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Today's Stories October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency American-Style October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play   October 15, 2007 Gary Leupp Response to an Angry Marine Andy Worthington A Gitmo Detainee Finally Gets a Break Heather Gray Al Krebs, a Fighter for Family Farmers John Walsh Blacks Turn Against the War: Why Won't Liberals Join Them? Joshua Frank Nobel Gore? Dave Lindorff Slaughter of the Innocents in Iraq Matt Vidal Squaring the Circle on Children and Health Care Ali Khan Pakistan's Constitutional Mess Sen. Russ Feingold The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program Johnny Barber The Balm of a Peace Process Infuses the War on Terror Website of the Day The Real Gore October 13 / 14, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Al Gore's Peace Prize Wajahat Ali Privatizing Terror, Outsourcing Diplomacy: an Interview with P. W. Singer Jeffrey St. Clair A Half Mile of Hell Ralph Nader Impeachment, Cowardice and the Democrats David Heleniak Gitmo at Home Laura Carlsen Plan Mexico and the Billion Dollar Drug Deal Brian Cloughley The Flat Drug World Richard Rhames Here Come the "Bankrupted Social Security" Scamsters, Again Ron Jacobs For the Sake of a Future Fred Gardner The Overrated Importance of Being "On Message" John Ross The Betray Us Flap Russell Hoffman Another Pro Nuker Wins the Peace Prize Missy Beattie Will Someone Please Give Lou Dobbs a Lobotomy? Poets' Basement Gibbons, Buknatski and Ford Website of the Day "Psychokiller", the Blackwater Version October 12, 2007 Cindy Sheehan Leadership Void Brendan Cooney Washington's Holocaust Deniers Alan Farago Gore Still Lost Florida Jan Oberg Gore's Peace Prize, a Grand Misjudgment M. Shahid Alam The Mercenary State: Pakistan's Killer Elites David Macaray Lies About Teachers and Unions Julia Kendlbacher Urban Legend, We Love Our Forest People Peter Rost, MD Drug Money and the Clinton Campaign Website of the Day Nader Live: "Things are a Lot Worse Than We Thought" October 11, 2007 Al Giordano Bill Clinton as Ambassador to the World? Saul Landau Killing for Profit: Blackwater in Iraq Jacob G. Hornberger The Failed Legacy of Interventionism William S. Lind The Iraq Mirage Joshua Frank Big Sky Rebels Josh Mahan Colorado River Blues Pat Williams Where Are You, Paul Wellstone?     October 10, 2007 Michael Yates Travels Across Greenspan's America Gary Leupp Spreading Awareness or Smearing a Religion? David Macaray How Wal-Mart Can be Beaten Alan Farago Corruption and the Law of Intended Consequences Tom Clifford Homeless in Their Own Land: Iraq's Deepening Refugee Crisis Col. Douglas MacGregor Washington's War Sunsara Taylor Nooses at Columbia George Wuerthner Behind the Bovine Curtain Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Indigenous Peoples' Day Michael Dickinson Forgetting Lennon's Birthday Website of the Day Paying for War   October 9, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Blinded by Ideology: Cato, Trade and Outsourcing Andy Worthington Fourth Whistleblower Rocks Guantánamo Alan Farago The Fall of Florida's Largest Land Developer Brian Eno Exporting Democracy with Missiles David Rovics The RIAA vs. the World Farzana Versey Two Lovers and the Funeral of Secularism Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich Musharraf's Landslide Website of the Day Romney and the Wheelchair Bound Medical Marijuana Patient   October 8, 2007 David Macaray Lesbians for Hillary? or Teamsters for Hillary? Jeff Ballinger Nike, Steroids and Marion Jones Brian Eno This Ban Won't Stop Us Christopher Brauchli Translating Bush Louay Safi End the Disgrace of Guantánamo Matt Reichel Homocide by Cops at the Phoenix Airport Dave Lindorff Finally, A Good Day for the Constitution Thomas P. Healy The Politics of Mercury Pollution Martha Rosenberg E. Coli Spreading Slaughter Allowed to Stay Open Richard Rhames A Democrat's Lament Website of the Day Not All Italians Love Columbus   October 6 / 7, 2007 Alexander Cockburn A Rainbow Over a Graveyard Norman Finkelstein Jeffrey Goldberg's Prison James Bovard Are Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners? Patrick Cockburn The Invasion of Afghanistan, Six Years Later Jeffrey St. Clair At Disaster Falls Ralph Nader Where Are the Lawyers of America? Ray McGovern So Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby? Saul Landau A River Runs Through It Ben Tripp Bring on the Next War! Terry Lodge The Grateful Dead Body Parts Delivered to Your Door Reform Act Seth Sandronsky Market Mystification and the Liberal Virus Kevin Funk / Steve Fake Divestment and Darfur Missy Beattie In the Custody of Bush and Cheney Website of the Weekend Snoop Dogg vs. Bill O'Reilly   October 5, 2007 Andy Worthington The Anonymous Victims of Guantánamo David Macaray De-Skilling America's Labor Force Lee Sustar The Democrats and Iran: Can