Friday Nite Video: Ohio (Remembering Kent State)

From the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young Freedom of Speech tour, 2006:

Ohio

On May 4, 1970 the Ohio National Guard opened fire into a busy college campus during a school day. A total of 67 shots were fired in 13 seconds. Four students: (L to R) Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Jeffrey Miller, and Sandra Scheuer were killed. Nine students were wounded.

Visit the Kent May 4 Center for more information.

Last week, a controversial audio tape of the day's shootings was revealed:

KENT, Ohio, May 1 — An audio recording of the shootings 37 years ago at Kent State University includes the voices of Ohio National Guard leaders ordering troops to fire into a crowd of students, according to a man wounded in the shootings, who obtained a copy of the recording.

If confirmed as authentic, the recording could solve the central mystery of the shootings on May 4, 1970, which became a defining moment in the protests against the Vietnam War.

Alan Canfora, who was shot in the right wrist, played a copy of the recording at a news conference here on Tuesday.

Through grainy static and the high-pitched calls of protesters, it was possible to faintly hear someone shout “Point!” Mr. Canfora said the full command is recorded on the tape, with multiple voices shouting “Right here!” “Get Set!” Point!” and “Fire!” Those words, however, were difficult to discern when he played the recording. A 13-second volley of gunfire follows, during which four students were killed and nine were wounded.

“The evidence speaks for itself,” Mr. Canfora said. “The voices are right there, very clear. There was an order to fire.”

The President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, which published its final report on the shootings in September 1970, never addressed whether commanders ordered troops to fire, saying only that the events immediately before the shooting “are in bitter dispute.” Based on the newly available recording, Mr. Canfora said he would call on Congress, the Justice Department and Ohio’s attorney general, Marc Dann, to open new investigations into the shootings.

Is that enough to reopen the investigation?

The audiotape of the shooting was recorded on a reel-to-reel machine by Terry Strubbe, a Kent State student whose dorm room overlooked the demonstrations, said Joe Bendo, Mr. Strubbe’s friend and spokesman. Mr. Strubbe declined to comment.

The tape originally was reviewed by the Justice Department, which contracted with the acoustics analysis firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman, now called BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Mass., to remove static and digitally enhance parts of the tape. James Barger, the scientist who analyzed the tape more than 30 years ago, still works at BBN. Through a spokeswoman, he said that no National Guard voices were audible on the tape.

The original tape sits in a safe deposit box near Kent, where it has been locked for over 30 years, Mr. Bendo said.

The copy obtained by Mr. Canfora came from the Yale University Library, which received it in 1989 as part of a large donation of materials from David E. Engdahl, a lawyer who represented the shooting victims in a civil lawsuit in the late 1970s. Mr. Canfora discovered the tape in the Yale archives a few months ago, he said, while researching a book.

Mr. Canfora, 58, works for the Summit County, Ohio, Board of Elections. He said he spends much of his free time teaching students about the Kent State shootings as director of the Kent May 4 Center, a nonprofit group that operates an informational Web site and organizes annual ceremonies to commemorate the shootings.

As with so many incidents involving governmental/police/military involvement, we may never know exactly what happened. Those of us who lived through that turbulent time however, still view the Kent State massacre as a symbol of exactly what can go wrong when a government involves itself in an extremely unpopular war and refuses to listen to the voices of the people - choosing instead to silence them by any means possible.
 

Van Loan Calls Detainee Abuse 'Roughhousing'

Just when you thought the Conservative government's mishandling of the Afghan detainee abuse scandal couldn't possibly get any worse, someone like Van Loan decides to pull a Rush Limbaugh and refers to charges of abuse as 'roughhousing'.

The federal opposition continued to hammer the Harper government Friday over the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan following revelations that the Afghan police beat up a detainee given to them by the Canadian Forces.

Col. Steven P. Noonan, a former task-force commander in Afghanistan, disclosed the incident in Federal Court affidavit that forms part of the government's response to a legal challenge by Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association to stop all further detainee transfers.

