Twenty days ago, David Barstow broke his story in The New York Times about the Pentagon’s use of network and cable military analysts to reinforce its talking points and present a favorable picture of happenings in Iraq. Ever since, the print and television media have delved into the scandal, prying out new details in interviews and document searches, and discussing the implications for democracy when the Department of Defense shapes the debate with the help of triple-dipping former employees who present themselves as objective observers of U.S. policy.

Riiiiiiiiiiiight. In some parallel dimension.

In our dimension, what we’ve got isn’t a flurry of follow-up reports but rather one of the key elements of propaganda: killing a story by ignoring it.

The media typically employ their pervasive power to reinforce the dominant ideology through repeated exposure to every element of their biased agenda. But silence should not be underrated. It provides a marvelous tool of control when accompanied by the never-ending distractions and distortions of infotainment.

No surprise whatsoever that the network and cable stations who hired these ex-military analysts without disclosing to audiences their conflicts of interest or other biases have been – let us be generous – reluctant to acknowledge their role in passing along exaggerations and outright lies to Americans in the run-up to the war and its bloody, treasury-sucking aftermath. They have a big stake in silence.

On the other hand, it might be thought that editorialists of major print outlets which didn't pay for the free-lance "expertise" of the Pentagon’s domestic propaganda brigade would be eager to write something excoriating. Or that print reporters would be digging into the documents on the subject that the Pentagon has dumped at this Web site. Alas, such modest aggressiveness is also confined to that other dimension.

Just how silent the media have been has been examined by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (TV News Blackout on Pentagon Pundits) and the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism (Media Passes on Times Pentagon Piece). In the first week after Barstow’s story appeared, Pew found two stories about it in other media, both of them on PBS. Since then, there have been a handful of others.

Only in wwwLand and among a few in Congress has the story been given any significant attention. Senator John Kerry urged a "thorough investigation" by the Government Accountability Office, as he noted here at Daily Kos in Investigate the Pentagon Pundit Program. Senator Russ Feingold also wrote the GAO. Michigan Senator Carl Levin has written to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro wrote to news executives at the broadcast and cable networks asking them to explain what criteria they use for hiring military analysts. Only ABC and CNN responded. She and 40 other congresspersons have asked the Pentagon’s Inspector General to conduct a probe. She joined with Michigan Rep. John Dingell and others requesting the Federal Communications Commission look into the matter:

"While we deem the DoD’s policy unethical and perhaps illegal, we also question whether the analysts and the networks are potentially equally culpable pursuant to the sponsorship identification requirements in the Communications Act of 1934 and the rules of the Federal Communications Commission," the letter stated.

"When seemingly objective television commentators are in fact highly motivated to promote the agenda of a government agency, a gross violation of the public trust occurs," it continued. "The American people should never be subject to a covert propaganda campaign but rather should be clearly notified of who is sponsoring what they are watching."

About all this too, megamedia silence.

It’s not as if there hasn’t been anything fresh to report. Media Matters, which has followed the story since it broke, actually spent some time perusing those documents the Pentagon posted. For those who claim there was nothing nefarious about the domestic propaganda program, that it was merely a program of courtesy briefings to ensure that the military analysts were up to speed on what was really happening with regards to Iraq, Media Matters found this audio-taped exchange of ass-kissing and subversion from an April 18, 2006, Pentagon meeting with several analysts, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and General Peter Pace, who was then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

UNIDENTIFIED 1: I'm an old intel guy, and I can sum all of this up, unfortunately, with one word. And that is "psyops." Now, most people, when they hear that, they think, "Oh my God --

RUMSFELD: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED 1: -- "they're trying to brainwash [inaudible]."

RUMSFELD: "What are you, some kind of nut? You don't believe in the Constitution?"

UNIDENTIFIED 2: Well, he is.
[laughter]

UNIDENTIFIED 1: Some have characterized [inaudible]. But I would also disagree with you, sir, respectfully. You are absolutely brilliant in front of the camera. And anybody --

RUMSFELD: It's by acting. Because I don't spend any time --

UNIDENTIFIED 1: It doesn't matter. The point is that you are. And I think most of us would agree with that. And --

RUMSFELD: But I -- but -- but --

UNIDENTIFIED 1: -- to take the offensive is -- because many of us go on every day. We don't agree with everything the administration does, maybe with some of your decisions and -- but we get beat up on television sometimes when we go on and we are debating, and then we take the -- and we're all thick-skinned, or we wouldn't continue to do this.

RUMSFELD: Mm-hmm.

UNIDENTIFIED 1: But we would love -- I would personally love -- and I think I speak for most of the gentlemen here at the table -- for you to take the offensive, to just go out there and just crush these people so that when we go on, we're -- forgive me -- we're parroting, but it's what has to be said. It's what we believe in, or we would not be saying it.
[crosstalk]

UNIDENTIFIED 1: And we'd love to be following our leader, as indeed you are. You are the leader. You are our guy.

The Pentagon wouldn’t say who those unidentifieds were, but it gave Media Matters a list of confirmed participants at the meeting. Among them were Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, military analyst for Fox News who recently suggested using terrorism against Iran.

On Wednesday at its Web site, Media Matters asked the media: "Have you hosted on air the person who told Rumsfeld at the  meeting with military analysts: 'You are the leader. You are our guy'?

In that other dimension, they might have gotten an answer. But in that dimension, they wouldn't have had to ask the question.