They Sink Any Lower? Dan La Botz Cincinnati Six Years After the Killings and the Riots Aaron Hess Hate Week Comes to Campus William A. Cook Unmasking AIPAC Website of the Day Range of Memory   October 4, 2007 Uri Avnery The Power of the Israel Lobby Dave Marsh Dick Cheney, a Eulogy Valerio Volpi How Italy Became a Launching Pad for the US Military Cecilie Surasky Dissenting at Your Own Risk Dave Lindorff Remaking Iraq, as Vietnam Norman Solomon Sputnik, 50 Years Later Laura Carlsen Costa Rica and CAFTA: Memo Reveals Manipulation Scheme Walter Brasch When Compassion Fails: Bush and the Children's Health Act Ben Terrall Haitian Human Rights Advocate Kidnapped William S. Lind Beyond the OODA Loop Website of the Day Musicians in Handcuffs   October 3, 2007 Vijay Prashad Gang of Four Anita Sinha Black Ties and Bulldozers in New Orleans Winslow T. Wheeler Posturing at the Petraeus Hearings: Where was the Oversight? Sharon Smith The Kucinich Quandary Jeff Leys Our Bonhoeffer Moment Sen. Russ Feingold We Must End This Tragedy Mohamad Bazzi Playing Into the Hands of Ahmadinejad Brenda Norrell A Cry from the Top of the World Robert Weissman No Sex, Still a Scandal at the IMF Website of the Day Jena by Mellencamp   October 2, 2007 Ibrahim Warde Logical Lies About Bin Laden's Wealth Gary Leupp "I Hate All Iranians": Frank Talk from a Defense Dept. Official David Macaray The Hunt for a Blue November: In Pursuit of the Labor Vote Conn Hallinan Religion and Foreign Policy John Ross The Great American Chess Match Alan Farago Ripping Off Miami's Poor Sonja Karkar The Right to Exist: States or People? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Meteor and the Mahatma Website of the Day Grandin on Che's Legacy   October 1, 2007 Al Giordano The Clinton Campaign's Reckless Race for Big Money Donors Paul Craig Roberts From Burma to Iraq: Hypocrisy Rules the West Moshe Adler The Crimes of Microsoft Ingmar Lee My Kayak Journey Down the Wild Pacific Coast John V. Walsh Ahmadinejad is Not My Enemy Norman Solomon Political Science and Truth of Consequences Roger Burbach Historic Victory in Ecuador for the Left Ramzy Baroud The Politics of Assassination Stephen Lendman The Maestro of Misery: Greenspan's Dark Legacy Susie Day Honey, I Shrank the Military! Website of the Day Letters from Fort Lewis Brig   September 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks Forward or Back? Uri Avnery So What About Iran? Andrew Cockburn Iraq's WMD Myth: Why Clinton is Culpable Jeffrey St. Clair Through the Gates of Lodore Wajahat Ali The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi Andy Worthington The Curse of the Military Commissions Don Santina Ethnic Cleansing in San Francisco Ralph Nader Free Lunches, for Corporations! Fred Gardner The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad Seth Sandronsky The US Economy Since 1980 Gideon Levy The Children of 5767 William S. Lind A Ticking Bomb Reza Fiyouzat An Anti-Imperialist Case Against a Nuclear Iran Richard Rhames Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog David Michael Green Buyer's Remorse: Their Purchase, Our Regret Zach Mason Hate and Hope in Herndon Poets' Basement Gibbons, Ali, Davies and Suss Website of the Weekend Domestic Crusaders     September 28, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison The Teflon Alliance with Israel Roberto J. González / David H. Price When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents Saul Landau September, the Cruelest Month in Chile Tom Clifford Burma by the Numbers Christopher Brauchli Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef Martha Rosenberg Spinning Suicide Statistics Dave Zirin Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6 Laray Polk Bush Library or Lockbox? Binoy Kampmark When Reagan Turned Brown James McEnteer Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant Website of the Day Concerned Anthropologists   September 27, 2007 Alan Farago Housing Market Crashes and Burns Andy Worthington A Bad Week at Guantánamo Jonathan Cook Why Did Israel Attack Syria? William Hughes Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed Ray McGovern Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy Ron Jacobs Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq Dave Lindorff Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement! Joshua Frank Pruning the Green Party Anne Dachel The CDC, Vaccines and Autism Website of the Day The God-O-Meter   September 26, 2007 Bill Quigley HUD's Home Wreckers Paul Craig Roberts A Pandemic of Police Brutality Jeff Kisseloff Still Smearing Alger Hiss China Hand Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran? Behzad Yaghmaian At the Gates of Paradise Sonja Karkar The Quality of Mercy in Gaza Mike Ferner Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time Col. Dan Smith Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn Clifton Ross Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech