With so much money pouring into the Pentagon’s base world, the question is: Who’s benefiting?

Continue Reading...

After the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, he was surprised to discover that the essential global structure of that other Cold War colossus, the American superpower, with its vast panoply of military bases, remained obdurately in place as if nothing whatsoever had happened.  Almost a decade later, when the Evil Empire was barely a memory, Johnson surveyed the planet and found “an informal American empire” of immense reach and power.  He also became convinced that, in its global operations, Washington was laying the groundwork “all around the world... for future forms of blowback.”

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

“What was most interesting to hear was what was it like living at vice president’s residence. What’s the reality of that? It’s surprisingly small. Where does the secret service go? What happens if you have to get up at midnight to go to bathroom? I was interested not in the grandeur of it, but the real nitty gritty of it. Certain questions were not answered directly and I thought that was interesting.”

While Louis-Dreyfus may have nailed the questions about the security detail on "Veep," the show's second season (beginning Sunday) has a long way to go on the broader strokes, said vice-presidential historian Joel Goldstein, of Saint Louis University, who watched some but not all of season 1.

"I really like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and I think she's terrific, but when I saw the show, my reaction was -- this is nothing like reality. Since Mondale, the vice president has really been a big deal."

Continue Reading...

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

 

Continue Reading...

To answer this question, one obvious place to start is school textbooks. I looked at several of them, and was happily surprised. The books present a fairly complex and balanced view of the war in Iraq, avoiding the falsehoods and sugarcoating that has so often marred American history instruction. But textbooks only tell part of the story.

Just as important is what is actually emphasized in the classrooms, and the ability of teachers to engage in real inquiry. Unfortunately, a combination of school policies and judicial decisions have made it so that many kids learn little or nothing about what we have done in Iraq, or why we have done it.

I’m a professor of education and history, and wrote a book examining conflicts over history in American public schools. But for me, this probe is more than theoretical: My daughter is an 11th grader in a suburban public high school, where she takes Advanced Placement U.S. History.

Continue Reading...

For Portman, it was his 21-year-old son coming out as gay that "allowed" him to see the issue as a "dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have -- to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years.”

Continue Reading...

Laura Miller bites into "Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live," by evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk, who debunks the myth of the caveman diet:

Why are we so intent on establishing how paleolithic people ate, exercised, coupled up and raised their kids? That’s a question Zuk considers only in passing, but she hits the nail pretty solidly on the head … Even if we wanted to live like cavemen, Zuk points out (noting that the desire to do so somehow never seems to extend to moving into mud huts), we couldn’t. In reality, we don’t have their bodies, and don’t live in their world. Even the animals and plants we eat have changed beyond recognition from their paleolithic ancestors. It turns out we’re stuck being us.

Continue Reading...

Portman told reporters Thursday in Washington that his views began changing in 2011 when his college-age son Will told his parents he was gay.

Portman says he reconsidered gay marriage from a different perspective, one of a father who wants all three of his children to have happy lives with people they love.

He says he discussed the issue with his pastor and others, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose daughter is a lesbian.

As a member of the House in 1996, Portman had voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman and bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Two Democratic senators who spoke to Politico on the condition of anonymity said that, when challenged by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., over the administration's resistance to releasing Justice Department memos justifying the targeted killing program, the president responded, "This is not Dick Cheney we’re talking about here.”

Again, President Obama, in defense of his targeted killing program, reportedly said, "This is not Dick Cheney we're talking about here."

It's the sort of defense Dick Cheney would probably use, were he not already Dick Cheney.

Continue Reading...

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a joke. Not for the Iraqis, of course, and not for American soldiers, and not the ha-ha sort of joke either. And here’s the saddest truth of all: on March 20th as we mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion from hell, we still don’t get it. In case you want to jump to the punch line, though, it’s this: by invading Iraq, the U.S. did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at the time. And we -- and so many others -- will pay the price for it for a long, long time.

The Madness of King George

Continue Reading...

The Associated Press writes that McDonnell issued his annual list of "pardons, commutations, reprieves and other forms of clemency" on Feb. 23, and Libby was included among those whose civil rights have been restored, as of Nov. 1, 2012.