+ + +

^{Glenn Greenwald has written an excellent piece based on the documents on the Pentagon Web site.}

A century and a half ago in Internet time, during the first flowering of political blogging, I found myself devouring a lot of outstanding writers and thinkers. Some have now burned out, or departed the scene for sadder reasons, but many have continued, growing in stature and skill. At the top of my list from the beginning was (and is) digby. Clever, original, provocative, refreshingly unclichéd, and progressive to the marrow, she has epitomized the benefits of this new form of media and offered a moral center. Even when I disagree with her take on some subject - not all that often - I've been able to count on her to spur me think, to look at an issue or person or political history in a new way.

Most of all, she makes me - everyone who regularly reads her, I believe - ponder the big picture. No matter which presidential candidate you support (she and I disagree on this), or what your specific point of view is on a particular imbroglio, or where you stand on any one of the panoply of issues progressives have been talking about for the past several decades, digby has a record for hitting the bullseye more often than anybody in wwwLand. She resonates.

Her Hear Ye, Hear Ye piece Wednesday morning provides a perfect example. I'm going to break the rules and quote her at length:

So I hear that Village High Commissioner Tim Russert declared that we have a Democratic nominee. The Town Crier, Drudge, immediately followed with an official announcement The real leadership of our nation --- the punditocricy -- have handed down their decision. Hallelujah! ...

Look, I have the same analysis of the outcome of the elections in Indiana and North Carolina that most people have this morning. Clinton's best argument --- which was essentially that the voters were taking a second look at Obama and showing some buyers remorse --- didn't pan out last night. And there's nothing wrong with political junkies sitting around the virtual pot-bellied stove and saying the race is "over" or exhorting her to drop out. We're citizens and, in some cases, political players. There is, however, something unbelievably distasteful about a handful of powerful, millionaire, celebrity pundits "declaring" such a thing and having the paper of record breathlessly report it as if it was decisive and meaningful.

Who the fuck anointed Tim Russert as the final arbiter of anything? His job is to analyze the political landscape not declare the decision as if he were some kind of Roman Emperor giving a thumbs up or thumbs down. It's bad enough that these gasbags put those thumbs on the scale as hard as they do, but actually taking the initiative to say when the race is over is even worse. To coin a favorite Village phrase, "it's not their place." ...

But if it is the end, as I think many of us suspect, it's for Senator Clinton to be the one to declare it, not Tim Russert or any other fatuous overpaid Village gasbag who is no more insightful or informed than any of you.

The idea floating around, even in the blogosphere, that once Tim Russert "says it" it's true is so galling that I can hardly keep from projectile vomiting. Giving him that power will come back to bite us hard down the road. ...

I think we all see the writing on the wall. Obama has plenty of money and there is no great problem if this thing goes on for a couple of weeks. I think everyone should relax about the campaign and start regrouping around the ideas that brought us here --- one of which is the fact that the mainstream media are tools, that Drudge is a Republican pimp and that our nation is not well served by a bunch of corporate whores who all sit around sipping mojitos on Nantucket playing with our politics like they are a rousing game of cribbage.

Indeed. Political blogging has come a long way in the past half decade. Some people have gotten famous for it. Quit their day jobs. And some already-famous folks - journalists and pundits and others - have become become bloggers, at least as supplements to their regular gigs.

But this transformation and legitimization ought not to obscure progressive bloggers from our roots.

We emerged because the megamedia - the oligopress, the pundithugs, the corporatist whoredom of propaganda - were lying to us, and when they weren't lying, they were omitting the truth. Not that there weren't and aren't a few truthseekers embedded in the megamedia, folks who actually take their role as reporters and investigators seriously and behave accordingly. But, as a whole, the megamedia were and continue to be conduits for ideological reinforcement. In short, brainwashers. Doing the job prescribed to them by the powers-that-be, even if they think they are doing something else. Not every pawn realizes it is one. The writings of Antonio Gramsci are relevant in this regard, but save that for another time.

Keep what digby says in mind. Even when they agree with us, smile at us, quote us, invite us on their shows, the megamedia moguls are not our friends nor the friend of the politics we espouse. They never will be. We ignore this at our peril.

+ + +

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

Poblano, who has wowed Kossacks with his detailed election analyses and in-depth background Diaries like this one at Daily Kos and at his own FiveThirtyEight.com blog, got some well-deserved attention today from the  National Journal.

As Mark Blumenthal writes:

Over the last week, an anonymous blogger who writes under the pseudonym Poblano did something bold on his blog, FiveThirtyEight.com. He posted predictions for the upcoming primaries based not on polling data, but on a statistical model driven mostly by demographic and past vote data. His model predicted a 17-point victory for Barack Obama in North Carolina and a 2-point edge for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Indiana.

Critics scoffed. Most of the public polls pointed to a close race in North Carolina. Looking back at Poblano's efforts in Pennsylvania, pollster Dick Bennett decried the models as "stepwise regression run amok." Slate's Mickey Kaus predicted failure for "a sophisticated model that ignores... what's been happening in the campaign. Like Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright."

But a funny thing happened. The model got it right. ...

Moreover, the predictions were more accurate than any of the pollsters' results, as indicated by the graphic below (modified from a chart created by Brian Schaffner of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies).

Poblano is just another example - albeit an exemplary one - of how a blogger with a brain and an obsession  benefits us all. We don't know if he does this from a basement in his pajamas, but who cares? Kudos to you, sir.