Brenda Norrell A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas Website of the Day The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture   September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism Uri Avnery Foam on the Water Brendan Cooney Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him! Harry Browne Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell Marjorie Cohn The Drift Toward War with Iran David Macaray The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out Ralph Nader Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite Anthony Papa Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws Christopher Ketcham All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants Website of the Day John Waters on Free Speech   September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time               Subscribe Online

October 17, 2007 Business as Usual Iraq, Iran and the US By ROBERT FANTINA General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, has accused the government of Iran of meddling in Iraq. Mr. Petraeus claims that Iran's ambassador to Iraq, one Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, is a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and now, as ambassador, has diplomatic immunity. One is somewhat puzzled by Mr. Petraeus's accusations. Has not the U.S. 'meddled' in Iraq's affairs to a far greater extent than Iran may now be doing? Is not the invasion of that nation, the overthrow of its government and the violent, bloody occupation of it at the very least 'meddling?' The general also said that Iran was playing an 'increasingly dangerous role' in Iraq. Is it, one wonders, more dangerous than the role the U.S. has been playing in Iraq for over four years? If Iran is indeed supplying weaponry to the Shia militia as Mr. Petraeus states, will it be more than the U.S. government supplies to its 160,000 soldiers, who have thus far caused the deaths of at least 1,000,000 Iraqis? At least as he made his accusations Mr. Petraeus did not provide any evidence to support them. He could have taken a page from President Bush's playbook and simply invented some that fit. But he seemed more content with merely spouting words that would cause Congress to continue to 'support the troops' (read: keep them in mortal and unnecessary danger for a longer period of time) by raising the specter of a possible invasion of Iran. Mr. Petraeus' comments bring to mind thoughts of the U.S. bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Cambodia, it was alleged, was being used by the Viet Cong as a staging area for incursions into Vietnam. If one needs a reminder of how successful the bombing of Cambodia was in the Vietnam War, one need only recall the scenes of helicopters rescuing desperate U.S. citizens from the roof of the apartment building where senior CIA employees lived as South Vietnam 'fell' to the North, thus reuniting that country in defiance of decades of U.S. efforts to prevent it. One can think of the more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers killed during America's tragic Vietnam misadventure, or the 2,000,000 Vietnamese killed. Perhaps the hostility that much of the world felt towards the United States during the Vietnam era prepared the U.S., in some small way, for the hatred many nations now feel toward it because of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Mr. Bush's war of choice in Iraq has killed nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers, not nearly as many as Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford's war killed in Vietnam, but his record of deaths of citizens of the victimized nation is impressive. It took those four earlier presidents many years to kill the number of citizens of the invaded nation as it has taken Mr. Bush to kill Iraqis in just four years. If the current war drags on as long as the Vietnam War did, Mr. Bush will far exceed the number of deaths for which Messrs Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford are responsible. Of course, with the current president saying it will be the decision of some future president to remove U.S. soldiers from Iraq, he will, in all likelihood, have a deadly accomplice, in addition to the war-promoting members of Congress. And what of the deaths of U.S. soldiers? For some reason, politicians and the general media seem to feel that those are somehow more important than the deaths of Iraq's citizens. Perhaps, unlike U.S. soldiers, Iraqi soldiers and civilians don't have loved ones to grieve for them; children who will grow up as orphans; parents to bury them; siblings to mourn their loss. Perhaps Iraqis do not feel quite the same level of pain when they are being shot; perhaps they do not bleed in quite the same way that U.S. soldiers do. So while the death toll of Americans enrages the Bush Administration (one need not mention the fact