Iraq Carnage Continues

Tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy:

Iraq Bombings Add to Week of Carnage
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, March 31 — Car bombs in three Iraqi cities killed nine people on Saturday and wounded dozens more, while the government gave its first official reckoning of the carnage in the northern city of Tal Afar this week.

The explosions on Saturday were in the Shiite district of Sadr City in Baghdad; in Hilla, which is frequently hit by car bombings; and in the northern town of Tuz khormato, south of Kirkuk.

The Interior Ministry gave its first news conference about the killing in Tal Afar, announcing that the total number of dead was 152 with another 347 wounded. It appeared that the 152 included those killed in the initial truck bombing of a Shiite neighborhood and those killed in the subsequent reprisals.

A retaliatory rampage by Shiite police officers and gunmen after the bombings killed 47 Sunnis, said Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Kh

Top Bush Supporter Loses Faith

AUSTIN, Tex., March 29 — In 1999, Matthew Dowd became a symbol of George W. Bush’s early success at positioning himself as a Republican with Democratic appeal.

A top strategist for the Texas Democrats who was disappointed by the Bill Clinton years, Mr. Dowd was impressed by the pledge of Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, to bring a spirit of cooperation to Washington. He switched parties, joined Mr. Bush’s political brain trust and dedicated the next six years to getting him to the Oval Office and keeping him there. In 2004, he was appointed the president’s chief campaign strategist.

Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

(snip)

In the last several years, as he has gradually broken his ties with the Bush camp, one of Mr. Dowd’s premature twin daughters died, he was divorced, and he watched his oldest son prepare for deployment to Iraq as an Army intelligence specialist fluent in Arabic. Mr. Dowd said he had become so disillusioned with the war that he had considered joining street demonstrations against it, but that his continued personal affection for the president had kept him from joining protests whose anti-Bush fervor is so central.

Too Bad About Tony Snow

his cancer is back.

Being press secretary for Bush must be extremely stressful, which really can't help his situation.

...and I'm trying REAL hard to avoid a cheap "cancer on the presidency" joke.

Anyway, I guess that line has already been used for Bush.

Impeachment Threat Real

John Nichols:

Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough had me on his MSNBC show Monday night to talk about impeachment. It was smart, civil discussion that treated the prospect of impeaching the president as a serious matter.

Scarborough took the lead in suggesting that Bush's biggest problem might be that Republicans in the House and Senate who — fearful of the threat Bush poses to their political survival — do not appear to be rallying 'round the president. The host's sentiments were echoed by two other guests, columnist Mike Barnicle and Salon's Joan Walsh.

The impetus for the show was Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel's ongoing discussion of the impeachment prospect — Hagel's not quite a supporter of sanctioning Bush, more a speculator about the prospect — and a new column by Robert Novak that suggests Bush has dwindling support within the congressional wing of the GOP.

Stripped!!!

In a 329-78 vote last night, the House of Representatives followed the Senate and stripped President George W. Bush of the authority to appoint United States Attorneys on an interim basis, ending the ability of the Bush administration to do an end run around the Senate in putting controversial US Attorneys in office.
The bill sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) places a 120-day limit to the term of a United States Attorney appointed on an interim basis. Democrats allege that the previous authority to appoint interim US Attorneys on an unlimited basis, inserted stealthily into the 2006 reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, was used as a 'loophole' to insert Bush administration political loyalists into office.

Good Old-Fashioned Bush Bashing

Though I can't argue with this:

One thing that is fascinating about George Bush is how little he has grown in office. No, that's not right. It's not that he hasn't grown, he has gotten smaller; less Presidential, more sad little man watching his paper boat circle the drain. After six years of playing The Decider he should at least have a thin candy shell of gravitas as opposed to coming across like one of those guys on Peoples Court who not only has an unshakable belief that people won't see through his bullshit, but that no one will notice his artful comb-over either.

As bad a president as George W. Bush has been (and lets face it, not only is he the worst ever, he's actively lobbying to be considered worse than at least the next five, possibly six presidents, and that includes President Patrick McHenry [warning: video] who will come to power following the Great Munchkin Uprising of 2021. You don't want to know...) he is a worse person and it shows whenever he is under pressure; he melts down into a greasy little puddle of glares and smirks and incipient panic. But tonight was special. Tonights performance lays to rest any notion other than the fact that he's not a very bright man who has nothing but contempt for a world that refuses to dumb down for him.

Salt Lake City Mayor calls for Bush impeachment

Salt Lake City Mayor, Rocky Anderson says President Bush is committing "high crimes and misdemeanors" and should be impeached. Mr. Anderson explains his position during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Anderson offers an extensive list of what he considers "high crimes" that form the grounds for impeachment.