Col. Noonan's sworn evidence was cited by the opposition in Question Period to demonstrate that the Conservative government was far from telling the truth when its members repeatedly denied that they had no specific examples that any detainee transferred by Canadian troops to Afghan authorities was later subject to abuse or torture.

Liberal Geoff Regan accused the government of deception.

“The government knew about the abuse. It knew and yet it did nothing. Worse, the government denied the facts, distorted the truth and deceived Canadians, day after day, week after week,” he said.

But Government House leader Peter Van Loan said the case cited by Col. Noonan is actually a good story for the Canadian military.

“ It is a case where they saw some treatment, some roughhousing of an individual and they stepped in immediately to put an end to it. That is how things should work. That shows that things were working well in the field.”

The hypocrisy is absolutely stunning.

As recently as Thursday, Mr. Harper dismissed allegations of prisoner abuse and blamed the opposition parties for making it an issue.

“This is based on nothing more than a handful of unsubstantiated allegations from Taliban prisoners and I think, quite frankly, it has detracted unnecessarily from the good work Canadian men and women are doing in the field in Afghanistan under dangerous circumstances,” the prime minister told a news conference in Mission, B.C.

Harper et al have been pushing these allegations as being false because they don't believe the sources. Well now they have a member of the Canadian military providing a statement to a federal court. Is he in league with the Taliban too? According to the tories' so-called logic, apparently he is.

...court documents, including a transcript of Col. Noonan's cross-examination earlier this week, filed in Federal Court, reveal that a prisoner captured by Canadian troops was abused by the Afghans.

Col. Noonan swore in his affidavit that the Canadian military learned that the detainee had been beaten by the local ANP, the Afghan national police. “When we learned of this, they approached the local ANP and requested that the detainee be given to them.”

The Afghans turned the prisoner over to the Canadians who then gave him to provincial Afghan police authorities.

The Ottawa Citizen reported that when Amnesty lawyer Paul Champ tried to get more details on the incident when it happened, what injuries were sustained, whether the Afghan police were charged federal lawyer J. Sanderson Graham curtailed questioning of the incident citing national security interests.

“It threatens Canada's national security to know when the Canadian Forces observed local Afghan national police beating a detainee that they transferred to that unit?” Mr. Champ asked.

“We object to any questions on this incident generally,” Mr. Graham replied.

Yeah, I'll bet you object to questions.

There is absolutely no way these Conservatives can wiggle their way out of this one. Every time one of them opens their mouths, they show just how horribly inept they are and their disrespect for human rights is so glaringly obvious that only a fool would believe they actually care about these charges. They're so incompetent that they can't even get their stories straight and now we have Van Loan minimizing the abusive treatemnt of a detainee much as Limbaugh did when he said that torture at Abu Ghraib was equivalent to frat boy pranks. That kind of flip indifference is staggering.

Not only that, the more this government dismisses these allegations, the more they place our troops at risk because they are then seen by local Afghanis as representing a country that doesn't care what happens to them. Human rights be damned. So, while these tories keep slamming members of the opposition parties as being "disloyal" to our troops when they simply raise these allegations and ask for the truth, it's their posturing that has the potential to cause serious repercussions in the end. Who's really being disrespectful here? It certainly isn't those in opposition to this government's continued malfeasance and lies.
 

Fact Checking the Republican Debate

Via Think Progress (video), Tommy Thompson had some splainin' to do today after he said last nite that private employers should be able to fire homosexuals.

The NYT has more on the debates. I was going to link to the WaPo article too but it's written by Howard Kurtz - not exactly my favourite "journalist".

And then there was this:

There were revealing moments that went past the well-rehearsed lines by all the candidates. Three of the candidates — Mr. Huckabee, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado — raised their hands to signal that they did not believe in evolution.

I suspect their candidacies won't be evolving into much of anything either.

