Professor Smartass

As I listened to the umpteenth story these last seven years on Republican torture it occurred to me that Democrats have a profound advantage on gay issues--we only support VOLUNTARY gay sex.

When the Abu Ghraib story broke, the defenses offered by the right in addition to the "few bad apples" lie was that it was no worse than a fraternity hazing or "Skull & Bones initiation" as Rush Limbaugh said (an inadvertent slip revealing what kind of people populate these 'elite' fraternities).

So I guess these republicans and their apologists think VOLUNTARY gay sex is bad, but COERCING likely heterosexuals to have gay sex at Abu Ghraib and in out of control police stations on "Guiliani time" where I seem to recall a guy in custody being sodomized with a plunger. Bush has fought tooth and nail to keep the power to do these tortures and only this week barred the use of sexual torture (and even then left some wiggle room so he could still authorize it). On a less trumpeted issue, it's not hard to figure out which side of the prison rape issue republicans fall on. Most have no trouble with gay rape of heterosexuals when it's part of punishing someone for selling a dime bag of pot or the like (truly violent offenders or big gangsters aren't in much danger).

The basis of right wing concern about gays is that they will somehow "convert" people to be gay. The vast majority of gays, especially those who want to get married, want to do their gay things only with other gays.

By contrast, if you are a heterosexual and cross the GOP, you could be forced to perform gay sex acts.

There's got to be a way to boil this down to a bumper sticker.

I bring this issue up at all because I know some democratic candidates for president will be tempted co-opt GOP positions on gays like opposing gay marriage and or even civil unions.

This approach could give them a chance to appeal to right wing homophobes without kicking a loyal constituency in the nuts as supposed "centrist" Democrats seem so willing to do.

Would saying Dems only support VOLUNTARY gay sex help with righties?
	NO-- the right would really prefer lynching. anything that emphasizes live and let live is repugnant to them
	NO--righties would not be able to process something they didn't hear from Rush or Fox News. They are the gimp locked in the trunk of the right wing co
	MAYBE--if it got enough airplay and Democrats had the balls to do it (two ginormous and unlikely ifs)
	YES--the fear of being raped would trump the more obtuse threat of being converted by osmosis if gays married.
	I'm George W. Bush, and sodomy is not gay unless I say so. See sodomy is gay sex between two terrist loving Democrats. When you rape a prisoner, yur jes showin' em who's boss.
	other
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Labels: abu ghraib, closet gay republicans, framing, gay marriage, homoerotic torture, meme, rush limbaugh

I went to get a link on the military spending chart in the CIA World Factbook and noticed it had changed from dollars spent to percentage of GDP, so it now looks like this:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-fact...



Wow! Our military spending looks pretty modest there--less than Greece or Chad.

In the old dollar chart, we were number ONE and spent eight times as much as number two, China. I happened to have a screenshot of it on my hard drive:




I can see why some would argue that the dollar figure is misleading. We have higher labor costs to pay our soldiers, and our weapons are a lot more expensive (although the weapons expense in some cases like aircraft and electronics do give us a qualitative edge). But the GDP percentage is even more misleading. The casual observer might assume that Yemen or Syria could put up a good fight against us or even invade us since they spend so much more of their GDP than us when in reality we could wipe out most of their military in an afternoon of airstrikes (occupation would be another matter).

It would be hard to sell wars without that misperception though. If someone realized that our military spends more on toilet paper than the boogey man of the month spends on their whole military, they might not get scared. The same is true about nukes. Whenever the Bushies or Congress talk about the nuclear "threat" from Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, they conveniently leave out that we have 10,000 nuclear warheads and if any of those countries nuked us or gave nukes to terrorists who did, we could burn that country off the map and have enough left to kill everyone on earth five times. We forget that, but the rest of the world doesn't.

If the CIA thought that the dollar figure was misleading, they could have corrected that with caveats and MORE information like troop levels, number of aircraft carriers, and so on that can be found in public domain sources anyway. I suspect this change wasn't the CIA's idea though. This is the kind of statistical slight of hand a public relations firm would come up with and in fact when a flak for drug companies was asked why Americans pay more for prescription drugs than any other country, especially since our tax dollars help pay to develop the drug, the flak said, "Well, Americans pay a smaller percentage of their income on drugs than most other countries," as if the drug companies were selfless non-profits charging based on ability to pay.

