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Remove Bush Over War LiesThere had been the sound of many feet on a Brooklyn street at the first funeral, of firefighter Joseph Graffa-gnino, and at the second funeral, of firefighter Robert Beddia, a fire engine sounded in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. In my office about an hour later, slips of paper came silently out of a machine, the slips coming from the Department of Defense and carrying the names and ages of the 14 soldiers who were killed in Iraq when their helicopter crashed. Four were under 21 and nine 25 or under. Of course the first thought was how the city at this time could handle such calamity if the 14 dead were New York firefighters or police officers. This gives a good view of the catastrophe that happens in Iraq, day after day.
But as the soldiers die at a time of national Alzheimer's, there was virtually no reaction to the 14.
When anybody you elect tries to end the war, Bush blocks all intentions with a veto or threats of a veto that prevent it. And his Supreme Court is ready to validate whatever he does, this court with its five Catholic justices, and a chief who falls on his face a couple of times that we know of.
Our politicians despair that there can be no way to override Bush and save our young and everybody of any age in Iraq.
Of course there is. By all the energy and dignified disgust of a nation that needs it to keep any semblance of greatness, there is an extraordinary need for an impeachment of this president and his vice president.
You start an impeachment with an investigator who starts to develop a case. That's what got Nixon out. He had the most expensive, elaborate defense in the world, and when they were pressed his assistants folded and Nixon quit. I wonder whether Bush and his people can do any better when pressed.
Who Owns the Media and How the People Can Take It BackOkay, so we still need to know about Big Media. Only a few hands are writing our history these days, and the push for greater media consolidation is ferocious. Just this month, media titan Rupert Murdoch snatched up the Wall Street Journal. Of course, this consolidation has squeezed out other voices and media owners, particularly women and people of color. Consider two studies by the media reform organization Free Press, which found that just 7.7 percent of racial or ethnic minorities own full-power commercial broadcast radio stations, and 3.3 percent of this demographic own broadcast television stations.
This cleansing is poised to continue. Once again, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is trying to change media ownership rules to allow a handful of media giants to scoop up even more local television channels, radio stations and newspapers in a single market. Think of the media conglomerates as a child who hordes all of the Lego’s - only Big Media is playing for keeps.
Proposed rule changes by the FCC would give media a Botox injection - Ahh! All the newspapers and TV stations look the same - while further eroding our free press. After all, it’s not really free when we have to pay such a high price for it. And of course, that price is the drowning out of our voices, our concerns, our questions and our revolution as media is consolidated.
According to Free Press, “If… changes were approved, one company could potentially own the major daily newspaper, eight radio stations and three television stations in the same town.” Sign me up for a subscription to The Stifled Times!
As promised, the FCC has been charging around the country like a traveling circus to hold public hearings about the proposed rule changes. There may not be a Big Top, but there’s certainly an act - “See the FCC Commissioner Smile and Nod.” Only two more public hearings are scheduled, with the next one taking place in Chicago on September 20.
Soldiers pen a jaw-dropping NYT op-ed about the war in IraqIn April 2006, six retired generals called for then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. In May of this year, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an active-duty officer, wrote an article lambasting the Army's general officer corps as lacking "professional character" and "moral courage." Now, just last Sunday, seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers—all finishing their 15-month tours in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division—took to the New York Times op-ed page to dismiss prospects of victory as "far-fetched" and recent appraisals of progress as "flawed" and "surreal."
This last insiders' protest is the most jaw-dropping and may ultimately be the most potent. It is unusual enough to see officers—active or retired—publicly denouncing military superiors or civilian leaders for mistakes or deficiencies in wartime. But for NCOs—none higher in rank than staff sergeant—to air their contrary views on the war (and, implicitly, their sour views of high-ranking policy-makers) is, as far as I can tell, unprecedented: an act of, depending on your politics, great courage or outright insubordination—or, perhaps, both.
It is for this reason that the seven junior soldiers might have the deepest political impact. They, after all, are breathing, fighting specimens of "the troops," whose interests President George W. Bush routinely invokes to justify staying the course.
Seven US Soldiers Speak Out - The Iraq War As We See ItViewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is surreal.
Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.
As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins.
more at link from - Buddhika Jayamaha is a U.S. Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.
Bush versus the Constitution
Repeatedly through our history, the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution have been threatened in war by an overreacting government and then reaffirmed in peace by calmer leadership. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, the suppression of free speech during and after World War I, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, McCarthyism, and the wiretapping of Vietnam-era dissenters -- all of these came to be seen, once fears subsided, as violations of our freedoms and embarrassments to our heritage.
George W. Bush's presidency is another era of overreaction at the expense of constitutional rights, but the prospects for a quick correction are not auspicious. Nothing has helped end earlier bouts of repression so much as the fact that the wars themselves came to a close, and nothing has so exposed our liberties to indefinite jeopardy as the conception of a "war on terrorism" with no end.