From the AP:

Libby was the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. He was convicted in 2007 of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements in a case involving leaked information that compromised the covert identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Libby's 2 1/2-year prison sentence was commuted by then-President George W. Bush.

In Virginia, only the governor can restore felons' civil rights. McDonnell has streamlined the process and, consequently, has restored the rights of more than 4,600 felons – more than any previous governor – with nearly a year still remaining in his term.

"We look at the merits of each application, not the name," McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin told the AP. "This application was handled like every other one that comes to the office."

Continue Reading...

"Congress will not hold anyone to blame. Lyndon Johnson's probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney," Jones, a libertarian who is often critical of the war in Afghanistan, told a Young Americans for Liberty conference in Raleigh this weekend.

Jones also called the use of drones in targeted killing "absolutely unconstitutional," warning the autonomous aircraft could be used against Americans in the future. "When that drone comes to America from a foreign country, we're going to wonder what in the hell hit us. It was a drone," he said.

Continue Reading...

...

As a gay rights supporter, I think the new ad from the Respect for Marriage coalition, promoting the pro-marriage equality stance of Republicans like Laura Bush and Dick Cheney, is great politics. As a Democrat, forgive me if I don’t rush to applaud them for their alleged “courage” in bucking what has been Republican dogma.

Continue Reading...

Cheney joins a handful of other Republicans who have defended the program unconditionally, even as more lawmakers are calling for increased oversight of the administration's targeting of U.S. citizens.

Cheney, of course, was and is a big proponent of the Bush administration's use of waterboarding, and even told Rose that he has no regrets about it:  "I didn't have any. Absolutely not." He added that waterboarding "absolutely" should still be part of American counterterrorism methods, despite what people like Stanley McChrystal say about it offending American values. "The question I think you've got to answer, Charlie, is how many people are you wanting to let die so that you don't, you know, offend your values?"

Continue Reading...

With new friends like John Bolton, who recently praised President Obama’s targeted killing policy as “consistent with and really derived from the Bush administration approach to the War on Terror,” Obama needs some old-fashioned enemies. Just in time, Dick Cheney breaks his months of silence with a slashing, over-the-top speech denouncing Obama’s national security nominees as “second-rate” and charging, again, that he’s making the country less safe.

"The performance now of Barack Obama as he staffs up the national security team for the second term is dismal," Cheney said in comments to about 300 members of the Wyoming Republican Party reported by the Associated Press on Sunday.

"Frankly, what he has appointed are second-rate people," he said, for the positions of secretary of state, secretary of defense and CIA director -- John Kerry, Chuck Hagel and John Brennan, to be precise.

Predictably the top neocon had the toughest words for Defense nominee Hagel, even though they’re both Republicans. Cheney joined the realm of conspiracy theorists by suggesting that Obama picked Hagel so he has “a Republican that he can use to take the heat for what he plans to do to the Department of Defense." That’s a new one.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

"The performance now of Barack Obama as he staffs up the national security team for the second term is dismal," Cheney said in comments to about 300 members of the Wyoming Republican Party.

Cheney, a Wyoming native, said it was vital to the nation's national security that "good folks" hold the positions of secretary of state, CIA director and secretary of defense.

"Frankly, what he has appointed are second-rate people," he said.

John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, has been confirmed as secretary of state. CIA designate John Brennan and defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel are still awaiting U.S. Senate confirmation.

Wyoming's two U.S. senators, Mike Enzi and John Barrasso, voted for Kerry's confirmation. Both Enzi and Barrasso gave introductory speeches for Cheney Saturday night.

Cheney said Hagel, a former Nebraska U.S. senator, was chosen because Obama "wants to have a Republican that he can use to take the heat for what he plans to do to the Department of Defense."

Continue Reading...

They’re the hawkish, bellicose bunch in the Republican Party — William Kristol, Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams — who shaped Dick Cheney’s and Don Rumsfeld’s disastrous foreign policy.

These are also the people who have supported Israel’s rightward lurch in recent years. They don’t want a two-state solution. They eschew any possibility of talks with Hamas or Iran. They favor building more settlements in the West Bank.

Continue Reading...