Today, The 4,000th American Died In George Bush's Illegal Iraq War. That's 3,999+ Too Many. Home, Now!

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by Wm. Butler Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Blogswarm Against The War

So it's the fifth anniversary of the day that George Bush, with the acquiescence of a Republican Congress and a Fourth Estate that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, took my country to war against Iraq -- a country that never did anything to my country. I've tried all day to think what I could say about this war that hasn't been said.

I could say that it is immoral, as all wars are immoral. I could say that it is illegal, as it quite clearly is, and that nothing in the shameful resolution authorizing Bush to "use force" legalized it. I could say that, like all wars, it has caused untold human suffering and that much of that suffering has been inflicted on women and children and young men who were completely innocent. I could say that, like all wars, this war has been fought by the poor and the poorly-educated and has profited the already-rich and the powerful. I could say that this war, like all wars, has caused grievous harm to the Earth, which is already harmed almost unto death. I could say that this war, like all wars, has created and will continue to create many more problems than it will "solve" -- not that there was ever even a problem for this war to "solve" anywhere outside of George Bush's Oedipally -twisted morass of a soul.

But I think that what I will say is that this war, like all wars, is a symptom of a larger problem. This war, like all wars, would be impossible to imagine in a culture that actually valued life, women, children, the Earth, consensus, negotiation, nonviolence, diversity, empathy, sustainability, and the rule of law over the power of might. In short, this war is a symptom of patriarchy, of what Riane Eisler called the Culture of the Blade, rather than the Culture of the Chalice. And I will say that, until we address the root cause, we may end this war, or run out of credit to finance it, but my children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will have to be out in the streets, marching to end future wars as I've marched to end this one.

Which is one reason why I undermine the patriarchy every chance I get. I get a lot of chances. We all do. Let's use them.

International Women's Day in Iraq

Kathlyn Stone reminds us that conditions for women in Iraq have become much worse since the U.S. invasion.

International Women's Day, March 8, should be a global day of celebration over the economic, political and social achievements of women worldwide.
Instead I mourn what my government has done to the women of Iraq.

The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have brought an alarming increase in violence against women, including "honor killings” by religious fundamentalists. Women who do not subordinate their role to that of property of male family members have no value among the fundamentalists.

The Iraq Freedom Congress, a grassroots political movement headquartered in Baghdad, issued a statement congratulating women worldwide on International Women’s Day and asked that people everywhere stand with the women of Iraq as they face oppression from sectarian gangs.

While hundreds of women have been murdered by religious gangs, unveiled women are routinely targeted and threatened with violence if they don’t wear hajibs and follow strict Islamic law. The government has not moved to stop the violence or the threats, according to the Iraq Freedom Congress.

“Iraq Freedom Congress stands at the forefront of the struggle to expel these bandits from Iraq,” said Amjad Al-Jawhary, an IFC spokesperson.

The international protests against sexual discrimination are growing louder every year, says Al-Jawhary, and yet in Iraq, “the discrimination against women by sectarian militias linked to mullahs in Iran and groups of Al Qaeda has reached the level of sexual genocide, particularly in the cities of Basra, Baghdad, Mosul and Diyala.
These groups have committed the most heinous crimes against humanity, and women in particular.”

The U.S. military occupation has “turned a blind eye” to the work of the religious gangs, said Al-Jawhary. He suggests that both the occupation forces and the present government have surrendered Iraq and future generations to the criminals through their failure to reign in the gangs.

"We must put an end to the killing of women,” said Fryal Akbar, head of the IFC’s Women’s Bureau at a press conference in Bagdad held earlier this year to draw attention to the escalation of violence against women.

“Women today have every right to defend themselves against the religious and sectarian gangs by all means." She also warned that the IFC will not stand by watching crimes being committed without consequences. "From our experience, these gangs will not put an end to their crimes unless serious action is taken."

