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Jatropha Being Developed as a New Biodiesel Source
by Todd Sullivan
Jatropha, remember it because the stuff will grow and flourish anywhere. Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Daimler AG (DIA) and Bayer AG (BAY) are studying the use of the plant. Folks, this is huge. Why?
ADM is going to study the conversion into biodiesel, Daimler is going to study its interaction with car engines and Bayer is going to produce herbicides, insecticides and fungicides for Jatropha plants. Essentially we have farm to engine collarborative here.
Jatropha is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds containing up to 40% oil. When the seeds are crushed and processed, the resulting oil can be used in a standard diesel engine, while the residue can also be processed into biomass to power electricity plants. The best part is that because it is so hardy, it can be planted on lands that currently do not have agricultural uses (barren land), bypassing the "food vs fuel" debate.
In a statement, the companies said, "Biodiesel derived from Jatropha nut kernels has properties similar to those of biofuels obtained from oilseed rapes. It is also characterised by a positive CO2 balance and can thus contribute to protecting the climate."
Now, is this going to affect ADM in 2008? No. But the big thing is this is a plant that can be grown in the US Southwest in lands currently uncultivated due to their climate. This is a long term story and as time goes by, its significance will grow dramatically.
Another sign of political progress:
" Iraq to reinstate Saddam party followers
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer Sat Jan 12, 3:12 PM ET
BAGHDAD - Iraq's parliament passed a benchmark law Saturday allowing lower-ranking former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to reclaim government jobs, the first major piece of U.S.-backed legislation it has adopted.
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Traveling in Manama, Bahrain, President Bush hailed the law as "an important step toward reconciliation."
"It's an important sign that the leaders of that country understand that they must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people," he said.
The seismic piece of legislation had been demanded by the United States since November 2006 and represented the first legislative payoff for Bush's decision to deploy 30,000 additional troops to the country to quell violence.
In announcing the troop buildup more than a year ago, Bush said it would provide the Iraqi government "breathing space" to begin tackling legislation designed to reconcile Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Arabs as well as Kurds.
Other benchmarks languish, though, including legislation to divvy up the country's vast oil wealth, constitutional amendments demanded by the Sunni Arabs and a bill spelling out rules for local elections.
It was not immediately clear how many former Baathists would benefit from the new legislation, titled the Accountability and Justice law. But the move was seen as a key step in the reconciliation process.
Before the party was outlawed — the first official act of L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority — its membership was estimated at between 2 million and 6 million.
The strict implementation of so-called de-Baathification rules meant that many senior bureaucrats who knew how to run ministries, university departments and state companies were fired after 35 years of Baath party rule.
Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority order No. 1 of May 16, 2003, had effectively stripped key government ministries, the military and top economic institutions of centuries of cumulative experience.
The order also was blamed for fueling the Sunni-dominated insurgency that took root in the late summer of 2003, under the leadership of ousted Sunni Baathists who sought vengeance against what they saw as their American tormentors.
The leadership cadres drew primarily from the Sunni Muslim community, reflecting Saddam's sectarian base — a minority in Iraq. Because advancement in government and professional circles during the Saddam era depended on Baath Party membership, majority Shiites also made up a large portion of the party rank-and-file.
The bill was approved by an unanimous show of hands on each of its 30 clauses. The measure seeks to relax restrictions on the rights of former party members to fill government posts. It also would allow reinstatement of thousands of lower-ranking Baathists dismissed from government jobs on Bremer's order in the first month after Baghdad fell to invading American forces.
Ali al-Lami, a senior official who has worked on the new legislation, said 3,500 former high-ranking Baathists would be offered retirement and pensions. He said 13,000 lower-ranking Baathists would be offered reinstatement. Also, 7,000 people now holding government jobs but who had been members of Saddam's security service would be retired and given pensions.
Iraq's military already had worked through the Baath Party problem, declaring that anyone who had served above the rank of major in Saddam's time would be automatically retired and put on pension. Those who held the rank of major or below were allowed to return to the military if qualified.
The Bush administration initially had promoted de-Baathification as a worthy and necessary goal, but later claimed that Iraqi authorities went beyond even what the Americans had contemplated to keep Saddam's supporters out of important jobs.
With the Sunni insurgency raging and political leaders making little progress in reconciliation, the Americans switched positions and urged the dismantling of de-Baathification laws.
Later, enacting and implementing legislation reinstating the fired Baath supporters became one of 18 so-called benchmark issues the U.S. sought as measures for progress in national reconciliation.
The legislation can become law only when approved by Iraq's presidential council. The council, comprised of Iraq's president and two vice presidents, is expected to ratify the measure.
___
As usual your point has nothing to do with my response to soxfan's post
We know you believe in socialism in general, so it's no surprise that you just extend that to health care.
Look at how Romney's mandated health care is working in Ma. The cost of insurance there is skyrocketing- up 10% last year.
The medical system does need to be reworked, but govt control is part of the cause, not generally the solution. Medicare is skyrocketing because of hospitals gaming the system.
The problem is that no one is actually paying for care. IF there were no insurance and health care costs weren't subsidized, do you think the cost would be what it is today?
Medical savings accounts, cheaper clinics in retail stores like Walmart and CVS, and importantly people paying attention to prevention will all help much more than having the government take over.
The number of patients who forsake care in socialized countries to come to be treated here points out the efficiency of those systems
Megan McArdle on Paul Krugman
Posted by: Jon Henke
Megan McArdle:
Paul Krugman is voting for doom. It's worth keeping in mind, however, that Paul Krugman has predicted eight of the last none recessions under the Bush administration.
Like Megan, I think "a recession seems likely-ish", but "Krugman predicts" is generally a good sign to bet the other way.
* "[R]ight now it looks as if the economy is stalling..." - Paul Krugman, September 2002
* "We have a sluggish economy, which is, for all practical purposes, in recession..." - Paul Krugman, May 2003
* "An oil-driven recession does not look at all far-fetched." - Paul Krugman, May 2004
* "[A] mild form of stagflation - rising inflation in an economy still well short of full employment - has already arrived." - Paul Krugman, April 2005
* "If housing prices actually started falling, we'd be looking at [an economy pushed] right back into recession. That's why it's so ominous to see signs that America's housing market ... is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble." - Paul Krugman, May 2005
* "In fact, a growing number of economists are using the "R" word [i.e., "recession"] for 2006." - Paul Krugman, August 2005
* "But based on what we know now, there's an economic slowdown coming." - Paul Krugman, August 2006
* "this kind of confusion about what's going on is what typically happens when the economy is at a turning point, when an economic expansion is about to turn into a recession" - Paul Krugman, December 2006
* "Right now, statistical models ... give roughly even odds that we're about to experience a formal recession. ... [T]he odds are very good - maybe 2 to 1 - that 2007 will be a very tough year." - Paul Krugman, December 2006
Atrios, Huffington Post, Media Matters/Eric Boehlert, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart and Glenn Greenwald are constantly telling me things like how "it's worth taking note of just how constantly wrong all of our Most Serious Political Analysts are" (Glenn Greenwald, again) and how there should be some sort of consequence for that sort of relentless wrongness. Doesn't seem to apply to their own, though.
Liberal logic
YOU should follow these guidelines because I want lower health insurance premiums??
Brilliant
Insurance is optional and is not a constitutionally guaranteed right. There are health insurance policies with lower premiums for healthier lifestyles.
That obese 500 lb er will have more problems than higher premiums. Their history of health problems will cause them to pay higher premiums- along with the type of lifestyle that goes along with being obese
I wonder if you can get a discount for off the wall arrogant smugness?
Let's hope you an your ilk don't EVER get to determine what is "OK" and what isn't
"Also never underestimate the power of placebos"
Just read a great book, the "Biology of Belief"
There was a part about an orthopod who did placebo surgery
He had 2 groups of patients who were told they were getting knee surgery.
IN half, he did actual surgery.
In the other group, he sedated and prepped them, but only made incisions- didn't do actual surgery
The placebo group had results as good as the actual surgery group!