I didn't catch the debate and I didn't watch the Dems' debate either. At this point (it is only May '07 after all), the field is far too wide and the talking points are much too predictable. Wake me when it gets interesting - around October '08.
 

Harper Gov't Pulls a Fast One on the Afghan File

So, now that the Harper cronies have been caught with their political pants down on the Afghan detainee transfer file, they've decided that springing a new agreement the same morning as the legal case hits the courts is the appropriate way to deal with the situation?

OTTAWA — The Harper government has struck a new detainee transfer agreement with Afghanistan that includes stringent safeguards for follow-up monitoring to prevent torture and abuse that were previously absent, it was revealed in federal court today.

The new deal signed this morning in Kabul by Canada's new ambassador to Afghanistan, closes the gaping holes that rights groups claim existed in the original agreement signed by chief of defence staff Lieutenant-General Rick Hillier in Dec 2005.

The announcement stunned a packed federal court hearing in Ottawa where a call for an immediate halt to transfers was about to being when lawyers for the federal government brought the new agreement to court.

Federal Court Judge Michael Kelen told the court the deal was a major development that took the urgency out of deciding whether to block future transfers.

“It probably wouldn't have happened if this court hadn't been happening,” he said as he announced a postponement of proceedings.

Well, that's convenient, isn't it?

More via CP:

The new arrangement allows Canadian officials greater access to insurgents turned over to the Afghans by Canadian soldiers. Among its provisions is a guarantee that captured fighters can be interviewed in private without the intimidating presence of their Afghan jailers.

The government negotiated the deal despite insisting that the allegations of torture are false. The Conservatives hope it will put an end to two weeks of bad press over their confusing and contradictory statements on the detainee issue.

"What we have done is enhance the 2005 agreement - that is exactly what people were calling for," said Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay.

But Amnesty International, which launched the Federal Court challenge on behalf of detainees, said the new deal isn't good enough.

"Canada is still not complying with its international obligations," said spokesman Alex Neve.

"This agreement does not sufficiently protect people from the risk of torture after being transferred and that's the bottom line."

Human rights groups note that prisoners often don't admit to having been tortured - especially when they're still in jail - out of fear of more torture.

The only solution, Neve said, is for Canada or NATO to establish a detention facility where Afghan guards can be properly trained to respect human rights.

The Federal Court case has been put on hold pending further examination of the transfer agreement.
[...]
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the new deal merely formalizes commitments the government already has from the Afghans.

"We have access (to prisons) and can get information whenever we want it," he said in Vancouver.

He also repeated that the allegations of torture are "unsubstantiated" - but there has been no investigation into the claims.

They still don't get it.

And round and round it goes:

The agreement comes despite the fact that Harper has assured the House of Commons that the old deal was working well.

The Conservative government has also insisted that allegations of abuse are false even though no investigation has been conducted.

Since allegations surfaced that at least 30 detainees - captured by Canadians and turned over to Afghan authorities - might have been abused, the Conservatives have offered varying explanations.

After days of denying knowledge of any "specific" allegations of torture, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day revealed Monday that Canadian correctional officers in Kandahar had indeed reported torture claims by two detainees.

Despite that admission, the government's submission in the Federal Court hearing states that: "Canadian officials have not received any notification of mistreatment or torture of detainees transferred from Canada to Afghan authorities."

Amnesty lawyers asked for a copy of the written report submitted by the officers, but was denied on the grounds that it violated national security.

And the kicker?

The government submission also reveals that the Canadian Forces have two procedures for handling Afghan detainees, including one that does not involve any oversight by human rights groups.

The documents show that Canadian troops are authorized to hand some detainees directly to Afghan authorities, rather than take them prisoner. That would appear to circumvent rules that require Canadian soldiers to notify human rights monitors when they detain Afghan militants.

You'd think that the judge in this case, armed with that knowledge, would have granted the injunction to temporarily halt the transfer of detainees.

The more that's revealed about this file, the murkier it gets.