A year ago today, Yifat Susskind of MADRE, an international women's human rights organization headquartered in New York, wrote “Since the United States invaded, Iraqi women have endured a wave of death threats, assassinations, abductions, public beatings, targeted sexual assaults and public hangings.

Both Sunni and Shiite Islamist militias direct much of this violence. These groups mushroomed across Iraq after the United States toppled the secular Baath regime. Ironically, the Shiite militias are the armed wings of the political parties that the U.S. boosted into power. Their aim is to establish an Islamist theocracy and their social vision requires the subjugation of women.”

Suhad Salim, another member of the IFC Women’s Bureau, described a young woman’s sense of hopelessness. “The deterioration of the security situation, the intervention of the political Islamic groups into everyone’s personal life and the enforcement of the Islamic law on the street has forced women to quit both school and work to stay home seeking safety. These conditions create desperation and hopelessness in life leading many women to buy shrouds and wait for their death.

“I asked Sawsan Ali of Althawra city who is 30 years old why she quit school and stays home. She has lost her ambition and tends to think about death. Sawson answered: “There’s no hope for safety in the foreseeable future, my rights as a woman do not exist. Everything is against me as a human: family, traditions and culture. Killing and terrorizing women have become a daily show. Why should I live? I cannot go to school safely or voice my opinion. Whatever I do is opposed by others. Basically nothing is left to live for, therefore I am preparing for death.”

May The Goddess Guard Her.

In the morning, Desiree from CodePink goes to court for "disorderly conduct" because she confronted Condi Rice with the fact that Rice is a war criminal. She punched through the bubble in which the members of this junta live and let Rice know that some Americans are against the illegal war and occupation of Iraq.

That's not a crime. That's patriotism in action. But Desiree could be sent to jail tomorrow for 130 days. Or, her judge could do the right thing.

If you do magic, please do magic. if you pray, please pray. If you can send good wishes, please send good wishes.

Where Your Treasure Is, There Also Will Your Heart Lie (And, Likely, The Reverse Is True, As Well.)

/Hat tip to ql.

Bite Me, Godwin

Nine hundred thirty-five lies. By the time that someone tells nine hundred thirty-five lies, I believe they've crossed over into Big Lie territory.

From Yahoo:

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.


Nancy Pelosi, impeach this man! WTF is wrong with you?

What If They Invaded America?

Guestblog: Current Administration Scandals, Part So Many I've Lost Count

I don't even have time to go into the whole thing right now, but those of you who care about the state of our country, what's going on in Iraq, our service men and women, and Curious George the Boyking's latest disasters need to check out the Blackwater story:

• Salon.com
• WaPo
• Mother Jones
• Democracy Now

As Al Gore points out in The Assault on Reason: "Our Founders' faith in the viability of representative democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry...."

So what are you waiting for?

Want To Save America Tonight?

Hey! What are you doing tonight? Is it more important than ending the war? Go to MoveOn.org, plug in your zipcode, and find the vigil nearest to you. Then, go. Go without a candle or a sign or even much faith that it will "work" -- but go. It's only an hour or two. You can devote an hour or two to saving America, can't you? MoveOn is holding vigils all across the country tonight to remind the Democrats that it's their job to get us out of this war.

There's a full moon tonight. Go hang out under it and do something for your country.

March On Washington September 15th

WaPo reports that ANSWER has sued the city over the city's attempts to make it difficult to publicize the September 15th march to end the war in Iraq.

An antiwar coalition filed court papers yesterday challenging D.C. laws that regulate posting signs in public places.

The court action comes one week after the D.C. Department of Public Works ordered the ANSWER Coalition to remove its signs pasted on electrical boxes around the city or face nearly $10,000 in fines. Public Works officials say the posters advertising a Sept. 15 antiwar march were improperly put up using an adhesive that makes the posters hard to remove.

The coalition asked a federal judge to stop the city from regulating signs posted on D.C. property until the city creates a "constitutionally allowable and non-discriminating system" for determining the rules on sign posting. The coalition alleges the city gives preferential treatment to signs for political candidates, commercial businesses and crime prevention, while bankrupting grass-roots campaigns with massive fines.

