POLL FINDS 63% REPUBLICAN VOTERS APPROVE GEORGE BUSH'S PRESIDENCY

Yesterday's The New York Times carried the a report written by Jackie Calmes and Megan Thee on the results of the latest NYTimes/CBS poll.

Democrats should focus on the poll's results because they clearly show that many if not most Republicans are extremists in their views towards the most important questions facing the electorate.

For example, 79% of Republican convention delegates approve of the way that George W. handles his job as president. But how about Republican voters? Some 63% approve George Bush. I find this amazing and at the same time troubling. How could anyone approve Bush or his management of the White House? This means that most Republicans approve George Bush's use of waterboarding and torture, his predilection for extraordinary rendition, his denial of Constitutional rights, his locking up prisoners without trial or charge, without benefit of counsel, without access to the federal courts. And how about Bush's sexing up the evidence to justify the War in Iraq? How can anyone, even a Republican, approve these un-American ways, practices and values?

Yet these same Republicans are nothing if not consistent. As to the war in Iraq, 70% of Republican voters approve taking military action in Iraq. Republican delegates approve 80%. Do these guys every read the papers? Do they really believe the Bush bull that Iraq is and was the center of the "war on terror?" Even though Saddam had nothing to do with bin Laden and even though Saddam was more secularist than Islamist, people like Dick Cheney still try to claim a connection. Like Dick Cheney, these Republicans must get all their news from FOX. Together with their energy mantra, Drill, drill, drill," they also seem to shout, like John McCain, their militaristic "Bomb, bomb, bomb," in response to the world's problems.

WHY NO INVESTIGATIONS ABOUT PHONY LETTER LINKING SADDAM & MOHAMED ATTA

The new book by Ron Suskind, The Way of the World, makes the sensational charge that the White House instructed the CIA to create a bogus letter from the former head of Saddam's Intelligence Agency that Saddam had ties with Mohamed Atta.

The White House has issued non-denial denials, calling the assertion "ridiculous" but not saying that it is false. So has George Tenet, formerly head of the CIA, that "to the best of [his] knowledge," he received no such instructions.

But where are the reports we should expect about this in the public media? Where are the stories in The New York Times or on CBS? Investigative reporters should be swarming all over this story, but so far, there has been relative silence.

SUDAN CONDEMNS EIGHT TO DEATH BY HANGING

Sudan, notorious for its treatment of Black non-Muslims in Darfur, has condemned eight rebels to death by hanging. In a court specifically designed to try these insurgents, the judged pronounced the verdict guilty.

So then, what's the difference between Bush's military tribunal at Guantanamo and the Sudan special court? There is no difference. When a government or regime wants to punish those fighting against it, it sets up a special court and renders a death sentence usually by hanging.

Consider Bush's latest move with the death penalty. He has just approved a death sentence against an Army private for killing and rape.

I don't care whether it is Saddam Hussein or Khalid Sheik Mohammed. The state should not be allowed to impose the death penalty. It is barbaric and cruel and it offends against the Eighth Amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment.

The U.S. under Bush is not all that different from Sudan under Oram al-Bashir or Iran under Ahmadinejad. All three countries approve and utilize the barbaric and cruel death penalty to punish offenders.

PETRAEUS BLAMES IRAN FOR ROCKET ATTACKS ON GREEN ZONE

The BBC reports that Gen. David Petraeus is accusing Iran of supplying the rockets and training the militants who attacked the Green Zone yesterday, the home of all the U.S. diplomats and big-shot military attaches.


Writes the BBC:


"The most senior US general in Iraq has said he has evidence that Iran was behind Sunday's bombardment of Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.


"Gen David Petraeus told the BBC he thought Tehran had trained, equipped and funded insurgents who fired the barrage of mortars and rockets."

Where and when have we heard accusations of this nature before? Think of Iraq having WMD. Yet the U.S. and these generals never produce any credible evidence of Iran's involvement. They say they have the "evidence," but nobody ever gets to examine it. They expect the world to believe them just because they say it. Just like Bush expected the world to go along with his "evidence" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and was an imminent "threat."


I don't believe anything Bush says, or anything that his hand-picked generals, such as David Petraeus, say. I want to see the "evidence" that they say they have. I want to know how they know that Iran "provided" the rockets and "trained" the insurgents. Until they provide credible evidence, I refuse to believe them and doubt that Iranian government is involved.

IRAQ - STOP ALL EXECUTIONS

Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," the cousin of Saddam Hussein, and two other accomplices are to be hanged during the next ten days. The BBC reports that their second trial has resumed in Baghdad after a hiatus of one month. Writes the BBC:

"On 4 September, Majid's death sentence in another genocide trial was confirmed by an appeals court and under Iraqi law he must be hanged within 30 days. Majid and two other top officials in Saddam's regime had been found guilty of organising what was known as the Anfal campaign against the Kurds."

I have no doubt that they are guilty as charged of "crimes against humanity."

However, their executions will also be offenses against the concept of human dignity and human life. No matter how guilty, no matter what the crime, the state should not take away life. Never.

GEORGE BUSH CALLS IRANIANS "MURDEROUS" - PRELUDE TO A WAR AGAINST IRAN?

