John Yoo and David Addington: A Study of Contempt and Unabashed Evil

by Cheryl Abraham

http://www.opednews.com
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Somewhere in an American run prison a young man, a 'detainee', is bent over, his head touching his shins, his hands shackled tightly behind his legs and affixed to the bars of his cell. He is shirtless and his prison pants are soaked with sweat and urine. He cannot move and he is in agony, he has been in this position for hours, maybe days, he cannot remember how much time has passed, he does not know the day or the month, he only knows pain.

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Meanwhile in the United States, John Yoo and David Addington temporarily disrupt their privileged lifestyles and leave their comfortable homes to testify before a House subcommittee meeting regarding the statements and documents they have authored that have been used by the U.S. government to legalize the destruction of the human body in the name of national security and to justify the opinion that the president has unlimited power. Yoo and Addington arrive to all the pomp and circumstance of rock stars, lights flashing as the press takes picture after picture, questions being yelled out, and Yoo and Addington present themselves as 'experts' to some of the most powerful people in the world.
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The young man's legs tremble and shake from the exertion and strain of the stress position he has been forced into. He has no idea how long he has been without water, sleep, or food. Muscles throughout his body have been in a perpetual spasm and there is no position he can move into to lesson his pain because he cannot move. The smell of his cell sickens him, the pain overwhelms him, and he can see no relief coming to him anytime soon. He is utterly alone and helpless against what is happening to him.
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It seems as if David Addington has enough of a conscience to know that he should not blatantly state his approval of extreme, cruel, and harsh interrogation techniques, but much is revealed about the dark side of Cheney's former chief of staff by what he did NOT say under questioning by the House subcommittee. Addington kept a haughty demeanor during the entire meeting and did not bother to veil his utter contempt of both the questions and the questioners. These questions, almost without exception, related to the moral and legal issues regarding the treatment of prisoners. When Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D- N.Y.) asked Addington if he would bear any responsibility if the interrogation program was found to be illegal Addington's reply was a smug, "Is that a moral question or a legal question?" Addington went on to state that he bore no legal or moral responsibility for the interrogation program. Nadler asked Addington whether or not it would be legal to torture a detainee's child as part of an interrogation, to which he countered with subterfuge – incredible considering the simplicity of answering such a question by any moral, reasonable, and rational person.
Addington bobbed and weaved through further questioning stating that he "did not recall" if he had ever pushed for harsh interrogation techniques. The Washington Post writes of Addington, "Think of Addington as the id of the Bush White House. Though his hidden hand is often merely suspected -- in signing statements, torture policy and other brazen assertions of executive power -- Addington's unbridled hostility was live and unfiltered yesterday."

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Bush's Dollar Drop Maps Loss of U.S. Clout at Final G-8 Summit

Dollar drops 41% during Bush term

By James G. Neuger
July 3 (Bloomberg) -- When President George W. Bush went to his first Group of Eight summit in 2001, a dominant issue was the dollar -- the strong dollar, that is. The U.S. currency was on a record-setting streak, and the free-marketeering president wasn't going to stand in the way.
On the eve of Bush's last G-8 appearance, the dollar's gyrations are again in the crossfire. This time, it is a weak currency, upended by slumping growth, a housing recession and record gas prices, that is gnawing away at the world economy.
The dollar's 41 percent drop against the euro during Bush's term writes the economic epitaph of an administration that set out to restore American preeminence. Instead, Bush heads to Japan next week for his final international summit with diminished leverage as Russian and Chinese influence grows.
``Between the economic duress facing the United States and the global community at large and the fact that the clock is running out on the Bush administration, Bush does not hold a good hand,'' said Charles Kupchan, an international-relations professor at Georgetown University in Washington. He called the summit a ``damage-limitation'' exercise to show the world that governments are trying to contain food and oil prices.

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6th straight month of US job losses

Employers shed 62,000 jobs amid lingering slowdown: govt. report.