And the groups included people who had difficulty walking due to their knee pain
Amazing
Just read a blurb today about Bloomberg ( who banned trans fats in all NYC restaurants ) caught in his office eating a bag of Cheetos- taht are loaded with trans fats
Maybe people should be responsible for their own choices and consequences
Read the article carefully ( many others posted on the net included screen shots of the actual newsletters- it's not speculation ) he admitted writing some of the articles
Even if he didn't, what does it say about him as a manager that he allowed vile speech to go out under his name??
Not much
I agree with a lot of what Paul says about domestic policy- limited govt and adherence to the constitution
His foreign policy is a disaster. He is the worst possible spokesman for his ideas. Ross Perot was every bit as loopy. Paul's talking about Austrian economics in last nights debate a perfect example
His return to the gold standard
It's not just posters here labeling him a kook - just witness the looks given him by the other candidates on the stage last night
This is a plan for stimulating the economy?
Posted by: McQ
If you buy into the notion that the government is responsible for 'stimulating the economy' in supposed down times, would this be how you approached it?
Democrats controlling Congress are looking at tax rebates, extended unemployment benefits and more food stamps to stimulate the sagging economy.
More food stamps? Extended unemployment benefits? That's not a stimulus, for heaven sake. It's insulation.
The mantra among Democrats and many economists is that any stimulus bill should be timely, temporary and targeted toward people most likely to funnel the money right back into the economy. As such, some Democrats are suggesting limiting tax rebates to lower-income and middle-class families and people with children.
Most "lower income" families don't pay income taxes to begin with, and the same may be true with middle-class families with children and a mortgage. So what do you "rebate" to them?
"Our initiative will assist hard-hit families by promoting consumer confidence, economic growth and job creation," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement Tuesday.
Really? Pelosi must know something about economics which isn't at all clear given the broad outlines of their "package". Seems to me that, for one, cutting Corporate income taxes, the 2nd highest in the world, would far more likely to stimulate growth and job creation than rebating taxes not payed, more food stamps and longer unemployment benefits.
Well, it was the neighboring countries that sponsored the UN bill sanctioning Saddam.
They feared his ambitions .
Whether they were equally corrupt and whether saddam was a US client is irrelevant.
Your stated explanation for the dramatic decrease in casualties in Iraq is that most of the likely suspects have been killed already. Typical delusional response when the reality doesnt match you pathetic 60's socialists view of the world
The war doesnt happen w/o saddam in power.
I'm not making any argument here over why we went in and how saddam's relative nastiness''
The point of the post was to show that in reality that although casualties were high ( keep in mind that the killing was mainly done by other non Americans- not us ) they would have been higher if saddam were still in power
'IT's simply to refute the moonbat thesis that Iraq would have been better off if we never got involved- the numbers are there to see
"Old News"? "Rehashed for Over a Decade"?
Matt Welch | January 11, 2008, 2:40am
In Ron Paul's statement responding to The New Republic's story about his old newsletters, he said the following:
The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts. [...]
This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. [...]
When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.
Has Paul really disassociated himself from, and "taken moral responsibility" for, these "Ron Paul" newsletters "for over a decade"? If he has, that history has not been recorded by the Nexis database, as best as I can reckon.
The first indication I could find of Paul either expressing remorse about the statements or claiming that he did not author them came in an October 2001 Texas Monthly article -- less than eight years ago. Here is the relevant excerpt, which references a Ron Paul newsletter that referred to then-Rep. Barbara Jordan as "Barbara Morondon," and called her the "archetypical half-educated victimologist" whose "race and sex protect her from criticism":
What made the statements in the publication even more puzzling was that, in four terms as a U.S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this.
When I ask him why, he pauses for a moment, then says, "I could never say this in the campaign, but those words weren't really written by me. It wasn't my language at all. Other people help me with my newsletter as I travel around. I think the one on Barbara Jordan was the saddest thing, because Barbara and I served together and actually she was a delightful lady." Paul says that item ended up there because "we wanted to do something on affirmative action, and it ended up in the newsletter and became personalized. I never personalize anything."
His reasons for keeping this a secret are harder to understand: "They were never my words, but I had some moral responsibility for them ... I actually really wanted to try to explain that it doesn't come from me directly, but they [campaign aides] said that's too confusing. 'It appeared in your letter and your name was on that letter and therefore you have to live with it.'" It is a measure of his stubbornness, determination, and ultimately his contrarian nature that, until this surprising volte-face in our interview, he had never shared this secret. It seems, in retrospect, that it would have been far, far easier to have told the truth at the time.
So what exactly did Paul and his campaign say about these and more egregious statements during his contentious 1996 campaign for Congress, when Democrat Lefty Morris made the newsletters a constant issue? Besides complaining that the quotes were taken "out of context" and proof of his opponent's "race-baiting," Paul and his campaign defended and took full ownership of the comments. For a chronological Nexis tour of Paul's 1996 responses, please read on.
The first time I can find reporting on the controversy is in the May 22, 1996 Dallas Morning News:
Dr. Ron Paul, a Republican congressional candidate from Texas, wrote in his political newsletter in 1992 that 95 percent of the black men in Washington, D.C., are "semi-criminal or entirely criminal."
He also wrote that black teenagers can be "unbelievably fleet of foot." [...]
Dr. Paul, who is running in Texas' 14th Congressional District, defended his writings in an interview Tuesday. He said they were being taken out of context.
"It's typical political demagoguery," he said. "If people are interested in my character ... come and talk to my neighbors." [...]
According to a Dallas Morning News review of documents circulating among Texas Democrats, Dr. Paul wrote in a 1992 issue of the Ron Paul Political Report: "If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be."
Dr. Paul, who served in Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s, said Tuesday that he has produced the newsletter since 1985 and distributes it to an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 subscribers. A phone call to the newsletter's toll-free number was answered by his campaign staff. [...]
Dr. Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. He said they should be read and quoted in their entirety to avoid misrepresentation. [...]
"If someone challenges your character and takes the interpretation of the NAACP as proof of a man's character, what kind of a world do you live in?" Dr. Paul asked.
In the interview, he did not deny he made the statement about the swiftness of black men.
"If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them," Dr. Paul said.
He also said the comment about black men in the nation's capital was made while writing about a 1992 study produced by the National Center on Incarceration and Alternatives, a criminal justice think tank based in Virginia.
Citing statistics from the study, Dr. Paul then concluded in his column: Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."
"These aren't my figures," Dr. Paul said Tuesday. "That is the assumption you can gather from" the report.
May 23, 1996, Houston Chronicle:
Paul, a Republican obstetrician from Surfside, said Wednesday he opposes racism and that his written commentaries about blacks came in the context of "current events and statistical reports of the time." [...]
Paul also wrote that although "we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational.
Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."
A campaign spokesman for Paul said statements about the fear of black males mirror pronouncements by black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has decried the spread of urban crime.
Paul continues to write the newsletter for an undisclosed number of subscribers, the spokesman said.
Writing in the same 1992 edition, Paul expressed the popular idea that government should lower the age at which accused juvenile criminals can be prosecuted as adults.
He added, "We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."
Paul also asserted that "complex embezzling" is conducted exclusively by non-blacks.
"What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn't that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?" he wrote.
May 23, 1996, Austin American-Statesman:
"Dr. Paul is being quoted out of context," [Paul spokesman Michael] Sullivan said. "It's like picking up War and Peace and reading the fourth paragraph on Page 481 and thinking you can understand what's going on." [...]
Also in 1992, Paul wrote, "Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions."
Sullivan said Paul does not consider people who disagree with him to be sensible. And most blacks, Sullivan said, do not share Paul's views. The issue is political philosophy, not race, Sullivan said.
"Polls show that only about 5 percent of people with dark-colored skin support the free market, a laissez faire economy, an end to welfare and to affirmative action," Sullivan said. [...]
"You have to understand what he is writing. Democrats in Texas are trying to stir things up by using half-quotes to impugn his character," Sullivan said. "His writings are intellectual. He assumes people will do their own research, get their own statistics, think for themselves and make informed judgments."