that Mr. Bush initially put soldiers in harm's way for no reason at all, and then invited Iraq's people to further oppose them with his infamous 'bring them on' comment), a million Iraqi deaths, give or take a couple of hundred thousand, does not seem too important in the great scheme of things. Which, of course, brings one to the inevitable bottom line. Perhaps former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Alan Greenspan expressed it best in his recent memoir, 'The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.' Said he: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Thousands of Americans; millions of Iraqis. Does it really matter when their ultimate sacrifice makes the world, and especially the United States, safe for importing Iraq's oil? That they gave their lives so upper middle-class and well-to-do soccer moms can transport their children in their gas-guzzling SUVs? The world has experienced the 'war to end all wars,' and the 'war to make the world safe for democracy.' People of many nations rallied around their flag to support those noble causes, often unaware that the catchy, patriotic-sounding slogans had little or nothing to do with the reason any particular war was waged. Now we have the 'war to make the world safe for oil.' Ah, the noble cause! The patriotic ring! Yes, says Mr. Bush; yes, says Congress, this is the struggle of the new millennium. This is what we send our best to die for, so their children too will be able to drive their SUVs to soccer games. The Iraqi people, under the leadership of a cruel tyrant, were able to live in relative peace and safety, but their oil was not at the disposal of the world's monitor of right and wrong, the United States. What choice, one might ask, did the U.S. have but to fabricate a reason for invading, overthrow the government, destabilize the world and in the process obtain this coveted and profitable natural resource? The White House public relations spin was never quite as effective during the U.S.'s current imperial adventure as it had previously been, except within the all-important halls of Congress. American citizens opposing the war were dismissed as mindless liberals, 'soft' on terrorism and generally uninformed. That Congress proved to be 'soft' on facts, short-sighted and totally lacking in spine, is now evident. That most members of that august body remain blind to reality only further evidences their cowardice. One would think that, after the disastrous, continuing Iraq debacle, Congress might have learned something, anything. Yet even the darling of the Democratic Party, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, recently supported legislation defining Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. Should not the U.S. military be so designated? This is the same Sen. Clinton who, one may recall, joined with most of her Congressional colleagues and authorized Mr. Bush's needless, tragic and murderous invasion of Iraq. And Ms. Clinton, in her efforts to avoid being 'soft' on terrorism while opposing the Iraq war at the same time, has subsequently become a co-sponsor of Sen. Jim Webb's (D- VA) proposed bill that would require Congressional approval before Mr. Bush sets his bloody footprint into Iraq. Ms. Clinton seems to be in the unenviable position of being caught between two camps: the 'fulfill-your-Congressional-responsibility and monitor-the-president's-actions' camp, and the 'play-the-political-game-for-all-its-worth and hopefully-get-elected-president' camp. Straddling that divide requires even a wider stance than Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) could manage in the busiest of men's rooms. But perhaps Ms. Clinton, like much of Congress, doesn't mind being 'soft' on facts, when those facts do not seem to play well to middle-class (what's left of it), so-called American values. Wave the bloody flag overhead and then salute the flag-draped coffin of dedicated soldiers, stand proud to be a leader of the self-proclaimed greatest country in the world, being sure to do so in front of television cameras, and watch the voters as the pull the lever by your name. One's determined optimism cannot last forever; with a Democratic Congress elected to end the war keeping busy prolonging it, the next election does not offer much hope. With that same Congress continuing to enable, like the co-dependent spouse of an alcoholic, the murderous rampages and civil rights violations of Mr. Bush, a sense of pessimism about the U.S.'s future can hardly be avoided. It takes an extreme level of naiveté, or perhaps a blindness caused by the glare from the profits of oil companies, to deny that history repeats itself, and that the world is reliving an ugly, deadly episode from America's disgraceful past. Robert Fantina is author of 'Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776--2006.'

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