Military Chief: US Doesn't Have Enough Troops To Send To Afghanistan

From The Washington Post:
The nation's top military officer said yesterday that more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to tamp down an increasingly violent insurgency, but that the Pentagon does not have sufficient forces to send because they are committed to the war in Iraq.
Watch the video:

Mullen: No Troop Increase In Afgh. Until Iraq Withdrawal

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Bush's Other Legacy: Deepening Cycle of Job Loss

Gen. Wes Clark on Fact the Nation June 29, 2008

“Attacking” McCain’s Military Record
What Wesley Clark really said; how the press missed it

Satellites are allegedly being used to track the American-backed force after breakdowns in trust and coordination.

US Spying On Iraqi Army After Breakdowns In Trust

By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 2, 2008 WASHINGTON --

Caught off guard by recent Iraqi military operations, the United States is using spy satellites that ordinarily are trained on adversaries to monitor the movements of the American-backed Iraqi army, current and former U.S. officials say.
The stepped-up surveillance reflects breakdowns in trust and coordination between the two forces. Officials said it was part of an expanded intelligence effort launched after American commanders were surprised by the timing of the Iraqi army's violent push into Basra three months ago.
The use of the satellites puts the United States in the unusual position of employing some of its most sophisticated espionage technology to track an allied army that American forces helped create, continue to advise, and often fight alongside.
The satellites are "imaging military installations that the Iraqi army occupies," said a former U.S. military official, who said slides from the images had been used in recent closed briefings at U.S. facilities in the Middle East. "They're imaging training areas that the Iraqi army utilizes. They're imaging roads that Iraqi armored vehicles and large convoys transit."
Military officials and experts said the move showed concern by U.S. commanders about whether their Iraqi counterparts would follow U.S. guidance or keep their coalition partners fully informed.
"It suggests that we don't have complete confidence in their chain of command, or in their willingness to tell us what they're going to do because they may fear that we may try to get them not to do it," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a website about intelligence and military issues.
But the development was also seen as a sign the Iraqi army has reached a level of independence and competence that U.S. military planners had hoped it would achieve.
"The bad news is we're spying on Iraqis," said the former military official. "The good news is that we have to."
The former military official and several other sources described the operation on condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity. The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies declined to comment.

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YouTube ordered to hand over user details

By Andrew Ramadge, Technology Reporter
July 03, 2008 05:15pm
YOUTUBE has been ordered to give up records of each clip watched on the popular video-sharing website, along with the date, time and IP address of each person who watched it, to media giant Viacom.
In a ruling that could have major implications for online privacy around the world, US District Court judge Louis Stanton granted Viacom access to the records as part of its ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit against Google and its subsidiary YouTube.
Each time a video is played, YouTube's "Logging" database records the user ID and IP address of the viewer, the date and time of the request and the ID of the clip – and includes details of videos embedded on websites other than YouTube.
"While the Logging database is large, all of its contents can be copied onto a few 'over-the-shelf' four-terabyte hard drives," Judge Stanton said, in response to Google's claim that providing the data would be too difficult.
"The motion to compel production of all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website is granted."
Viacom sought access to the database in a bid to prove that clips allegedly infringing copyright, such as scenes from TV shows and movies, were more popular than user-generated videos.
Online rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said the decision stood at odds with US privacy laws and was a "setback to privacy rights".
"The court’s order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users," said a statement on the group's website.
"We urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users."
Judge Stanton denied Viacom's requests for access to other Google and YouTube properties, including the search engine's source code – including the algorithms it uses to provide search results.
Viacom began legal action against YouTube in February 2007, when it issued over 100,000 takedown notices to the website regarding material in beach of copyright.
In March 2007, the media giant instigated a $US1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube, alleging that the video-sharing website hosted over 150,000 unauthorised clips that had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
Viacom's media empire includes Paramount Pictures, MTV, DreamWorks and Nickelodeon.
It is not known if Google will challenge the decision.
Links
Judge Stanton's ruling on Wired (PDF) – http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/viacom_yout…Electronic Frontier Foundation statement – http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/court-ruling-…
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Panel Questions State Dept. Role in Iraq Oil Deal