May 26, 1996 Washington Post:
Paul, an obstetrician from Surfside, Tex., denied he is a racist and charged Austin lawyer Charles "Lefty" Morris, his Democratic opponent, with taking his 1992 writings out of context.
"Instead of talking about the issues, our opponent has chosen to lie and try to deceive the people of the 14th District," said Paul spokesman Michael Sullivan, who added that the excerpts were written during the Los Angeles riots when "Jesse Jackson was making the same comments."
"Ron knows our society and our nation has done some horrible things to the black community, which has pushed a majority of young black men in some areas, in Washington, D.C., for example, into criminal activities," Sullivan said.
July 25, 1996, Houston Chronicle:
Democratic congressional candidate Lefty Morris on Wednesday produced a newsletter in which his Republican opponent, Ron Paul, called the late Barbara Jordan a "fraud" and an "empress without clothes." [...]
Paul said he was expressing his "clear philosophical difference" with Jordan. [...]
Paul, a Surfside physician and former congressman, said he was contrasting Jordan's political views with his own.
"The causes she so strongly advocated were for more and more government, more and more regulations and more and more taxes," Paul said.
"My cause has been almost exactly the opposite, and I believe her positions to have been fundamentally wrong," the Republican said. ""I've fought for less and less intrusive government, fewer regulations and lower taxes."
Paul said Morris was trying to "reduce the campaign to name-calling and race-baiting" so as to avoid more relevant issues, such as economic growth, taxes and spending, crime and welfare reform.
July 25, 1996, Dallas Morning News:
Dr. Paul, who faces Mr. Morris in the 14th District race for the U.S. House, dismissed the criticism as "name-calling and race-baiting." [...]
In a written statement, Dr. Paul said, "Repeated attempts by my liberal opponent to reduce the campaign to name-calling and race-baiting is just more of the same old garbage we expect from his camp and will not deter me from continuing to address the real issues."
Dr. Paul said his opinions about Ms. Jordan, who died earlier this year, "represented our clear philosophical difference."
July 29, 1996, Roll Call:
In a statement, Paul said he had "labored to conduct a campaign based upon the issues that are vital to our nation" and charged Morris with "repeated attempts...to reduce the campaign to name calling and race-baiting."
He called Morris's request that he release all back issues of the newsletter "not only impractical, but...equivalent to asking him to provide documents for every lawsuit he has been involved in during his lengthy legal career."
Of his statements about Jordan, Paul said that "such opinions represented our clear philosophical difference. The causes she so strongly advocated were for more government, more and more regulations, and more and more taxes. My cause has been almost exactly the opposite, and I believe her positions to have been fundamentally wrong: I've fought for less and less intrusive government, fewer regulations, and lower taxes."
Aug. 13, 1996, Houston Chronicle:
He once called former President Bush a bum and he's taken aim at Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, California Gov. Pete Wilson, House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, and, yes, GOP vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp.
Over the course of 1992 and 1993, the GOP nominee in the 14th Congressional District has called Kemp a "malicious jerk," and a "welfare statist" who had secretly increased the nation's public housing budget while serving as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He also charged in one newsletter that Kemp had "made a pass at a female reporter young enough to be his daughter."
Sept. 26, 1996, Austin American-Statesman:
"Fortunately, several types of accounts are tough for the IRS to investigate," Paul wrote. "For instance, it's still legal to open a bank account without revealing your Social Security number."
He also offered to help readers get a foreign passport.
"Peru recently announced that it will sell its citizenship to foreigners for $25,000," Paul wrote. "... People concerned about survival are naturally interested in a second citizenship and passport. If you're interested, drop me a note and include your telephone number, and I'll get you some interesting information." [...]
Paul, a Surfside obstetrician, former member of Congress and 1988 Libertarian Party nominee for president, said Morris quotes material out of context. Paul also said his advice was appropriate at the time it was published.
Sept. 30, 1996, San Antonio Express-News:
Paul, a Surfside obstetrician, former congressman and the 1988 Libertarian presidential candidate, counterclaimed that Morris is name-calling to avoid discussing the issues like taxes and abortion.
Repeated requests by telephone and by fax to interview Paul for this article were denied.
Paul's spokesman Michael Quinn Sullivan said the candidate does not want to "rehash" old issues. [...]
Paul has said he opposes racism and accused Morris of reducing the campaign to "name-calling and race-baiting."
Oct. 11, 1996, Houston Chronicle:
Paul, who earlier this week said he still wrote the newsletter for subscribers, was unavailable for comment Thursday. But his spokesman, Michael Quinn Sullivan, accused Morris of "gutter-level politics."
Sullivan said it was "silly" to try to make a political issue of something written in an "abstract" sense. [...]
In his April 15, 1992, newsletter, Paul wrote about a person who had a beef with the IRS and "fired bombs through mortars" one night at an IRS building in California. Some federal property was damaged, but no one was injured, and the defendant was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
"Unfortunately (the defendant's) war against the IRS was not nearly as successful as Harry's War," wrote Paul, who wants to abolish the federal tax-collection agency. "Harry's War" was a movie about a fictional individual's battle against the IRS.
Sullivan said Morris "would rather sling mud at Ron Paul than talk about the issues or discuss how his own campaign is being almost completely financed by two liberal special interest groups: the trial lawyers and big labor."
Oct. 11, 1996, Austin American-Statesman:
Paul's aide, Eric Rittberg, said -- as a Jew -- he was "outraged and insulted by the senseless, anti-Semitic statements Mr. Morris is making."
"Lefty is taking statements out of context," Sullivan said. "When you are not looking at things in context, you can make anyone look horrible."
Hey Ru Paul supporters, how about your boys comment last night that if we hadn't gone into Kuwait, the Israelis and Arabs would have joined together to take care of it themselves w/o our help
In what universe does he live where that level of cooperation would ever happen between Arabs and Israel?
UFB and then you wonder why people call him nuts
LOL, I don't know why you wasted your time posting to me when your post shows you haven't read what I post at all
The funniest part is calling me out for intolerance when it's actually the libs on the board who epitomize that
Talk of "dumbfukistan" and the constant smarmy put down of the south are daily occurrences here
They blindly support Ron Paul in spite of his name being associated with vile bigotry against blacks, gays and Jews
Liberal Math
I don't often go after individual bloggers, but statements made yesterday by "dday" at Hullabaloo warrant direct comment.
Discussing a new report that places the number of Iraqi's killed since the start of the war until June of 2006 at roughly 151,000, "dday" wrote:
NPR was trying to spin this as somehow a LOW number of Iraqi civilian casualties in the last three and a half years, because it comes in lower than the Lancet study. But it remains 150,000 human lives, dead, senselessly, for an unnecessary war of choice. And that only goes up to June 2006, and the authors of the study admitted they were unable to reach certain areas that were "too violent."
Not to mention the 3,900-plus soldiers, including 9 in the last two days. And the numbers of wounded are incalculable.
All to remove a dictator who wasn't nearly as efficient at killing Iraqis.
Saddam Hussein "wasn't nearly as efficient at killing Iraqis"? Only in his community-based reality.
Between 70-125 Iraqi civilians were killed per day during Saddam Hussein's reign.
Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power.
That gives us a range of 600,000-1,000,000 civilians killed during Saddam's stewardship, with a median average of 97.5 Iraqi civilians killed per day during his reign, or 780,000. Over 24 years, that is a median average of 32,500 Iraqi civilians per year...
But this isn't a true "apples to apples" comparison, is it?
This does not include military deaths that occurred during Saddam's "unnecessary war of choice" with Iran from 1980-88, which which accounts for roughly one million more lives on both sides, nor casualties sustained as a result of his other "unnecessary war of choice" that resulted from his invasion of Kuwait, where an estimated 100,000+ died during the first Gulf War in 1990-91.
Combining the number of civilians killed by Saddam and number of soldiers killed on all sides during his two "unnecessary wars of choice," and we find a median estimate of 1.88 million killed during his 24-year reign, or 235 people a day.