I hope when the Bushies are gone this kind of obfuscation will go with them.

Labels: cia, cia world factbook, military spending, propaganda, public relations

FOREIGN POLICY: American foreign policy for the last few decades has had little to do with our security or even our economic well-being, nor does it promote the welfare or democracy of countries on the receiving end. Instead, neoliberalism, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, World Bank, and the IMF serve a handful of very wealthy people and corporations.

Americans ignorance of this is how 9/11 can happen and a president can get away with saying it was because they "hate our freedom."

Ignorance of this also kept alarm bells from going off when Bush applied the same program to America that has been used on Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere with the same disastrous results: run up gigantic government debts that can't possibly be paid, and collect by forcing the country to drastically cut social services and privatize everything including essential services like WATER, and sell off their natural resources for a song, allowing all the profits to be expropriated.

CLASS: Class exists. Class warfare exists. If Rush Limbaugh screams about his opponents committing class warfare, it's because the class he serves is winning and don't want anyone to notice. America has always prided itself on access to upward mobility and rags to riches stories, but right now that path is narrower and steeper. We need to open it up.

CULTURAL ISSUES: Both Democrats and Republicans prefer to talk about gay marriage, abortion, flag desecration, prayer in school, and all those other symbolic cultural issues because while people are getting in a lather about something that probably doesn't affect them, the pols can quietly line their pockets and the pockets of their cronies. Whether abortion is legal or not or your gay neighbors are married is not going to help you put food on the table, pay for you to go to the doctor, or put your kid through college. All of those things cost money and some are hard to solve. By contrast, prayer, abortion, etc. costs nothing (at least to the politicians). When a pol hears you talking about that stuff, he breathes a sigh of relief--for all he cares, you could be talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.


DEFENSE: Only a small portion of our "defense" budget is actually for defense. China is an instructive example. They spend about a seventh what we do on defense and yet they are in no danger of being invaded or likely even attacked. Why? They would be hell to occupy. Similarly, if we are having trouble occupying a medium-small country like Iraq, imagine some other country trying to occupy us. Apart from having to cross one of two oceans, every yahoo and his brother have a gun and lots of places to hide and shoot at the for'ners. We would be a pain in the ass.

Most of our defense budget is for OFFENSE, either protecting economic interests overseas or acquiring more. No one in the Persian Gulf region would come over here to attack us if we weren't propping up dictators, and now trying to install the semblance of democracy (so long as it lets our companies pump the oil, at a pace and price of the companies choosing) at the barrel of a gun.

Every war has at least one side who is a thief, sometimes both. He goes to another country to steal their land and resources. Hitler said this plainly in the Hossbach Memorandum before the war. Rarely is an invasion about anything else--maybe never. I don't suppose Hawaii was a threat to us when we annexed them unless they were going to paddle over here and throw pineapples at California.

Marine Corps General and two time Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler said it best:

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

FULL TEXT:
http://www.hackvan.com/pub/stig/anti-govt/...

When someone of either party tells you we need a Cold War size military, they have one of three things in mind:

• looking tougher than the other guy
  
  
• getting donations from defense contractors
  
  
• using the military to help other business interests.
  

Defense could probably be done with a fourth of our defense budget.

MORALITY IN GOVERNMENT: There is none except what we force them to have. None. Most politicians would not only kill an Iraqi to fill their friends pockets, they would kill you. Here they don't do it with bombs but by blocking safety regulations like inspecting beef for Mad Cow Disease or having safety testing for supplements. I worked for an attorney service and served papers on the company that made herbal ecstasy. Seven kids died at one party from taking it. Orrin Hatch takes money from the supplement industry and bars any testing or safety warnings. Members of both party either serve or cringe before the health insurance industry, which denies millions of us health care by pricing us out of the market or worse, not approving of coverage we paid for and putting us on hold until we die. Politicians know those health care stories. Lots of their constituents have called and said their wife or husband or kid died because they were denied care or couldn't afford it in the first place, and the politician thinks,

"Hmmm...save lives or get a campaign donation. Those insurance companies would really chew my ass if I went after them. Probably back my opponent...Marcy! Send these people an autographed photo! That ought to make them happy."

Got any to add?

