From washingtonpost.com:
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.
To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What they needed to be was a member of the Republican Party.
O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
More...much more...at the link. Like this nugget:
To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.
And this:
CPA staff members weren't worried about employment prospects after Baghdad. "Oh, I'll just work on the campaign" -- the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign -- several said.
"I'm not here for the Iraqis," one worker noted over lunch. "I'm here for George Bush."
The Katrina debacle was not an isolated incident. Both that humanitarian disaster and the current mess in Iraq are a direct result of not just incompetence, but actual contempt for competence by this Administration. "Who cares if you know how to do the job? The important thing is that you think right thoughts. Tell me your position on abortion."
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Friday, September 15, 2006
Jack Keller Feels Your Pain, Dog
Bounty Hunter Duane 'Dog' Chapman arrested in Hawaii
By MARK NIESSE, Associated Press WriterFri Sep 15, 8:31 AM ET
TV reality star Duane "Dog" Chapman and two co-stars on his show were arrested Thursday in Hawaii on charges of illegal detention and conspiracy in the bounty hunters' capture three years ago of a cosmetics company heir.
Chapman, son Leland Chapman and associate Timothy Chapman were taken into custody and did not resist arrest, said Mark Hanohano, U.S. Marshal for the district of Hawaii. "It went down without incident," Hanohano said.
Mona K. Wood, a publicist for the star of the popular cable series "Dog The Bounty Hunter," said Chapman would be vindicated. "He arrests the bad guys — and he is definitely not one of them," she said.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
A New Low
Rick Santorum Hides Behind His Kids In a Political Ad:
From FactCheck.org:
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum shows his children claiming that political opponents have criticized him 'for moving us to Washington,' and that 'they criticized us for attending a Pennsylvania public school over the Internet.' In fact, the critique was of Santorum, not his children. And the controversy was over money, not Santorum's family values.
The ad is Santorum's response to accusations by local officials that he exploited a Pennsylvania program that paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition for his children to be educated via a publicly supported Internet charter school while the family was living in Virginia.
n the ad 13-year-old Johnny Santorum says "My dad's opponents have criticized him for moving us to Washington so we could be with him more." And 11-year-old Daniel Santorum adds that "they criticized us for attending a Pennsylvania public school over the Internet."
From FactCheck.org:
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum shows his children claiming that political opponents have criticized him 'for moving us to Washington,' and that 'they criticized us for attending a Pennsylvania public school over the Internet.' In fact, the critique was of Santorum, not his children. And the controversy was over money, not Santorum's family values.
The ad is Santorum's response to accusations by local officials that he exploited a Pennsylvania program that paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition for his children to be educated via a publicly supported Internet charter school while the family was living in Virginia.
n the ad 13-year-old Johnny Santorum says "My dad's opponents have criticized him for moving us to Washington so we could be with him more." And 11-year-old Daniel Santorum adds that "they criticized us for attending a Pennsylvania public school over the Internet."
That misstates matters. The criticism wasn't of Santorum's children, but of the senator himself. And it was not over moving the children to be near him, nor was it about choosing "public school" or "the Internet." Rather, it concerned whether Pennsylvania taxpayers should foot a very substantial bill for the Santorum brood's education-via-Internet from a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC
(More at the link)
Lying in a campaign ad is expected. Trotting your kids out to do it for you in a cheap sympathy ploy is a half-mile below despicable.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Saturday, September 09, 2006
9/11 +5
Latest Newspaper Column (Expanded Version):
Tomorrow is the 5th anniversary of the day. The day that changed all of us, and our country, in ways we could barely have imagined. The day that nineteen young Muslim men, armed with box cutters and a dreadful, ironclad sense of their own righteousness, cold-bloodedly slaughtered the flight crews of four airliners, took control, and turned the planes into enormous missiles, loaded with explosive fuel.
Almost 3,000 people died; more certainly would have if the passengers of one plane hadn't sacrificed themselves to stop it.
We've come a long way since that day. But in what direction?
After my initial shock, despair, and outrage over the brutality of the attacks, I saw things that, as I wrote at the time, made me glad I live in this country. One was the moment when I heard that the hospitals were jammed with people trying to donate their blood to help the injured.
