The Hollywood Liberal

U.S. Pushed Allies on Iraq, Diplomat Writes

Washington Post

UNITED NATIONS — In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting “bitterness” and “deep mistrust” in Washington’s relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Mu¿oz, Chile’s ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book “A Solitary War: A Diplomat’s Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons,” set for publication next month.

White House back pedals on Bush comments on Iran bomb

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The White House on Friday sought to back pedal on comments by President George W. Bush accusing Iran of having said it was seeking a nuclear bomb.

The Islamic regime has always denied in recent years trying to arm itself with an atomic bomb, saying its nuclear program was a peaceful, civilian effort to meet its electricity needs.

But Bush in an interview with a US-controlled Farsi-language radio station said Iran has declared it wants nuclear weapons “to destroy people.”

Hume dimisses McCain gaffe as ‘a blip’ and ‘a senior moment.’

This week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repeatedly and falsely claimed that Iran was training al Qaeda in Iraq. Ignoring the fact that McCain made the error at least three separate times, Fox News’s Brit Hume dismissed the mistake today as simply “a blip” and “a senior moment.” Hume insisted that “we all” agree that McCain has understanding and knowledge of world affairs. Watch it:

Mayhem At Fox News: Anchor Walks Off Set, Wallace Rails Network For “Obama-Bashing”

Fox News’ very own anchors are speaking out — and walking off — over what they perceive to be “Obama-bashing” on their network.

This morning on “Fox and Friends,” Brian Kilmeade walked off the set after a dispute with his co-hosts Gretchen Carlson (she who celebrates deadly floods) and Steve Doocy over Obama’s comment that his grandmother is a “typical white person.” Kilmeade argued that the remark needed to be taken in context and eventually got so fed up with his co-hosts that he walked off set.

Later, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace came on the show and railed against “Fox and Friends” for what he called “Obama-bashing.”

Is Bush the worst U.S. president ever?

Historians might argue over ranking, but there’s no doubt he has been an unmitigated disaster
Mar 22, 2008 04:30 AM
Thomas Walkom
Columnist

Historians will argue over whether George W. Bush is the worst president the United States has ever endured. But that is not the point. Five years after Bush’s ill-starred invasion of Iraq, three years after Hurricane Katrina and seven months into the unravelling of the U.S. financial system, the point is that the 43rd president of the United States – regardless of his ranking in the pantheon – is a unique and unmitigated disaster.

McCain’s ties to Airbus could cost him votes in Kansas

Excerpt
WASHINGTON — As a reliably red state, Kansas has backed a Republican in each of the last 10 presidential elections. But Democrats say things could be different in 2008.

With their economy strongly tied to aviation and defense jobs, Kansans are riled over the Air Force’s decision Feb. 29 to give a $35 billion aerial-tanker contract to a partnership with ties to France, rejecting a bid by Boeing, which would have done final assembly and testing of the planes in Wichita.

As the anger builds, Democrats are reminding voters that Arizona Sen. John McCain, this year’s presumed Republican presidential nominee, has a history of sparring with Boeing, which promised to bring 3,800 jobs to Wichita if it won the contract.

Cheney’s “peace” trip to Middle East prepares new wars

Excerpt
US Vice President Dick Cheney, during a trip to the Middle East aimed at consolidating Washington’s position in its ongoing wars of aggression and preparing new ones, gave vent Wednesday to his utter contempt for the will of the American people.

In the course of an extended interview with Cheney conducted in Oman, Martha Raddatz of ABC News noted, speaking of the Iraq war, “Two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting, and they’re looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.”

The vice president replied, “So?”

Raddatz continued, “So—you don’t care what the American people think?” Cheney responded, “No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.”

Excerpt
WASHINGTON — As a reliably red state, Kansas has backed a Republican in each of the last 10 presidential elections. But Democrats say things could be different in 2008.

With their economy strongly tied to aviation and defense jobs, Kansans are riled over the Air Force’s decision Feb. 29 to give a $35 billion aerial-tanker contract to a partnership with ties to France, rejecting a bid by Boeing, which would have done final assembly and testing of the planes in Wichita.