Labels: chamber of commerce, class warfare, gatt, imf, nafta, privatization, trade agreements, world bank, wto

Best quick explanation of Iraq Oil Theft Law	In depth study compares Iraq Oil Theft Law with neighbors deals
News on Iraq Oil Theft from Iraqi point of view	Best investigative reporting on big oil & US gov't plans for Iraq oil

sign Nobel Prize winners petition opposing Iraq Oil Theft Law

Easy contact Congress on Oil Theft Law

Easy contact Congress on Oil Theft Law & broader oil issues

Current stories on oil on Professor Smartass

Detailed report on restructuring of Iraq's oil industry to benefit our oil companies


Greg Palast's timeline of Iraq oil meetings (with video interviews with the players)


Oil & Gas Journal, 2002: We need Iraq War to keep Saddam from pumping too much and lowering prices

***DSM: Bush assures Putin Iraq War won't lower oil prices***


Colin Powell's chief of staff on oil motive for Iraq War

Broader background on oil, war, and foreign policy

Naomi Klein on privatization and its effects in Iraq:

Economic war crimes in Geneva and Hague Conventions:

The Hague Convention of 1907 (IV) see articles 47, 53, 55

The Geneva Convention of 1949 (IV) we've broken almost every section of article 147, and Bush has personally broken article 148.

The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time

A good brief summary of neoliberalism:

How "economic hit men" set it up and enforce it:






iraq war oil production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican GOP conservative corruption occupation International Monetary Fund imf colonialism hydrocarbon law professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation fascism democracy political opinion agent provocateur george w bush war on terror public relations foreign policy al qaeda false flag cointelpro northwoods worst president ever failure war criminal puppet fascist chimp nazi smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

Labels: antonia juhasz, daniel yergin, greg palast, hydrocarbon law, iraq war, naomi klein, oil, president george w bush, production sharing agreement, psa, the prize, war crimes

Why aren't the Democrats denouncing and investigating this Hydrocarbon Law that Iraqis don't want but Bush is forcing on them?

Gen. Jay Garner, the first guy Bush appointed to run Iraq said trying to privatize their oil would lead to violence. He was right, but the Bushies are still trying to do it anyway.

The blood of our troops and the Iraqis is on the hands of the Bush administration but if the Democrats as a group fail to speak out on this economic war crime, it will be on their hands too.

KEY EXCERPTS:



Iraq unions vow 'mutiny' over oil law

"This law cancels the great achievements of the Iraq people," Subhi al-Badri, head of the Iraqi Federation of Union Councils, told the al-Sharqiyah TV station. He referred specifically to laws that nationalized Iraq's oil sector.

Iraq holds 115 billion barrels of proven reserves, the third largest in the world, and likely much more when the country is fully explored.

It could produce more than the 2 million barrels per day, and many are pushing the oil law as a means of solidifying investment in the sector. The law, as drafted, allows for foreign access to the oil, a line that must not be crossed, the oil unions say.

"If the Iraqi Parliament approves this law, we will resort to mutiny," he said. "This law is a bomb that may kill everyone. Iraqi oil does not belong to any certain side. It belongs to all future generations."

FULL TEXT

More on OIL THEFT motive for Iraq War

Labels: big oil, congress, democrats, hydrocarbon law, iraq, president george w bush, production sharing agreement, psa, war crimes, worst president ever

Please inform your righty friends:

EXCERPTS:

Expert: Al-Qaida can't conquer Iraq

Published: July 20, 2007 at 6:11 PM

"Al-Qaida also had a much larger force in Afghanistan -- an estimated 18,000 fighters. Even the U.S. government concedes that there are fewer than 2,000 al-Qaida fighters in Iraq, and the Iraq Study Group put the figure at only 1,300," Carpenter wrote. "It strains credulity to imagine 1,300 fighters -- and foreigners at that -- taking over and controlling a country of 26 million people."

A poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland last year found 94 percent of Sunni Muslims in Iraq, 98 percent of Shiites and 100 percent of Kurds had a somewhat or very unfavorable view of al-Qaida, Carpenter wrote.

"Even if U.S. troops left Iraq, the successor government would continue to be dominated by the Kurds and Shiites, since they make up more than 80 percent of Iraq's population," Carpenter said. "That doesn't suggest a reliable safe haven for al-Qaida."

He blamed al-Qaida's numerous violent attacks in Iraq, mainly on Shiite civilians, for the group's unpopularity in the country. -- Leander Schaerlaeckens, UPI Correspondent

FULL TEXT

Labels: al qaeda, al qaida, cato institute, iraq, withdrawal, zarqawi

It is fairly obvious that the only reason the Democrats are holding back on impeachment is they are afraid it will hurt their political chances in 2008, whether they remove Bush or not.