"If impeachment were every justified, this certainly is the time," says Anderson, "This president, by engaging in such incredible abuses of power, breaches of trust with both the Congress and the American people, and misleading us into this tragic and unbelievable war, the violation of treaties, other international law, our constitution, our own domestic laws, and then his role in heinous human rights abuses; I think all of that together calls for impeachment."

Anderson does not spare his fellow Democrats saying, "The fact that anybody would say that impeachment is off the table when we have a president who has been so egregious in his violations of our constitution, a president who asserts a unitary executive power, that is absolutely chilling."

But Bush Promised!!!

NEW YORK Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, told a congressional committee today that he was aware of no internal investigation or report into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.

The White House had first opposed Knodell testifying but after a threat of a subpoena from the committee yesterday he was allowed to appear today.

Knodell testified that those who had participated in the leaking of classified information were required to attest to this and he was not aware that anyone, including Karl Rove, had done that.

He said that he had started at the White House in August 2004, a year after the leak, but his records show no evidence of a probe or report there: "I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office," he said.

Rep. Waxman recalled that President Bush had promised a full internal probe. Knodell repeated that no probe took place, as far as he knew, and was not happening today.

Fealty

Fred Kaplan analyzes the strange need of Bush to demand foreign leaders to pledge their gratitude to him.

White House wanted to fire all 93 U.S. attorneys!

Two years ago, apparently.

More here.

Manipulating Justice

US Attorneys pressured to investigate Democrats.

What It All Boils Down To

Bush Record Of Illegalities Suggests Possible Role In 9/11 WTC, Pentagon Strikes

By Sherwood Ross
The trouble with thinking 9/11 was an inside job staged by George W. Bush & Co. is that it defies belief any U.S. president might be capable of such an iniquitous crime against his own people.

Yet, subsequent Bush actions, such as lying the nation into war against Iraq, makes one wonder if the man didn’t create the 9/11 massacres to justify his attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran.

After all, his record reveals him to be a serial liar, warmonger, tyrant, torturer, and usurper of his peoples’ civil liberties. Just off the top, here are some illegal GWB actions that betray what he is really about.

# Bush lied the U.S. into what former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called an “illegal” war on Iraq. This conflict has killed 650,000 civilians, wounded over a million more, drove nearly 2-million from their country, and turned life into a living hell for the rest. The death toll there is already equal to about 240 WTC massacres, yet Bush persists in waging the war.

# Bush okayed $1.5-trillion for new weapons' research including grisly weapons that would thrill mad scientists, such as sound waves that crush a victim's internal organs. Another gem is "rods from god" to hurl tungsten poles down from Earth orbit down upon its victims at 7,200 miles an hour, striking with the atomic fury. He is illegally militarizing space. These are not the dreams of a humanist.

# Bush has allowed illegal radioactive ammunition fired in Afghanistan and Iraq that poison civilian populations and U.S. troops, as well as cluster bombs. Does this evince concern for human life?

# Bush has made himself master of the greatest spy apparatus the world has ever known at a cost to taxpayers of $50-billion annually. He authorized NSA to spy illegally on Americans, allegedly to catch terrorists. If this was the true reason, why did he also eavesdrop on UN officials?

# Bush authorized CIA agents to go to foreign countries to kidnap "suspects" and dump them in distant prisons to be tortured with no warrants signed to seize them, no charges brought against them, and no lawyers to defend them. In his secret prisons there may be many thousands held illegally, and tortured, while all the time he lies to the world "we don't torture." Is this a man with empathy for others?

# Bush is also funding hundreds of biotechnology labs to create deadly strains of exotic killer diseases at a cost to taxpayers of $40-billion. Many operate in secret, illegally violating transparency rules. On Bush’s watch, anthrax germs from a military laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md., were mysteriously unleashed upon two of his political opponents in the U.S. Senate that killed five people and sickened 17 others and temporarily shut down the Congress.

Peculiarly, the perpetrators of the anthrax panic and the massacres at the WTC and Pentagon have not been caught. “Why not?” Is it just possible the White House doesn’t want the killers apprehended?

For all these, and many other reasons, it’s worth hearing out the arguments of those who claim the 9/11 events were staged by the White House to rush a frightened nation into war.

Delusional: 7 Countries in 5 Years

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.

I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” -- meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office -- “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry. What did you say his name was?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I’m not going to give you his name.

AMY GOODMAN: So, go through the countries again.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and back to Iran.

George W. Bush is a stupid, stupid man

MORONS. WE HAVE MORONS ON OUR TEAM. I don't have much to add to the very good analysis that Hilzoy and Josh Marshall give on the North Korea uranium situation. There have been questions floating around about the uranium enrichment process in North Korea for a while, but the New York Times article confirms that the Bush administration had almost no convincing evidence that the North Koreans had an alternative process. Let's make one thing as clear as possible, though; North Korea has nuclear weapons today because George W. Bush is a stupid, stupid man.