A good article on Cameron, without the irritating commentary about how horrible America is:

The Boudreauxs are growing weary of the name Katrina, particularly the media’s coverage of New Orleans. Regina says, “You hear all these celebrities with Katrina this and Katrina that. They have a Katrina fund and all this stuff. I think our governor almost forgot us.”

“She’s beginning to wake up to the facts over there,” J.C. says. “We do exist. But we didn’t holler enough. We just sucked it up and went back on back to work. People in New Orleans there squawked and howled.”

     For a very candid interview with a British member of Parliament, George Galloway, in which he agrues positions with a SKY NEWS anchor woman :
   
     He ecchoes my exact sentiments on Israel's Lebanon campaign and tangentially discusses how Israel can achieve peace, and that is by letting justice occur by seeing Israel evacuate the OT, all of them, The West Bank, East Jerusalem, get the IDF out of the Gaza, and return the Golan Heights to Syria, and return Sheba Farms to Lebanon.

    Please view :

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw


      

A vacuum in Lebanon, and Hezbollah fills it - Africa & Middle East - International Herald Tribune

I've been struggling for a couple of days with Scottie's questions. This column will not completely answer his questions :), but it will give my thoughts about moving forward.

For more, visit DC Offline.

The article above really opened my eyes about the situation in the Middle East and helped me put the pieces together for the first time. My developing thoughts are below for your comments.

There is a stated aim of Bin Laden as well as a concerted effort that we are seeing right now with Iran's outstretched arm to the citizens of Lebanon through Hezbollah to recreate a Muslim Caliphate in the Middle East, free of Western influence and a world power in its own right.

There does seem to be a fight over which branch of Islam will own this Caliphate, once it emerges - the Shi'ite branch from Iran (and already we are seeing a Shia Crescent develop from Iran through Syria and down through Lebanon via Hezbollah), or a Sunni branch from Al Qaeda.

America has just helped this enterprise along, however unknowingly, by deposing Saddam Hussein (a pain-in-the-ass, but an avowed secularist who saw himself as the second coming of Hammurabi) and opening the door to a Shia vs. Sunni Civil War in Iraq.

It is no longer a question of whether this Civil War will happen - it is only a question of who will influence the outcome: The United States on the side of a secular outcome regardless of the brand of Islam OR Iran toward a definitive Shi'ite state under its direct influence if we vacate our position there as some statesmen (I use that term with some levity) here in the States are now advocating.

As should be apparent, I am no Bush fan. His policies have been so disastrous to our image and to the Region itself, it will take decades to recover - IF we can navigate the months ahead successfully. But the counterpoint to his Middle East policy is NOT to leave our position there right now. The certain occupant of that power vacuum would be Ahmedinejad and the Shi'ite influence from Iran with their bloated oil treasury buying influence and good will the exact way they are doing through Hezbollah in Lebanon right now.

The pattern is obvious and will be repeated in Iraq to win the cultural victory and repair all the infrastructure we have destroyed and have been, up to this point, unable to properly restore. Just read the above article to see the real effects of this on the ground in Lebanon and translate that to Iraq if we leave right now.

The correct counterpoint to the Bush policy in the Middle East is a change in strategy. A real battle to win "the hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people. Terence Daly notes: "This is scoffed at by many conservatives as the equivalent of sitting around a campfire singing "Kumbaya." But in fact it is a sophisticated, multifaceted, even ruthless struggle to wrest control of a population from cunning and often brutal foes. We must be ready and able to kill insurgents - lots of them - but as a means, not an end."

We were led to Iraq with false intelligence, false links to Al Qaeda, false motives, even false expectations and budget projections - but the question of "Should we have gone in there or not?" is no longer important. Rather, the question of "What do we do now?" is of paramount importance given the stakes of those we are playing this game against. They have already gamed out their strategy several moves ahead of us. Will we stop reacting to events as they take place, define victory and form a strategy to win, or continue to try to figure out how to retreat as quickly as we can from a war we never should have entered into in the first place?

