Video: Phil Donahue on the Iraq War

From CBC's The Hour:



Documentary: Body of War
 

And here's the clip of Donohue taking on Bill O'Reilly:

Video: Fascist America on Display

This is absolutely outrageous.

Reverend Lennox Yearwood was arrested while standing in line as he waited to get into the hearing room to watch the testimony of General Petraeus and Ryan Crocker on Monday.

When he questioned why he was not being allowed into the room, this is what happened:



From the LA Times:

Interest in the hearing was hot, likened to Gen. William Westmorland's performance on Vietnam a generation ago. But some tempers were hotter. There weren't enough seats. The acoustics were bad. The overflow room was two buildings away, and it was muggy outside. Clearly, a lot of people were sick of this war, and a lot of other people were sick of the people who were sick of this war.

They started lining up before 8 a.m. Two opposing factions standing in line for five hours with nothing to do is not a recipe for harmony.

Suddenly, there was a lot of scuffling and a clot of Capitol police coagulated in the hallway. In the middle of the clot was the anti-war activist Rev. Lennox Yearwood, who apparently had attempted to push his way into the hearing room and was wrestled to the floor.

Television cameras scurried to the scene. Yearwood was lying on the ground with his legs askew, as though he had been hit by a car. Seizing the moment, Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war protesting mom, started chanting, "Arrest Bush, not Rev!" The police told her, if she said that one more time, they would have to arrest her. She said it one more time and put her hands behind her back before the officer even reached for the cuffs.

The Washington Post reported:

Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, was among the first to be arrested. She was taken into custody shortly after noon and charged with disorderly conduct, Capitol Police said, because she shouted during the hearing.

Christy Anne Miller, Sheehan's sister, was also charged with disorderly conduct after allegedly shouting in the hallway.

Others arrested included Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, who was charged with unlawful conduct after allegedly shouting during the hearing, and the Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., of the D.C.-based Hip Hop Caucus, who allegedly refused to move back after jumping in front of a line of people waiting to get inside the room. He was charged with disorderly conduct and assault on a police officer, Capitol Police said.

Yearwood had to be removed by wheelchair and was taken to the hospital as a result. I've watched that video twice and obviously missed the part where he supposedly tried to "push his way into the hearing room" or where he jumped in front of the line.

Code Pink has more on Monday's arrests which included former CIA officer Ray McGovern.

Visit the site of the Hip Hop Caucus.

Update: Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairing the hearing, called the protesters in the room "assholes".

Skelton: That really pisses me off, Duncan.

Hunter: What?

Skelton: Those assholes. And I don't need a goddamn lecture from Dan Burton neither.

Hunter: Here's their strategy; there's about ten of them, so they say they’re going to sacrifice one every five minutes. If they do that I would boot the whole identifiable group out.

Skelton: How do you do that?

Hunter: Because they're all in the same dress--the pink people. They're an association. So you [makes out the door hand gesture, muttering].

Skelton: Might have to.

Update:
Ray McGovern speaks out about his arrest.

'Swear Him In'

by Ray McGovern

That's all I said in the unusual silence on Monday afternoon as first aid was being administered to Gen. David Petraeus' microphone before he spoke before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

It had dawned on me that when House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) invited Gen. Petraeus to make his presentation, Skelton forgot to ask him to take the customary oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I had no idea that my suggestion would be enough to get me thrown out of the hearing.

Sheehan and 45 Other Protesters Arrested in DC

Cindy Sheehan announced a few weeks ago that she would give house speaker Nancy Pelosi until July 23rd to put impeachment back on the table or Sheehan would run against her as an independent. During protests at Jonn Conyer's (D-MI) senate office today, Sheehan formally announced her candidacy.

She and 45 other protesters were also arrested (pics here). You'll see that outspoken Bush administration critic and former CIA officer Ray McGovern was arrested as well along with Colonel Ann Wright and Cindy Sheehan's sister, Dede.

Sheehan was taken into custody inside Rep. John Conyers' office, where she had spent an hour imploring him to launch impeachment proceedings against Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Conyers, D-Mich., chairs the House Judiciary Committee, where any impeachment effort would have to begin.

"The Democrats will not hold this administration accountable, so we have to hold the Democrats accountable," Sheehan said outside of Conyers' office after the meeting. "And I for one am going to step up to the plate and run against Nancy Pelosi."