. . .

City law allows people and organizations to hang posters on lampposts as long as they can be easily removed and there are no more than three on one side of a block. Sign hangers must date the signs when they are posted and register two copies of the sign with the city.

Violations carry fines of $150 for each offending sign.

Coalition organizers said they use water-soluble paste to hang the signs and provide all people who hang signs with a copy of the rules. They argue that electrical boxes are equivalent to lampposts and that no individuals or groups should have to notify the government of their political opinions.
. . .

Yesterday morning the Alliance for Global Justice, a nonprofit organization that shares office space with the coalition, received two similar citations and potential fines from the city for the posters, said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice.

The National Park Service has also asked the coalition to remove signs on federal property or pay for their removal but has not set a deadline.

At a news conference yesterday, several coalition members and supporters said the large yellow and black signs were lawfully posted. They argued that D.C. laws need clarification and revision so that all who post signs are treated the same.

The fines have not stopped the coalition from plastering posters across the city. Coalition members said that as the march draws nearer, they plan to ramp up publicity with more posters, banners and stickers. Sarah Sloan, national staff organizer, said publicity of the fines has brought waves of support and volunteers to the coalition.

"We heard they were taking down posters on Connecticut and Wisconsin," she said, "and the next day there were people out there putting even more up. . . . They can't stop this." More on the lawsuit, including a link to the complaint here.

Additionally, Code Pink has called for the DC government to rescind the fines it imposed on the ANSWER coalition for putting up posters advertising the September 15 anti-war rally. We view posters as one of the few low-cost ways of letting the DC community know about our rallies and this form of advertising should be protected as our free speech right. The $10,000 fine is meant to not only suppress ANSWER, but all grassroots organizations that don’t have large budgets to advertise through the mainstream media.

The posters around Washington DC let the public know about a march from the White House to the Capitol on Saturday, September 15 to stop the Iraq War and Impeach George Bush. This is something supported by the overwhelming majority of DC residents. Informing them about this march is actually a public service, and should be treated as such.

The ANSWER Coalition is right to refuse to remove the posters. Local regulations permit the posters, and such messages are supposed to be protected under free speech. Every community group, religious institution, union, and individual who values the right to assemble and speak out in public should join in protesting these fines and demand they be rescinded.

A list of nationwide transportation centers for those interested in coming to the march is available here.

Since the goverment is taking down the signs that publicize the antiwar march, please use your blog, LiveJournal, or MySpace page to publicize it. This is our last best chance to convince Congress to stop funding George Bush's war.

Update: NTodd's organizing the bloggers here.

Don't Let Them Silence Us

Local news radio is reporting that ANSWER, the group doing much of the organizing for the upcoming September 15th anti-war march: says it's received citations for more than $10,000 from the city. This notice of violation from the Department of Public Works orders the group to remove all signs reading "March To Stop The War."

The protesters say they've been putting these posters on the rectangular metal boxes near street corners for years and have never had any problem. The group says local and federal government are acting politically and unconstitutionally.

Of course, the Department of Public Works doesn't even have a good lie prepared: DPW spokeswoman Linda Grant says this is not about the message, but is an ongoing attempt to make sure people post signs according to city regulations.

If you have a chance, why not throw up a post about the march on your blog? As the ANSWER webpage explains, the September 15 Mass March [] is timed to coincide with the report of General Petraeus and the debate in Congress on the Iraq war. Iraq war veterans and their families will lead this dramatic march from the White House to the Congress on September 15. The last thing the government wants is to see the streets of Washington DC fill up with throngs of anti-war protesters right in the middle of the debate. The September 15th March will be followed on Monday, September 17th, with a Peoples March Inside Congress, led by Code Pink (Meet at 12 noon in the cafeteria of the Rayburn House Office Building ).