Then there were the moments when I was proud to be a member of the human race. One such moment was when I saw a picture of the flags flying at half-staff over the Kremlin. That expression of sympathy and solidarity from a country that had been our sworn enemy for decades brought tears to my eyes. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, we can all pull together, across the country and across the world, and beat this thing.
For a while there, we stood united. When the vote came up to authorize an attack against the al Qaida terrorists and their Taliban allies in Afghanistan, it passed the House 420-1 and the Senate 98-0. And our allies stood with us. France. Germany. Canada. Even the Russians, who had every reason to want to have nothing to do with Afghanistan ever again, provided intelligence and logistical support. And the Taliban fell. When it did, I cheered as loudly as anyone. You can look it up.
Then things started going off the track. The so-called "neoconservatives" in the Bush Cabinet had been agitating for a fight with Iraq since before 9/11. They hoped to implement their grandiose and arrogant theory that we could reshape the Middle Eastern countries into Western-style democracies, at gunpoint if necessary. After all, the theory went, democracies don't make war on each other or foster terrorism.
The PR machine cranked up. Saddam Hussein, we were assured, was making nasty gases, germs, and nukes to hand over to the terrorists. Bush and his cronies never failed to mention Iraq and 9/11 in the same sentence until people actually began to believe that Saddam was behind the attacks. (The Bushistas would deny any direct connection if you ever cornered them; unfortunately, very few news outlets actually had the spine to do that.)
Those who dared to question either the wisdom of invading Iraq or the plans to do so with a relatively light force were shouted down or branded as traitors. Our allies who'd helped us in one invasion but didn't back this one were suddenly weak, craven, "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."
Suddenly, all the unity we'd had was thrown aside in the rush to war with Iraq.
And, as we know, that war didn't work out as planned. The American military accomplished its first mission brilliantly, rolling over Iraqi resistance and taking Baghdad. But the only thing close to WMDs they ever found were a few old and corroded artillery shells. Those who had called for a larger occupying force turned out to be right as the country descended into a frenzy of looting.
Islamic militias began picking off American soldiers a few at a time. Terrorist recruiting went up. U.S. military recruiting went down. Iran and North Korea got bolder in their own nuclear ambitions, knowing we were tied up in Iraq.
Across the Middle East, the neoconservative article of faith that democracy would spell the end of terror proved to be a mirage. When given a choice, the Palestinians put Hamas in power, while the Lebanese gave seats in Parliament to Hezbollah. Elections in Iraq have done nothing to stop the upward spiral of violence there.
Faced with these failures, Bush and Company continue to retreat into fantasy, blaming ill-defined enemies that seem to exist only in their heads. Presidential adviser Karl Rove revised history by falsely claiming that "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." This, despite the near unanimous support in Congress for the attack on Afghanistan.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld railed against "some people" who would "appease terrorists," comparing them to the weak British governments of the '30s who knuckled under to Hitler. These vicious and hateful statements (and those who parrot them in the pages of this paper and elsewhere) delivered a brutal and cynical slap in the face to those of us who backed our government in the days after 9/11 and during the Afghan war.
For a brief time after Sept. 11, 2001, something beautiful arose out of those ashes. We had unity. We had the majority of the world on our side. And then George Dubbya Bush and his cronies frittered it all away.
So this is a doubly sad day for me.
I'm sure the responses to this column will include the inevitable accusations of partisanship, and a lot of indignation that I'm not "honoring the dead" of 9/11 because I "hate Bush."
But I didn't always hate this President. At one point, I actually had hope that this incredibly unqualified, shallow-thinking, arrogantly ignorant man might actually do as so many have done, exceed his own limitations, and rise to the crisis.
He failed. He failed us all. And in doing so, George W. Bush did more to dishonor the dead of 9/11 than any small-town newspaper columnist could ever dream of doing.
Tomorrow is the 5th anniversary of the day. The day that changed all of us, and our country, in ways we could barely have imagined. The day that nineteen young Muslim men, armed with box cutters and a dreadful, ironclad sense of their own righteousness, cold-bloodedly slaughtered the flight crews of four airliners, took control, and turned the planes into enormous missiles, loaded with explosive fuel.