As the anger builds, Democrats are reminding voters that Arizona Sen. John McCain, this year’s presumed Republican presidential nominee, has a history of sparring with Boeing, which promised to bring 3,800 jobs to Wichita if it won the contract.

Were Karl Rove’s Emails Destroyed?

Excerpt
Another round in the saga of the vanished . . . reappeared . . . no–vanished White House emails. As last noted, U.S. magistrate John Facciola has now twice given the White House short deadlines to produce the missing emails or explain why they could not be produced.

On Friday afternoon, the White House stated that it had destroyed old email hard-disk drives, and that the traffic on them couldn’t be recovered. It provided evasive responses on a number of other queries, including whether emails were lost or could be retrieved. This marks a continuation of White House evasions that now stretch over almost a year. Here is Pete Yost’s account for the Associated Press:

Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005. The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.

Here is a story from Paul Craig Roberts. No wonder the cauality rate in Iraq had gone down for a while (it’s not back up). Bush and Cheney must really be making a lot of money of this war (duh!) if they can afford to pay the insurgents $800 large every day and still make a profit. I guess Bush isn’t such a bad business man afterall.

VDARE.com
It is impossible to keep up with all the Bush regime’s lies. There are simply too many. Among the recent crop, one of the biggest is that the “surge” is working.

Launched last year, the “surge” was the extra 20,000-30,000 US troops sent to Iraq. These few extra troops, Americans were told, would finally supply the necessary forces to pacify Iraq.

HL’s Take
Did you see todays headline on the 5 year anniversary. No reservations whatsoever, and unqualified success. Man what an A$$hole.

This claim never made any sense. The extra troops didn’t raise the total number of US soldiers to more than one-third the number every expert has said is necessary in order to successfully occupy Iraq.

The real purpose of the “surge” was to hide another deception. The Bush regime is paying Sunni insurgents $800,000 a day not to attack US forces. That’s right, 80,000 members of an “Awakening group,” the “Sons of Iraq,” a newly formed “US-allied security force” consisting of Sunni insurgents, are being paid $10 a day each not to attack US troops. Allegedly, the Sons of Iraq are now at work fighting al Qaeda.

The German magazine Stern did an interview with Lynndie England. The woman from Abu Gharib in the picture with the prisoner on the leash, here are a couple of excerpts:

Why did you join the army at the age of 17 and against the express wishes of your mother?
I always wanted to be in the military. My whole life. I just didn’t know what branch – Navy, Army, Coast Guard, Marines, Air Force. I just wanted to serve my country and be a patriot, I guess. As a child I mainly grew up on military gung-ho movies so that’s where I got the idea. Old Chuck Norris movies, “Delta Force”, “Rambo”, “Missing in Action”, “Platoon”…..

The former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, called you and your colleagues the “rotten apples” of the military. Bush claimed to be ashamed of what you did.
Well, back then I thought: How can they say that when it was happening all over Iraq. The same thing is happening in Guantanamo now and other places. We knew that our officers knew about it and our sergeants. We thought if they know then somebody else knows. And I really do still think that Rumsfeld knew what was going on. I mean he had been there while I was there at that prison. And if he was there I know he knew what was going on. How could he have not known? And Bush? He’s the headman.

There is talk about new pictures that are even harsher than the ones we know.
I know there were some harsher pictures they had at the time of the trial that the media decided not to expose.

What was on those pictures?
You see the dogs biting the prisoners. Or you see bite marks from the dogs. You can see MPs holding down a prisoner so a medic can give him a shot. If those had been made public at the time, then the whole world would have looked at those and not at mine.

H.L.s Take
Of course Rumsfeld knew, probably Bush too. They will never be punished for it though, only the low level grunts that were ordered to carry it out. What she did was wrong but I don’t blame her as much as I do the people higher up on the chain of command. When you take a uneducated kid from the sticks, who was brought up to believe “my country right or wrong” and put them in a place where they think they must obey any order, of course you are going to have things like this happen. It’s not like Ms. England spent time studying the ramifications of the Nuremberg defense. You can read the whole interview Here

Republicans See Storm Clouds Gathering

Week of Bad News Highlights Difficult Challenges for GOP in Fall Elections
Excerpt
The latest blow came with the revelation that the former treasurer of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) had allegedly diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars — and possibly as much as $1 million — from the organization’s depleted coffers to his own bank accounts.