Add their button to your blog. We shouldn't let the DC government (shame on you, Mayor Fenty) prevent the word from getting out about the march.

After Culloden

The Highland Clearances
hard recruiting sergeants
Scottish regiments for English battles
potato famine
later economic dearth
and half a million Scots
not to mention Irish
directly or by circumstance
driven from their land

As was for the Iraqi Kurds
so was for the Gaelic ones
‘You see,’ said the Iranian scholar:
‘We are looking at a common history’
an archetypal commonality
of suppurating colonisation
perpetuation and re-perpetuation
broken emigrants breaking First Nations
hunting Aborigines, indenturing Africans
Calvinist Apartheid
oppressed turned oppressor
lowest common denominator of brutality

And England !
You carver-up of nations for perpetual advantage!
Divided self’s divide-and-rule worldview
Yes, you, England !
dear England
you too were cleft within your soul
viscerally cauterised
much further back in time
by Roman and by Norman yokes
of robber barons
lords of war and land
that laid you low

But still I sense your taproot yet
to winnow from the karmic curse
Winstanley’s England , Blake and Mary Webb
Benjamin Zephaniah and Elizabeth Fry
and George Monbiot in the Manchester Guardian
and even a Great Chain
of Liverpool Bishops
grooving with Jah people
in their struggle, their desperation
their elation and their elevation

And did those feet on green and pleasant land?
Of course they did!
Aye … England …
Sill writhing in the birth pangs of your great vocation
See you, England …
Jerusalem England !

~Alastair McIntosh

Freeway Blogger Is My Hero

Download these. Print them out. Leave a stack every time that you fill up your tank.

No End In Sight

~Hat tip to Shaw Kenawe in comments at Eschaton

Are You Doing Something Else More Important?

If you live in or around D.C., or if you can get to D.C. tomorrow, here's where you should be:

Candlelight call to action to support the Levin-Reed amendment to bring our troops home

Where: Upper Senate Park across from the U.S. Capitol
Constitution Ave NW, between New Jersey Ave and Delaware Ave
Washington, DC 20001

When: Tuesday, July 17th at 8:30 p.m.

From MoveOn's announcement:

It's pretty outrageous: Senate Republicans are blocking key votes to stop the war this week because they know they'll lose. With the Democratic majority, plus three key Republicans ready to vote for an exit strategy in Iraq, the Senate has enough votes to pass legislation that would force President Bush to bring most troops home by April. But the Republicans are trying to stop that vote.


We're fighting back—the voters aren't going to tolerate political games in Washington while our troops are dying in Iraq. There's going to be a big event in DC on Tuesday night and we could really use your help. A bunch of us—including Iraq war veterans, military families and several members of Congress—are going to join Senator Reid to call on Republicans to stop the stonewall on Iraq and start voting to bring our troops home.

All of the nation's media will be focused on Congress and on what the Republicans do Tuesday night—we need to show them that Americans want an end to these stalling tactics. Can you join us on Tuesday night to turn up the heat on Republicans for siding with President Bush over the people?

A Word To Those Who Oppose The War

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many — they are few.

~Shelley

Out Now!

Corrupt

I don't normally post such a long excerpt, but you really need to read all of this. Rahm Emanuel doesn't normally inspire me, but he's just dead on here.

Not since the days of Watergate, when our judicial system and intelligence community were deployed by the White House in the service of partisan politics, have we seen such abuses. And in many ways, what we have seen from this administration is far more extensive than that scandal.

Partisan politics has infiltrated every level of our federal government – from scientific reports on global warming to emergency management services to the prosecutorial power of the federal government itself. Even the Iraq War – from our entry to the reconstruction – has been thoroughly politicized and manipulated.

Recently, even those who had become somewhat inured to the intense partisanship of this Administration were shocked by the political manipulation of our U.S. Attorneys. And we have just begun to feel the impact of this scandal. Just as Hurricane Katrina exposed the issue of incompetence, the U.S. Attorney scandal has placed a spotlight on the Administration’s pattern of always placing the Republican Party’s interests before the public interest.