Today George Bush has ratcheted up his war-mongering rhetoric against Iran. He called the Iranians murderers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians in Iraq. Furthermore, he said Iran would be the cause of a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East if allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

George Bush seems intent on military action against Iran. Just like his reckless words prior to the invasion of Iraq, where he said there were WMD and that Saddam Hussein was intent on developing nuclear and biological weapons, and that Iraq was an imminent threat to the entire region, so now Bush is up to his old tricks, this time substituting Iran for Iraq with words designed to inflame and demonize.

George Bush is dangerous to world peace. Under no circumstances should the United States be dragged into military conflict against Iran. It would be unjustified and baseless. The repercussions would be enormously dangerous to world peace.

BUSH WILL BE A "WINNER," BILL KRISTOL CLAIMS

William Kristol has an article in today's The Washington Post that exposes the leading Republican theorist to serious charges that he is delusional and not quite with reality. Kristol admits as much but claims it would be only "harmless ridicule." Here's the gist of his article. Bush will emerge as a politically victorious president because 1) he will "win" in Iraq; 2) he has created a "strong" economy; 3) he has appointed "impressive" judges (Alito and Roberts) to the Supreme Court; 4) there have been no terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 9/11; 5) Saddam Hussein has been overthrown (and hanged), and thus an enemy of America who had nuclear weapons ambitions and "ties" to Al Qaeda is no longer; and 6) the U.S. will elect a Republican successor to Bush in 2008.

Kristol's arguments turn out to be more wishful than predictive. For example, the notion that Bush will "win" in Iraq because he has his Ulysses S. Grant in General David Petraeus is simply pie in the sky. Neither Petraeus nor Bush has any solution whatsoever to the internecine hatred between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. Fighting will continue between these groups at every point that they intersect, and no U.S. propaganda or spin that the "real enemy" is Qaeda in Iraq will stop the killing.

Secondly, any connection between Bush and a strong economy is purely accidental. It is Bush who turned a Clinton surplus of 300 billion into a yearly deficit of more than 200 billion. It is Bush who refuses to list the true annual costs of the stupid war in Iraq in his annual budget. Imagine how much better the economy would do if the 100 billion or more Bush has wasted on Iraq every year was invested in infrastructure and job creation here in the U.S.

Thirdly, Alito and Roberts are far from "impressive." They have consistently voted for big business over the interests of the little guy. They say in law school that between 1875 and 1950, in any case between a railroad and the little guy, the railroad always won. With Alito and Roberts, we have turned back the clock to those days. And Kristol thinks that these conservative hacks are "impressive"?

Fourthly, the fact that there have been no terrorist attacks in the U.S. just goes to show that proper police action, not full scale military war, has been effective in monitoring and preventing criminal action. Furthermore, it may be that the radical Islamists have no desire to mount another criminal action in the U.S. for whatever reason of their own. In other words, they accomplished their mission on 9/11 more than they could have imagined, because they provoked Bush and Cheney to waste innumerable resources of the United States, lives, money, religious hatred, world turmoil, in invading and occupying an Arab country for specious reasons.

Fifth, Kristol claims if Bush had not invaded Iraq, Saddam "might well have restarted his nuclear program, and his connections with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups would be intact or revived and even strengthened." Here Kristol is really blowing smoke. What ties with Al Qaeda? Saddam had no ties with bin Laden's Qaeda. The two were enemies. Saddam was a secular Baathist. Bin Laden, as we all know, believes in a worldwide Sunni caliphate where the law of the world would be sharia. Yet Kristol cannot let go of the Republican fiction that there is a connection between Qaeda of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.

And Kristol even goes on to add "other terrorist groups." Please Mr. Kristol, what are you talking about? Specify the groups you mean. Name those other terrorist groups. If you do not or cannot, then you should not say or claim things for which you have absolutely no evidence or basis.

Finally, Kristol opines the citizenry will elect a Republican successor to Bush in 2008. This guy is simply delusional. The whole country has had its fill of Bush and his Republican militarists. Good luck to people like Kristol who believe that if they say it enough, it will come true.

IRAQ: STOP EXECUTING PRISONERS

I call on the Al Maliki government in Iraq to end capital punishment. For a state to take a life is barbaric and cruel. I don't care what the offense, how heinous or how premeditated. No state should execute a human being. This applies especially to Iraq that has thrown off a dictator who engaged in thousands of executions. Now, it seems, the new regime is just as inhumane as the old.

Stephen Farrell reports today in The New York Times:


"BAGHDAD, July 6 — A suspected member of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who confessed to involvement in an August 2003 bomb attack that killed one of Iraq’s most prominent Shiite leaders and at least 84 other people has been hanged, a Justice Ministry official said Friday.


"The sudden announcement came three days after the suspect, Oras Muhammad Abdul-Aziz, was executed for the bombing, which killed Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, a well-known politician and cleric. The attack was one of the earliest high-profile bombings after the American invasion in March 2003."


A state has too much power. To take a life should not be in the power of a state. There are too many ways that a state can err, and of course, once taken, the person is gone forever. Even Saddam's neck should not have been put into that noose. Let the state incarcerate the convict. But let not blood be on the state's hands, even though it is on the hands of the outlaw.