Sheehan and about 200 other protesters had walked to Conyers' office from Arlington National Cemetery. She said Conyers told her there weren't enough votes for impeachment to move forward on the issue.

Forty-five of Sheehan's fellow protesters also were arrested. Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said that after they are processed, the arrested activists could each pay a $50 fine to be released.

"Impeachment is not a fringe movement, it is mandated in our Constitution. Nancy Pelosi had no authority to take it off the table," Sheehan told her group of orange-clad activists before they began their march from the national cemetery.

That "we don't have the votes" canard has angered many online Democrats who have reminded their party leaders that when impeachment investigations began against Nixon, the Democrats didn't have the votes either. It's an empty response to a hugely important concern of the majority of Democrats (and millions of Americans) who want hearings to begin now to investigate the wrongdoing crimes perpetrated by the Bush administration.

Sheehan has been completely marginalized at Daily Kos (as she was again on Monday during the protest) and no longer posts at that large Democratic (party comes first!) blog hub (which has become an unbearably thuggish snake pit), but she obviously doesn't need their support to keep up her fight anyway. She's doing just fine.

She relentlessly continues (in spite of all of the venomous criticism she's received) to be the public voice of outrage against the Iraq war and this criminal administration. She gets out there and puts herself in peril in order to act on behalf of all ordinary American citizens who have been so gravely affected by Bushco's policies and many are thankful for the face she's given to the right to dissent.

She and all who protested with her today did their duty as citizens - refusing to sit back and wait for the Democrats to take action - any action - to hold Bushco responsible for at least something...one thing...is that too much to ask? Apparently so. Their refusal to do so is shameful.

Cindy now blogs at ImpeachBush.org. Please support her efforts.

(By the way, some Democratic party members are so desperate to believe that their leaders will do the right thing that they just make shit up about their "brilliant", "genius" leaders and try to sell it to others who, apparently, are quite willing to buy it. That's quite pathetic to watch. They ought to do much more than to tell each other fairy tales so they can actually crack that dangerous state of denial. It's bad enough that Bush lives in that world. It really is something to see members of the so-called "reality-based" community falling for that kind of self-deception too.)
 

'Happy' Dead Soldiers Day?

I was over at Daily Kos this morning reading Cindy Sheehan's diary "Good Riddance Attention Whore" in which she announced that she's decided to stay home and take care of her family rather than being the face of the antiwar movement any more - after years of being the most visible US antiwar advocate following the death of her son Casey in the Iraq war:

I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called "Face" of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such "liberal blogs" as the Democratic Underground. Being called an "attention whore" and being told "good riddance" are some of the more milder rebukes. [She has also received scorn from some at Daily Kos. -catnip]

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt "two" party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

Exactly. And that sentiment is akin to blasphemy on a blog like Daily Kos which exists , in the words of its founder, as "a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory." That goal trumps everything. Anyone, such as those who advocate third parties or otherwise doesn't fall in line is ridiculed, harassed and/or troll-rated into oblivion or banishment.

Cindy's fight was against a corrupt government - and that includes Democrats who supported the war or did nothing to end it - those who chose to look the other way after Bush had so blatanly and dishonestly pursued a pre-emptive war against a country that wasn't even a threat to the United States. That's what Cindy's son died for and she is brutally honest about it.

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

Imagine her tremendous pain at that realization.

And so she is going home:

I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.

So how, on the day that is supposed to be in remembrance of dead soldiers, can anyone bring themselves to attach the word "happy" to this or any memorial day or think it's just a day for barbeques and parties?

Via wiki, the dead seem to be an afterthought:

In addition to remembrance, Memorial Day is also a time for picnics, family gatherings, and sporting events. Some Americans view Memorial Day as the unofficial beginning of summer and Labor Day as the unofficial end of the season. The national Click it or ticket campaign ramps up beginning Memorial Day weekend, noting the beginning of the most dangerous season for auto accidents and other safety related incidents. The USAF "101 Critical days of summer" also begin on this day as well. Some Americans use Memorial Day to also honor any family members who have died, not just servicemen.

