If you remember 9/11, you remember the anguished cries of bewilderment:  Why do they hate us?

Not just the killers from that day: we all understood them to be madmen, and so they were, and so are those who sent them.  Mass murder is an act of madness, and of barbarism.

But what of those who cheered them on, who expressed satisfaction at what happened to America that day?  Why do they hate us?

Implicit in the question was an element of narcissism: that Americans were unquestionably Good, and Decent, and Fair, and should therefore be universally loved.  America could not have done anything that would inspire hate.

So our civic and cultural leaders gave us answers that played to that narcissism -- they hate us for our freedom (heck yeah!  America, land of the free!), and they hate us because we're prosperous and powerful (damn straight!  Rich and strong, that's us!).  Some of those leaders, the darker ones, gave answers intended to divide us -- they hate us because of the moral corruption of the ACLU and People for the American Way.

Among all the excitement of the Democratic races this weekend and the impressive sweep by Senator Barack Obama, there was another story that seems to have been overlooked: the brazen election fraud committed against underdog former Governor Mike Huckabee in the Washington Republican party caucuses.

This has significant implications for the November race -- and we can help.  Follow me below the fold ...

Well, well ... the GOP's wunderkind in Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal,  is now under investigation by that state's Board of Ethics for failing to report $118,000 in contributions by the Republican Party.  

In office for less than a month, Jindal's spokesperson says that the governor will pay a fine from his campaign fund and has amended his reports to reflect the donation.

Get ready for George W. Bush's third term.

The outcome of the 2008 Presidential election is rapidly being written into the history books.  Oh, yes, there are some blanks left to be filled out: the name of the triumphant Republican, and the name of the vanquished Democrat haven't yet been decided.  There's always the possibility of a third-party candidate, or an independent bid.  But those are details.

The election, for all intents and purposes, is over.

Last night I published a diary entitled "BREAKING:  WaPo Reports Hillary Dead."  The text of the diary linked to a Washington Post story about the passing of Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand explorer who was one of the first to reach the peak of Mount Everest.  I wrote the diary as a swipe at the gleeful corporate media reporting following the Iowa caucuses.  At the time I wrote it, it seemed a perfect foil to parody the reports of the demise of Senator Clinton's career.

I was wrong.

This is just beginning to break: the Associated Press reports that former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is under house arrest.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan last month and was the target of an assassination attempt in which hundreds of her supporters were killed or wounded.  She had previously been living in exile; her return was with the tacit approval of Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf.

I attended a rally the night before last at the Andre Agassi College Prep Academy in Las Vegas last night.  The speaker was President Bill Clinton, who spoke on behalf of Hillary's campaign and the importance of the Nevada caucus in setting the tone for the Democratic race.

The following disclaimer is important, because I don't want this discussion to get bogged down in a debate over the merits of Hillary Clinton versus the other candidates.  I would be proud to support any of the current Democratic nominees.  I expect that Senator Clinton has the best grasp of what the Democratic nominee -- any nominee -- can expect during the general election campaign, and understands that it will not stop on Inauguration Day.  That said, I don't agree with her on all issues and she has been too cautious for my taste in many regards.  But again, this is not about the candidates.

It's about running mates.

MSNBC is reporting twin bomb blasts in Karachi, Pakistan, near the convoy in which former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was traveling.  There are apparently injuries on the scene, but no word as yet as to whether Bhutto herself was injured in the explosions.

Bhutto was the democratically-elected leader of Pakistan before she was deposed and forced into exile.  She returned to Pakistan today, vowing to end military rule in Pakistan.

Some biographical data on Bhutto.

Well, he's done it.

According to the latest Zogby poll, Dubya has achieved a milestone: his latest approval rating of 24% is an all-time low for that poll.  His approval rating also ties the lowest score recorded by Richard M. Nixon on the eve of Nixon's resignation.

Last week, Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, asked to be reassigned.  His departure follows that of the chief defense counsel, Marine Corps Colonel Dwight Sullivan, who left late this summer.

Two high-level departures in a short period of time are not in themselves unusual -- a constant aspect of military life is the rotation of personnel into and out of key assignments -- but there's something out of the ordinary going on here.  According to the Los Angeles Times, Davis has been given a gag order:

Asked why he was leaving his position, Davis said in an e-mail message that he was "ordered not to communicate with the news media about my resignation or military commissions without the prior approval of the Department of Defense General Counsel and the Department of Defense Public Affairs."

