Adam Kokesh of Iraq Veterans Against the War (Part 1)

Kokesh Reams Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) for Backing the War (Part 2)

Dave Lindorff on the Bush/Cheney Push for War with Iran (Part 1)

Dave Lindorff on the Bush/Cheney Push for War with Iran (Part 2)

By Dave Lindorff

What the hell is Barack Obama talking about?

He says that America should be talking with leaders in Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Korea, Syria. Fine. But he calls this “talking with our enemies.”

What enemies?

Let’s get something straight. Enemies are people who are fighting against you, who are trying to destroy you. Is Cuba fighting against America? Is Iran fighting against America? Is Venezuela fighting against America? Syria? China? No. These countries may be rivals, but they are not enemies.

The closest we come to having an actual enemy in today’s world is North Korea, where we are technically still in some kind of truce following a hot war, but of course that war itself has been over for half a frigging century, and nobody has been killing anyone on the Korean Peninsula in decades.

Tonight's alert is a little different, in the form of an humorous and entertaining (hopefully) story. If you have already called your members of Congress toll free at 800-828-0498, 800-459-1887 or 800-614-2803, to voice opposition to the Bush/Cheney escalation, please consider forwarding a link to this posting to all your friends.

ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/no_escalation2.php

Late this last fall, as November approached, Mr. and Mrs. America decided to go shopping for a new car. Almost from the day they had bought it six years earlier, their current car, a Liberator model, had been very unreliable. Its instruments were constantly telling them things they knew from their own senses to be untrue. The gas gauge would indicate empty when they had just topped up the tank, or the speedometer would show them at over the speed limit when parked in their driveway.

Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), the new Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has announced a tentative schedule for hearings to investigate the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war and to examine further options to free the United States from that quagmire.

“The purpose of these hearings will be to seek an answer to the question currently dominating the national debate: what options remain to secure America’s interests in Iraq? Where do we go from here?” said Biden.

Atrios is screaming, but no one at the top of the Democratic Party seems to be listening when he says repeatedly - and utterly correctly - that Bush will never leave Iraq, no matter how many members of the James Baker/Leon Panetta/David Broder WiseOldMenOfWashington Party ask him.

How is that little old me, one of the blogosphere's most disreputable rabid lambs, understands what's going a hell of a lot better than The Wise Old Men of Washington? Really, I'm just aghast at this. Bush has made it quite clear for months and years that leaving is losing. My brilliant insight isn't based on my ability to look deep into his soul, it is based on my ability to hear what he has said over and over again. It's possible the ISG could've provided cover for Bush to shift from "stay the course!" to something slightly different, but only if that slightly different thing didn't involve, you know, leaving. Bush has made that perfectly clear repeatedly. Leaving is losing. Staying is winning. It's that simple.

It took nine months for Poppy's wise men (Iraq Study Group) to come to conclusions on Smirk's IraqNam Quagmire. A hundred pages of BS, recommending everything, including the kitchen sink, to try and fix Jr.'s FU. What it boils down to is a twist on an old time riddle and rhyme -

Humpty Bushty sat on Iraq.

Humpty Bushty's Iraq suffered great attacks.

All of Poppy's wisemen and all Junior's yes-men

Can't put Humpty Bushty's IraqNam together again.

(more)

From the Huffington Post:

The First Catastrophic President In American History Says: "Not Satisfied With The Pace Of Progress In Iraq"

By Brent Budowsky

It was genuinely sad to see George Herbert Walker Bush cry, not out of pride for Jeb Bush, but out of horror for what has become of the George W. Bush Presidency.

It is even more sad to see American Gold Star mothers, with sons and daughters who pay the price for his extremism, ignorance and vanity.

MORE MORE MORE

Here's some reaction from leading Senate Democrats on the findings of the Iraq Study Group released yesterday. Note especially that Senators Feingold and Boxer believe that to some extent the Baker-Hamilton panel missed the real point underlying our current non-strategy in Iraq:

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

“Each day the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Nominee Robert Gates said ‘we’re not winning.’ Today, the Iraq Study Group said Iraq is ‘grave and deteriorating.’ Like the Iraq Study Group, I urge the President to change course."

The Iraq study group report, which dominated the news on Wednesday with the alleged revelation that the politics of George W. Bush in the Middle East are not working, just as the day before Robert Gates' Senate confirmation hearings dominated the news with his admission that the U.S. is losing the war in Iraq, are both part of an orchestrated campaign to provide political cover for one of the most corrupt governments in the history of democracy and to keep public interest and media coverage away from key issues that face the planet.

And once again, the complete lack of understanding of the issues on the part of the U.S.

From the Washington Note:

The POTUS Plan: Mobilize All Living Former Presidents For A Historic Middle East Peace Initiative

by Brent Budowsky

At this moment of crisis and chaos, it is time for American leaders to lead and lift this land we love, to rally what Thomas Jefferson called the decent opinion of mankind, and to inspire young generations everywhere with a panoramic vision for a lasting peace in the Middle East.

The real America is never a choice between the arrogance of power and the fear of failure, it is the sustenance of military and economic power put in the service of great aspirations of good and decent people everywhere.