some love?’ Rick Perlstein’s new book chronicles in piercing detail the story of what happened because the Establishment didn’t. He takes his title Nixonland from the phrase coined by the Democratic candidate in the 1956 Presidential election and patron saint of American liberalism, Adlai Stevenson, to describe the world represented by the then Republican Vice- President. ‘The land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling’, said Stevenson, ‘the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. America is something different.’ Although Stevenson lost the election, by 1964 it looked as if his prophecy had come true.

Liberal America had triumphed. Lyndon Johnson had trounced the arch-conservative Barry Goldwater at the polls. Within a year, he had introduced federal funding for education and medical insurance for the elderly under the banner of the Great Society and passed the Voting Rights Act — the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. Richard Nixon himself looked as finished as Nixonland. The man who, but for Joe Kennedy’s wallet, would have won the White House had gone on to suffer a humiliating defeat in the California Governor’s race, and had with seething resentment told the media that ‘you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference’.

Ohio’s Election Stolen Again? State May Face 600K Voter Purge in Coming Weeks

Advancement Project and Project Vote. Posted August 13, 2008.

Voting rights attorneys say hundreds of thousands of voters could be purged from voter rolls.

Editor’s note: In 2004, election integrity activists challenged the results of Ohio’s presidential election before the Ohio Supreme Court, and convinced Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D-OH) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to challenge the state’s Electoral College vote before a joint session of Congress. The reaction by Ohio’s then Republican-controlled Legislature was to enact a series of election reforms that punished likely Democratic voters. Some of the laws adopted were later thrown out in court, such as penalizing voter registration drives. But others, including a technical process to require certain voters to prove their registrations are valid on Election Day — or lose their right to vote, remain in effect. Two of the nation’s top voting rights groups, Advancement Project and Project Vote, this week reported 600,000 Ohio voters could be effected. This article is a combination of the releases both groups issued this week. George W. Bush beat John Kerry by nearly 119,000 votes in Ohio in 2004. — Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet Democracy and Elections editor.

Columbus, Ohio August 13, 2008 — Nearly 600,000 eligible Ohio voters may be dropped from the voter rolls if Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner doesn’t act to protect these voters, according to findings based on publicly available information discovered by Advancement Project and Project Vote.

These voters — disproportionately voters of color and young voters — are subject to being removed from Ohio’s voter registration rolls without notice or a hearing because of the state’s vague regulations on vote caging, a process that enables representatives of one political party to challenge the voter registration credentials of voters at polling places on Election Day.

The Ohio counties with largest numbers of returned notices prior to March 2008 Presidential Primary are Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Lucas and Summit, where Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo are located.

The mechanism of caging or challenging voters dates back to legislation passed soon after the 2004 presidential election.

Did McCain ad lift ‘cross in the dirt’ story from Russian novelist?

RAW STORY | Monday, Aug 18, 2008

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), in a Christmas-themed December ad for his presidential campaign, told the following story:

“One night, after being mistreated as a POW, a guard loosened the ropes binding me, easing my pain. On Christmas, that same guard approached me, and without saying a word, he drew a cross in the sand. We stood, wordlessly, looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas. I’ll never forget that no matter where you are, no matter how difficult the circumstances, there will always be someone who will pick you up.”

“It just sounded so fake and so contrived, so I did a little research about it,” said DailyKos contributor rickrocket. The research revealed a similar story by recently departed novelist and McCain favorite Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, recounting his experience in a Soviet gulag in The Gulag Archipelago, released in the United States in 1973. Luke Veronis, in The Sign of the Cross, recounts:

“Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The intense suffering reduced him to a state of despair.

We Are Change Colorado Check Out DNC Detention Camps

DNC Protesters Outraged Over Makeshift Razor-Wire Jail in Denver Warehouse

“We’re trying to shine the light on this little secret political prisoner camp that was being set up in the city of Denver.”

Read more…

City defends ’secret jail’ built for DNC

DENVER - Activist groups say the converted warehouse poses a threat to civil liberties. The city maintains the facility is needed in case of mass arrests during the Democratic National Convention.

Read more…

Was 9/11 an Inside Job?

By Mark H. Gaffney

The following is an excerpt from Mark H. Gaffney’s forthcoming book, THE 911 MYSTERY PLANE AND THE VANISHING OF AMERICA, to be released in September 2008.

15/08/08 “ICH” — - - Regrettably, there is considerable evidence that elements of the Bush administration were complicit in the 9/11 attack, and may even have helped stage it. Let us now examine some of what I regard as the most compelling evidence. However, the following discussion makes no claim to be comprehensive.

We know that within minutes of the “worst terrorist attack” in US history, even before the collapse of WTC-2 at 9:59 am, US officials knew the names of several of the alleged hijackers. CBS reported that a flight attendant on AA Flight 11, Amy Sweeney, had the presence of mind to call her office and reveal the seat numbers of the hijackers who had seized the plane.[1] FBI Director Robert Mueller later said, “This was the first piece of hard evidence.”[2] In his memoirs CIA Director George Tenet emphasizes the importance of the passenger manifests, as does counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke.[3] All of which is very strange because the manifests later released by the airlines do not include the names of any of the alleged hijackers. Nor has this discrepancy ever been explained.

According to MSNBC, the plan to invade Afghanistan and “remove Al Qaeda from the face of he earth” was already sitting on G.W. Bush’s desk on the morning of 9/11 awaiting his signature.[4] The plan, in the form of a presidential directive, had been developed by the CIA and according to Richard Clarke called for “arming the Northern Alliance…to go on the offensive against the Taliban [and] pressing the CIA to…go after bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership.”[5]