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Outsiders? Liberators!

The Iraqi prime minister today reacted angrily to warnings that the country risked losing US support unless it shunned sectarianism in its new government.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari spoke out after Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, said Iraqi leaders could lose support unless they established a government in which the police and army were beyond the control of religious parties.

Mr Khalilzad said Washington was investing billions of dollars in Iraq and did not want to see that money go to support sectarian policies....

Mr al-Jaafari said Iraqis did not need to be told what to do by outsiders.
Link

posted by degustibus at 10:54 AM

 
Who would die a martyr to sense in a country where the religion is
folly?
William Congreve
posted by degustibus at 3:45 PM

 
Inscrutable Dems? Or Just Plain Old Spineless Dems?

Rockefeller (following Libby's indictment & resignation, quoted by Josh Marshall):

"We must send a strong message to all the patriotic Americans in our intelligence agencies who continue to serve their country at great personal risk. Our government and our judicial system will not tolerate those who leak classified information and put the lives of others at risk.”

Josh Marshall::

Accountability for the Congress's failure to pursue its oversight responsibilities in this case does not end on the Republican side of the aisle. Nor does it end with Rockefeller. He's the ranking member of the committee, with unique access and power. But he's not the only Democrat on the committee. Why stand up now when they didn't stand up before? The Republicans' behavior at least has the logic of self-interest behind it. That of the Democrats' is inscrutable.

posted by degustibus at 6:51 PM

 

The Tough on Crime Guys

From Firedoglake & elsewhere

Bill Frist (R-TN): To not remove President Clinton for grand jury perjury lowers uniquely the Constitution's removal standard, and thus requires less of the man who appoints all federal judges than we require of those judges themselves.

I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the President. He is not above the law. If an ordinary citizen committed these crimes, he would go to jail.

Lindsey Graham: Should he be impeached? Very quickly; the hardest decision I think I will ever make. Learning that the president lied to the grand jury about sex, I still believe that every president of the United States, regardless of the matter they called to testify about before a grand jury should testify truthfully and if they don't they should be subject to losing their job.

Henry Hyde (R-ILL, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee): But when circumstances require you to participate in a formal court proceeding and under oath mislead the parties and the court by lying, that is a public act and deserves public sanction. Perjury is a crime with a five-year penalty.

James Sensenbrenner: (R-WI): What is on trial here is the truth and the rule of law. Our failure to bring President Clinton to account for his lying under oath and preventing the courts from administering equal justice under law, will cause a cancer to be present in our society for generations. I want those parents who ask me the questions, to be able to tell their children that even if you are president of the United States, if you lie when sworn "to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," you will face the consequences of that action, even when you don't accept the responsibility for them.

Chuck Hagel (R-NB): There can be no shading of right and wrong. The complicated currents that have coursed through this impeachment process are many. But after stripping away the underbrush of legal technicalities and nuance, I find that the President abused his sacred power by lying and obstructing justice. How can parents instill values and morality in their children? How can educators teach our children? How can the rule of law for every American be applied equally if we have two standards of justice in America--one for the powerful and the other for the rest of us?

Mitch McConnell (R-KY): Perjury and obstruction hammer away at the twin pillars of our legal system: truth and justice. Every witness in every deposition is required to raise his or her right hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them God. Every witness in every grand jury proceeding and in every trial is required to raise his or her right hand and swear to tell the truth. Every official declaration filed with the court is stamped with the express affirmation that the declaration is true. In the words of our nation's first Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Jay: `if oaths should cease to be held sacred, our dearest and most valuable rights would become insecure.'

Most delicious:

This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law. Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us, when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth.

No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That’s the principle that we all hold very dear in this country.

-Rep. Tom DeLay, on the impeachment of President Clinton, October 9, 1998

Best advice::

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
--Woody Allen

posted by degustibus at 6:48 AM

 
9-23-04

Poor, Black, and Left Behind

By Mike Davis

The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath.

New Orleans had spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they had ten thousand body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the city's poorest or most infirm residents. The day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, New Orlean's daily, the Times-Picayune, ran an alarming story about the "large group…mostly concentrated in poorer neighborhoods" who wanted to evacuate but couldn't.

Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome.

In the event, Ivan the Terrible spared New Orleans, but official callousness toward poor Black folk endures.
TomDispatch

Yeah, 9-23-04

posted by degustibus at 7:51 PM

 
No Cake at the Superdome -- Let them eat shit.

We need to understand that the capability has been there from the start to drive water and food right up to the convention center, as those roads have been clear -- it's how the National Guard drove into the city.

Let me say this again: The government is intentionally not allowing food or water in.
Mitch Cohen

posted by degustibus at 12:23 PM

 
Giving

Okay, pony up, but where to put the bucks?

I consulted my brother who's got a much more eleemosynary spirit than I -- he volunteers at the Salvation Army, does good in many ways.

I tell him it's a toss up between the Red Cross and the Sally. He tells me that the international head of the Sally gets $310 a week, a car and a house, just like every other officer in the Salvation Army.

The head of the Red Cross gets $250,000 a year.

My Hurricane Katrina disaster relief donation is going :: Here
posted by degustibus at 6:27 PM

 
& Hope is a thing with wings & pigs fly

If one good thing comes out of this tragedy, it will be the repudiation for decades of the idea that people who don't believe in government have any place running the government.
--Jeffrey Dubner

posted by degustibus at 1:37 PM

 
What Went Wrong? It Was Privitised.

Now we know why there was no FEMA presence --

New Orleans' seemingly unintentionally accurately named 'catastrophic hurricane disaster plan' was privatised last year.

IEM, Inc., the Baton Rouge-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Lenin's Tomb

I think this may mean a lot of work for lawyers.

"So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job" Paul Krugman, NYT

No: Not so much a can't-do government, but a sold-out, won't-do government, your Ownership Society.

This way to the egress, folks.
posted by degustibus at 1:14 PM