The upsurge in the youth vote this primary season has been nothing short of phenomenal. This sharp rise in turnout has been widely chalked up to two factors: the war in Iraq and the presence of Barack Obama in the field of candidates.

In Iowa, Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas, the youth vote tripled over 2004. In Tennessee, it quadrupled. In Louisiana and Massachusetts, it doubled. Other states also saw large increases. It appears not just possible but likely that this year will break the record for the youth vote, a record set in 1972, the first year that 18-year-olds could vote in a presidential contest. That year, 52% of eligible 18-to-24-year-olds showed up at the polls (compared with 68% of those 25 and older).

After '72, until 2004, the youth vote plunged downward except for the uptick in 1992 - which was in great part accounted for by the youthful casualness of a candidate named Bill Clinton, who was a year younger when he took the oath of office than Barack Obama will be when and if he does.

The primary turnout is a heartening prospect for Democrats and those who lean Democratic because young voters have picked Democrats over Republicans by close to a 2:1 margin overall in the primaries. And that fits into a whole range of other good news for Democrats that has been partly obscured by the acerbic nature of the Obama-Clinton battle since Super Tuesday. Among them the facts that fewer people self-identify as Republicans since 2004, and that both Obama and Clinton have (personal loans notwithstanding) raised more cash, recruited more volunteers and generated more turnout than anybody could have imagined even a year ago. This is now backed up by Senator Obama's 50-state voter registration drive.

What all this seems to presage, the youth vote certainly, but all the other positive factors as well, is the very real possibility of what Paul Rosenberg at Open Left has been harping on for some time: realignment. A shift in partisan power and political outlook and approach as striking as that of 1932, as DHinMI has written about here,  here, and here.

In short, not only would the Democrats win the White House, but they might even better their 2006 net gain in the House of Representatives with 30-40 more seats, add three or four seats to their Senate majority, and continue the gains they made in state legislatures two years ago. That wouldn't be a mere blowout. It would put the Democrats in position to shape the political landscape for the next decade or two.

Whether they would actually do so should they turn all the good news into success at the polls in November - or whether the change they would usher in could legitimately be labeled "progressive" - remains, of course, to be seen. Realignment is about a lot more than who controls Congress, indeed, about a lot more than electoral politics in general. But first things first.

 

The Burmese are used to bad news. The person who should be their prime minister, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house detention or in prison off and on for 18 years. The military junta has repeatedly proved that it has no intention of relaxing its iron-fisted rule. As Dr. Suu Kyi said in her Freedom from Fear speech in 1990:

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

The generals are corrupt, so corrupt, indeed, that they did not have a system in place to give citizens an early warning when Cyclone Nargis struck Saturday. Even now, with Burma reeling from the aftermath of one of the world's worst modern natural disasters - with perhaps more than 100,000 dead and 2 million homeless - the junta is continuing years-long behavior, approving only $5 million for aid relief to their citizens, even though the government receives $2.7 billion a year in revenue from gas exports.

"Not only are the regime blocking international aid, they are not mobilising their own resources either," according to Mark Farmaner, the director of the Burma Campaign UK. "£2.5m is pathetic given the scale of this crisis. This is less than was spent on presents for the wedding of the daughter of Than Shwe, the dictator of Burma." The Campaign says that the government spends half its budget on the military.

As widely reported, the junta has somewhat relaxed its usual tight grip on aid workers who were already in Burma when Nargis struck. The BBC says these aid workers have been allowed to travel with someone from the local Red Cross or a government official without needing to obtain additional permission, as was previously the case. But far more aid workers are needed, and the junta is barely moving to make that possible, despite the devastation.

The military is extremely wary of allowing the small number of foreigners based in Burma to move around in normal times; the prospect of having many times that number operating in the country may prove too much for the generals to swallow.

"Some are getting in, some are not - we need the floodgates to open," said Britain's Ambassador in Rangoon, Mark Canning.

"It's crucial that we get these humanitarian experts in, and that's what we're putting a lot of effort into at the moment".

The government has appointed Deputy Foreign Minister Maung Myint to oversee the issuing of visas, but it still is not clear whether he has the authority to approve them in the numbers the international agencies say they need.

Early Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner spoke in favor of the United Nations invoking the concept of the "responsibility to protect." Under this highly controversial approach, approved by the world body in 2005, the United Nations could intervene in cases where governments failed or refused to protect their own citizens, even when this would violate national sovereignty.

But John Holmes, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said "confrontation" would be unhelpful because discussions with the government were slowly moving forward.

"I'm not sure that invading Burma would be a very sensible option," he said in response to criticism that the United Nations was not doing enough.

"We are having useful and constructive discussions with the authorities of Burma," he said.

"It is moving in the right direction. We want it to move much faster clearly. But I'm not sure it would help at this moment at least to embark on what could at least be seen by some people as a confrontation."

Millions of dollars have already been pledged for relief if only it can be delivered directly to those who need it. That, it seems clear, will take some blend of cajoling of and pressure on the junta to save their own people. Time is of the essence. Obtaining clean water has been a problem for days, and lack of food is rapidly becoming a serious worry.

If the immediate roadblocks can be overcome, much suffering can be avoided, and, perhaps, the generals will see their way clear to relaxing their tough rule overall, although that is a far dicier prospect. Once the first weeks are past, it would behoove aid agencies to avoid some of the problems associated with aid to Aceh province in Sumatra after the 2004 tsunami. There, that aid, according to a survey by Oxfam, wound up in the hands of the more well-to-do, with the poor benefiting least.