Read this story if you want to laugh (or cry) at Ohio Judges.  Two kids set up deer decoys in the middle of the road to watch cars swerve.  That's pretty kewl.  But get this, the judge is suspending the sentencing until football season is over.  I mean, who's going to be quarterback if this kid is in jail?  Somebody should call up Jim Tressel so he can offer these boys a scholarship to join the rest of the criminals and thugs on his team.

[http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/bushs-unchecked-executive-power-v.html]

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Bush's unchecked Executive power v. the Founding principles of the U.S.

I recently found this blog by Glenn Greenwald. Glenn is the author of the New York Times Best-Selling book, How Would A Patriot Act?, a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released May, 2006.

For all you Federalists out there - and I know there are plenty, since I love the Federalist Papers with a passion myself - this article is perhaps the best critique of the Bush Administration's aggregation of unchecked Executive Power that I have read.

Just as Nixon famously said, "If the President does it, that means it's not illegal."

Glenn writes, "The Administration is expressly claiming that the President does have the right to violate laws of Congress because his executive power is absolute and thus cannot be restricted by anything. And rather than applying this theory of unchecked executive power to a single case (as the Reagan Administration did in Iran-contra), the Bush Administration has arrogated unto itself this monarchical power as a general proposition, applicable to each and every issue which can be said to relate, however generally, to this undeclared "war" against terrorism."

    To open up the discussion on the blogsite, I would like ANY blogger to state their position on whether the decision to invade Iraq was right or wrong.
    If your position has changed since 2003, please note how it has changed.
    If you claim that the Iraq invasion and occupation was the right course of action, please include your reasons why.
    If you argue that the Iraq episode was not justified, then or since other issues have come to the forefront, please note underlying arguments as well.

    John McCain recently stated the he feels thats the 2006 mid-term elections might turn out to be a referendum on the Iraq war, so I feel this discussion is important and timely.

    Below I am posting 2 articles, one discussing Chuck Hagel, whom I respect greatly, and the other written by Stephen Zunes, a professor at USF, and I know it might vex some to learn that the 2nd article concerns the US, Israel, and Lebanon's Hezbollah, but it is quite informative, and really puts certain issues in their proper perspectives.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060820/ap_on_el_pr/hagel_republicans

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0819-25.htm

cheers

This lady has some ideas about the root causes of islamic terrorism.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060818/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush

Ever since President Bush was forced to admit that he was spying on Americans' telephone calls and e-mail without warrants, his lawyers have fought to keep challenges to the program out of the courts. On Thursday, that plan failed. A federal judge in Detroit declared the eavesdropping program to be illegal and unconstitutional. She also offered a scathing condemnation of what lies behind the wiretapping - Bush's attempt to expand his powers to the point that he can place himself beyond the reach of Congress, judges or the Constitution.

"There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," wrote Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the U.S. District Court in Detroit. Her decision was based on a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

She said Bush violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when he ordered the National Security Agency to spy without a warrant on international phone calls and e-mail by Americans and foreign residents of the United States. She noted that the surveillance law was passed to prohibit just this sort of presidential abuse of power and provided ample flexibility for gathering vital intelligence. She also said that the program violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as the rights of free speech and association granted by the First Amendment.

The ruling eviscerated the absurd notion on which the administration's arguments have been based: that Congress authorized Bush to do whatever he thinks is necessary when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan.

It's good news that this ruling exists at all. Bush's lawyers tried to have the entire suit thrown out on national security grounds, a tactic they have used in an alarming number of cases.

No sooner had this ruling been issued than Congress, who has been searching for ways to give legal cover to an illegal spying program, began calling for new laws to overcome Taylor's objections. Republicans quickly pointed out that Taylor was appointed by President Jimmy Carter and that some of the many precedents she cited were written by liberal judges. These efforts to undermine Taylor's arguments will undoubtedly continue while the White House appeals the decision, and the outcome in the conservative 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is uncertain.

But for now, with a careful, thoroughly grounded opinion, one judge in Michigan has done what 535 members of Congress have so abysmally failed to do. She has reasserted the rule of law over a lawless administration and shown why issues of this kind belong within the constitutional process created more than two centuries ago to handle them.

Of course, Bush is appealing the decision. And for now is not indicating he will obey the court ruling on grounds of National Security. Click the link above for the Yahoo! News story . . .

For more, visit www.dcoffline.com