By: Mike Schiller  

Human beings are souls, not resources. Nobody should let another person treat them like an object, for any reason. People deserve to be treated with dignity and respect for their physical space. To allow oneself to be forced to fight in another country on potentially fraudulent speculation of what the other nation might someday do, is not patriotism, even if you are following "orders". To follow "orders" in such circumstances is merely complicity in the degradation of one's own government, and thus an act of contempt against the people of one's own nation. That is the opposite of patriotism.

A citizen of America, whether they are a lawmaker or an average citizen, has but one obligation and that is to the people of their country. To defend the people of one's own country sometimes requires us to resist or refuse unacceptable demands from the leaders of one's own nation. When we refuse to allow ourselves to be disposed of like toilet paper, we are also protecting our fellow citizens from being treated like garbage by lawmakers who have grown contemptuous of the very population they claim to represent.

By: John Chuckman  

So why is it that Americans believe that bombing and shooting and burning people in Iraq or Afghanistan can produce anything of value? You might think the ghostly screams of three million murder victims occasionally wafted in on Pacific breezes from Vietnam would serve as terrifying reminders of the futility of war.

Why are the civilized tools of patient diplomacy and international organizations held in contempt by many Americans?

Quite apart from all the weighty concerns of morality and human civilization, the truth is that war almost never solves anything.

I do not question self-defense, but most people can distinguish an act of genuine self-defense without hearing from official spokespersons and propagandists and advertising hucksters. I suspect that most of the world's people recognize that much of what the United States is doing today has little to do with self-defense. This instinctive judgment is reinforced by all the choking smog of explanations coming from Washington.

By: Eliot J. Chandler  

It was not apparent at first. But following 9/11, and the President confiscating a bull horn, the White House was off and running, not only taking the Congress by storm but the news media and the American public as well. Piece by piece the administration then began to put their comprehensive plan into action and have received only minimal dissent. Even those critical of the administration have failed to recognize the coup that had taken place. Their criticisms were not only missing the mark but were, in effect, further empowering the White House by stirring the public to view that dissent as being un-American.

For the most part the U.S. public fully trusts this President to look after things so that they can comfortably return to their SUV's, TV sports, and sitcoms. Unlike the homefront during WWII, the patriotism Americans are expressing today would in no way encourage them to accept high prices, shortages, food and gas rationing, air raid drills, blackout curtains, and painting half of their car's headlights black.

By: Dan DeLisio  

Among the plethora of sugar coated falsehoods contained in Mr. Bush's State of the Union (Bad and Getting Worse) Speech was his bald statement that "we will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, other presidents, and other generations". Come again? Does he ever bother to really try and understand the import of the words that Karl and his minions write for him? If he did maybe he would realize how the vast gulf between his prepared text and cold reality, his credibility gap if you will, grows wider each time he utters such a blatant untruth.

The plain truth of the matter is that the exploding federal budget deficits that Mr. Bush's regressive tax cuts have played a heavy part in causing, and the even greater deficits that his new grievously ill-conceived dividend tax elimination proposals will cause, are a huge problem that will be passed on to future generations in the form of a runaway explosion in the national debt...

"See, we were running deficits in the $275 billion a year. This country had $3 trillion of debt under Republican mismanagement, and ridiculous tax cuts we couldn't afford. We came into an era of fiscal responsibility under Bill Clinton and Bob Rubin and had the largest expansion ever. I hope the President starts taking advice from people like Bob Rubin and Bill Clinton and gets this economy going."

- James Carville, on CNN's Crossfire

Editorial from:  

Remember him? He was the guy who masterminded the attacks that brought down the World Trade Center, smashed the Pentagon, and killed more than 3,000 people here. Because he was hiding in Afghanistan, under the protection of the Taliban government there, we went to war. Funny, but we haven't heard too much about that war lately, either.

The last time President George W. Bush mentioned bin Laden's name in a public address was in June of last year. That's when the focus of America's "War on Terror" shifted to a new bogeyman, Saddam Hussein.

By: David Corn  

The compassionate warrior. That's the image Bush offered in his second State of the Union address, as he deftly blended his 2000 campaign schtick (and all of its policy disingenuousness) with his post-9/11 position as the nation's protector. He talked softly about helping drug addicts, at-risk children, and AIDS sufferers at home and in Africa. And he waved one damn big stick at Saddam Hussein, practically promising war. He was, to be polite, less than honest on several fronts.