Almost 3,000 people died; more certainly would have if the passengers of one plane hadn't sacrificed themselves to stop it.
We've come a long way since that day. But in what direction?
After my initial shock, despair, and outrage over the brutality of the attacks, I saw things that, as I wrote at the time, made me glad I live in this country. One was the moment when I heard that the hospitals were jammed with people trying to donate their blood to help the injured.
Then there were the moments when I was proud to be a member of the human race. One such moment was when I saw a picture of the flags flying at half-staff over the Kremlin. That expression of sympathy and solidarity from a country that had been our sworn enemy for decades brought tears to my eyes. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, we can all pull together, across the country and across the world, and beat this thing.
For a while there, we stood united. When the vote came up to authorize an attack against the al Qaida terrorists and their Taliban allies in Afghanistan, it passed the House 420-1 and the Senate 98-0. And our allies stood with us. France. Germany. Canada. Even the Russians, who had every reason to want to have nothing to do with Afghanistan ever again, provided intelligence and logistical support. And the Taliban fell. When it did, I cheered as loudly as anyone. You can look it up.
Then things started going off the track. The so-called "neoconservatives" in the Bush Cabinet had been agitating for a fight with Iraq since before 9/11. They hoped to implement their grandiose and arrogant theory that we could reshape the Middle Eastern countries into Western-style democracies, at gunpoint if necessary. After all, the theory went, democracies don't make war on each other or foster terrorism.
The PR machine cranked up. Saddam Hussein, we were assured, was making nasty gases, germs, and nukes to hand over to the terrorists. Bush and his cronies never failed to mention Iraq and 9/11 in the same sentence until people actually began to believe that Saddam was behind the attacks. (The Bushistas would deny any direct connection if you ever cornered them; unfortunately, very few news outlets actually had the spine to do that.)
Those who dared to question either the wisdom of invading Iraq or the plans to do so with a relatively light force were shouted down or branded as traitors. Our allies who'd helped us in one invasion but didn't back this one were suddenly weak, craven, "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."
Suddenly, all the unity we'd had was thrown aside in the rush to war with Iraq.
And, as we know, that war didn't work out as planned. The American military accomplished its first mission brilliantly, rolling over Iraqi resistance and taking Baghdad. But the only thing close to WMDs they ever found were a few old and corroded artillery shells. Those who had called for a larger occupying force turned out to be right as the country descended into a frenzy of looting.
Islamic militias began picking off American soldiers a few at a time. Terrorist recruiting went up. U.S. military recruiting went down. Iran and North Korea got bolder in their own nuclear ambitions, knowing we were tied up in Iraq.
Across the Middle East, the neoconservative article of faith that democracy would spell the end of terror proved to be a mirage. When given a choice, the Palestinians put Hamas in power, while the Lebanese gave seats in Parliament to Hezbollah. Elections in Iraq have done nothing to stop the upward spiral of violence there.
Faced with these failures, Bush and Company continue to retreat into fantasy, blaming ill-defined enemies that seem to exist only in their heads. Presidential adviser Karl Rove revised history by falsely claiming that "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." This, despite the near unanimous support in Congress for the attack on Afghanistan.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld railed against "some people" who would "appease terrorists," comparing them to the weak British governments of the '30s who knuckled under to Hitler. These vicious and hateful statements (and those who parrot them in the pages of this paper and elsewhere) delivered a brutal and cynical slap in the face to those of us who backed our government in the days after 9/11 and during the Afghan war.
For a brief time after Sept. 11, 2001, something beautiful arose out of those ashes. We had unity. We had the majority of the world on our side. And then George Dubbya Bush and his cronies frittered it all away.
So this is a doubly sad day for me.
I'm sure the responses to this column will include the inevitable accusations of partisanship, and a lot of indignation that I'm not "honoring the dead" of 9/11 because I "hate Bush."
But I didn't always hate this President. At one point, I actually had hope that this incredibly unqualified, shallow-thinking, arrogantly ignorant man might actually do as so many have done, exceed his own limitations, and rise to the crisis.
He failed. He failed us all. And in doing so, George W. Bush did more to dishonor the dead of 9/11 than any small-town newspaper columnist could ever dream of doing.
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