Now, the U.S. Attorney scandal will be to public corruption what Hurricane Katrina was to incompetence in the Bush Administration.

And the scandal has created a new context for viewing and evaluating scandals in the Bush Administration. Americans have learned just how the Bush Administration works and are discovering that under President Bush, no function of the federal government is free from the influence of politics.

And this is no accident. It’s all by design. The incidents I will list today are not a laundry list of one offs or isolated cases of corruption. There is a common denominator. Instead of promoting solutions to our nation’s broad challenges, the Bush Administration used all the levers of power to promote their party and its narrow interests.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s political architect, often drew an analogy between that election and the election of 1896, in which adviser Mark Hanna joined forces with many of the plutocrats of that Gilded Age and ushered in a 35-year era of Republican dominance – dominance that didn’t end until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Without a trace of reserve, George Bush and Karl Rove set out to recreate that earlier era of one-party rule. And they pursued their goal by inverting the very purpose of government.

Under this Administration, the federal government has become a stepchild of the Republican Party. And in promoting its partisan interests, absolutely nothing is out of bounds – from our national security to our justice system and everything in between – places that in past Administrations were off limits to political influence.

Principals and supporters of the Bush Administration have taken to attributing its myriad failures to mere incompetence. This is an ironic defense for an Administration that once touted President Bush as the first MBA President and boasted about a cabinet filled with CEOs.

In his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied politics was involved in his firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. Instead, he suggested that the dismissals were just “poorly handled” or a PR failure.

The Attorney General could offer no coherent explanation for the fiasco, because to do so would unveil the guiding principle at the core of this White House -- insinuating partisan politics into every aspect of government and bringing politics into what used to be a political-free zone – the Justice Department.

Even today, after three months of interviews and investigations and public discussion we still do not know who drafted the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired. We have been left with only three logical explanations for their dismissal:

1) the names of 93 U.S. Attorneys were thrown in a hat and eight were selected at random; or

2) the eight U.S. Attorneys were incompetent, a notion that has been dismissed by the Justice Department’s own rankings; or

3) a White House fearful of public corruption cases further weakening their hold on power concluded that attorneys leading public corruption cases were not “loyal Bushies” and had to go.

They had a plan. They told us what they were going to do. They carried it out. And now America is paying the price.

From the very beginning, the Bush Administration has seeded the government with highly partisan appointees – people more interested in serving their party than serving the broader public interest.

Almost every senior Bush appointee to the EPA and Interior Department has come out of the very industries they regulate – and which generously fund the Republican Party. As Jim Hightower has noted, this Administration eliminated the middleman. The corporations don’t have to lobby the government, because they are the government.

This cronyism transcends the regulatory agencies. The Bush Administration even laced FEMA with political operatives rather than people with experience handling emergencies.

There were early signs, not heeded, that this Administration would be driven by partisan politics, not public policy. In Ron Suskind’s book “The Price of Loyalty,” former-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill complained that he couldn’t interest anyone in policy discussions at the White House, because it was populated with political operatives rather than policy experts.

Even the President’s highly touted faith-based initiative turned out to be a purely political play. The top two leaders of that new office both quit in frustration. John J. DiIulio Jr. left after being forced to work in a White House that he likened to “the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.” Former Deputy Director David Kuo later alleged that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use that government office to mobilize religious voters in 20, targeted congressional races – of which the Republicans won 19.

I’ve got to tell you – Tammany Hall had nothing on team Bush.

The Bush Administration has redefined the famous challenge of President Kennedy’s inaugural address. Instead of “Ask not what your country can do for you,” it has become “Ask what your government can do for our party.”

It’s true that Franklin Roosevelt started an era of Democratic domination of Washington that lasted into the 1960s. Roosevelt forged a lasting political coalition by conquering the economic blight of the Great Depression and uniting our country to win World War II. The Democratic Party reaped the political dividends of successfully confronting those national challenges.