The Iraq War started on March 20, 2003, and this study ran through June of 2006. In that time, 151,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, or 126.04 per day.
Add in 10,000 estimated terrorist/insurgent/militia dead and roughly 2762 through that time period Coalition military deaths, and you arrive at a rough total of 163762 total violent deaths, or 136.7 total violent deaths per day through June 2006.
235 violent deaths per day over Saddam's reign including his wars.
137 violent deaths per day in Iraq over the first three years of the present war.
You do the math, and try to paint Saddam's continued reign as a preferable state of affairs.
Digg This
General: Anbar Ready for Handover
Jan 10 06:53 PM US/Eastern
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
8 Comments
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq's western province of Anbar, hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency for the first four years of the war, will be returned to Iraqi control in March, a senior U.S. general said Thursday.
In a telephone interview from Iraq, Marine Maj. Gen. Walter E. Gaskin, commander of the roughly 35,000 Marine and Army forces in Anbar, said levels of violence have dropped so significantly—coupled with the growth and development of Iraqi security forces in the province—that Anbar is ready to be handed back to the Iraqis.
Thus far, nine of 18 Iraqi provinces have reverted to Iraqi control, most recently the southern province of Basra in December. The process has gone substantially slower than the Bush administration once hoped, mainly because of obstacles to developing sufficient Iraqi police and army forces. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that he expects the process to continue.
Gates also said he was encouraged by security gains achieved in Anbar and Baghdad in the year since President Bush ordered an extra 30,000 U.S. troops to those areas of Iraq in what became known as a "surge." Gates said it has created new promise for long-delayed political reconciliation.
"We clearly are hoping that the reconciliation and improvement in the political environment that has taken place at the local and provincial level over the past number of months will now meet further progress coming at the national level," Gates told a Pentagon news conference.
Gates ticked of a list of statistical indicators of recent security improvements in Iraq. He did not mention the plan to return Anbar to Iraqi control in March, but did say the province has seen a remarkable turnaround on the security front over the past year.
"Anbar province, once considered a stronghold of al-Qaida, has been reclaimed for the Iraqi people," Gates said.
Having been largely driven out of Anbar, insurgents shifted first to Baghdad and more recently to the northern provinces of Diyala and Ninewa.
Gaskin said that a provincial security committee under Anbar's governor has been established and has rehearsed procedures for handling any security crisis that might develop.
Under a plan accepted by the Iraqi government as well as the top two American authorities in Iraq—Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus—the U.S. military will transfer control of Anbar to provincial authorities in March, followed by a ceremony in April, Gaskin said.
"We all agree that, based on the requirements, Anbar will be ready by that time," Gaskin said, speaking from his Multi-National Force West headquarters in Fallujah, about 25 west of Baghdad.
The return of security control to Iraqi authorities in March does not mean U.S. troops will leave Anbar. Two Marine battalions, numbering roughly 1,500 troops, that were sent as part of the 2007 buildup are due to leave Anbar in about May, Gaskin said. But he would not forecast any additional cutbacks.
U.S. forces will remain in Anbar, for the time being, as partners with Iraq's army and police.
Nearly five years into the Iraq war, the demand for U.S. combat forces remains high. At his news conference, Gates cited the strain on the military as one factor as he weighs a proposal to send an additional 3,000 Marines to Afghanistan this spring to bolster NATO-led defenses against the Taliban.
"I have asked a number of questions that I expect to be answered before I make up my mind," Gates said. "I am concerned about relieving the pressure on our allies to fulfill their commitments. I am concerned about the implications for the force, and I also am very concerned that we continue to be successful in Afghanistan," and to keep the Taliban "on their back foot," Gates said.
Visiting Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi, appearing with Gates, also mentioned the turnaround in Anbar. He asserted that the situation has improved to the point where Iraqi forces are able to fight on their own, although that is a view not shared by U.S. commanders.
"I can say that the Anbar province, which was the hottest area of Iraq, does not now need any (U.S.) forces because the (number) of the attacks is now zero for months now, the Iraqi minister said, speaking through an interpreter.
As recently as 18 months ago Anbar was the central stronghold of al- Qaida in Iraq, the shadowy insurgent group that U.S. officials say is largely led by foreign terrorists but populated mainly by Iraqis.
What recently has developed into a broad-based backlash against al- Qaida among Iraq's Sunni Arab community began in Anbar in late 2006. Americans recruited Sunni sheiks to help oust al-Qaida from their home turf, and the movement spread to former militants who once fought U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.
Gaskin, who is scheduled to return to his home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C., in February when he is replaced by Marine Maj. Gen. John Kelly from Camp Pendleton, Calif., arrived in Anbar in February 2007. That was a turning point in the security situation in the provincial capital of Ramadi. The city is now largely pacified—a state of affairs that few would have predicted a year ago.
Referring to the decision to return all of Anbar to Iraqi provincial control in March, Gaskin, recalling the unsettled situation he faced when first arriving, said, "I didn't expect it to happen so fast."
What about the huge numbers of Iraqi's that would die as a result??
Look at how the civilian casualties have gone way down. If you moonbats had had your way, there would have been thousands of Iraqi deaths- and the blood would have been on your hands
Hillary without tears
Camille Paglia
Jan. 10, 2008 | Subject: Hillary and sado-masochism
As her husband has dragged his numerous female play objects before her and has humiliated her on the public stage year after year, she still stays within the marriage.
Hillary seems to take every beating, and yet she appears to "keep on ticking." Does she thrive on this?
How would this affect one's (female) psyche? Judgment as President? General perspective?
Robert Philips
Corrales, New Mexico
A swarm of biographers in miners' gear has tried to plumb the inky depths of Hillary Rodham Clinton's warren-riddled psyche. My metaphor is drawn (as Oscar Wilde's prim Miss Prism would say) from the Scranton coalfields, to which came the Welsh family that produced Hillary's harsh, domineering father.
Hillary's feckless, loutish brothers (who are kept at arm's length by her operation) took the brunt of Hugh Rodham's abuse in their genteel but claustrophobic home. Hillary is the barracuda who fought for dominance at their expense. Flashes of that ruthless old family drama have come out repeatedly in this campaign, as when Hillary could barely conceal her sneers at her fellow debaters onstage -- the wimpy, cringing brothers at the dinner table.
Hillary's willingness to tolerate Bill's compulsive philandering is a function of her general contempt for men. She distrusts them and feels morally superior to them. Following the pattern of her long-suffering mother, she thinks it is her mission to endure every insult and personal degradation for a higher cause -- which, unlike her self-sacrificing mother, she identifies with her near-messianic personal ambition.
It's no coincidence that Hillary's staff has always consisted mostly of adoring women, with nerdy or geeky guys forming an adjunct brain trust. Hillary's rumored hostility to uniformed military men and some Secret Service agents early in the first Clinton presidency probably belongs to this pattern. And let's not forget Hillary, the governor's wife, pulling out a book and rudely reading in the bleachers during University of Arkansas football games back in Little Rock.
Hillary's disdain for masculinity fits right into the classic feminazi package, which is why Hillary acts on Gloria Steinem like catnip. Steinem's fawning, gaseous New York Times op-ed about her pal Hillary this week speaks volumes about the snobby clubbiness and reactionary sentimentality of the fossilized feminist establishment, which has blessedly fallen off the cultural map in the 21st century. History will judge Steinem and company very severely for their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary.
How does all this affect the prospect of a Hillary presidency? With her eyes on the White House, Hillary as senator has made concerted and generally successful efforts to improve her knowledge of and relationship to the military -- crucial for any commander-in-chief but especially for the first female one. However, I remain concerned about her future conduct of high-level diplomacy. Contemptuous condescension seems to be Hillary's default mode with any male who criticizes her or stands in her way. It's a Nixonian reflex steeped in toxic gender bias. How will that play in the Muslim world?
The Clintons live to campaign. It's what holds them together and gives them a glowing sense of meaning and value. Their actual political accomplishments are fairly slight. The obsessive need to keep campaigning may mean a president Hillary would go right on spewing the bitterly partisan rhetoric that has already paralyzed Washington. Even if Hillary could be elected (which I'm skeptical about), how in tarnation could she ever govern?