If Republicans needed any more evidence of how difficult this fall may be, the past week had it all, analysts said. The Illinois race demonstrated new levels of disaffection, the party’s efforts to go on offense elsewhere were thwarted by recruiting failures, and the NRCC scandal will divert campaign resources and could frighten off badly needed contributors, they said.

"It’s no mystery," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.). "You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He’s just killed the Republican brand."

Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan analyst of congressional politics, said: "The math is against them. The environment is against them. The money is against them. This is one of those cycles that if you’re a Republican strategist, you just want to go into the bomb shelter."

H.L.s Take
Mr. Rothenberg is forgetting one thing; The Democrats are also against them, and as long as the democrats are against them The Republicans have at least a 50-50 chance at winning. The pathetic Democrats will do everything in their power to make sure that the Bush/McCain reign of terror goes on forever.
The Gun is out, it is pointed at their feet, all they have to do is pull the trigger. So how will they blow it this time. Guess we will have to wait and see.

The Existentialist Cowboy
Republicans benefit from the fact that recessions are class conscious, affecting worse those who can least afford them. An era of highly leveraged US economic expansion and empire is about to come crashing down and swept away. Count on the GOP to make out like bandits.

It seems like ages ago, the US was at peace, there was a budget surplus, the economy was growing, and the unemployment rate was very low. But not everyone was happy. There was an entire group of people who harbor not good, but ill will; an entire class wished for bad times and got it.

Until now, China had an interest in keeping the US ponzi scheme propped up –they sold billions to US citizens via Wal-Mart, the economic Kudzu that ate America. But since a Chinese sub popped up undetected in the middle of the US fifth fleet, it has been apparent that the honeymoon is over. China now leads the world in dumping dollars. Everywhere, it seems, it has become a habit.

Read The Rest of The Story Here

HL’s Take:
It’s looking more and more like an economic collapse is coming. Gas prices are at an all time high, food prices are going up. Diesel prices are so high that truck drivers can’t afford to drive anymore, which causes food prices to go even higher. Housing prices are plunging, Bear Sterns just collapsed. It is all coming down hard. This is Bush’s final F&%k You to America. He is letting his buddies run rampant while they still can. After it is over he will retire to Paraguay, while the nation he ruined fights to survive.

Now she is saying the Obama campaign is attacking her for being white

Geraldine Ferraro the 1984 Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, and current Hillary supporter and fundraiser has been getting herself deeper and deeper into hot water. She blatantly came out and said that the only reason Obama is beating her girl in the race is because he is black. Ouch. Has this woman been living under a rock for the last 20 years? Did she really think she could get away with that. She has twice had a chance to recant her statement but is standing firm. Yesterday when she was asked if she really meant that she said “of course, the truth, is the truth is the truth”. So I guess she really does beleive it, but doesn’t she know that you can’t say that in a political campaign even if you really believe it is true.
Hillary, making like Bush is standing by Ferraro even though she “disagrees” with what she said. I guess Hillary wouldn’t mind if Obama said that she was only in the race because she is a woman. (or because Bill Clinton got a BJ from Monica) Ms. Clinton refuses to fire Ferraro despite the racially tinged remark. She is doing what Bush did when his countless minions screwed up. Just letting it slide.
Last week when one of Obamas key people called Hillary a monster, she was immediately fired. See it’s all about ethics. Some candidates have them, some don’t. Now Ferraro is saying that they are attacking her because she is white. Check out the video.

Polidics.com
BBC’s killer documentary called “The Power of Nightmares“. Top CIA officials openly admit, Al-qaeda is a total and complete fabrication, never having existed at any time. The Bush administration needed a reason that complied with the Laws so they could go after “the bad guy of their choice” namely laws that had been set in place to protect us from mobs and “criminal organizations” such as the Mafia. They paid Jamal al Fadl, hundreds of thousands of dollars to back the U.S. Government’s story of Al-qaeda, a “group” or criminal organization they could “legally” go after. This video documentary is off the hook…

FOX NEWS Interview with Ian Blair (THIS IS A LINK NOT RELATED TO THE VIDEO):Blair said, “Al Qaeda is not an organization. Al Qaeda is a way of working … but this has the hallmark of that approach.”