In contrast, the Bush Administration has ignored the great challenges of our day. And for six years, the Legislative Branch was complicit in this scheme. Now our country is paying the price.

Let’s begin with the biggest issue facing our nation: the war in Iraq. We now know that when the CIA and other intelligence agencies failed to find evidence to justify the President’s rationale for war, the Administration browbeat the CIA to tailor its intelligence. Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld even set up their own intelligence arm to provide the desired evidence.

And when former-ambassador Joseph Wilson cast doubt on the Administration’s contention that Saddam was trying to obtain uranium in Niger for a nuclear weapon, Cheney’s chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby, embarked on a smear campaign by leaking the identity of Wilson’s wife, an undercover CIA officer.

Once the Iraq War was launched, we all knew how important the reconstruction would be to securing the peace. But politics extended to that country’s reconstruction and the examples are truly shocking:

The person chosen to oversee Iraq’s health care system was the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan. The man he replaced was a physician with a master’s degree in public health and post-graduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and UC-Berkeley and taught at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where he specialized in disaster response.

A 24 year-old with a background in commercial real estate was hired by the Authority to reopen and manage the Iraqi stock exchange.

The daughter of a prominent neoconservative was tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion annual budget.

Nothing was free from political influence.

This bias toward political appointees for key positions extended beyond Iraq to our own homeland security. At Mayor Giuliani’s urging, President Bush nominated former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik as Secretary of Homeland Security. Bush’s legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, took charge of Kerik’s vetting by the White House. Kerik was later convicted of taking gifts from a construction firm with ties to organized crime.

Politically connected individuals weren’t the only beneficiaries of the Administration’s Iraq operations. Before the invasion of Iraq, Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary was granted a $7 billion classified contract to restore the country’s oil fields. Halliburton then went on to overcharge the government for fuel imports by more than $100 million.

The Administration’s coziness with corporations extends to the treatment of our injured veterans. Last year, a company called IAP Worldwide Services won a $120 million contract to privatize the management of Walter Reed. IAP is owned by a firm chaired by former Bush Treasury Secretary, John W. Snow, and has political ties to Congressman Jerry Lewis, the former Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Everyone knows about Vice President Cheney’s secret energy task force meetings with top executives from Exxon-Mobil, Conoco, Shell Oil and BP America. But science and sound policy have also taken a back seat to political considerations when it comes to the government’s findings on global warming. The New York Times reported that when Philip Cooney served as chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, he removed or adjusted descriptions of scientific research to downplay links between emissions and global warming. Before joining the Bush Administration, Cooney worked for the American Petroleum Institute. After resigning his government post, he went to work for Exxon-Mobil.

Bush Administration officials even vacation with energy lobbyists. The Justice Department’s former top environmental prosecutor, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, recently bought a beach house with an energy lobbyist and J. Steven Griles, a former Bush Administration official who pled guilty in the Abramoff case.

From legislation to government reports to oversight, the energy industry, one of the GOPs largest donors got what they needed.

Even federal efforts to help students learn and afford college aren’t off-limits to manipulation. The Washington Post recently reported that Matteo Fontana, a senior official in the Department of Education’s financial-aid office owned about $100,000 worth of stock in a student loan company that has been subpoenaed by New York officials.

Last weekend, we learned of an investigation into President Bush’s Reading First program and allegations that officials improperly profited when implementing the program and the case has now been referred to the Justice Department.

The Bush Administration memorably demonstrated its willingness to enrich those who helped carry out its political agenda. Seeking to build support among African-Americans for the No Child Left Behind law, the Administration paid Armstrong Williams $240,000 in taxpayer funds to promote the law on his nationally syndicated TV show.

An even more egregious misuse of public funds took place around the Administration’s budget-busting Medicare prescription drug program. The non-partisan General Accounting Office concluded that the Department of Health and Human Services illegally spent federal money to produce videos made to look like news reports and distributed them to TV stations across the nation.

