The Era: March 2006

Finally, Some Good News From Iraq

American Reporter Kidnapped in Baghdad Is Released

Jill Carroll, the American reporter who was kidnapped in Baghdad nearly three months ago, was freed today on a street in western Baghdad and walked into the office of an Islamic political party clutching a letter from her captors and asking the party to help her.

The Cost of Produce

Thoughts from The Weed Garden
Wherein we investigate what just happens to grow

When I was a teenager in the 1960s, my step-brother was in a summer program that recruited teens to work in the fields alongside Mexican and Chinese laborers. Every day he came home smelling delightfully of strawberries and complaining mightily about how hard the work was. Continue reading here...

Today's Immigration Battle

Corporatists vs. Racists (and Labor is Left Behind)
By Thom Hartmann

The corporatist Republicans ("amnesty!") are fighting with the racist Republicans ("fence!"), and it provides an opportunity for progressives to step forward with a clear solution to the immigration problem facing America. Continue reading here...

How Does He Get Away With This?

Bush Blames Saddam for Iraq Instability

President Bush said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government. ''Iraq is a nation that is physically and emotionally scarred by three decades of Saddam's tyranny,'' Bush said in a speech to Freedom House, a more than 60-year-old independent organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world.

Change of Course

By John R. Bomar

George Bush’s recent admission that our occupation of Iraq will extend beyond his presidency passed with hardly a ripple in American public opinion. Uh oh.
Continue reading here...

Facts and Folly

By Thomas L. Friedman

I was leaving for a trip the other day and scooped up some reading material off my desk for the plane ride. Continue reading here...
*Note: I usually do not post Friedman articles because I find him to be too much of a corporatist but I think this piece is important.

Osama Who?

More human remains found in building near World Trade Center site

Construction workers cleaning toxic waste from a vacant skyscraper near the World Trade Center site have found more bone fragments and human remains, officials said today. More than 40 percent of the victims at the trade center have not been identified.

Corporate War Profiteers

Halliburton overcharged for Iraq oil work

Halliburton Co., the world's second largest oil services company, repeatedly overcharged taxpayers and provided substandard cost reports under a $1.2 billion contract to restore Iraq's southern oil fields, according to a new report by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman.

Let the Light Shine In

Bush Was Set on Path to War, British Memo Says

Behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times. *Photo from The Freeway Blogger

True Patriots Rising

Impeach! The Shot Heard ‘Round the World
by Kathryn Casa

The resolution that roared
1. Misled the nation about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction;
2. Misled the nation about ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda;
3. Used these falsehoods to lead our nation into war unsupported by international law;
4. Not told the truth about American policy with respect to the use of torture; and
5. Has directed the government to engage in domestic spying, in direct contravention of U.S. law.
Continue reading here...

Fly Into a Building? Who Could Imagine?

By Maureen Dowd

Three little words:

Still employed there.

Of all the through-the-looking-glass moments in the last few days, the strangest is this: The F.B.I officer who arrested and questioned Zacarias Moussaoui told a jury that he had alerted his superiors about 70 times that Mr. Moussaoui was a radical Islamic fundamentalist who hated America and might be plotting to hijack an airplane. Continue reading here...

"The Final Word Is Hooray!"

Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

Weeks after thse invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War. Continue reading here...

Pull the wool over your eyes

Bush Asks U.S. to Look Past Iraq Bloodshed

Beginning the fourth year of an unpopular war, President Bush defended his Iraq record on Monday against skeptical questioning. He said he could "understand people being disheartened" but appealed to Americans to look beyond the bloodshed and see signs of progress.
Ongoing Wave of Violence in Iraq Kills 39
Freedom? What we left behind in Afghanistan: Afghan on trial for Christianity

Bogus Bush Bashing

By Paul Krugman

"The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is 'incompetent,' and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: 'idiot' and 'liar.' " Continue reading here...

Round the bend

By John R. Bomar

When the Secretary of Defense writes an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post trying to defend the indefensible, you know things must be desperate. When the house of cards you construct begins to tumble down around your ears -- a house built on sand -- happy-talk and self-delusion no longer work. Continue reading here...

Pigs!

Senate gives Bush his defense budget request

The Senate agreed to put back $3 billion into Pentagon accounts that was taken out of Bush's budget request by the Senate Budget Committee. The Senate defeated Democrats' call for $1.5 billion more for veterans health care that they said was needed to deal with the rising numbers of wounded soldiers returning from Iraq.

Enough said...

Hat tip to Freeway Blogger

The same crap over and over again

Bush defends Iraq policy
Poll: Americans Pessimistic On Iraq
80 killed in Iraq bomb blasts, mortar attacks
UK:reducing troops, changing views
Rice:Visiting Indonesia, Restoring Military Ties

Dr. Strangelove is Our President

By JOHN BLAIR

Is this a bad dream? Please wake me up! Is Dr. Strangelove really our President?
But, it is not a dream. George W. Bush has decided that the world needs another nuclear arms race and has done so by going to India and signing an agreement to undermine the five decade success of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty which India has refused to sign. Continue reading here...

Governor praises young thought police who taped criticism of Bush

Gov. Bill Owens praised the Overland High School student who taped and then made public a teacher's classroom criticism of President Bush's foreign policy. "The governor has demonstrated a lack of knowledge about the First Amendment for many, many years," Lane said. He "has a First Amendment right to say whatever he wants."