State Dept Officials Knew Of Iraq Oil Deal WIth Company Tied To Bush

Deal Infuriated Iraqis, Ran Counter To Policy

By JAMES GLANZ and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
Published: July 3, 2008
Bush administration officials knew that a Texas oil company with close ties to President Bush was planning to sign an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government that ran counter to American policy and undercut Iraq’s central government, a Congressional committee has concluded.The conclusions were based on e-mail messages and other documents that the committee released Wednesday.
United States policy is to warn companies that they incur risks in signing contracts until Iraq passes an oil law and to strengthen Iraq’s central government. The Kurdistan deal, by ceding responsibility for writing contracts directly to a regional government, infuriated Iraqi officials. But State Department officials did nothing to discourage the deal and in some cases appeared to welcome it, the documents show.
The company, Hunt Oil of Dallas, signed the deal with Kurdistan’s semiautonomous government last September. Its chief executive, Ray L. Hunt, a close political ally of President Bush, briefed an advisory board to Mr. Bush on his contacts with Kurdish officials before the deal was signed.
In an e-mail message released by the Congressional committee, a State Department official in Washington, briefed by a colleague about the impending deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, wrote: “Many thanks for the heads up; getting an American company to sign a deal with the K.R.G. will make big news back here. Please keep us posted.”
The release of the documents comes as the administration is defending help that United States officials provided in drawing up a separate set of no-bid contracts, still pending, between Iraq’s Oil Ministry in Baghdad and five major Western oil companies to provide services at other Iraqi oil fields.
In the no-bid contracts, the administration said it had provided what it called purely technical help writing the contracts. The United States played no role in choosing the companies, the administration has said.
Disclosure of those contracts has provided substantial fuel to critics of the Iraq war, both in the United States and abroad, who contend that the enormous Iraqi oil reserves were a motivation for the American-led invasion — an assertion the administration has repeatedly denied. LinkHere

U.S. Is in No Shape to Give Advice, Medvedev Says

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
Published: July 3, 2008
MOSCOW — Russia’s new president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, less swaggering than his predecessor but as touchy about criticism from abroad, said in an interview that an America in “essentially a depression” was in no position to lecture other countries on how to conduct their affairs.
With soaring oil revenues bolstering the Russian economy and Kremlin confidence, Mr. Medvedev brushed aside American criticism of his country’s record on democracy and human rights. He also said that a revived Russia had a right to assume a larger role in a world economic system that he suggested should no longer be dominated by the United States.
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U.S. helicopter shot down in Afghanistan

REUTERSReuters North American News Service
Jul 02, 2008 08:47 EST
KABUL, July 2 (Reuters) - A helicopter belonging to U.S.-led coalition troops was shot down by small-arms fire south of the Afghan capital on Wednesday, but there were no serious injuries to those on board, the U.S. military said.
Afghanistan has seen a rise in violence this year, despite the increased presence of foreign troops, now numbering more than 70,000 and some Western politicians have recently warned the country may slip back into anarchy.
The pilots landed the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter safely and evacuated all personnel before it caught fire in the Kharwar district of Logar province, where Taliban militants are known to be active.
"Coalition forces cleared the area using helicopters, show-of-force and firing warning rounds before using precision-guided munitions to destroy the helicopter," the U.S. military said.
It was the second coalition helicopter to crash in a week. The other incident, in Kunar province in the northeast, is under investigation but indications are that the helicopter crashed due to mechanical failure, a U.S. military spokesman said.
Removed from power in 2001 by U.S.-led troops, the resurgent Taliban claimed responsibility for downing the helicopter and said that all those on board were killed. The group said it shot down the helicopter with anti-aircraft rockets.
The Taliban have brought down a number of aircraft, but so far the militants are not thought to have obtained surface-to-air missiles that could alter the balance of the war dramatically.
Many historians believe it was the Afghan mujahideen's acquisitions of such missiles that tipped the war against the Soviet occupation in their favour in the 1980s.
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Tehran Puts on a Show of Strength