The current wave of support for Barack Obama from Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans is partly based on his vision of a new political discourse that breaks with the petty, destructive polarization of the past 20 years. Whether Obama can build up his foreign policy credentials sufficiently to reassure an anxious general electorate remains to be seen.
But Hillary herself, with her thin, spotty record, tangled psychological baggage, and maundering blowhard of a husband, is also a mighty big roll of the dice. She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark ("Cue the tears!"). Forget all her little gold crosses: Hillary's real god is political expediency. Do Americans truly want this hard-bitten Machiavellian back in the White House? Day one will just be more of the same.
I will vote for Hillary if she is the nominee of my party, because I want Democrats appointed to the Cabinet and the Supreme Court. But I plan to vote for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity. Obama has served longer as an elected official than Hillary. He has had experience as a grass-roots activist, and he is also a highly educated lawyer who will be a quick learner in office. His international parentage and childhood, as well as his knowledge of both Christianity and Islam, would make him the right leader at the right time. And his wife Michelle is a powerhouse.
The Obamas represent the future, not the past
I heard those allegations from moonbats like you, but READ how those allegations weren't backed by fact. All those claims were disputed and the facts showed the allegations to be false. You must believe that other moonbat Rather. You need to take a look at who you give credibility to
Whether he did coke at some point isn't really relevant
The FACTS are your boy Ru Paul is that a newsletter bearing his name published bigoted comments over a period of years.
I can only believe that those tools STILL supporting him support those bigoted views
Likewise please do not cite Israel, as discussion of Israel is not allowed on this thread.
Typical misrepresentation
YOU aren't allowed to flaunt your Nazi fetish on this board
Moment of Truth in Iraq
Reviewing the dispatches from 2007 shows that the war in Iraq is not spiraling toward inevitable catastrophic failure. The year did not start out on a positive note.
In January 2007, growing doubts I had about our ability to stave off an eventual genocide in Iraq were intensified by our failure to competently manage the media battlespace. Within the military I sensed a growing censorship and was myself denied access to the battlefields in 2006. After months of fighting with Army Public Affairs for access, they relented, but only due to public pressure following the publication of an article in the Weekly Standard. An expanded version of the article “On Censorship” was published as the dispatch “Al Sahab—the Cloud” on my website. The article was blunt; by then I’d been fighting for about six months to re-embed with troops.
In a counterinsurgency, the media battlespace is critical. When it comes to mustering public opinion, rallying support, and forcing opponents to shift tactics and timetables to better suit the home team, our terrorist enemies are destroying us. Al Qaeda’s media arm is called al Sahab: the cloud. It feels more like a hurricane. While our enemies have “journalists” crawling all over battlefields to chronicle their successes and our failures, we have an “embed” media system that is so ineptly managed that earlier this fall there were only 9 reporters embedded with 150,000 American troops in Iraq. There were about 770 during the initial invasion.
Many blame the media for the estrangement, but part of the blame rests squarely on the chip-laden shoulders of key military officers and on the often clueless Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad, which doesn’t manage the media so much as manhandle them. Most military public affairs officers are professionals dedicated to their jobs, but it takes only a few well-placed incompetents to cripple our ability to match and trump al Sahab. By enabling incompetence, the Pentagon has allowed the problem to fester to the point of censorship.
Before returning to Iraq, I flew to Vietnam and Cambodia to visit war museums. Interestingly, the Vietnamese and Cambodians alike were friendly toward Americans. I found similar friendliness in neighboring Laos some years ago: we nearly bombed Laos into oblivion. Huge fields of craters still exist and people are still being killed by our old bombs, yet they treated me well. But on this trip, especially when I stopped at a Cambodian museum/memorial on the site of a former “killing field,” it was impossible to shake the dread that history might be revving itself up for a repeat genocide in Iraq, something I wrote about in the dispatch “No Darker Heart.”
After the monsoon rains abate, the draining earth offers up fragments of clothing, human teeth and bones as final testimony of the restless, wronged dead. Murdered on this now sacred ground, thirty or more years ago, they are among the millions of souls sacrificed to a fevered ideology that was completely broken only a decade ago. The remains that seep up through the mud under my feet in this Killing Field are from a different war, but they echo a mournful reminder of how jarringly common it is for societies at war with themselves to descend into madness. Death squads under holy orders, suicide bombers in mosques, machete-wielding mobs in Rwanda, industrialized gas chambers in Europe, fire-breathing Janjaweed militias in Darfur, and here the tree named for its function as “killing tree against which executioners beat children.”
By December 2006 I was back in the Iraq war. Within couple of weeks, I was quite literally helping to pick up American body parts and carefully putting them into body bags. By then, enemy bombs were even more sophisticated and bigger than they had been in 2005. There was the Iraqi civil war, full on in parts of the country, and trending in the wrong direction, and waning patience at home in the United States and Great Britain, especially with politicians long on slogans and spin and short on solutions. Americans and Brits had never gotten consistent balanced coverage of the war, and without that context, the daily drumbeat of the death tolls, followed by the same empty barrel analysis was becoming deafening.
If the violence could not be contained, most people in America and Great Britain would likely lose patience, and force the withdrawal of troops, leading to genocide and regional chaos with global implications. Al Qaeda would score a strategic victory. In this scenario, the Mother of All Mistakes would be followed by a century of negative consequences, because violence would likely devolve into genocide on a scale similar to or worse than that seen in Cambodia; and because the Sunni/Shia fault line snakes throughout the Middle East, the chaos might catapult the region into war.
If we catastrophically lost the war—for instance, if we rushed out of the country and it descended into genocide—likely many generals would point at politicians who would point at the press who would point at politicians and generals. There would not be enough fingers to fulfill all the pointing requirements. All while blood filled the rivers. No revision of history would reverse the incidents in which more than thirty thousand of our finest young men and women were wounded or killed while making our country less safe.
The same truth holds for the uncounted thousands of Iraqis who died for one of our flawed decisions only to then have the value of their lives diminished by another. The only gains to come of this complete loss would be the swollen ranks of a reinvigorated al Qaeda.
The impulse to withdraw the troops is understandable, especially once the media that had written off Iraq began to focus instead on the inexcusably, unacceptably poor way this war was managed from the start. Truly, 2003 and 2004 were first-order fiascos. I’ve twice read the book Fiasco by Tom Ricks and found it accurate from my perspective as a witness to the aftermath. That we created the conditions for the complex insurgency to follow is a fact. There is plenty of blame to go around for that: some politicians and generals made severe errors, but then so did some in the press. Cases like Abu Ghraib needed to be reported, but not blown to such enormous proportion that the reporting itself became a kind of recruitment campaign for terrorists. Clearly none of the key voices were singing off the same sheet of music and the audience can’t be blamed for covering their ears and grimacing when what should have been close harmony sounded instead like cats mating underwater.
In America, the photographs and reports made many people shake their heads and say, “That’s not who we are. That’s not what America stands for.” Across the Muslim world, the photographs stoked the fires of radical fundamentalism and swelled the ranks of terrorist groups like al Qaeda. But in Iraq, it wasn’t the news reports about Abu Ghraib that did the real damage. The torture itself had already done that almost a full year before someone leaked photographs of it to the press.
In late 2007, when I was in Mosul, LTC Eric Welsh told me about a former al Qaeda leader whom he had persuaded to turn against al Qaeda. It was not an easy task to convince the man to become an informant because he did not trust Americans. The Iraqi man told LTC Eric Welsh that although he hated al Qaeda, he hated the Americans more. Why did he hate Americans? Because we had tortured him at Abu Ghraib.
Media coverage of the war drew to a conclusion in many ways from that point forward. For most of the next two years, stories that illustrated the decline in security and unraveling of progress on the ground were widely reported, while those showcasing the pockets of progress, especially among the Iraqi security forces, were increasingly rare. So much so that when I finally succeeded in getting back into Iraq in late 2006, even I was truly amazed at the progress that had been made across Iraq with the training and management of Iraqi Army and Police forces.