The instant-analysts were right to point out that Bush essentially delivered a double feature. Spectacle One was his standard policy speech, with a few new special effects. Spectacle Two was a pseudo-declaration of war. In the opener, Bush claimed credit for his 2001 tax "relief" package (without explaining why he considers it "relief" to give the bulk of his nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts to the top 5%); for the so-called education reform legislation (without mentioning the extensive criticism the law has recently received from state officials and education experts worried about its real-world consequences); for the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security (without mentioning his initial opposition to the birth of this super-bureaucracy); and for the corporate-crime measure passed last year (without mentioning the White House's efforts to trim some of the stricter provisions). He then proceeded with a familiar script: new tax cuts that favor the well-heeled, Social Security privatization, Medicare reform, his energy plan, and limiting medical malpractice awards. In doing so, Bush replayed many of his classic fibs.

By: Danny Schechter  

Missing words in last night's State of the Union sermon: Osama, risks, costs of war, consequences of war, collateral damage, alternatives to war, duration of war, Putin, France, Germany, democracy. Newsweek's Howard Fineman called it: "liberation theology, but from the right this time." Maureen Dowd was on fire in her op-ed gallery at the NY Times; "There was no smoking gun last night. There was merely a smoky allusion... The axis of evil has shrunk to Saddam, evil incarnate. Iran and North Korea were put aside with the dismissive comment: 'Different threats require different strategies.'"

It was a masterful performance but was it persuasive? From the constant invocation of the name of the most high in the sky, HE who blesses the United States of America, GOD or G-D as is your preference, we have put ourselves in holier hands. But what about the people?

News analysis from:  

As we watched Bush's State of the Union Address (which was really a "Please Don't Ask Me About the State of the Union While I Distract You With War" Address), we couldn't help feel exasperated at the length with which this administration will peddle hearsay and innuendo as fact, presenting information to support its claims that the sheeple/dumb Americans won't think twice about checking for reliability.

There were many credibility holes in the speech - taking credit for putting money in our pockets through a tax cut (actually, the Democrats sponsored the $300 checks), Homeland Security (and, again, the Democrats created the idea, which Bush and Co. HATED until the public screamed for it), safer airports (umm, federal airport baggage checkers was another idea from the Democrats), and an education bill (which everyone says is under-funded and, therefore, useless) - but the most egregious factual liberties were taken during the warmongering section of the speech (we won't even get into the hypocrisy of decrying torture - did you see that feigned look of anguish on his face - while Bush did (does?) the same thing to the Al Qaeda captives).

From:  

Butler, who led U.N. inspection teams in Iraq until they left in 1998, said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein undoubtedly possessed weapons of mass destruction, and was trying to "cheat" his way again out of the latest U.N. demand to disarm.

But a U.S. attack, without United Nations backing, and without any effort to curb the possession of weapons of mass destruction globally, would be a contravention of international law and sharpen the divide between Arabs and the West.

"The spectacle of the United States, armed with its weapons of mass destruction, acting without Security Council authority to invade a country in the heartland of Arabia and, if necessary, use its weapons of mass destruction to win that battle, is something that will so deeply violate any notion of fairness in this world that I strongly suspect it could set loose forces that we would deeply live to regret", Butler said.

"Even if the military could handle two major theater wars, it isn't clear that the White House or the interagency process could handle that. It's very difficult for an administration to focus on two crises at the same time."

- Michele Flournoy, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies

"I think there's no question the Bush administration has given nuclear weapons a new shine, that they have decided that not only are nuclear weapons important to deter Saddam Hussein or other opponents of the United States from possibly using nuclear weapons, but but also that those nuclear weapons might be useful military instruments to actually thwart them from using weapons of mass destruction, and that's really the departure from what we've seen in the past."

- Professor William Arkin, from John Hopkins University, to ABC radio's PM program

By: Dafna Linzer  

The top nuclear inspector in Iraq disputed President Bush's claims that Iraqi intelligence agents are posing as scientists but conceded Wednesday he would not be surprised if the inspections effort had been infiltrated - not necessarily by the Iraqis.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency also stood by his inspectors' findings that aluminum tubes the Iraqis had tried to import were for rockets and not for a nuclear program, as the President reasserted Tuesday in his State of the Union address.