Two good sites to visit for information about the situation are Democratic Voice on Burma and Campaigning for Human Rights and Democracy in Burma. The latter contains a short list of organizations accepting donations for cyclone relief.

One important effort you can make that won't require a financial commitment is to e-mail or phone your favorite media operations to urge them to pay attention to this tragedy.

+ + +

^{Avila and srkp23 have Diaries here and here on the same subject.}

 

Adrian Blomfield and Mike Smith of the The Daily Telegraph write:

^{Mikhail Gorbachev has accused the United States of mounting an imperialist conspiracy against Russia that could push the world into a new Cold War.}

Delivering one of his most scathing attacks on the US, Mr Gorbachev told The Daily Telegraph that a US military build-up was under way to contain a resurgent Russia.
From Nato's expansion plans in the former Soviet Union to Washington's proposals for a bigger defence budget and a missile shield in central Europe, the US was deliberately quashing hopes for permanent peace with Russia, Mr Gorbachev said.

"We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them," he said.

"The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. ...

"The problem is not with Russia," he said, speaking at a friend's château outside Paris.

"Russia does not have enemies and Putin is not going to start a war against the United States or any other country for that matter.

"Yet we see the United States approving a military budget and the defence secretary pledging to strengthen conventional forces because of the possibility of a war with China or Russia.

"I sometimes have a feeling that the United States is going to wage war against the entire world."

While Gorbachev has criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past, he also has advised him on foreign policy for some time. Putin handed over the reins to Dmitry Medvedev Wednesday, but is expected to be an éminence grise in the new government.

Gorbachev's comments stand somewhat at odds with the Kremlin's stated position, which has softened recently and been redirected at getting security guarantees from the West.

Although the language was stronger this time, the Telegraph interview isn’t the only time the first and last president of the Soviet Union has expressed concerns about deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations. In December, the 77-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner was interviewed by Anna Badkhen of  the Ideas section of the Boston Globe

IDEAS: How do you view the latest developments of relations between Russia and the West? You said recently that you see the US plan to deploy a missile defense shield in Central Europe as targeting Russia, not Iran, as the United States claims. Do you see your achievements in ending the Cold War being depleted?

GORBACHEV: What we see is the beginning of a new arms race. The United States has a super-large military budget; its military budget is even larger than it was during the Cold War.

IDEAS: What about your comment regarding the true purpose of the proposed missile defense shield?

GORBACHEV: There is truth in this. It's too early to talk about Cold War, but I think we are seeing some frost.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

If any additional evidence were needed to prove that (sur)reality has killed satire in the past seven-and-a-half years, a Michael Howard story in Tuesday's Guardian delivers the coup de grâce.  

^{This is what U.S. military planners have in mind for the "Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club" in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq. Artist rendering courtesy U.S. Army.}

Picture, if you will, a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad's International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel, which would not look out of place in Sydney harbour. Then, as twilight falls, a pre-prandial stroll, perhaps, amid the cool of the Tigris Riverfront Park, where the peace is broken only by the soulful cries of egrets fishing.

Improbable though it all may seem, this is how some imaginative types in the US military are envisaging the future of Baghdad's Green Zone, the much-pummelled redoubt of the Iraqi capital where a bunker shot has until now had very different connotations.

A $5bn (£2.5bn) tourism and development scheme for the Green Zone being hatched by the Pentagon and an international investment consortium would give the heavily fortified area on the banks of the Tigris a "dream" makeover that will become a magnet for Iraqis, tourists, business people and investors. About half of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the US state department or private foreign companies.

And, because $5 billion investments don't grow on trees, you won't be seeing anything like it in, say, New Orleans.

But they're not going to stop with soothing massages and post-prandial walks along the Tigris (where nowadays dead bodies bob to the surface with their hands tied behind their backs). Disneyfication is also on the way, as reported by the Times (of London) two weeks ago:

^{Skateboarding the perimeter}

Last week, a Los Angeles-based holding company for equity firms, C3, confirmed it was starting a $500 million project to build an amusement park on the outskirts of the Green Zone in an area encompassing the Baghdad Zoo. The first phase, a skateboard park, is scheduled to open this summer.

But any Green Zone project is literally starting from the ground up.

"There is no sewer system, no working power system. Everything here is done on generators. No road system repair work. There are no city services other than the minimal amount we provide to get by," Karnowski said.

Dr. iRack over at abu muqawam invites everyone to "nominate the carnival games and rides you'd like to see in this stunning new symbol of post-surge Iraq."

+ + +

^{See Magnifico's Diary from last night on this subject.}

Thanks to Rick Perlstein for pointing out that Mildred Loving has died at age 68.

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.

Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble -- and believed in love," Fortune told The Associated Press.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

Last June, on the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, Mildred wrote the following:

^{Loving for All}

By Mildred Loving

When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.

We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the "crime" of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.

Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn’t have to fight alone. Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men," a "basic civil right."

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Condolences to her kin and friends.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

‎Does support of terrorists make one a terrorist? Presumably that depends on whether you take Mister Bush’s squint-eyed November 6, 2001, prescription – "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror" – in a blindly nationalistic fashion or in a moral one. Terrorism isn’t an ideology. It’s a technique. Much as sophists and thugs - such as the late Jeane Kirkpatrick - like to twist the definition to fit who is carrying out a policy, terrorism can't be one thing for them and something else for us.