There’s only a small group of writers who honestly spend enough time in Iraq to make serious claims based on firsthand accounts. But I’ve seen the Iraqi Army with my own eyes. I’ve done many missions in 2005 and 2007, in many places in Iraq, along with the Iraqi Army: please believe me when I say that, on the whole, the Iraqi Army is remarkably better in 2007 and far more effective than it was in 2005. By 2007, the Iraqis were doing most of the fighting. And . . . this is very important . . . they see our Army and Marines as serious allies, and in many cases as friends. Please let the potential implications of that sink in.
We now have a large number of American and British officers who can pick up a phone from Washington or London and call an Iraqi officer that he knows well—an Iraqi he has fought along side of—and talk. Same with untold numbers of Sheiks and government officials, most of whom do not deserve the caricatural disdain they get most often from pundits who have never set foot in Iraq. British and American forces have a personal relationship with Iraqi leaders of many stripes. The long-term intangible implications of the betrayal of that trust through the precipitous withdrawal of our troops could be enormous, because they would be the certain first casualties of renewed violence, and selling out the Iraqis who are making an honest-go would make the Bay of Pigs sell-out seem inconsequential. The United States and Great Britain would hang their heads in shame for a century.
Alternately, in an equation in which the outcome is a stable Iraq for which they (Iraqi Police and Army officials) are stewards, the potential benefits are equally enormous. Because if Iraq were to settle down, and then a decade passes and we look back and even our most severe critics cannot deny that Iraq is a better place, a generation of Iraq’s most important leaders would have deep personal bonds with their counterparts in America and Great Britain. This could actually happen. The ultimate irony is that many of those same people who would have gotten the blame likely would be getting the credit. But somehow I doubt there’d be as much of a circle-point to share the glory.
In “The Ghosts of Anbar, Part I,” the caption for this photograph read as follows: “Shattered headstones, like broken promises, warn of restless ghosts.”
At the start of 2007 when I first learned that General David Petraeus was going to take over the management of the war, I described the situation he was inheriting as a disaster in progress.
It took enormous guts to take the job at this stage of the war, when it’s like an airplane with one of the wings blown off, and there is this pilot in the back of the airplane who easily could have parachuted out the back—where some of the others already have gone—but instead he says, “I can still fly this thing!” Had David Petraeus jumped and landed safely, he’d still have been one of the few who could land with a sterling reputation after his previous commands here. If this jet crashes while Petraeus is flying it, we will always know that the best of the best did not jump out the back; he ran to the cockpit.
Throughout most of 2007, as I’ve watched General Petraeus’ strategy being implemented, I have observed the impact his change in strategy was having on our soldiers, on Iraqi security forces, and most importantly, on Iraqi people including some who were formerly our avowed enemies. I have seen how our own military morphed into something much more agile, and I came to see how American commanders tended to be the most trusted voices in Iraq for many Iraqis.
To be sure, the “Anbar Awakening” and other signs of progress were underway before the massive strategy overhaul occurred, and nobody can track and trace all the factors involved in this fantastically complex war, but one thing was certain: the momentum was shifting in favor of a stable Iraq for the first time. The institutional knowledge reservoir was becoming vast, and success was touted and shared. It may have been true that Americans knew very little about Iraq before the invasion, but it was for certain that American commanders had now developed an intimate understanding of the goings-on. It can be said with confidence that as a group, no non-Iraqis know more about Iraq than the US military.
My own confidence in the US military has grown immeasurably in 2007. But for most of 2007, I was one of the only writers to stay on the battlefield with troops. The few who came tended to embed for very short and specific assignments, and their reports inevitably reflected the clipped staccato that such a practice results in. A whole lot of truth can get lost in between the gaps in coverage, while false assumptions that remain unchallenged only attain more vigor.
It’s well-known that alligators are green. I saw an alligator just this morning on 6 January in Florida. It’s also well-known that massive amounts of weapons are pouring in from Syria and Iran. Do you know how many tons we’ve caught while coming in? How many shipments? The answer might astonish many people. I’ve been up and down the Iranian border. I’ve talked with Iraqi commanders, with British commanders on the border down south, and of course with our commanders by the many dozens. They’ve all told me the same thing. I asked Lieutenant General Odierno on a Baghdad street one day about weapons coming in from Iran. LTG Odierno was forthright. I’ve even asked General Petraeus and he was equally forthright and didn’t hesitate to tell me what I had already learned: the answer is ZERO. We have caught zero shipments coming in from Iran. We may have caught a single shipment recently coming in from Syria.
Now, to be sure, frankly, based on the incredible access I’m given, I do believe many EFPs and other weapons are coming in from Iran, although the numbers may have greatly declined recently, based on information I learned during a top secret briefing in Baqubah. You know, the cynical part of me knows that most armies would probably just make it up; after all, the message from Washington that Iran intends to topple Iraq comes through loud and clear. Keeping the lie intact would require limited access to the soldiers; however, reporters from many nations are given unescorted access to American forces and journalists have pretty much free rein on the American bases in Iraq.
It’s also astonishing how many Iraqis have been telling me they, too, want to help us attack Iran. This is not surprising given the history of hostility between the two countries, but it’s the conspiratorial sense of it all that startles. I recently had lunch with the Iraqi doctor who treated Uday Hussein after he was shot years ago. The doctor told me Uday’s bodyguards all had his same blood type just in case, and Uday did need a lot of blood on that occasion. The doctor told me that Uday’s mom was there in the hospital and she was screaming at Saddam—(screaming at Saddam!)—something like, “You killed my son, you bastard! You killed my son!” Uday survived to be killed by our guys later in Mosul and the doctor is now very helpful to US forces and seems to be doing quite well (he has a home in Costa Rica). Like many Iraqis, he blames a huge part of Iraq’s problems on Iran, and the doctor thinks many Iraqis would support US action against Iran. But what is the truth? Why did part of our own government recently do an about-face on the Iranian WMD question?
Michael Yon
Media Backlash
So here is the latest Bold Prediction, inspired by a late night and little caffeine - Obama is about to endure a media backlash.
Why a bursting of his media bubble? Well, they (alright, "they") have finally admitted what was obvious in this Harvard study last fall and to Bill Clinton at Dartmouth - as some NBC talent put it, "it's hard to stay objective covering this guy".
However, while the press was non-objectively giving Obama a shoulder ride around New Hampshire, Hillary surprised and embarrassed the media and the experts by sneaking to victory.
So, having been caught out as having been both non-objective and wrong, what will the monolithic MSM do next? We look for the MSM to engage in the customary self-recrimination, reflect on the manner in which they failed to inform the public, and devote themselves henceforth to doing a better job of presenting Obama fairly, i.e., more negatively.
It seems bold to predict that someone will do something conventional in this election cycle, so I Boldly Predict a notably more negative tone in Obama's press coverage.
We can anticipate a few weeks of "Who Is Obama, Really?" coverage to complement the "Hillary, the Comeback Queen who proved her resolution and resourcefulness on the mean streets of Portsmouth...". Yikes.
just one minute blog
Tight Democrat Primary Sparks Fraud Allegations
by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace · 1 Comment
(2008-01-08) — In the wake of the unexpected outcome of the New Hampshire Democrat primary Tuesday, sources at the Democrat National Committee (DNC) said they’re still trying to figure out whom to sue amid a flurry of allegations of fraud, malfunctioning electronic voting machines and voter intimidation.
“It’s a forgone conclusion that if the race outcome defies the pollster predictions, there must have been corruption,” said an unnamed DNC source. “Just because it’s an intra-party contest, doesn’t mean we’ll subject the results to less scrutiny.”
The DNC source added that “Americans need to have faith in the electoral process, but the New Hampshire Democrat primary has the smell of Bush-Gore 2000 all over it. We’re determined to follow the facts where they lead.”