By Sami Moubayed

"Should it happen that a strong government finds it may with impunity destroy a weak people, then the hour strikes for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give its judgment in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment." - Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia"

Psychological warfare is on the rise. This weekend, a senior Iranian general, Mir-Faisal Bagherzadeh, said his country was digging 320,000 graves for American soldiers scheduled to fight in Iran. "In implementation of the Geneva Conventions, the necessary measures are being taken to provide for the burial of enemy soldiers. We have plans to dig 15,000 to 20,000 graves for each of the border provinces, or a total of 320,000," he said, pointing out that some of them would be mass graves, if necessary. This was "to reduce the suffering of the families of the fallen in any attack against, and prevent the repetition of the long and bitter experience of the Vietnam War".
These may sound like big words - similar to those barked by Saddam Hussein and his information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf in 2003 - but they carry real impact on the psychology of American troops. Iraq - with its weak army and corrupted regime - was impossible to chew for the Americans. Nobody can imagine how difficult a war would be against 65 million Iranians, with a well-trained, well-armed military indoctrinated with Shi'ite Islam and a strong sense of purpose against the "great Satan".
In addition to building the graves - which has actually started - the Iranians have several actions they could resort to if war were declared between now and the end of President George W Bush's tenure at the White House in January.
They can incite the Shi'ites of nations where there are US military bases; Saudi Arabia (33%), Kuwait (36%), Bahrain (80%). They can incite the Kurds of Turkey and create problems with the Shi'ites of Yemen. They can unleash hell in Iraq through proxies like the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr and the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council. The Shi'ites of these countries have strong bonds to Iran and would listen and respond, if duty calls, and if the Americans or Israel went to war against Tehran.
The Iranians can - and would - close the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway separating the Arabian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman and the North Arabian Sea. This would cause already rocketing oil prices to go through the roof, as pointed out by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Mohammad Ali Jaafari.
The strait is the world's second-busiest international water route, channeling 25% of the world's oil supplies on a daily basis. Over 75% of Japan's oil, for example, runs through Hormuz. According to Mustapha al-Sayyed, a Syrian oil expert, "if the strait is closed, alternate routes [if available] would have to be used, and this will result in a loss of more than 20 million barrels per day in the international market." He added that he expected oil prices to reach "no less than US$500 a barrel". Currently, the oil flow through the strait stands at more than 17 million barrels per day. The chaos in world markets this would cause does not need explaining.
Iran has also reportedly positioned some of its Shahab-3B missiles, with a range of nearly 2,000 kilometers, and according to certain press reports, is ready to fire at the Dimona reactor inside Israel.
The arrogant tone of the Iranians came after the New York Times ran a story saying that over 100 Israeli warplanes had carried out major training exercises over the eastern Mediterranean on June 12, in preparation for a war on Tehran. As part of the exercise, they flew the distance needed to reach the Iranian city of Natanz, where a nuclear facility is based.
One day after the Israeli provocation, Deputy Prime Minister Shaoul Mofaz was quoted in an Israeli daily as saying his country would attack Iran if it did not halt its nuclear program, which Iran maintains is for civilian purposes only. Meanwhile, an ex-Mossad (Israeli intelligence) chief, Shatai Shavit, told The Sunday Telegraph of London that the "worst-case scenario" was that Tehran would develop nuclear weapons within a year, and, therefore, require Israel to strike at Iran.
LinkHere