"The old economic team was a disaster. The new economic team is selling the same stupid policy. They'll be a disaster, too. Ari Fleischer is a mouthpiece. He gives away nothing. The press can't stand him. The President loves him because this is the most secretive and arrogant administration we have seen - probably since the days of Richard Nixon. I'd like to have Richard Nixon back. I think he'd be a huge improvement."

- Eleanor Clift

By: Bryan Zepp Jamieson  

Back in the nineties, it used to be fun watching Republicans during Clinton's SOTU speeches. Clinton would quite often leave the teleprompter, and wing it for five or ten minutes at a time, presenting a dazzling array of knowledge and statistics, and never, ever making a mistake. It was a virtuoso performance by a political master, and the more adversity Clinton faced, the better and more stirring he became, and the longer the Republican faces grew.

I could understand how they felt. Back in the decade before, Reagan could also take his political opponents and make them his bitch on the last Tuesday in January. He often enjoyed a bounce in the polls of five or ten points, even as such catastrophes such as Beirut, Iran/Contra, and the Challenger explosion swirled about him.

Such a gift for seizing the opportunity has not been vouchsafed to our boy George. Oh, they have worked with him on his delivery, polishing it a bit. I noticed that his habit of pausing after each recitation, and gazing about the chamber with that trademark smirk had been quite reduced. Last year, when he was still milking 9/11 for all it was worth, a lot of people noticed that smirk and wondered, many for the first time, if there was any link at all between the man's words and his inner thoughts and feelings, if any.

By: Mike McArdle  

Today President Bush will deliver the State of the Union address. Now, of course, Bush "delivers" the State of the Union about the way the paperboy "delivers" your newspaper. Even his supporters will realize that he had about as much insight into the speech he will read as the kid on the bike had into the lead editorial that he flings onto your lawn.

But even though his role in the address begins when they fire up the teleprompter and ends when it runs out of words, even Bush must realize that the state of the union that he at least theoretically presides over has rarely been more dismal. The economy has settled into a malaise that may last years. The country is divided by deep cultural and philosophical differences that seem to split the nation in half. Polls show that dissatisfaction in the direction of the country is the highest it's been in years.

"No god and no religion can survive ridicule, no political church, no nobility, no royalty, or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field and live."

- Mark Twain

By: Alexander Chancellor  

One consequence of September 11 has been a great leap forward in the development of identification technologies. Leading this work is the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Pentagon, or DARPA, which I have written about here before. DARPA has recently notched up the dubious achievement of establishing an "Information Awareness" programme, with the purpose of storing everything there is to know about every U.S. citizen on a "virtual centralised grand database".

But that is just one of its crazy schemes. Another one, just revealed in the New York Times, is the development of a sniffing machine that would be able to identify people by their body odour. There are already machines for reading people's fingerprints and scanning their irises. But this is a whole new idea. If, in theory, you got hold of one of Osama bin Laden's old jalabias - perhaps from the dry cleaners in Kabul - you would be able to waft its smell into the machine, which would then recognise it if it ever came across it again. The clever thing is that the dry cleaning wouldn't have eliminated the smell, for this wouldn't be a normal kind of smell - like that of sweat - that is removed by washing, but a smell not normally detectable by humans that is supposedly given off by the proteins of a person's immune system...

"He was one of the cool guys. He rose to prominence for no ostensible, visible reason... He really came as 'to the manner born'."

- Bill Semple, a classmate of Smirk at Andover in Massachusetts

From:  

It's Top Ten time again! With the war machine going into overdrive we have a thoroughly depressing list of moronic conservative behavior this week. George W. Bush and his lying administration top the chart amidst revelations that they really never had any evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Colin Powell (2) reveals how we're going to occupy Iraq's oilfields, and there's George W. Bush again (3) announcing his fabulous Office of Global Communications. Elsewhere, John Snow (4), the new treasury secretary, is a drunk driver and deadbeat dad, Jerry Thacker (5) is a first-class homophobe, and the Republican Party (7) is has been caught "astroturfing". Bringing up the rear we find the latest judicial conservative idiot, Karl Forester (9) and back again in the number ten slot is Matt Drudge.