After the bill was passed it was revealed that the Administration purposely withheld information from Congress on the true cost of the prescription drug program. Richard S. Foster, Medicare’s chief actuary for two Administrations said Bush Administration officials threatened to fire him if he disclosed that the drug plan would cost hundreds of billions more than what President Bush was telling Congress. In short, he would be fired if he did his job.

Perhaps the most thoroughly politicized bureau in the federal government is the General Services Administration, the mammoth agency charged with procuring supplies and managing federal properties. Its former chief of staff, David Safavian, was convicted of covering up his efforts to assist Jack Abramoff in acquiring two properties controlled by the GSA.

Safavian was also convicted of concealing facts about a lavish weeklong golf trip he took with Abramoff to Scotland and London– a trip that included Congressmen Bob Ney.

The current head of the GSA is Lurita Doan, a former government contractor, who has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party. On January 26th of this year, Doan took part in a meeting at the GSA that included 40 regional administrators by videoconference. At this meeting, Karl Rove’s deputy, J. Scott Jennings, gave a PowerPoint presentation on the 2006 elections. The Washington Post reported that one slide named 20 Democrats in Congress the Republicans will try to defeat in 2008. Another slide listed Republican Congressmen the party wants to protect.

According to the Post, Ms. Doan asked the assembled government employees how they could “help our candidates” in the next election.

Of course, it’s illegal for political activity of this kind to occur in a federal office, involving federal employees on taxpayer time. At a House hearing last month, Ms. Doan claimed she couldn’t recall the slide presentation or making the remarks that were attributed to her by various Republican appointees who were in attendance. Now, the Office of the Special Counsel is investigating this matter.

The most vivid example of this Administration’s corruption– and the one that revealed its true cost to the American people – was the fumbling of the Katrina disaster. Under President Clinton, FEMA was run by James Lee Witt, a political appointee and a man with years of experience in disaster management. But the Bush Administration chose to staff that sensitive agency with unqualified political appointees.

Bush first appointed his 2000 campaign manager, Joseph Allbaugh, to run FEMA. Allbaugh hired his long-time friend, Michael Brown, as the agency’s general counsel. Brown had no emergency management experience, having served as attorney for the International Arabian Horse Association. Allbaugh left in early-2003, and Bush named Michael Brown to replace him.

When the Gulf Coast was hit by the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, FEMA, one of the best agencies in the federal government and only four years after 9/11, was woefully unprepared to provide the needed assistance.

Now, millions of Americans are continuing to suffer terrible consequences and FEMA has left behind a striking legacy of mismanagement. Even FEMA’s attempt to take modest action failed. After purchasing thousands of trailers for those displaced by the hurricane, the trailers continue to sit empty in Arkansas. FEMA had no plan to move the trailers to the communities where they were needed.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with political appointees, per se. James Lee Witt, whom I mentioned before, was a political appointee and he was qualified to run FEMA. So was Alexander Hamilton as our nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury. And Harold Ickes Senior, appointed by FDR, was a key architect of the New Deal that helped our nation emerge from the Great Depression.

Political appointees are not inherently corrupt. The difference is that these appointees were well qualified for their positions. And they put the welfare of the nation ahead of purely partisan interests. Judged by those criteria, few of this President’s appointees would pass the test.

We have all focused on the recent firing of eight U.S. Attorneys, but they didn’t come out of the blue. There were a number of examples of political considerations overriding the work of Justice Department lawyers that should have woken us all up.

Indeed, the removal of U.S. Attorneys for political reasons is not a new occurrence. In 2002, a grand jury in Guam opened an investigation into Jack Abramoff’s secret arrangement to block a bill threatening his clients in the U.S. Territories.