Yet one of the most pre-eminent of the Pentagon’s chosen propaganda team of ex-military-cum-television-analysts, retired Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, not only supports but promotes terrorism against Iran. He's still spewing on Fox News despite having been exposed by David Barstow’s revelations three weeks ago.

This isn’t new territory for McInerney. He’s argued for attacks on Iran for as long as Bill Kristol and other neoconservatives have done. As a member of the Iran Policy Committee, McInerney has long argued that the State Department should take the Mujahideen-e Khalq off its terrorist watch list. The group originated as leftwing opposition to the Shah of Iran in 1963 and was involved in various operations, including the taking of U.S. Embassy hostages in 1979 and the bloody suppression of the Shiite revolt in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Although MEK killed Americans as well as Iranians in the past, it has since adopted a public veneer of being a backer of freedom and democracy as soon as the Iranian mullahs are overturned, the idea being to install one of its founders as Iran’s president.

Although thousands of MEK fighters based in Iraq were disarmed in 2003 when the U.S. military arrived, the organization has since been implicated in attacks in Iran, including assassinations and bombings in public places. Given Mister Bush’s ordering of clandestine activities in Iran and long-standing White House support for various armed groups along Iran’s borders as – belatedly – reported in the Los Angeles Times three weeks ago, such activity can hardly be surprising to anyone who has followed U.S.-Iranian relations even cursorily.

But, just as Max Boot and Robert Kaplan and Stephen Peter Rosen and others argue quite openly for American empire, now we have a well-connected ex-general openly calling for terrorist attacks – excuse me, responses – in Iran. With a Fox News reader cheering him on.

McInerney starts one minute into the video linked here.

Question: If we do have evidence, and apparently we do, according to officials, that Iran is killing U.S. troops in Iraq or supporting that, why haven't we struck by now?

McInerney: It beats me, Greg. I don't know why we haven't. They have killed hundreds of Americans with their explosively formed projectiles [EFPs], and that's why I think we have to take action. And here's what I would suggest to you. No. 1, we take the National Council for Resistance in Iran off the terrorist list that the Clinton Administration put them on, as well as the Mujahideen-e Khalq that are at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Then I would start a tit-for-tat strategy. For every EFP that goes off that kills Americans, two go off in Iran. No questions asked, people don't know have to know how it was done. It's covert action. They become the most unlucky country in the world. And then I would start moving U.S. carrier battle groups into the region, as well as some of our stealth aircraft, just to make sure they understand, don't try to kick off a major insurrection come October and September, October to impact our elections. They are deliberately ratcheting up and we’ve got to counterattack.

As McInerney pointed out, this isn’t the first time he has made this proposal. He did it in a March 30, 2007, column, too. And while he suggests that the tactic won’t endanger civilians, this is a detestable lie. IEDs, whether equipped with EFPs or not, kill civilians in Iraq all the time. Deploying McInerney’s monstrous terrorist proposal would mean murdering Iranians - men, women, children - who happen to get "unlucky."

Tony Pugh and Kevin G. Hall at McClatchy write:

As economy worsens, coping becomes a way of life

When long-haul trucker Rusty Wade pulled his rig into a Missouri truck stop last week, he noticed something strange.

Of the 50 or so 18-wheelers parked in the lot, only five had their engines idling.

"That's only because of the high price of fuel," said Wade, an independent owner-operator from Brundidge, Ala. "A year ago there would only be about five that weren't running."

But with diesel fuel at more than $4.20 per gallon, Wade not only shuts his engine down to save money. He's also cut his average road speed from 60 to 56 mph.

Instead of hotels, he and his trucker wife, Mary, often sleep in their separate vehicles. ...

In one form or another, Americans from coast to coast are following Wade's cost-cutting ways. Whether it's fewer restaurant visits, shorter road trips or skipping a haircut here and there, more consumers are looking for ways to stretch their dollars.

And with good reason. The soaring cost of core essentials like gasoline, food and housing now account for 57 cents of each consumer dollar spent. That leaves Americans with a record-low 43 cents out of each dollar for discretionary spending, according to new figures from Wachovia Economics Group.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

A zillion Diaries this week on the gasoline tax holiday. Since I’ve already been twice accused this week of hyperbole, the number was actually only 72 – so far. While many Diarists had a lot to say about the holiday and the two presidential candidates (Senator McCain and Senator Clinton) who have proposed it, few suggested what to do about it.

Which makes it this week’s eco-action item. Since Clinton is taking the idea to the Senate, now’s the time – as Riterzbloc suggested in his Gas Tax Email-Action required  Diary – to contact your elected officials and let them know what you think of the idea.

Since I have been recommending an incrementally rising gasoline tax with revenue directed toward alternative fuels research since 1981, you probably know what I’m going to be saying to my two Senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and my Representative, Xavier Becerra. The tax holiday is a terrible idea. I hope you’ll do the same. If you don’t believe me, check out the Diaries on the subject: They’re the last category in this week’s Rescue (which begins after the fold).

The DailyKos Environmentalists can be found here.

From today's edition of Democracy Now!