What's going on at Gitmo?  

In 1992, then-Lieutenant Colonel Charles J. Dunlap Jr., writing in the Army War College’s official periodical Parameters, published a cautionary tale titled The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012. Dunlap’s work foretold the rise of a fictional "General Brutus," a charismatic and ambitious officer who parlayed the disillusionment of American citizens with civilian government into a takeover of the American government.

Don't hold your breath waiting for a drawdown of U.S. forces.  By this fall, the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is set to increase to 171,000, according to Army Lieutenant General Carter Ham, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Lt. Gen. Ham (for those unfamiliar with military ranks, a lieutenant general wears three stars and is the equivalent of a Navy vice-admiral) says that the deployment of troops into Iraq will overlap the planned rotation of forces out, causing what MSNBC describes as a "temporary surge in U.S. forces."

So many of the people ... were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.

-- Barbara Bush

Well, except for the poison gas, Babs.

The latest bombshell from the cesspool of Republican incompetence

    ...wait, that could be any Federal agency!

known as the Federal Emergency Management Administration

    That's better.

comes to us courtesy of the Washington Post.  According to this article by Spencer Hsu, FEMA has known for over a year something in the trailers it provided for evacuees from the Gulf Coast was making those evacuees sick.  Gulf Coast doctors have noticed a pattern of upper respiratory tract infections amoung Katrina survivors living in the trailers, according to current FEMA director R. David Paulison, infections that subside when the families move out of the trailers.  

Sometimes -- not often, but on occasion -- the Washington Post reminds me of the great paper it used to be.

Today's op-ed by Harold Meyerson represents one of those occasions.  Meyerson's angry, and he wastes no time going after the source of that anger: "Anyone searching for the highest forms of invertebrate life need look no further than the floor of the U.S. Senate," he says, proclaiming the premier "spineless specimens" to be GOP Senators Dick Lugar, John Warner, Pete Domenici, George Voinovich.

I've posted some highlights of Meyerson's piece below.  Do yourself a favor, though, and read the whole thing.  

Absolutely chilling testimony in the general court-martial of Marine corporal Trent D. Thomas.

Thomas was one of five Marines charged in the killing of an Iraqi civilian in April 2006.  Tasked with finding and killing a suspected insurgent leader, they were unable to locate their target.  Instead, they found another man, 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad, dragged him from his home, killed him, and then planted a weapon near the body to make it look as though he had engaged them in a firefight.  Five other servicemen have already entered guilty pleas on various charges resulting from the killing.

One of Thomas's Marine comrades testified yesterday that he saw nothing wrong with the killing.

More than a quarter-billion dollars was stolen from a bank in Baghdad yesterday.

According to press reports, Iraqi officials claim that bank guards were involved in the heist, which netted $282 million in U.S. dollars.  The media notes that it's not clear why the currency was in the form of dollars, rather than Iraqi dinars: while it may not be unusual for banks to have large cash holdings on hand, it's unlikely that there's a demand for dollars in Baghdad that requires the ability to immediately disburse hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars at a moment's notice.

What's behind the heist, described as an inside job by Iraqi officials?  There's more below the fold.

An interesting bit of background information on GOP hopeful Mitt Romney:  according to the Boston Globe, Mitt Romney has said he "longed" to fight in Vietnam and was "frustrat[ed]" by the fact that he was never drafted.  

Aside from the obvious flaw in this complaint -- the services all accepted volunteers, and there was no need to wait for the draft board to make its call -- the Globe reports that Romney obtained a draft deferment as a Mormon "minister of religion," and that he relied on that deferment to avoid the draft during the height of the Vietnam war.

Rather than take his chances in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Little Mitt went to France.

Disclaimer up front: I've never been an Obama man.  It's not that I dislike him; I'd happily vote for him as our nominee, but to this point, he hasn't sealed the deal for me.

He just took a big step in that direction.

In a speech before the United Church of Christ convention in Connecticut, Obama came out swinging against the so-called Christian right:

Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and faith started being used to drive us apart ... Faith got hijacked, partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us.