Just days later, the U.S. Attorney who launched that probe was demoted after more than a decade in office. A report by the Interior Department’s Inspector General later concluded that Abramoff had actively lobbied for his dismissal and had a pipeline into the White House to accomplish that goal. And he wasn’t shy about reaching out to the White House for help. While the White House initially told us Jack Abramoff only occasionally reached out to the West Wing, we later learned he contacted the White House 485 times.

You can see the beginnings of a scandal – a U.S. Attorney was removed who wasn’t a “loyal Bushie.”

Sharon Y. Eubanks, the 22-year veteran career Justice Department lawyer who led Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies, told the Washington Post that three political appointees in Attorney General Gonzales’s office undermined the government’s case in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, which cost the federal government billions of dollars.

Now we’ve learned that political considerations were behind the dismissal of eight U.S. Attorneys across the country, including some who were actively investigating Republican Members of Congress. Recently released emails between staff at the Justice Department and staff at the White House show that loyalty to President Bush and pressure from political figures led to the firings.

In the course of the ongoing congressional investigation, we have also learned that White House staffers, including Karl Rove, have used email addresses issued by the Republican National Committee. I have a simple question and it remains unanswered: why? Why did government officials need a political tool to conduct business each day? Of course, party computers are necessary for running a re-elect campaign. But are they still necessary two years later when the President had no campaign ahead of him? These email accounts were only necessary because politics was so deeply engrained in the administration’s normal course of business. R.N.C. – U.S. Government…it is all one seamless political machine to them.

The Administration would like the press and public to believe all of this corruption and cronyism consists of isolated instances and one-offs. But I ask you:

Michael Brown. Scooter Libby. Bernard Kerik. Halliburton. Philip Cooney. David Safavian. Lurita Doan. Matteo Fontana. Sue Ellen Wooldridge. Steven Griles. Alberto Gonzales. FEMA. Iraq intelligence. Iraq reconstruction.

This Hall of Shame is no accident and these are not isolated incidences. It’s a pattern of political appointees who put partisan interests ahead of country – and were told to do so.

The good news is that this pattern of putting party first and country second has been brought into the light of day and can no longer be explained away as the product of errors or lapses in judgment by individuals. The implausible excuses are piling up, the explanations becoming harder and harder to believe and the truth more difficult to obscure. Americans now know that we are witnessing much more than just incompetent individuals at work. We are watching corruption in action.

This corruption might have continued unchecked, except for the last election – which brought a Democratic majority to Congress with subpoena power and a real seriousness about oversight and accountability. This Administration, and a complicit Congress, thought that the American people didn’t care about the rampant corruption infecting their national government.

Many in Washington dismissed Democratic efforts to make corruption an issue in the 2006 elections. But voters across the country rendered a different verdict than official Washington. And now we Democrats are accountable for fixing the problems we inherited.

. . .

The saddest legacy of the Bush Administration’s six-year trail of cronyism and corruption is that it contributes to the public’s already cynical view of government. This makes it even more difficult for those of us who believe that the purpose of government is to secure a better future for our country and all of its people. Repairing this sorry legacy is the first challenge our next President will face.

Hillary Sends An E-Mail

We can end the war in Iraq. We can achieve universal health care coverage. We can commit to energy independence. We can restore America's rightful place on the world stage.

Working together, we'll get our country back on track. It's going to be a long journey with a lot of hard work, but I can't think of anything more important.

So let's get back to work. I need your help right now on an important issue.

Last week we passed historic legislation in the Senate that calls for a phased redeployment for our troops in Iraq while ensuring they have the support they need. It's an important first step in ending the war in Iraq. But President Bush has threatened to veto the bill.

The American people have had enough of the president's failed strategy in Iraq. Join me today. Tell President Bush to listen to the will of the people and withdraw his veto threat.

*******

Go here to tell Bush not to veto the will of the American people.

What Watertiger Said

What watertiger said. If you know DC, you know that Walter Reed is a very short bike ride down 16th Street from the WH. The A-Hole-in-Chief could visit there every morning while getting in his all-important cardio fix.

If he cared to do so.

Another Bush photo op. Sad.