The Democrats want Bush and Cheney in place so 2008 will be a referendum on their corrupt, destructive government. If they are removed, they will be history, and for Americans, history is anything that isn't in the current news cycle, and only a handful of eggheads care about history.

They also mistakenly believe the rest of us are so stupid we can't tell the difference between the politically motivated impeachment of Bill Clinton and trying to remove the most dangerous, reckless, and corrupt president in our history.

However, if they impeached Bush & Cheney and they was NOT removed, they would not only still be in place, but the media would be forced to cover the hearings and a lot of the public would be hearing about their impeachable offenses. That would make the anti-republican tsunami even greater in '08.

But it would also make the Bush & Cheney offenses so obvious, enough republicans would vote to impeach,just to get the albatross off their neck, and they would be removed.

While I would prefer to see both removed, and sent to prison here or sent to the Hague, impeaching just Cheney could meet the needs of our constitutional system for accountability, and still leave an emasculated Bush in place as the political punching bag they want. With Cheney gone, half of Bush's brain would be gone.

And impeaching just Cheney is exactly what Dennis Kucinich proposed in his bill.

The objection to this is it may give Bush a chance to give one of the GOP candidates for president some prestige by appointing them as VP, and possibly catapult some seeming moderate to the GOP nomination who might otherwise not have made it through the gauntlet of American Taliban voters (if Bush appointed a far righty, that would be the best of all possible worlds since the guy would have the same pedestal, but be doomed in the general election no matter what). A 'moderate' VP would have a real problem as long as Bush was in office though--he would have to defend the corruption, destruction, and failure of his boss, so his appointment would only be a gift if Bush resigned or was impeached himself.

I doubt that Bush would do something as selfless as resign just to help the party.

Labels: cheney energy task force, Dennis Kucinich, dick cheney, greg palast wmd, impeach, impeachment, iraq war resolution

The most excruciating thing about the Bush administration's oil theft law they are forcing on the Iraqis is not the silence of most Democrats in Congress about it, but that even in the midst of calling for our troops to withdraw, DEMOCRATS demand that Iraqis pass the law that will give over 80% of their oil income to big oil companies, as Levin did during a speech on his own troop withdrawal bill:

The Iraqi leaders agreed to approve the hydrocarbon law by October 2006 as well. That too has not been accomplished. They didn’t do what they had promised they would do.

Carl Levin 7/17/07

I would like to believe Levin and others like him who voted for including passage of the Hydrocarbon Law in the benchmarks in their Iraq bill are just ignorant, but it isn't true. When they say Bush has mismanaged the war, they aren't being euphemistic and pussyfooting around saying he shouldn't have gone in at all--they really mean me mismanaged invading Iraq and giving its oil to American corporations with enough subtly and finesse that the Iraqis didn't complain too much--if that's even possible.


Just this Monday, 5oo Iraqis in Basra were protesting this law Levin is demanding they pass. If we want to teach the Iraqis something about democracy, we should refrain from telling them what laws to pass about their oil, especially when they have a gun to their head.


Nobel Women's Initiative Iraq Oil Theft Law page

THEIR PETITION OPPOSING THE IRAQ OIL THEFT LAW

IRAQ OIL THEFT RESOURCES

Labels: carl levin, hydrocarbon law, iraq, president george w bush, war crimes, worst president ever

NOTE: cross-posted at John Edwards website to make his staffers actually consider bringing it to his attention. Consider doing the same to other candidates.

If Democrats were serious about ending the war, they would make the GOP lies about the war all the more obvious by giving up on vague platitudes and state the facts about Iraq plainly and often.

Some of the facts I have in mind have been covered in the press on page A13 or further back, but have only been acknowledged by a handful of Democrats, not the leadership, and NO republicans.

The main ones: the war is about oil, the Iraqis want us to leave, the insurgency is NOT al Qaeda, and the Iraqi government is only "sovereign" as long as they agree with Bush.

If a member of your family was killed, and the cop assigned to the case never got more detailed in his updates on the case than saying, "Well, he was in a dangerous neighborhood, and we all know what happens there," you would rightly be worried about whether he was actually working the case.