^{After More than Six Years, Al Jazeera Cameraman Sami al-Haj Released from Guantánamo Bay}

Arrested in Pakistan in December 2001, Sami al-Haj spent nearly six-and-a-half years at Guantánamo without charge or trial. He had been on a more than a year-long hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. We hear al-Haj’s first public remarks from his hospital bed in Sudan ...

Al-Haj, who’s been on a hunger strike since January of 2007, was taken to a hospital immediately after landing in Khartoum. After a tearful reunion with his family, he spoke out against the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo in an interview broadcast on Al Jazeera.

SAMI AL-HAJ: [translated] I’m very happy to be in Sudan, but I’m very sad because of the situation of our brothers who remain in Guantánamo. Conditions in Guantánamo are very, very bad, and they get worse by the day. Our human condition, our human dignity was violated, and the American administration went beyond all human values, all moral values, all religious values. In Guantánamo, you have animals that are called iguanas, rats that are treated with more humanity. But we have people from more than fifty countries that are completely deprived of all rights and privileges, and they will not give them the rights that they give to animals.

For more than seven years, I did not get a chance to be brought before a civil court. To defend their just case and to get the freedom that we’re deprived of, they ignored every kind of law, every kind of religion. But thank God. I was lucky, because God allowed that I be released. Although I’m happy, there is part of me that is not, because my brothers remain behind, and they are in the hands of people that claim to be champions of peace and protectors of rights and freedoms.

But the true just peace does not come through military force or threats to use smart or stupid bombs or to threaten with economic sanctions. Justice comes from lifting oppression and guaranteeing rights and freedoms and respecting the will of the people and not to interfere with a country’s internal politics.

See Avila's Diary on this subject here.

The Overnight News Digest has been posted.

Lazydiarying disses readers.

Writing a "breaking news" or other Diary with three pathetic lines and a link without excerpts or analysis or commentary or snark is the Diary version of shouting "First" in a comment thread.

It's pitiful. A txt msg version of Diarying. But, since it's all the rage, who am I to buck the trend?

Fifty-two American military personnel deployed to the Iraq occupation went to premature graves in April. Male, female, black, white, Latino. The oldest was Colonel Stephen K. Scott, 54. The youngest was Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter, 19.

Those 52 came from Ardmore, Oklahoma. From St. Paul, Minnesota. From Mesquite and Hull and Fresno and Buchanan Dam and College Station and El Paso and Magnolia and San Antonio and Hempstead and Cedar Park, Texas. From San Juan, Puerto Rico. From Littleton and Colorado Springs, Colorado. From Springfield and Perryville, Missouri. From Dover, Delaware. From Bakersfield and Culver City and Fort Irwin and Hanford and Lake Tahoe and San Diego, California. From Oakmont, Pennsylvania. From Boise, Idaho. From Zephyrhills and Clearwater and Jacksonville and Miami Lakes and Coral Springs, Florida. From Sauk Village, Illinois. From New Market, Alabama. From Cudahy and Waukesha and Racine, Wisconsin. From Lafayette, Louisiana. From Mount Airy and Apex and Teachey, North Carolina. From Commerce, Georgia. From Gaylord, Michigan. From Morris Plains, New Jersey. From Sag Harbor, New York. From Burkeville and Dublin and Norfolk, Virginia. For each of these departed, a candle.

If the past is any guide, for each of the Americans who died in April because of the war and occupation, between 50 and 350 Iraqis died. We can't be any more exact than that because every attempted count is called into question. The constraints of the software template for this site won't allow me to post enough candles to mark the passing of those Iraqis even using the lowest probable tally.

Whatever the number, it is horrendous. All the more so because the deaths of the Americans, of the Iraqis, of the other members of the coalition, have all resulted from a war of choice, an unnecessary war, a war of the new imperialism. A war founded and continued to this day on exaggerations, distortions, fabrications, concoctions and lies. A war which a smirking, strutting, absurdity of a president told us 60 months ago was Mission Accomplished.

Progressives should never declare our mission accomplished until justice is delivered to those who lied us into this war. Justice for the 52 Americans who died last month, for the 4065 who have died since March 2003, for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have also died. Without justice, they truly will have died in vain.

An old friend asks if there is anything Dick Cheney wouldn't screw up for the fun of screwing it up. Apparently not, as Paul Kiel at Talking Points Memo wrote Wednesday:

^{Cheney's Office: (Do Not) Save The Whales}

The latest contribution to good government from Vice President Dick Cheney: preventing the implementation of rules to protect the endangered right whale.

This comes from a letter House sleuth Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent to the White House today, requesting that the administration quit delaying the rules, which would restrict the speed of ships near American ports. Faster moving ships hit the whales, causing injury or death, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say.

Faster ships aren't a problem, according to Cheney's office.

In a  letter sent today to Susan E. Dudley, Administrator of Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Waxman wrote:

Another internal document shows that the officials working for the Vice President also raised spurious objections to the science. According to this document, the Vice President's staff "contends that we have no evidence (i.e., hard data) that lowering the speeds of 'large ships' will actually make a difference. NOAA rejected these objections, writing that both a statistical analysis of ship strike records and the peer-reviewed literature justified the final rule. In its response to the objections from the Vice President's staff, NOAA reported that there is "no basis to overturn our previous conclusion that imposing a speed limit on large vessels would be beneficial to whales. ...