You ask as if it's in my power to do anything that would affect the situation
I do know that if I had been a supporter of Paul and found out about this trash, I would denounce him immediately
Any person with any ethical code would do the same, but I guess it's OK because it's just " those folks " so it's all good
As I expected, agreement with the ignorance of stereotyping
You are pathetic
Your delusional devotion doens't negate the words printed under his name
There was nothing equivocal about them- pure racism and stu[isity pandering to the lowest instincts
You and his other ( still ) supporters can never question anyone elses ethics again.
There were sentence after sentence, over a period of years that spewed hate, and it's OK with you because of some conceptual framework you admire
People criticize religion and the belief required.
Contrast that with your belief in Paul despite the clear evidence that he at least tacitly is a racist
ROn Paul for freedom, liberty and peace....except for blacks, gays and jews
Hitler had a nuanced belief system also
Ron Paul's Personal Details in Racist Newsletter
Tue, Jan 8, 2008 at 5:32:48 pm PST
In response to the New Republic article on the “Ron Paul Political Report,” Ron Paul stated that he did not write the newsletter and was unaware of the content.
But in this December 1990 issue of the newsletter, which labels Martin Luther King a child molester, there’s some pretty good evidence that Dr. Paul himself wrote at least this entry:
Ron Paul’s wife is named Carol, and in 1990 he did have grandchildren.
Read the whole PDF document by clicking the picture above. Even if this was written by someone else, it’s almost more disturbing that Ron Paul could be so disconnected and dysfunctional that he let freaks like this run his newsletter.
The personal details—especially the mention of grandchildren—show that whoever wrote this had a fairly close relationship with Ron Paul. Any way you cut it, this makes his claim that he “didn’t know” look ridiculous.
Well, I read the statement from your boy Ron:
"“When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”"
He's not denying the offensive material was in HIS NEWSLETTER.
What exactly are you denying???
IT was published under his name. DO you expect us to believe he was unaware of the newsletter?
Again, do you agree with the sentiments in the articles in question???
You have no credibility when your rail against the immoral conduct of others. You ridicule others for not thinking critically and you continue admiration for the sponsor of such filth
You're not answering the question, tool.
Despite your long infatuation w/ Paul, don't you find it troubling that HIS NEWSLETTER published such trash???
What wouk he have to do to lose your affection
Maybe you agree with the articles
So, as a Paul supporter, you're jsut ready to write the whole thing off as WHat???
They were quotes from newsletters- the RON PAUL NEWSLETTER.
Do the quotes seem offensive to you??
If so, aren't you concerned at all that your candidate has his name attached to them??
Again, UFB
Because they got the branch of the service he was in, the comments are OK??
Yeah , right. The offensive material was published in THE RON PAUL NEWSLETTER an you're stupid enough to believe him when he divorces himself from them.
The only moot thing is your ability to reason
UFB
But, whoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul's name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him--and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing--but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.
WaPo, WSJ Agree: Democrats Clueless On Iraq
How often do the editorial boards of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal not only agree, but coincide on foreign policy? Rarely enough so that today's twin broadsides on the Democratic presidential contenders is worthy of special notice. Both editorial boards scold the Democrats for not only getting Iraq wrong, but also for seriously misrepresenting the progress achieved through the surge.
The Post's criticisms get tart indeed:
A reasonable response to these facts might involve an acknowledgment of the remarkable military progress, coupled with a reminder that the final goal of the surge set out by President Bush -- political accords among Iraq's competing factions -- has not been reached. (That happens to be our reaction to a campaign that we greeted with skepticism a year ago.) It also would involve a willingness by the candidates to reconsider their long-standing plans to carry out a rapid withdrawal of remaining U.S. forces in Iraq as soon as they become president -- a step that would almost certainly reverse the progress that has been made.
What Ms. Clinton, Mr. Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson instead offered was an exclusive focus on the Iraqi political failures -- coupled with a blizzard of assertions about the war that were at best unfounded and in several cases simply false. Mr. Obama led the way, claiming that Sunni tribes in Anbar province joined forces with U.S. troops against al-Qaeda in response to the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections -- a far-fetched assertion for which he offered no evidence.
Mr. Obama acknowledged some reduction of violence, but said he had predicted that adding troops would have that effect. In fact, on Jan. 8, 2007, he said that in the absence of political progress, "I don't think 15,000 or 20,000 more troops is going to make a difference in Iraq and in Baghdad." He also said he saw "no evidence that additional American troops would change the behavior of Iraqi sectarian politicians and make them start reining in violence by members of their religious groups." Ms. Clinton, for her part, refused to retract a statement she made in September, when she said it would require "a suspension of disbelief" to believe that the surge was working.
In fact, the Journal notes that only after it became clear that the US would not follow the Democratic policies of defeat and retreat did the Anbar sheikhs sign onto the Awakening in full:
But the Sunni Awakening, as it is called, with its fall in bloodshed, occurred only after the Anbar Sunnis were convinced that the U.S. troops would not abandon them to al Qaeda in Iraq. Sunni sheiks have said explicitly it was the new U.S. policy of sustaining the offensive against AQI that made it possible for them to resist the jihadists. The U.S. military has supported the spread of these "awakening councils" in other areas of Iraq. It is navel-gazing in the extreme for Mr. Obama to suggest U.S. Congressional elections caused this turn.
Both Obama and Clinton have track records on the surge and Iraq that they have to explain away with half-truths and foggy memories. As the Post noted, both of them tried to push an unconstitutional hijacking of military command from the executive to the legislature. Not only should they answer for their wrong-headedness on policy, but they should also be forced to explain whether they would as President allow Congress to intrude on the role of Commander in Chief so baldly and illegally.
The Journal wonders whether these candidates have become so self-contained that they think they can say anything on national TV and get away with it. The Journal forgets that the candidates right now are speaking to only the true believers in the primary process. They're playing sing-along on defeatism, and no one wants to hear that the Left had it wrong all along. Hillary's refusal to retract her "willing suspension of disbelief" comment underscores the willing suspension of reality that the anti-war activists on the Left have promoted.
This, of course, is hardly new. What's new is that the Post, an establishment center-left paper, has come to the same conclusion as the Journal.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on January 8, 2008 8:51 AM |
Yep, and he'd probably still have more interesting things to say than you do
A "Muskie moment" for Clinton in New Hampshire? (updated)
Posted by: McQ
Hillary Clinton apparently had an emotional moment in a NH meeting today, in which it is reported that she teared up and her voice broke up a bit.
Tinkerty Tonk reminds us of another tearful moment in NH when another Democratic nominee, reacting to an editorial in the Manchester Union Leader about his wife:
In a voice choked with emotion, [Edmund] Muskie began to weep as he announced the title to the crowd. "This man doesn't walk, he crawls," sobbed Muskie. He tried to regain his composure, then said loudly: "He's talking about my wife." Muskie calmed himself; unfortunately for him, however, his breakdown was caught by CBS-TV cameras and shown round the country.
Clinton's moment was also caught on tape, in this case by ABC.
In the case of Muskie, reaction from both parties was swift and cutting:
Expectably, there was some gleefully negative reaction in both parties. Washington Democratic Senator Henry Jackson asked: "If he's like that with Loeb, what would he do with Brezhnev?" Added Republican National Chairman Robert Dole: "I don't blame Muskie for crying. If I had to run against Richard Nixon, I'd do a lot of crying too."
Will Ms. Clinton receive the same sort of treatment?
Or is the subject, because of who it happened too, taboo?
David Broder described the Muskie incident at the time:
First, it is unclear whether Muskie did cry. He insists he never shed the tears we thought we saw. Melting snow from his hatless head filled his eyes, he said, and made him wipe his face. While admitting that exhaustion and emotion got the better of him that morning, the senator believes that he was damaged more by the press and television coverage of the event than by his own actions.
Of course we all know that Muskie went on to lose to George McGovern in the primaries and that particular incident was cited as one of the major contributing factors to Muskie's demise.
I think it is safe to say, after the grueling schedule of Iowa and now New Hampshire, exhaustion is evident among all the candidates and, from experience, emotions are much easier to trigger when in such a state. I can empathize with Clinton.