Unfortunately, that is the case with most Democrats and Iraq. While they did an admirable job of exposing the lies about why we went into Iraq, they never dropped the other shoe and loudly explained the truth.

I could almost buy that they are trying to avoid kicking the dragons and quietly back out of the war except for a couple of nagging details--many back the Hydrocarbon Law that Iraqis rightly see as theft of their oil income, and many Democratic withdrawal proposals have massive loopholes about leaving some troops for counter-terrorism, force protection, and training Iraqis

Some of the facts I have in mind have been covered in the press on page A13 or further back, but have only been acknowledged by a handful of Democrats, not the leadership, and NO republicans.

I'm willing to listen to any proposals provided they squarely and upfront acknowledge the FACTs. Conversely, the less I hear about these things, the more I suspect the person talking is lying.

OIL

There is a more grown up, intellectual lie about why we invaded Iraq than the terrorist boogey man that says we went in to ensure access to a cheap source of oil to run our economy. Right wingers Pat Robertson and Tom Friedman said this plainly. Friedman said if the war went well, the price could drop to as little as $6 a barrel.

An additional reason this may have seemed strategically urgent is the world's oil supply has either peaked or is about to, and as it declines, the Middle East will be the last region sucked dry.

I could see why this would make sense to someone and even make some in the Pentagon see a need to play along with the lies because it was in our best interest. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff falls into this camp.

The only problem is, the behavior of the oil companies, the loyalties of the Bushies, and as BBC journalist Greg Palast found, the CIA's top oil analyst all undercut this argument.

And why exactly would oil men want to lower the price of their product, so they have to pay more and work harder to make the same or lower profits?

In fact, they wanted to make sure Saddam didn't pump too much and drive prices down, as even the Oil & Gas Journal said before the war. So we went to war to keep the price at the pump HIGH.

Recent price gouging and record profits by oil companies shows how much they care about the rest of us.

Timeline of oil company machinations regarding Iraq

Detailed study on how Bush's plan for Iraq's oil compares to Gulf neighbors

Restructuring Iraq's oil during a military occupation to favor our oil companies is probably a war crime.


The Hague Convention of 1907 (IV) see articles 47, 53, 55

The Geneva Convention of 1949 (IV) we've broken almost every section of article 147, and Bush has personally broken article 148.


The mechanism for giving the bulk of the profits from the oil, up to 80%, to major oil corporations is the Hydrocarbon Law that Democrats included in the benchmarks Iraqis must meet. Iraqi oil workers, scholars, and bureaucrats from the Saddam era strongly oppose this law, and sent a letter to Congress saying so. The vice president of Iraq even said the Hydrocarbon law screws Iraqis.

Screwing Iraqis out of their oil income is so important to the Bushies that they fired Gen. Garner, the first colonial governor of Iraq, when he correctly said delaying elections and privatizing oil would inflame resistance to the occupation.

Watch interview with Jay Garner




IRAQIS WANT US TO LEAVE

80% or more of Iraqis want us to leave according to a British intel commissioned poll. That Brit poll found that only 1% of Iraqis feel safer because we are there.

This is pretty consistent with the spring 2004 polls by Gallup and the Bush appointed CPA. To Jack Murtha's credit, he actually acknowledged these polls in his floor statement.

The Gallup poll in Spring 2004 found that 57% of Iraqis wanted us to leave immediately, and 71% viewed us as occupiers not liberators.

The Bush appointed CPA poll spring 2004 had similar results. 86% wanted us to leave after the January 2005 election and 82% viewed us as occupier not liberators.

Even Iyad Allawi, the thug who used to be an enforcer for Saddam that Bush appointed prime minister of the provisional government recently said the human rights situation in Iraq is at least as bad now as it was under Saddam.

At the Cairo Conference on Iraq, the Iraqi participants from all factions agreed that while insurgent attacks on civilians were wrong, those on occupation forces are not.

The war in Iraq has had an even worse effect on opinion of us in the Arab world. While some Americans may still believe the crap and platitudes about fighting terrorism and spreading democracy, few in the Arab world did, and the number is approaching absolute zero. It is not that they oppose democracy or "aren't ready" for it (one of the most racist bipartisan talking points ever) but that they know Bush cares about as much about democracy in the Arab world as he did about black people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.