Bush-Backing Letters to Editor Eerily Similar

By: Dennis Roddy  

In letters to the editors of their hometown papers they all agreed. Identically. To date, I have found 20 cases of this letter in newspapers from Honolulu to Atlanta. In Salt Lake City, the Deseret News published it twice in the same week.

This pithy letter has fooled the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the International Herald-Tribune, and a raft of smaller papers. Never have so many claimed credit for the same 134 words.

In Muncie, IN, John Pinckney signed off on them in the pages of the Star Press. Sherry Collins of Tucson, AZ, was pleased to apply her name beneath them for the readers of the Tucson Citizen. "Derick Mfoafo", whose name turns up nowhere in a search of Lynchburg, VA, says the same things as Collins and Pinckney for the readers of the Lynchburg Ledger.

The letter originates on a website called www.gopteamleader.com, reachable through a variety of websites, notably www.GeorgeWBush.com, all run by the Republican National Committee. Such letters are referred to in the business as "Astroturf", because their grass roots are wholly synthetic.

By: Glenn Frankel  

...Michael Gove, a columnist for the Times of London newspaper, said. "Anti-Americanism is a real force here and a growing one. It starts with tightly focused arguments but broadens into the crudest of caricatures."

Other British observers insist that what's growing here isn't anti-Americanism, but rather healthy criticism of a superpower gone awry. "Being critical of U.S. policy does not constitute a prejudice", said Godfrey Hodgson, a veteran journalist and author. "A vast majority of the British people are favorable to the United States, but a substantial majority are opposed to George W. Bush."

Much of the outrage is indeed aimed at Bush, whose colloquial speaking style and Texas accent don't go over well here. A cartoon in last Sunday's Observer newspaper depicted him as the Lone Ranger and Blair as Tonto. When Blair expresses doubts about the Iraq campaign, Bush replies: "Shut up, Tonto, and cover my back."

"Bush is a gift for anti-American cartoonists", Timothy Garton Ash, director of the European Studies Center at St. Antony's College at Oxford University, said. "If Bill Clinton were still in the White House, I suspect it'd be a very different story."

Report from:  

A day after Turkey hosted a regional meeting on the escalating U.S.-Iraq showdown, the head of Turkey's ruling party accused the United States and other countries of hypocrisy in demanding that Saddam Hussein give up weapons of mass destruction while holding on to their own arsenals.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, chairman of the governing Justice and Development Party, said eliminating nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in Iraq was a worthy goal.

"This sounds good", he said in his first appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "But let's not kid ourselves. No one is interested in eliminating their own weapons of mass destruction. They're interested in strengthening their own weapons of mass destruction."

Asked if he was accusing the United States of hypocrisy, Erdogan said: "I meant all the countries in the world. The United States is also included."

By: Haroon Siddiqui  

From Europe through Africa and Asia to the Far East, public opinion is solidly ranged against America. The dissidents include the Pope, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Nelson Mandela.

This anti-war movement may be more potent than the one against the Vietnam War. It is worldwide and it has gelled before the war has even begun.

North American pundits have it that Bush has a small window of opportunity for war because a delay would push it into the unbearable heat of the Middle East summer. The greater truth, as seen from here, may be that his options are closing because of growing people power, even in America.

The President's poll numbers are dropping. Public skepticism is rising, as is a chorus of influential voices, including those of Senator Ted Kennedy ("This is the wrong war at the wrong time."), Jimmy Carter, Gulf War veterans, stalwart Republicans, Hollywood celebrities, and unions.

The longer Bush delays the war, the more difficult it will be to launch it. But the only way he can go quickly is to abandon the fig leaf of the United Nations, proving that his enlisting of the U.N. was a sham all along.

"Our people remain vulnerable, nearly as vulnerable as we were before... September 11. Our vigilance has faded at the top, in the corridors of power in Washington, DC, where the strategy and resources to protect our nation are supposed to originate, where leaders are supposed to lead. We have relied on a myth of homeland security - a myth written in rhetoric, inadequate resources, and a new bureaucracy, instead of relying on good, old-fashioned American ingenuity, might, and muscle. The truth is, we are not prepared, we are not supporting our first responders, and our approach to securing our nation is haphazard at best. Somewhere along the line, we lost our edge. We let our guard down."

- Sen. Clinton (D-NY) at a homeland security conference in Manhattan, 01/24/03

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