What Bush hath wrought

By Andrew J. Bacevich
July 1, 2008
FEW AMERICANS, whatever their political persuasion, will mourn George W. Bush's departure from office. Democrats and Republicans alike are counting the days until the inauguration of a new president will wipe the slate clean.
Yet in crucial respects, the Bush era will not end Jan. 20, 2009. The administration's many failures, especially those related to Iraq, mask a considerable legacy. Among other things, the Bush team has accomplished the following:
Defined the contemporary era as an "age of terror" with an open-ended "global war" as the necessary, indeed the only logical, response;
Promulgated and implemented a doctrine of preventive war, thereby creating a far more permissive rationale for employing armed force;
Affirmed - despite the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001 - that the primary role of the Department of Defense is not defense, but power projection;
Removed constraints on military spending so that once more, as Ronald Reagan used to declare, "defense is not a budget item";
Enhanced the prerogatives of the imperial presidency on all matters pertaining to national security, effectively eviscerating the system of checks and balances;
Preserved and even expanded the national security state, despite the manifest shortcomings of institutions such as the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
Preempted any inclination to question the wisdom of the post-Cold War foreign policy consensus, founded on expectations of a sole superpower exercising "global leadership";
Completed the shift of US strategic priorities away from Europe and toward the Greater Middle East, the defense of Israel having now supplanted the defense of Berlin as the cause to which presidents and would-be presidents ritually declare their fealty.
By almost any measure, this constitutes a record of substantial, if almost entirely malignant, achievement.
Bush's harshest critics, left liberals as well as traditional conservatives, have repeatedly called attention to this record. That criticism has yet to garner mainstream political traction. Throughout the long primary season, even as various contenders in both parties argued endlessly about Iraq, they seemed oblivious to the more fundamental questions raised by the Bush years: whether global war makes sense as an antidote to terror, whether preventive war works, whether the costs of "global leadership" are sustainable, and whether events in Asia rather than the Middle East just might determine the course of the 21st century. >>>cont
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Iraqis Face Miles-Long Lines

Motorists wait up to 4 hours to fill up despite country's oil riches

Tues., July. 1, 2008
BAGHDAD - Frustrated Iraqis faced miles-long lines at gas stations on Tuesday — a stark reminder that a country with one of the world's largest oil reserves still has major challenges delivering fuel to its people.
The lines followed Iraq's announcement Monday that it was opening six major oil fields and two natural gas fields to development by foreign firms, which could lead to the biggest outside stake in Iraq's oil industry since it was nationalized more than 30 years ago.

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5th Anniversary of Bush's 'Bring 'em On' Boast on Iraq Is Today

Published: July 02, 2008 11:50 PM ET
NEW YORK It appeared, quite innocently and only in passing in The New York Times, five years ago, recording a statement by George W. Bush.
"President Bush today came close to taunting Iraqis who were attacking American-led forces in Iraq and said the assaults would not cause the United States to leave prematurely," the Times reported on July 2, 2003.''
'There are some who feel like -- that the conditions are such that they can attack us there,'' Mr. Bush said. ''My answer is, bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.'''
An AP account the following day reported that the official White House transcript of the press gathering had Bush saying "bring them on" but "reporters say the phrase actually sounded like 'bring 'em on.'"
In any case, the remarks inspired outrage. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., called the president's language "irresponsible and inciteful." Sen. John Kerry said they were "unworthy of the office."
To that point in 2003, 186 Americans had lost their lives in Irag. More than 4000 American military personnel, and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, have died since that date. Nearly 30,000 Americans have been wounded.
In 2006, Bush admitted that this "kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong message to people....I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know.... I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted.
"But the day after "bring 'em on," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush was only expressing his faith in the strength and capability of U.S. forces. "The president expressed it, said it, because he views it as a way to express confidence in the forces," Fleischer told reporters.
Asked then about the missing Iraqi WMD, Bush replied, "It's just a matter of time, a matter of time." Fleischer said the burden was on those who had always said there were no WMD -- to find out how Saddam had destroyed all of them.
On the day of "bring 'em on" Travis J. Bradachnall, a corporal in the Marines, was killed in an explosion during a mine clearing operation near the city of Karbala.*
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War cheerleading journo is waterboarded

Nick JulianoPublished:

Wednesday July 2, 2008

Hitchens says drowning practice is 'torture'
Christopher Hitchens, the British journalist who is among the staunchest defenders of the war in Iraq, was waterboarded for a recent article in Vanity Fair.
"Believe Me, It's Torture" is the article's title.
In it and an accompanying video Hitchens outlines a trip to North Carolina where interrogators experienced in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) training that Special Forces soldiers participate in to resist torture at the hands of enemies.
"I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture," Hitchens wrote after enduring the procedure.
Hitchens is one of the staunchest defenders of the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq, arguing on the 5th anniversary of the invasion that he was right all along. After the photos of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib became public he wrote that such conditions nonetheless made the prison an improvement from its pre-war state.
In his most recent piece, Hitchens does not touch on his arguments in support of the war, but he argues that waterboarding as a practice is not helpful in the pursuit and persecution of the war against al Qaeda.
"One used to be told—and surely with truth—that the lethal fanatics of al-Qaeda were schooled to lie, and instructed to claim that they had been tortured and maltreated whether they had been tortured and maltreated or not," he wrote. "Did we notice what a frontier we had crossed when we admitted and even proclaimed that their stories might in fact be true? I had only a very slight encounter on that frontier, but I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath."
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Olbermann airs extensive list of McCain flip flops

By David Edwards
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John McCain has claimed that the 2008 election “is about trust and trusting people’s word … Senator Obama’s word cannot be trusted.”
Keith Olbermann asks if the American people trust someone who has flip flopped on so many issues. He then goes on to enumerate GI educational funding, lobbying reform, campaign reform, immigration, gay marriage, abortion, nuclear waste … torture of detainees, the Iraq War … and a long, long list of other issues on which McCain has shifted positions.
This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast June 30, 2008.

Obama: Patriotism Speech

Barack Obama: Speech on Patriotism

Bush Wrongly Credits McCain For 'Working Hard' on GI BIll

Huffingtonpost.com — as Bush acknowledged the House and Senate members who came together to support the bill, he slipped in the name of one who labored to obstruct the bill -- Senator John McCain. McCain was given the same credit as those who had steered the passage of the bill from day one.

Three People Didn’t Vote On The G.I. Bill

Published May 22, 2008 in Military and Republicans.
Here is the roll call.
Ted Kennedy - who just got out of the hospital

Tom Coburn

John McCain
3/4 of the Senate voted for the bill. All the votes against the bill were Republicans.

Obama's Sister Becomes Asian-American Surrogate

SAN FRANCISCO — The throng of Asian-American donors drew closer, drinks in hand, to hear Barack Obama's sister describe the wide arc of his life: beyond politics and Chicago, into his childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii.
To many in this crowd Obama's Asian-American half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, represents yet another aspect of Obama's identity that makes him unique as a presidential candidate, although it has been underplayed amid the excitement surrounding his shot at becoming the first black president.
"It would be the first time that the first family is comprised in part of Asian-Americans _ as well as African-Americans, of course," said Keith Kamisugi, a coordinator with Asian-Americans for Obama. In early June he organized a fundraiser along with two other Obama events focusing on Asian-American voters in San Francisco.
Discussion of those ties has taken a back seat to the Obama campaign's efforts to win the Hispanic vote and his ability to rouse young and black voters. In spite of the drawn-out primary season, many voters have heard little about Obama's years in Jakarta _ he lived there between 1967 and 1971, while his mother was married to Soetoro-Ng's father, an Indonesian businessman _ or about his years in Hawaii, where Asian-Americans are a majority.
Soetoro-Ng and Obama have different fathers and the same mother. Her father is Indonesian, his is Kenyan. Her husband is Chinese-Canadian.
Initially, as the campaign focused on fighting out the primaries, state by state, "the idea was to downplay to some degree race and ethnicity," said Soetoro-Ng in an interview with The Associated Press. "A lot of the emphasis had been on reaching out, making connections, closing the gaps."
That theme resonated among Obama supporters of all backgrounds, said Soetoro-Ng, who is nine years younger than Obama and considers him "the strong male force" in her life after her parents' divorce.
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Obama Vows To Expand Bush's Faith-Based Programs