THE INSURGENCY IS NOT AL QAEDA

Israelis and Saudis separately studied our interrogations of foreign fighters captured in Iraq and found that most had no prior connection to al Qaeda and were motivated by our invasion, not religious fundamentalism.

The military admits they inflated al Qaeda and Zarqawi's role in the insurgency for propaganda purposes in both Iraq and the US The military admits they inflated Zarqawi's role in the insurgency for propaganda purposes in both Iraq and the US.

The Iraqis don't like al Qaeda. The Bushies use this to make the leap to say that they don't like all the insurgency. The reality is Iraqis recognize al Qaeda is responsible for attacks on civilians and are trying to inflame sectarian violence, and sectarian violence is one of our excuses for staying.

IRAQI GOVERNMENT IS FAILING BECAUSE THEY ARE ONLY SOVEREIGN WHEN THEY AGREE WITH BUSH

The Iraqis are not apes who just descended from the trees, and can't figure out how to put a military and police force together. You might recall that they successfully invaded Kuwait, fought the much bigger Iran to a draw in the 80s, and Bush convinced us they were going to invade the US even without a navy or being able to put a plane in the air without our permission.

Bush fired all the qualified people as soon as we invaded. And the current problem is getting troops and cops to fire on their own people who they know may have a legitimate beef with us being there. Which sounds a hell of a lot like Vietnam. Wasn't that the big plan there? Train the Vietnamese to fight for us in our absence? Although it was never put that bluntly, that's the real problem. When the perception and reality are we are there to screw them out of their natural resources and kill those who protest too much with either airstrikes or death squads, it's going to be tough to find people to consistently fight for us. Those who do are unlikely to be choir boys, and likely inspire even less love for the puppet government.

When the Iraqi government does show signs of independence, Bush pulls on their choke chain HARD. Bush told them to fire their first elected prime minister Jafari, the guy who wanted to meet Noam Chomsky, and he wasn't.

The current prime minister, Maliki has said Bush will FIRE him if he doesn't get the Hydrocarbon Law passed.

The Iraqi parliament has asked to please have a say in whether the occupation continues. Bush and even Congress are very careful about never asking Iraqis what they would prefer, but the Iraqi parliament understands that their legitimacy with their own people depends on asking the US to leave.

I don't expect Republicans to be honest on these issues. Like NASCAR racers, they wear their corporate sponsorship on their sleeve and read the talking points their owners fax them.

I do expect Democrats who want progressives to vote for them to be honest about these issues because too many have divided loyalties with one foot in the corporate camp, and one foot with the American people. Getting them to tell the truth about Iraq is one way to find out if the foot on our side isn't going to be on our neck if they get elected.

Labels: benchmarks, hydrocarbon law, insurgents, iraq, john edwards, oil, polls, war on terror, withdrawal

If impeachment proceedings are started, Republicans might be relieved and vote quickly to impeach for exactly the reason Pelosi is holding back: once Bush and Cheney are out of office, they will be out of mind, exactly the way Nixon and Agnew were after they resigned. 1976 between Carter and Ford was a squeaker when it should have been a landslide in the face of Nixon's crimes and foot-dragging on ending the Vietnam War. Nixon might have been in the minds of those who read and discussed politics, but not the broad masses of people.

Another unfortunately parallel is LBJ in 1968. Though he won in a landslide in 1964, Vietnam forced him to step aside in 1968. Since he was still in office election day, what people disliked about him wasn't an abstract memory but something as immediate as that night's evening news (back when it was still worth watching). Even though Humphrey moved to an anti-war position, Nixon not only wiped him out, but an even further right candidate, George Wallace, got a big chunk of the vote.

Both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are older than me and remember these pieces of history.

While this analysis is accurate as far as determining the outcome of the next election, if it gives Bush and Cheney a pass on impeachment, the damage to our constitutional system may be permanent, and their sins will be swept under the carpet, and history rewritten that much more easily.

Most Americans are still only vaguely aware of the impeachable offenses of Bush and Cheney given the page A14 treatment they get in newspapers and near blackout on TV news. Those same outlets could elevate him to at least an average president over time if not the near deity status of Reagan.

By contrast, if he is impeached, fifty to a hundred years from now, Bush and Cheney will be members of a very small historical club that includes Clinton, Nixon, and Andrew Johnson. When grade school kids look at the list of charges against Bush and Cheney in their history books, they will wonder what all the fuss was about the other three, and when a future president takes more than half a step in the same anti-democratic, militarily aggressive direction, people will remember that grade school text and pull back on his leash hard.