"Memorial Day" wasn't always about having a long weekend and "Memorial Day sales" in the stores:

Memorial Day formerly occurred on May 30, and some, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW), advocate returning to this fixed date, although the significance of the date is tenuous. The VFW stated in a 2002 Memorial Day Address, "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day."

In these times, the Bush administration's blackout of returning coffins of the war dead has also contributed to that nonchalance - as has the derision against those who oppose war who have been so wrongly labeled as being "unpatriotic" or "treasonous". The wars the US are in have been so sanitized for public consumption that they hardly seem real and the majority of US citizens support war as a concept anyway. Those who speak against that have been shunned and have even been spied on by US administrations as being possible threats to America's security. Ironic, since US involvement in Iraq (and in support of Israel) has now created the biggest threat. 3,400+ soldiers killed - more people than were lost on 9/11. Over 20,000 wounded - with no end in sight.

And then there are the war victims - when's their day of remembrance? When does the world pause to think about them? Where are their names carved in stone for time immemorial? I suppose if the US government decided to assign a day for them, they'd just make another long weekend out of it so people could just wish each other "Happy War Dead Day" while they grill another hamburger, because that seems to be what the memory of a life is worth these days.

No wonder Cindy Sheehan is going home. She's done her best and I wish her well. Hers was a sorely needed voice in the midst of such warmongering insanity. May she find some personal peace, at least.

Related: Read Andrew Bacevich's editorial, "I Lost My Son to a War I oppose", in the Washington Post.

Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.

This, I can now see, was an illusion.

The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."

To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.

To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.

It's been said over and over and over. When will people finally wake up?

See also: Wrapped and Trapped by Madman in the Marketplace.
Cindy Sheehan: Why I Am Leaving the Democratic Party
 

Damage Control

There's a sucker born every minute.

Over at GNN, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have co-authored a post titled 'Democratic Spin Won't End the War in Iraq'. No, it certainly won't, and the meltdown and continual attempts to control the damage done by Democratic sellouts who voted to fund the emergency war spending bill on Thursday is going to take much more than continual pep talks from the front pagers at places like Daily Kos and MyDD, where they really do believe they can spin gold from straw or victory from more dead bodies.

As Rampton and Stauber point out:

The bottom line, however, is that MoveOn until now has always been a big “D” Democratic Party organization. It began as an online campaign to oppose the impeachment of President Clinton, and its tactical alliances with Democratic politicians have made it part of the party’s current power base, which melds together millionaire funders such as George Soros and the Democracy Alliance, liberal unions like SEIU, and the ballyhooed Netroots bloggers like Matt Stoller, Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of the Daily Kos. At a personal level, we presume the members of this coalition genuinely want the war to end, but their true and primary priority is winning Democratic Party control of both houses of Congress and the White House. Now that the war in Iraq hangs like a rotting albatross around the neck of the Bush administration, it has become the Democrats’ best weapon to successfully campaign against Republicans. From a “shrewdly pragmatic” point of view, therefore, they have no reason to want the war to end soon.

That is echoed by the "just wait until September - we'll nail Bush then" meme that bloggers like kos are now pushing. And, to add insult to injury, he and Bowers have the audacity to continue to shill for donations to the Democratic party in the midst of a major meltdown in which several Dem party members have expressed that they've had enough and are finally ditching the party (despite the fact that poor kos finds that embarassing. It hurts his feelings, you see.)

If progressive grassroots activists are too demoralized to make small donations, the party becomes more reliant on large donors.

Thousands of Dem party supporters actually believed the party mouthpieces when they promised that a Dem majority would bring an end to the Iraq occupation so they opened their wallets, even if some couldn't afford to. Which "donors" do you think the party leadership listened to?

And, as if that wasn't insulting enough to the party's anti-Iraq war base (only a very small minority is actually anti-all war. See: war, Afghanistan - which no one has made a peep about there and which also received funding via that bill), kos (who along with his other front pagers have written an amazing flurry of posts the past couple of days to try to force his readers/members to still support the party) is dredging up 3 days old news about Lieberman threatening to leave the party (because, you know, if it weren't for Lieberman, somehow the Dems could have automagically ended the war yesterday) while making excuses for Jim Webb's 'yes' vote because Webb was one of kos's chosen people to win.

Webb, like most of his colleagues, bought into the b.s. right-wing frame that voting against this supplemental was voting against our troops.