A third document reveals that the White House requested that NOAA consider unpublished information relating to the birth rate of right whales. NOAA responded that it "used the latest, peer-reviewed, scientific data when developing" the rule. According to NOAA: NOAA closely monitors calf counts but is unaware of any recent scientific publications that provide more recent information on more recent calving. OSTP [the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy] was posed this question as well; and we have not received from them any new information on studies.

While I appreciate the value of vigorous scientific debate, I question why White House economic advisors are apparently conducting their own research on right whales and why the Vice President's staff is challenging the conclusions of the government's scientific experts. The appearance is that the White House rejects the conclusions of its own scientists and peer-reviewed scientific studies because it does not like the policy implications of the data. This is not how the review process is supposed to work. [My emphasis - MB]

C'mon, Congressman Waxman, science is just one opinion.

As for sending stern letters, I'm uncertain of the size of the circular file Ms. Dudley maintains for handling such correspondence, not to mention scientific reports, but I imagine the Vice President keeps available for this purpose a dozen or so abandoned missile silos in his old Wyoming stomping grounds. Given the number of times this administration has overridden scientific experts in the past seven-plus years, those silos must be just about full.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

One of many questions that Chris Wallace failed to ask Barack Obama during his 45-minute interview on Foxaganda Sunday was what the Senator thought about David Barstow’s devastating exposé in The New York Times the previous weekend.

No surprise. What would be the percentage in replacing one of the plethora of Jeremiah Wright questions with an inquiry about the megamedia’s hiring of retired military officers who sexed up the case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and then exaggerated, distorted and lied about what was happening when the war and subsequent occupation got underway? Would that help the bottom line? Nah. Hence, none of Wallace’s pals at Foxaganda are talking about this. Indeed, mum’s been the word on Barstow’s bombshell throughout the megamedia. The talking point – or perhaps the memo from on high – seems to be: Don’t talk.

Don’t tell viewers that retired generals and colonels and majors engaged in a war-drumming, flag-waving perversion of patriotism. Or that those in the Pentagon who ordered special briefings for these analysts as part of a domestic propaganda campaign ought to get their mail deliveries slipped between the bars at Leavenworth for the next few years. Avoid the subject and maybe it will go away like so many other stories which have been disappeared as if they were dissidents in some backwater military dictatorship.

No news coverage, no commentary, no questions for any candidates. No abject apologies to viewers from station CEOs who paid double-dippers and triple-dippers to give an official patina to fabrications that have caused the killing and maiming of tens of thousands of Americans and other coalition soldiers. Plus millions of Iraqis. Business as usual. Even two days after the Pentagon suspended the briefings last Friday, Foxaganda was still employing retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney without disclosure.

You want to know more about the story, you go to Barstow’s follow-ups, to those of Glenn Greenwald at Salon, to the folks at Media Matters, and to excellent work of Ari Melber at The Nation. As a matter of fact, if you’d like to see Senator Obama’s answer to that question Wallace should have asked, you can find it (and Senator Clinton’s answer, too) at Melber’s blog here.

We’ve arrived at this situation because of three sets of cowards.

First among these are the military analysts themselves, supposedly men of courage who donned the uniform of the United States and swore an oath to uphold its Constitution. As Barstow wrote:

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

Tell the truth on the teevee and say poof! to that lucrative retainer, that seat on the board of some major player in the military-industrial complex, that ability to get the Pentagon to assign a favorable contract to the guys who are filling your bank account. What would retirement be like with a lowered cash flow? Yikes! Can't have that. So, instead of calling government policy into question, instead of acting like an officer and a gentleman, sell the country out and keep the moolah flowing. Spit on the men and women sent to fight. Spit on the Constitution. Spit on the truth. Once, they painted a yellow stripe down the back of cowardly soldiers.

Not merely cowards. As Daily Kos Contributing Editor BarbinMD wrote when this story was new:  "These men willingly deceived the American public to protect their access to power and more importantly, their profits. Perhaps traitor doesn't even begin to describe them." Indeed.

The second set of cowards are all those well-coifed news-readers and commentators and interviewers at CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN and Foxaganda who’ve not seen fit to discuss The New York Times story except to briefly note that the Pentagon has stopped giving the briefings.

We know why Bill O’Reilly hasn’t stepped up with a mea culpa. On April 14, less than a week before Barstow’s piece appeared, according to Media Matters:

During the April 14 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly declared: "I can't base my opinion" about the Iraq war "on anything" other than "what my military analysts, people paid by Fox News, say to me." O'Reilly added that he could trust only Fox military analysts because "[t]he newspapers ... all have an agenda" and "only give you a snapshot of the war." Later in the broadcast, O'Reilly reiterated his position, saying, "I have to base my analysis on what our Fox News military analysts, who I think are the best and always [have] been the best, are saying." Further, O'Reilly described as "ridiculous" a caller's efforts to base his view of the war by "reading the Internet and the newspapers and forming a definitive opinion [based] upon what they say."

No retraction since. No mention at all. Silence from him and his colleagues throughout the industry – how appropriate that word. They didn’t vet the analysts or check out their possible agendas the way any good journalist would do. They ignored sources that might have called into question the claims of Lt. General Disinformation. Couldn’t find the wherewithal to let viewers know that Major Mendacious worked for a military contractor with a stake in the occupation of Iraq. Just broadcast his lies and cut his checks.