Impeachment postcard to send Congress

Articles of Impeachment at ImpeachBush.org

Text of Kucinich's impeach Cheney bill H Res 333






impeach impeachment postcard president george w bush dick cheney iraq war wmd terrorism oil congress osama bin laden representative habeas corpushurricane katrina 9/11 september 11 9/11 commission venezuela haiti corruption occupation halliburton coup nancy pelosi john conyers professor smartass iraq petitionletter propaganda corporation fascism democracyhr 333 war on terror muslim dennis kucinich opinion public relations foreign policy al qaeda false flag cointelpro northwoods terrorist worst president ever failure war criminal 1976 election 1968 election karl rove lyndon b johnson abu ghraib torture torture memo nazi smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

Labels: Dennis Kucinich, dick cheney, impeach, impeachment, Lyndon b johnson, president bill clinton, president george w bush, richard nixon

I got this in an email from Antonia Juhasz, who wrote THE BUSH AGENDA, and has been one of the few journalist writing on the Iraq Hydrocarbon Law that does more than retype Karl Rove's press releases.

See the end of the article for a petition to sign in support.

Forcing the Hydrocarbon Law that was dictated by the oil companies to give them up to 80% of Iraq's oil wealth while our troops are occupying the country is a prima facie war crime. Bush will commit the act, but we will pay the price of being hated for decades to come.

See the end of the article for a petition to sign in support.

You might also email, FAX, or snail mail this to your reps in Congress, Pelosi, Reid, and just for the hell of it, the GOP leadership too.

Find & write your representative & senators

Find & write Congressional "leaders"

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE RECIPIENTS AND CONCERNED PEOPLE OF THE WORLD SIGN ON STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO THE IRAQ OIL LAW

In support of the people of Iraq, we the undersigned Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, state our opposition to the Iraq Oil Law.

We also oppose the decision of the United States government to require that the Iraq government pass the Oil Law as a condition of continued reconstruction aid in legislation passed on May 24, 2007.

A law with the potential to so radically transform the basic economic security of the people of Iraq should not be forced on Iraq while it is under occupation and in such a weak negotiating position vis-à-vis both the U.S. government and foreign oil corporations.

The Iraq Oil Law could benefit foreign oil companies at the expense of the Iraqi people, deny the Iraqi people economic security, create greater instability, and move the country further away from peace.

The U.S. government should leave the matter of how Iraq will address the future of its oil system to the Iraqi people to be dealt with at a time when they are free from occupation and more able to engage in truly democratic decision-making.

It is immoral and illegal to use war and invasion as mechanisms for robbing a people of their vital natural resources.

Signed by

Betty Williams - Ireland
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 1976

Mairead Corrigan Maguire - Ireland
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 1976

Prof. Jody Williams - USA
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 1997

Dr. Shirin Ebadi - Iran
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 2003

Prof. Wangari Maathai - Kenya
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 2004

Also signed by:

Yanar Mohammed – Iraq
Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq

Antonia Juhasz - USA
Oil Change International

***

The letter is the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Statement that has been made in to a Sign-on letter and invites your signatures. To sign, please send you name, country of residence, and organizational affiliation (if any) to Kelek Stevenson with Oil Change International at kkelekk@gmail.com . The full text is below.

The petition was written by Yanar and includes the signatures of several prominent Iraqi and American activists. You can sign the online online petition here
www.petitiononline.com/iraqoil/petition.html

I hope you will sign both.

Congressman Jim McDermott of Washington State sent a copy of the statement to every member of the United States Congress.

Jody Williams and I have conducted interviews on radio stations across the United States, Democracy Now! highlighted the statement in a special program on the law, and United Press International did a story on the release of the Statement
www.upi.com/Energy/Briefing/2007/06/20/nobel_laureates_...

The debate in the U.S. Congress has finally shifted from “whether” to “how” to end the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the devil may yet be in the details. We must be vigilant and demand not only that the occupation end, but that as the details of withdrawal are worked out, that the requirement that Iraqis change their oil system is taken off of the table.