I'm just wondering if voters will. Don't forget, this is a blood sport.
UPDATE: The Anchoress called it a few days ago:
What I dread most in this political season is the "genuine" moment - and it is coming, soon, sometime between today and tomorrow, or tomorrow and New Hampshire - when Mrs. Clinton, in her ongoing effort to turn herself into whatever the polls says she must be, cries in public. It's going to be genuinely ghastly.
UPDATE II: How did I know the first to jump on it would be Johnboy:
Edwards, speaking at a press availability in Laconia, New Hampshire, offered little sympathy and pounced on the opportunity to bring into question Clinton's ability to endure the stresses of the presidency. Edwards responded, "I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also tough business."
That damn right-wing smear machine.
UPDATE III: The "experts" weigh in.
Diana Owen, an associate professor of political science and the chair of American studies at Georgetown University:
"Crying in a campaign at this stage is something you can't do — male or female — and history has shown that," said Owen. "It shows people weakness - crying goes against both male and female stereotypes, neither can do it."
Having watched it, I'd not characterize it as crying. However I think that's exactly how it will end up being characterized.
Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University:
"Crying traditionally isn't great for candidates and it's not something usually that voters want to see and so it might be a little setback. But again, I don't think it's the kind of thing voters will ultimately weigh when they vote."
Tell it to Ed Muskie.
And the ultimate reason, again, from Owens:
"Male voters are basically going to see a hysterical woman," said Owens. "Women are going to think that if Clinton is going to take on this responsible role and represent women in such a visible way she should do a better job of it and not expose the gender to this criticism."
Not to mention that opponents are going to jump all over it - see John Edwards.
Of course there's alway a contrary opinion:
CHRIS CILLIZZA: Well, Norah, I think she's both tired and probably emotional because she's losing, but i do think — I don't think everything's mutually exclusive. I think it may help her.
And then there's hubby Bill out there trying to help her out:
PRES. BIILL CLINTON: If you want a president, you want Hillary. If you want a new story, you want somebody else. We can't be a new story. I'm sorry. I can't make her younger, taller, male. There's lots of things I can't do.
NORA O'DONNELL: What does that mean, "I can't make her younger, taller, male"?
AB STODDARD: It means I can't make her Barack Obama. Bill Clinton, the most talented politician of his generation, no one can eat a shoe or a foot as well as he can.
Munch, munch. Another thing Bill Clinton has never known how to do is shut up.
Not to mention the democrat controlled congress with 11% approval ratings
PS
Bush won't be on the ballot in 2008
If you had a clue, you'd see it has begun
I guess you missed the elections, huh
Did you actually read the quotes from former anti was Congress people outlining the progress. It HAS begun, and even Gibson during the debates outlined the progress
Doe sharing oil revenue not count as political progress?? That's the key political issue n Iraq
Did Al Gore make CLinton a prominent force in his presidential run??
PS, Bush won't be on the ballot in 2008. Get over it, you'll need a serious reprogramming job. No more impeach Bush and Cheney to excite the moonbats
Well, enough of trying to reason with a bot
Silly, bots don't need sleep
though exactly who is going to pay the taxes for all the social programs Democrats love, is unclear to me.
That's what was ludcirous about Hllary's christmas present ad- neatly gift wrapped "health care, job security and an end to male pattern baldness"
Where would the money come from???
Our taxes- some " gift "
Even last night she admitted that people making over $250K are a very small portion of the population who already pay much more than their share of the taxes collected
botbotbotbot
YEs, the ultimate aim of the surge was to allow the political process to proceed. The FIRST step was to reduce the violence level ( accomplished ) and stabilize the country- there has been real progress made there
I've quoted you THREE times an article outlining the political progress that has been made. Even Gibson last night brought up the same points- there has been sharing of oil revenue- the elected officials are meeting regularly. The candidates, as you , refuse to acknowledge what he said and just went on spouting their talking points, completely ignoring Gibson's comments
Did you actually watch the debate?? Do you not recall Gibson making those points
I just don't why understand why you keep on asking for signs of political progress and then ignore them when presented to you
But, of course, you ARE a bot, solely programmed to repeat talking points over and over, so I shouldn't be surprised
Here's the article again- quoting a Congressperson who had been extremely anti-war till recently:
""Iraq - National Reconciliation: Slowly, but surely
Posted by: McQ
Ed Morrissey was on a teleconference with Rep. Michele Bachmann who relayed the following news:
[T]he National Assembly passed a pension bill, a critical step in reconciliation. That did not get much mention in the American media, but the Sunnis now have government pensions denied them after the fall of Saddam, which should alleviate much of the hostility.
Another step in the national reconciliation process is underway as well:
The Iraqi cabinet approved a draft law on Wednesday that will offer a general pardon to thousands of prisoners in U.S. military and Iraqi custody, a government spokesman said.
"The cabinet has passed the general pardon law, which will define who is eligible to be freed from all prisons, both Iraqi and American," spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters.
The law still needs to be approved by parliament.
Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, said earlier this month that the draft law was aimed at boosting reconciliation between majority Shi'ite and Sunni Arab Muslims, locked in a cycle of violence.
In addition, while the oil revenue law hasn't yet been passed, oil revenue is being shared among the various factions within Iraq. It is, in fact, directly responsible for much of the economic renewal that is happening there as well as many of the much needed infrastructure repairs.
Speaking of progress, another outspoken critic is seeing changes for the better in Iraq:
U.S. Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., who has been a vocal critic of President Bush's policy in the war in Iraq, on Monday visited troops in Iraq and said the situation appears to be improving.
"It's headed in a much better direction but everything is very tentative," Boyda said after receiving briefings from war commander Army Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and others.
She said that violence has decreased significantly in the region but that U.S. military and civilian officials don't want to raise hopes yet.
"What is happening on the ground tactically is very good, and everyone is hopeful that it will continue, but no one is taking anything for granted and they don't want to overstate things," she said.
No, you don't want to overstate things yet, but progress has become so obvious now, that even the critics can't ignore it or deny it any longer ... well, except in our comment section.
"
Obama spins the surge
Posted by: McQ
The most ludicrous moment of last night's Democratic debate (and there were many of them) took place when all 4 of the candidates went out of their way to deny the surge had done any good, or if it did, it was because of the Democrats. Barack Obama, who explained his version of why the "awakening", aka bottom-up reconciliation, took place, was perhaps the most obvious:
What we have to do is to begin a phased redeployment to send a clear signal to the Iraqi government that we are not going to be there in perpetuity. Now, it will — we should be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. I welcome the genuine reductions of violence that have taken place, although I would point out that much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar province — Sunni tribes — who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what, the Americans may be leaving soon, and we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shi'as. We should start negotiating now. That's how you change behavior.
And that's why I will send a clear signal to the Iraqi government. They will have ample time to get their act together, to actually pass an oil law, which has been — they've been talking about now for years.
That, of course, is abject nonsense, as the awakening had begun well before that was clear (review Michael Yon's writings for proof). The reason the Sunnis chose the Americans and the strategy of alliance is because we had shown we wouldn't quit and we were the better choice between al Qaeda and ourselves. Plus, the Sunnis had decided they'd made a mistake by refusing to participate in the electoral process and the politics of Iraq and knew that the Americans were the only ones who could guarantee their reentry.
To claim Democrats are the reason for the awakening (in reality, the Sunnis couldn't have cared less who was running the Congress at the time or who might be running it in the future at the time of the decision) and thus the success of the surge is simply a political fairy-tale. And Obama and Bill Richardson also claimed that absolutely no progress had been made at the national government level, which Charlie Gibson, to his ever lasting credit, pointed out was not true (see linked transcript).
I also got the impression that Democrats couldn't wait to get off of the subject of Iraq and on to other issues. They sounded exceedingly "dated" when they talked about the need to pull out now in the face of the success now beginning to dawn in Iraq.
BTW, I liked this debate format much better than previous debates. I'd like to see it become standard for future debates as well.
I've always been interested in Reich
Do you use any generators etc?
Thanks