"This is a massive deal," said Kuo, who is not an Obama adviser or supporter but was contacted by the campaign to review the new plan.
Obama proposes to elevate the program to a "moral center" of his administration, by renaming it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and changing training from occasional huge conferences to empowering larger religious charities to mentor smaller ones in their communities.
Saying social service spending has been shortchanged under Bush, he also proposes a $500 million per year program to provide summer learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps with white and wealthier students. A campaign fact sheet said he would pay for it by better managing surplus federal properties, reducing growth in the federal travel budget and streamlining the federal procurement process.
Like Bush, Obama was arguing that religious organizations can and should play a bigger role in serving the poor and meeting other social needs. But while Bush argued that the strength of religious charities lies primarily in shared religious identity between workers and recipients, Obama was to tout the benefits of their "bottom-up" approach.
"Because they're so close to the people, they're well-placed to offer help," he was to say.
Kuo called Obama's approach smart, impressive and well thought-out but took a wait-and-see attitude about whether it would deliver.
"When it comes to promises to help the poor, promises are easy," said Kuo, who wrote a 2006 book describing his frustration at what he called Bush's lackluster enthusiasm for the program. "The question is commitment."
Obama also planned to talk bluntly about the genesis of his Christian faith in his work as a community organizer in Chicago, and its importance to him now.
"In time, I came to see faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn't be fulfilling God's will unless I went out and did the Lord's work," he was to say.
UPDATE: An Obama campaign official told the Huffington Post that the AP's claims about Obama allowing hiring or firing based on faith are false. From a portion of Obama's speech today:
"Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe this partnership will endanger that idea - so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them - or against the people you hire - on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we'll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work."The Politico, meanwhile, describes Obama's new plan not as an expansion of Bush's Faith-Based Initiative, but as an effort to tear down what Bush created and establish a new program with a new set of goals:
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) slammed President Bush's faith-based program as "a photo-op" and a failure on Tuesday, and said he will scrap the office and create a new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that would be a "critical" part of his administration.
Obama, unveiling a plan to overhaul and expand Bush's faith-based program during remarks at a community ministry in Zanesville, Ohio, said the White House Office of Community and Faith-Based Initiatives - which Bush founded during his second week in office - "never fulfilled its promise." [...]
Reaching out to evangelicals who are non-plussed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Obama declared: "I still believe it's a good idea to have a partnership between the White House and grassroots groups, both faith-based and secular. But it has to be a real partnership - not a photo-op. That's what it will be when I'm President. I'll establish a new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships."
"The new name will reflect a new commitment," he continued. "This Council will not just be another name on the White House organization chart - it will be a critical part of my administration."

LinkHere

U.S. Helped Western Companies Divvy Up Iraqi Oil

By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Published: June 30, 2008
A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.



The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.
In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said.
It is unclear how much influence their work had on the ministry’s decisions.
The advisers — who, along with the diplomatic official, spoke on condition of anonymity — say that their involvement was only to help an understaffed Iraqi ministry with technical and legal details of the contracts and that they in no way helped choose which companies got the deals.
Repeated calls to the Oil Ministry’s press office for comment were not returned.
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‘Oh Happy Day’

By BOB HERBERT
Published: July 1, 2008
It’s getting harder and harder to remain deluded. With each day comes new facts to drag our heads out of the sand.

Two weeks ago, The Times reported that four Western oil giants were on the verge of signing no-bid contracts that would return them to Iraq, the third-most bountiful petroleum playground on the planet. The deals, expected to be finalized in the next 30 days, were the kind of news that big oil lives for.
Giddy executives singing “Oh Happy Day” could be heard in the corporate offices of Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP, which had been shut out of Iraq for three and a half decades.

LinkHere

Right On, General Clark. Do Not Back Down.