For more information on The Iraq Oil Law and activists steps you can take, please visit the Oil Law section of my website which is updated almost daily at www.bushagenda.net/article.php?id=365, Oil Change International’s website www.PriceOfOil.org, and www.handsoffiraqioil.org

Nobel Women's Initiative Iraq Oil Law page

THEIR PETITION OPPOSING THE IRAQ OIL THEFT LAW

IRAQ OIL THEFT RESOURCES

Labels: antonia juhasz, chevron, conocophillips, hydrocarbon law, iraq, laureate, nobel prize, president george w bush, privatization, production sharing agreement, psa, war crimes, worst president ever

Most of the Democrats in congress and even those running for president seem to agree with the Bush administration on a fairly crucial issue: by omission, they imply that the Iraq War is not about oil. The Democrats in Congress even went as far as including as including a benchmark in their Iraq funding bill requiring Iraq to pass a Hydrocarbon Law that gives up to 80% of their oil income to American oil companies, claiming that the law was about dividing the money between ethnic groups even though that is only 3 lines of a 33 page document.

Al Gore is seen as the natural candidate for president by many Democrats, so when his book THE ASSAULT ON REASON came out, I wanted to see if he was honest about the oil motive for the Iraq War or gave the same evasions or vague statements of other like "We wouldn't be there if their main product were coconuts," the equivalent of a cop investigating the murder of a loved one never getting past saying "He was in a dangerous neighborhood."

To my surprise, he was honest.

What he says is not new, but he is the highest ranking American establishment figure to acknowledge these facts.

For example on page 118, he talks about the Cheney Energy Task Force looking at the map of oil exploration blocks in Iraq, and quotes a Canadian journalist as saying it looked like "a butcher's drawing of a steer with the prime cuts delineated by dotted lines." On the next page, he mentions the Bush administration blending its policy toward rogue nations with the energy policy of capturing new oil reserves.

On page 119, he says the Hydrocarbon Law was written in Washington, DC for the benefit of oil companies and given to the Bush approved government to pass.

He revisits the Hydrocarbon Law on page 195:

EXCERPT:

Later, during the invasion itself, even as looters were carrying off many of Iraq's priceless antiquities from the museums designed to commemorate the "cradle of civilization," only one government building was protected by American troops: the petroleum ministry. In 2007, even as Iraq was disintegrating into sectarian violence, the Bush administration was carefully crafting legal documents --while the United States was still the occupying power--guaranteeing preferential access to the enormous profits expected from production of Iraq's vast oil reserves for ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell.

Critics like Greg Muttitt of the human rights and environmental group Platform, which monitors the oil industry, described the proposed law as a terrible deal for the Iraqis and regional citizens, who were totally cut out of the process. "The draft went to the US government and major oil companies in July [2006]," Muttitt said in January 2007, "and to the International Monetary Fund in September. Last month I met a group of twenty Iraqi MPs in Jordan, and asked them how many has seen the legislation. Only one had."

I would like a president who speaks this bluntly about who is buying our foreign policy. Corporate American would not, and would likely try to ridicule, taint with scandal, or kill him to keep him out of the White House.

IRAQ OIL THEFT RESOURCES

Labels: al gore, big oil, cheney energy task force, hydrocarbon law, iraq

EXCERPT:

The survey by the American Research Group found that 45 percent support the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Bush, with 46 percent opposed, and a 54-40 split in favor when it comes to Cheney.

FULL TEXT

According to the Wall Street Journal, support for impeaching Clinton never broke 30% and was two to one AGAINST it even at the peak of 24/7 impeachment coverage (contrast that with the near blackout of impeachment talk about Bush).

How many average people does it take to cancel out the big business interests that like Bush's lax oversight, cronyism, and murder of Iraqis to give their oil to his corporate friends at ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, or BP?

Please share this with Pelosi and other Democratic leadership. It would also be a good idea to send this screenshot to Republicans and ask them how many votes they think they are going to get if Bush & Cheney are still in office on election day 2008. Emails are good, but they essentially get scanned for the issue and counted. Better to FAX them. Some staffer has to physically handle it, and the congressman or senator might even see it if they are walking by or waiting for a fax on their golf itinerary from some pharma lobbyist.

Contact others in Congress

We need to make our government fear us more than CEOs and lobbyists, or they will continue to play us for suckers, use our tax dollars and military to seize assets for their corporate cronies, and funnel our kids into the meat grinder to feed the dogs of war.

Labels: abu ghraib, dick cheney, impeach, impeachment, iraq war, poll, president barack obama, president george w bush, war crimes, war criminal, worst president ever