Of course, pointing out the cowardice of the megamedia’s on-camera crowd is thoroughly redundant. As Greenwald wrote Monday after a little praise for the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz – one of the few print journalists of note to say anything about Barstow’s revelations:

Kurtz's specific criticism of the media's behavior regarding this story highlights a broader and even more important point. In general, the establishment media almost completely excludes critiques of their own behavior, and discussions of the role the media plays in bolstering deceitful narratives is missing almost entirely from media-controlled discourse.

One of the most significant political stories of this decade, if not this generation -- the media's full-scale complicity with the Government in the run-up to the Iraq war -- has never been meaningfully discussed or examined on any establishment television network, including cable shows. While piecemeal quibbles of media coverage can be heard (of the type Kurtz typically spouts, or the Limbaugh-driven complaint about the "liberal media"), no fundamental critique of the role the media plays, the influence of its corporate ownership, its incestuous relationship with and dependence on government power -- among the most influential factors driving our political life -- are ever heard.

And we’re not likely to because of the third group of cowards. The guys who actually own and run the channels who paid the military shills to present the Cheney-Bush administration’s Iraq case for the past six years. Indeed, as Media Matters noted, they refused to appear on PBS last Thursday when the public channel took its look into the role of the military analysts.

In the old days in Japan, so the story goes, bosses who engaged in illegal, destructive or merely shameful behavior made a deep bow to those they had offended and headed off to a private room for a date with the blade of a tanto.

Even for those who’ve betrayed their fellow citizens and helped deliver thousands to their deaths for profit, seppuku’s admittedly a bit harsh. But if the craven news chiefs and channel owners were the least bit honest and upstanding, they’d be setting aside 15 or 20 minutes of broadcast time to apologize to the American people for acting as propagandists, for their malicious, intentional, long-running disinformation campaign. And they’d end with an on-the-air resignation and a vow never again to head up a media operation.

But then, if they were honest and upstanding, they wouldn’t be who they are. And we wouldn’t be where we are, mired in Iraq with no end in sight.

A hundred years of scrubbing will not remove the blood from their hands.

At Alternet, Larry Beinhart, author of Wag the Dog, writes:

^{The Myths and Harsh Effects of Bush's Economic Class War}

George Bush came into office. There was a recession almost immediately. Officially it began in March of 2001 and, officially, it ended eight months later.

The causes of that recession are vague and amorphous, generally credited to the "business cycle."

There is, in addition, a minor Republican industry dedicated to backdating the onset by five months, to November 2000, in order to make it a Clinton recession. Or, to inadvertently say that the very election of George Bush screwed up the economy; he didn't even have to come to power. ...

The recession of 2001 never ended.

At least not for ordinary Americans.

Ordinary Americans found that their income was declining. From 2001 to 2007, median family income declined -- depending on where you get your figures from -- by somewhere between $500 and $1,000. Median individual income went down by at least $1,000.

The yearly average number of new private sector jobs created from 2001-2008 was just 369,000, not even keeping up with the growth in population. It should be compared to the average number of new private sector jobs created from '92 to 2,000: 1,760,000 per year.

The number of people in manufacturing jobs decreased by over 3 million.

The number who got healthcare at work went down, from 64.2 million to 59.7 million. The number of people without healthcare went up from 38.4 to 46.9 million.

The number of people in poverty increased from 31.6 million to 36.5 million.

American military fatalities in Iraq since March 2003: 4057

American military fatalities in the Philippine-American War (1899-1902): 4196

The Overnight News Digest has been posted.

In These Times has a weekly poll up that I’ve just stolen. You might wish to drop in there and fill out their poll, too, and maybe read a few articles. One I recommend is Adam Doster’s They Can’t Go Home Again.

From Chatham House comes Alex Evans's report on what rising food prices mean not today, but in the future. You can download the entire report here (11-page pdf). What follows are summary points:

^{Rising Food Prices: Drivers and Implications for Development}

Global food prices have risen 83 per cent over the last three years. The increases have been driven by high income growth in emerging economies (probably the single most significant factor), use of crops for biofuels, the relative inelasticity of supply, historically low stock levels and some speculative investment.

More recently, national concerns over inflation and prices have led some countries to reduce exports and others to try to build up stocks - creating a feedback loop that feeds on itself to drive prices up still further. In the medium to longer term, 'scarcity trends' - climate change, the cost of energy inputs, scarcity of land and water - could limit the supply-side response.

In the immediate term, the priority is to increase both the volume and the quality of humanitarian assistance available to poor people, including by moving away from in-kind food aid and towards cash transfers or voucher systems - although it is important to be clear that there are outstanding questions about how these social protection systems will work, and they should not be seen as a panacea. The issue of compensatory financing may also arise for some countries facing balance-of-payments difficulties.

In the longer term, the key challenge is to increase the supply of food: the World Bank estimates that demand for food will rise by 50 per cent by 2030, as a result of rising affluence and growing world population. Achieving this challenge will require something close to a revolution, and a massive investment in agriculture in developing countries.

If supply fails to keep pace with rising demand, then the question of 'fair shares' is likely to emerge as a significant global issue. Already, the effect of a burgeoning global middle class switching to diets with more meat and dairy products - both relatively inefficient in terms of grain use - has been to reduce the affordability of staple foods for poorer consumers.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

American military fatalities in Iraq since March 2003: 4052

Coalition military fatalities in Iraq: 4361

Iraqi civilian and military fatalities: 200,000 to 1.4 million

In the latest Gallup Poll, 63% of Americans, up 6 points since December, say the United States made a mistake invading Iraq.