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U.S. Decision On Iraq Has Puzzling Past (washingtonpost.com)

Five years ago, the Dec. 1 issue of the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, headlined its cover with a bold directive: “Saddam Must Go: A How-to Guide.” Two of the articles were written by current administration officials, including the lead one, by Zalmay M. Khalilzad, now special White House envoy to the Iraqi opposition, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, now deputy defense secretary.

Spain’s Zapatero Rejects Bush Appeal on Iraq

“Fighting terrorism with bombs, with operations of ‘shock and awe’, with missiles, that does not combat terrorism it only generates more radicalism.”

-Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

This article, Warblogging.com: Exploiting the Fallen needs no commentary or explanation.

As many of you have doubtless heard, one of President Bush’s three new campaign ads – debuted early last week – features a flag-draped coffin being removed from Ground Zero by firefighters. That’s correct. While Bush refuses to allow newsworthy events – the death of American soldiers – to be covered for the purposes of informing the public, Bush is perfectly happy to use similiar images from September 11th for his own campaign commercials.

This is a very important article from one of the original authors of the paper that exposed the massive security issues with the Diebold voting machines. He was an election judge at his local primary, and these are his thoughts.

I mentioned in my previous post that I proposed and passed a resolution that would require all touchscreen voting machines to have a voter verifiable paper trail. I believe this issue is extremely important. Judging by the number of requests for interviews this guy had on his cell phone at the end of the day, hopefully it will continue to be an issue until it is fixed.

My day as an election judge

There were also some security issues that I found to be much worse than I expected.

Well, I’m not even sure how you spell the word “caucusing” at this point, but I went to my polling location tonight and participated in the caucus.

It was actually kinda fun. There were about 25 people from our precinct there, and according to the single guy who had said that he had some caucus experience, it was quite a bit bigger than the 2000 turnout.

I ended up putting forth a resolution that any electronic voting machines include a voter verifiable paper trail, and it passed unanimously. It was fun to bring that up, there was a lot of discussion, and a lot of people had not heard of the issue before.

We had 17 delegates available to the county convention, but only 12 were filled by volunteers. I volunteered for that, so I will be going to the county convention March 27.

So who did I end up voting for? I am a dean supporter, and was really motivated to get involved in politics this year by Gov. Dean and his campaign. But in the end, I voted for Kucinich. Although I will support Kerry, as it looks he is the nominee, I feel that Kucinich’s platform is worth pushing forward to the national convention so that his ideas are heard.

ABB in November

Another excellent article from Arianna Huffington at Salon.com

So Justin exposing Janet’s boob is a sin, but White House staffers exposing Valerie Plame is a win. Profiting from porno is a sin, but Halliburton’s wartime profiteering is a win. Two men getting hitched is a sin, but Cheney and Scalia shacking up in a duck blind is a win. Telling students condoms can prevent STDs is a sin, but lying about WMD is a win. And so, apparently, is GOP staffers hacking into Senate computers and Tom DeLay illegally funneling corporate money to Texas politicians.

The president’s culture war is little more than breasts and circuses. Election-year weapons of mass distraction. Hail to the panderer in chief.

Here’s my stance on gay marriage. How can the state discriminate against two people who are committed to each other? Bring up the litany of arguments against it. I’m going to bet all of them come from religion. In this country we have the separation of church and state. If a church wants to say no to gay marriage, that’s their right. If the state wants to intentionally discriminate against a group of people, that is wrong.

Obviously this is a divisive issue, and I’m not going to be very eloquent in defending my position. But to look at all the religious types spewing hatred at people who love each other, it boggles my mind and they should be ashamed of themselves. They claim to know the bible so well, and yet they are missing the most important part. Love. What did Jesus say? Love each other. Love your brother. Love your mother and father. Love.

Matt 19:

[37] Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
[38] This is the first and great commandment.
[39] And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
[40] On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

It’s really not all that hard. There’s too much hate, destruction and violence in the world to be denying people who are in love the chance to spread love, peace and happiness.

Are we living in some sort of bizarro world where conservative pundits now are critical of President Bush?

Yahoo! News – Pundit O’Reilly Now Skeptical About Bush

“I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this,” O’Reilly said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

He goes on to blame the CIA for the no-WMD problem. So maybe we haven’t entered bizarro world yet. Blaming the CIA is what the bush administration will try and push now as the reason that we were so wrong. The reason we were so wrong is that Cheney, Rumsfield and Wolfowitz trusted their clandestine Office of Special Plans more than they trusted actual intelligence professionals. Read George Tenet’s comments from the other day. The CIA was urging caution about the intelligence that was being produced.

Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq [washingtonpost.com]

“The probability of him initiating an attack . . . in the foreseeable future . . . I think would be low,” a senior CIA official told the Senate intelligence committee during a classified briefing on the estimate on Oct. 2, 2002.

It is important to not believe the spin that comes from the Bush Administration. For example, in another classic case of administration doublespeak, they have released records that “prove” Bush completed his required service in the military. . . but the records contain no details about the 1972-1973 time period that everyone is so interested in!

In addition to the unanswered question about where Bush performed his service and the fact that no one he served with has come forward, several other loose ends remain:

Bush was suspended from flying at least twice for failing to “accomplish” a physical exam; he could not be evaluated by the Texas Guard because, at one point, he had not been observed there for a year;

Don’t take what the administration tells you at face value. Their record over the past 3 years has not been good.