HLs Take
The closer we get to the election, the more warnings we get from Bush that this fake terrorist is going to stage another fake attack. Spooky.

Dennis Kucinich has done it. He beat the combined forces of evil that were doing whatever they could to get him out of office. The last good politician is still in office, and impeachment is still on the table. AIPAC and Pelosi did what they could to remove the last roadblock to thier elitist takeover of the US Government, but they failed. Welcome to Pottersville picks up the story.

Well, it wasn’t the big one, Elizabeth, but your husband grabbing 50% of the vote in a five-way contest in OH 10’s Democratic primary was still a welcome sight.

Ya gotta love Cleveland. They stuck by their man, which I interpret as so many votes to impeach Dick Cheney. Kucinich was forced to abandon his presidential quest when he’d learned about City Councilman Joe Cimperman, whose war chest had swelled to half a million dollars virtually overnight thanks to corporate interests. What Cimperman didn’t count on was that Kucinich, thanks in large part to his huge netroots fanship, was able to raise a couple of hundred thou more than that.

Kucinich, the story goes, was told by representatives from AIPAC and Nancy Pelosi during his presidential race that if he would drop HR 333, the bill that would impeach Dick Cheney, they would “guarantee” him re-election to the House. This came from high up in the Kucinich campaign, which automatically elevates it from a mere rumor. So Kucinich is well on his way to getting re-elected for the sixth time and HR 333 is still on the table, to paraphrase Scarecrow of the House Pelosi. So hats off to Kucinich’s base.

HL’s Take
Fight on Dennis, You’re all we have left.

Hillary Clinton sure knows how to play a joke; she got back at all those nasty members of the press for not treating her like Bush yesterday. She is pissed off (poor choice of words) becuase they actually ask questions and report what they see of her campaign. True they may not be doing the same for Obama, but Hillary wants the Bush treatment. That is, no matter how bad you screw up, no matter how much you lie, cheat and steal, no matter how abhorrent a person you are the press always treats you like a Saint. Anyway she got back at them good yesterday by making them work out a foul urine stinking, $hit stained mens room. Is this how she will treat the American people the first time she is not happy with her ratings? Huffington Post picks up the story.

Is the Hillary Clinton campaign staffed with morons or do they just not care anymore? It is unbelievable that on the night before the Texas and Ohio (and Vermont and Rhode Island) primaries they would set up an impromptu press room in a freaking men’s bathroom, complete with urinals. Yes. It’s true. The WSJ’s Jackie Calmes posted an account of the scene last night, including the tidbit that former New Yorker and Talk editor, Diana-tome authoress and journalistic grande dame Tina Brown was stuck “gamely typing away close to a toilet” — and not just any toilet: ETP was able to confirm from someone present that Brown was “literally inches from a urinal.” According to the LAT’s Andrew Malcolm, many of the press corps had begun their day with Clinton at 5 a.m. in Toledo, Ohio before crossing the country with her to cover her in Austin, Texas. No doubt they were thrilled — especially since they also got to enjoy dinner in the men’s room, too. Tamales. Yes, tamales…..

Clinton spokesman Doug Hattaway denied that any message was being sent, saying, “These accommodations should in no way be taken as a comment on the quality of our media coverage.” Perhaps, but it sent a different message: That whoever was responsible for organizing this particular press filing center was an idiot.

Whatever the message was meant to be, whoever on the campaign knew about this and let it happen had to have known this would get negative attention and make the campaign seem churlish and vengeful. The bathroom in question was located in the Tony Burger Activity Center in Austin, Texas and is described as hosting “basketball, volleyball, drill team, musical events and graduations.” Do y’think on the night before a hugely important primary they might’ve been able to do a little better?

H.L.s Take:
Thank god Senator Larry Craig of Ohio wasn’t there. Now that would have been a story