Boy, talk about your echo chamber in the media. Yesterday, General Wesley Clark went on CBS' Face the Nation, and repeated something he's said many times before. If you missed it, here's the full quote in context :

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Why?
This wasn't a swift boating, or any low politics. General Clark called McCain a hero to millions for his sacrifice. And, that's a pretty big statement coming from a man who, himself, left Vietnam on a stretcher. But, facts are facts:
• Senator McCain's service and experience, both as a POW and as a Senator apparently hasn't infused him with a dose of good judgment.
• Senator McCain's experience hasn't led him to realize that the war in Iraq and it's continuance has empowered and emboldened Iran, and destabilized the region.
• Senator McCain's experience hasn't caused him to recognize that we're losing ground in Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden is still out there, plotting.
• Senator McCain's experience didn't lead him to support the 21st Century GI Bill -- he opposed it. It didn't even make him feel the need to get back to Washington to vote on this -- one of the most important veterans' bills this Congress. He twice skipped votes on the GI Bill, to fundraise.
• Senator McCain's experience didn't help him empathize with troops are overstretched and overdeployed, when he voted against the bipartisan Webb-Hagel "Dwell Time Amendment," which would have given troops as much time at home as in the field.
Senator McCain is running on his experience, saying it makes him ready to lead right away. By doing so, he is asking people to look at what that experience taught him. By looking at Senator McCain's positions and votes (or lack of them), it seems that experience has not given him the right judgment on important issues of our time. And, while we should all honor Senator McCain's service, that doesn't mean we should necessarily honor it by putting him in the White House to take up George W. Bush's third term.
So, General Clark is 100 percent absolutely right, and he should not back down. I'd hope that some of the so-called progressives on television back him up on this, and not get intimidated by the media and McCain campaign press releases. These are important times, and deserve a blunt and honest debate.
In some circles, that's just called 'straight talk.'
UPDATE: Since a lot of you are sending words of support on here for General Clark, we started a petition where you can sign to thank him, and tell him to keep it up. We will take the petition to General Clark, personally. Also, it's important to sign, so we can show the media that we've got his back.
LinkHere

McCain “Truth Squad” headed by 2004 Swift Boat Liar

Jun 30, 2008 - 02:26 PM by Terri Buchman
The Huffington Post is reporting today that Sen. John McCain has hired Bud Day, from the 2004 group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, to "truth squad" attacks on Sen. McCain's service record.
LinkHere

Here McCain jokes about how unqualified he is

McCain Comedy Tour

and he's even more unfunny than Bush. Slugbug

Bush Wrongly Credits McCain For 'Working Hard' On G.I. Bill

June 30, 2008 02:48 PM
President George W, Bush wasn't exactly a friend to the efforts put forth by Senators Jim Webb (D-VA) and John Warner (R-VA) as they worked to secure bipartisan, veto-proof support for an updated U.S. G.I. Bill, which would provide our veterans with enhanced educational opportunities. But Bush is stuck with the bill now, so naturally, he went in front of the press and deemed himself pleased with its passage.
It didn't escape our attention though, that as Bush acknowledged the House and Senate members who came together to support the bill, he slipped in the name of one who labored to obstruct the bill -- Senator John McCain. Instead of being rightly excluded from the list of thanks, McCain was given the same credit as those who had steered the passage of the bill from day one. Surely, though, John McCain will correct the President, because STRAIGHT TALK, RIGHT?
BUSH: The bill is a result of close collaboration between my administration and members of both parties on Capitol Hill. I appreciate the hard work of my cabinet, especially the leaders of Defense and State and Veterans' Affairs and Office of National Drug Control Policy, as well as OMB. I want to thank House and Senate leadership and leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. I am particularly grateful to Congressmen Boehner, Hoyer, Obey and Lewis. I want to thank members who worked hard for the G.I. Bill expansion, especially Senators Webb and Warner, Graham, Byrd, and McCain. This bill shows the American people that even in an election year, Republicans and Democrats can come together to stand behind our troops and their families.
[WATCH.]

Obamania Pride Seattle 2008