He's talking about Jim Webb - Secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan - as if he's some sort of political simpleton who was just fooled by right-wing talking points.

Does it get any clearer than that that kos et al are in absolute desparation mode? No wonder he titled his post 'Moving Forward'. He can't put this behind him soon enough.

This vote was a bloody trainwreck of massive proportions - but - it was no accident, that's for sure. The Democratic party is not an antiwar party. It's not even an anti-Iraq war party. It's amazing that so many people are only now awakening to that reality and those who have allowed themselves to be fooled should have paid more attention to history.

From that GNN article:

There is an organized anti-war movement in America that is not an adjunct of the Democratic Party. Up until now, it has been weak and divided and unable to organize itself into an effective national movement in its own right. In its place, therefore, MoveOn and its Netroots allies have become identified as the leadership of the anti-war movement. It is vitally important, however, that a genuinely independent anti-war movement organize itself with the ability to speak on its own behalf.

In the 1950s and the 1960s, the civil rights movement was most definitely not an adjunct of the Democratic or Republican Parties. Far from it, it was a grassroots movement that eventually forced both parties to respond to its agenda. Likewise, the movement against the Vietnam War was not aligned with either the Democratic or Republican parties, both of which claimed to have plans for peace while actually pursuing policies that expanded the war.

That’s the sort of movement we need again, if we wish to see peace in our lifetime.

That is exactly what Scott Ritter wrote about in 2006:

It's high time to recognize that we as a nation are engaged in a life-or-death struggle of competing ideologies with those who promote war as an American value and virtue.
[...]
Despite all of the well-meaning and patriotic work of the millions of activists and citizens who comprise the anti-war movement, America still remains very much a nation not only engaged in waging and planning wars of aggression, but has also become a nation which increasingly identifies itself through its military and the wars it fights. This is a sad manifestation of the fact that the American people seem to be addicted to war and violence, rather than the ideals of human rights, individual liberty, and freedom and justice for all that should define our nation.

In short, the anti-war movement has come face to face with the reality that in the ongoing war of ideologies that is being waged in America today, their cause is not just losing, but is in fact on the verge of complete collapse.

And those competing ideologies cannot be described as simply being Republican v Democrat - as more people on the so-called left have now realized as a result of Thursday's vote. Take the case of the much-heralded Jack Murtha, who voted in favour of yesterday's bill - again to some Democrats' surprise. Ritter had him pegged:

Americans aren't against the war in Iraq because it is wrong; they are against it because we are losing.

Take the example of Congressman Jack Murtha. A vocal supporter of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, last fall Mr. Murtha went public with his dramatic change of position, suddenly rejecting the war as un-winnable, and demanding the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. While laudable, I have serious problems with Jack Murtha's thought process here. At what point did the American invasion of Iraq become a bad war? When we suffered 2,000 dead? After two years of fruitless struggle? Once we spent $100 billion?

While vocalizing his current opposition against the Iraq War, Congressman Murtha and others who voted for the war but now question its merits have never retracted their original pro-war stance.

The bottom line is this: the real antiwar movement is not to be found on the big box blog sites like Daily Kos or their various spinoffs. In fact, many antiwar activists have either been ridiculed to no end, bullied, labeled as "radicals" and/or banned from those sites for having the audacity to go against accepted Democratic war policy. Code Pink members and antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan have been repeatedly insulted (you know - the people who are actually out there doing something to end these wars). And kos has decried any talk of impeachment as "impeachment porn". That's what's insulting to democracy - not vocal antiwar activists who have better things to do than to sit around figuring out 50 ways to apologize for the blow their spineless elected representatives dealt to them this week, like kos is currently up to.

It's amazing that a well-coordinated antiwar movement hasn't emerged after all of these years in the US. Perhaps this will act as one of those many "wake up calls". That depends, of course, at how successful Dem apologists are at spinning this latest catastrophe so they can lull people back into complacency. That road, however, looks much more rocky than it has in decades but it's time they felt some of that real pain that families of the dead and injured - Iraqi, American and coalition forces - have had to deal with in the face of the Democrats' utter failure to stand on principles instead of worrying about whether or not they'll be re-elected in '08.

And always remember: War is a Racket. Again, which donors do you think the Democratic party is listening to?