Related: Liberal party statement on the latest tory maneuverings.
The NDP declares O'Connor is Unfit for Duty
The Galloping Beaver has a post about General Rick Hillier's political grandstanding.
The BC Civil Liberties Association site.
Amnesty International Canada
Human Rights Watch Afghanistan page. Are we going the way of the US military with these cases?
 

Time Magazine Honours Maher Arar

Time Magazine has named its 100 most influential people of 2006 and Canada's Maher Arar is among them in the "Heroes and Pioneers" section.

Vermont Democratic senator Patrick Leahy, who has championed Arar's cause writes for Time:

Maher Arar

By Patrick Leahy

Sending a Canadian technology consultant to be confined in a gravelike cell and tortured did nothing to make Americans safer. A Syrian-born Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, 36, was returning home from a vacation in September 2002 when U.S. federal agents detained him in New York City on suspicion of ties to terrorism. Rather than send him to his home and our close ally, Canada, for interrogation, the U.S. government sent him to Syria, a nation with a history of engaging in torture. A year later he was released. Three years later a Canadian commission found no evidence that Arar had any terrorist connection. The commission also concluded that he was systematically tortured and held under horrendous conditions.

The Bush Administration refuses to acknowledge any responsibility, instead offering the tepid explanation that Syrian officials assured the U.S. that Arar would not be tortured. These are the same Syrian officials with whom our government now says it will not negotiate because they are not trustworthy. Maher Arar's case stands as a sad example of how we have been too willing to sacrifice our core principles to overarching government power in the name of security, when doing so only undermines the principles we stand for and makes us less safe.

Mr Arar responded saying 'he is "very honored" by the distinction, and thanked his supporters during his "struggle for justice." Although his lawsuit against the US government has been dismissed on the grounds of "national security", his lawyers are mounting an appeal.

Meanwhile, in Canada:

OTTAWA -- One of Canada's most respected judges yesterday formed a united front with Maher Arar aimed at lifting a veil of government secrecy around 1,500 words censored from last fall's report into possible Canadian government complicity in Syrian torture.

Counsel acting for Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor, the author of last fall's more than 800-page report on the Maher Arar affair, yesterday tried to persuade Federal Court Judge Simon Noël to force the government to reveal censored portions of the report. The public is still not allowed to see the blacked-out portion of the report, not even after a $15-million public inquiry that lasted more than three years.

Justice Department lawyers, who argue the government was hardly heavy-handed with its censor's pen, say that it is Ottawa's prerogative to shield portions of inquiry findings for security reasons. Crown lawyer Alain Préfontaine said that fewer than 1,500 words, or less than one half of 1 per cent of the overall Arar Inquiry report, have been censored.

But Paul Cavalluzzo, Judge O'Connor's commission counsel, argued at the Federal Court that "it's not a matter of the quantity of the evidence, it's a matter of the quality of the evidence."

He argued that Canadians need to know the entirety of the judge's report to have faith in government and to keep it accountable.

"The public demands to know what happened, why it happened," Mr. Cavalluzzo argued.

Some of the language surrounding the censored parts of the report appears to indicate that Judge O'Connor might believe that untested intelligence, possibly derived from the torture of a Canadian truck driver then held in the Middle East, may have found its way into RCMP search warrants in early 2002.

(The truck driver, Ahmad El Maati, is a former Afghanistan-based mujahed [holy warrior] who says he was tortured into naming other Canadians, and to being forced to confess to being behind a fake al-Qaeda bomb plot in Ottawa.

Just what, if anything, Canada did with this intelligence has never been made clear; Mr. El-Maati has never been charged with a crime.)

The full text of the search warrants has never been revealed.

There are still many unanswered questions on both sides of the border that, most likely, we'll never know the answers to.

Mr Arar's name surfaced again in parliament this past week during the debates about the allegations of torture launched by several Afghan citizens who had been turned over by Canadian troops to Afghan authorities for imprisonment. Public Safety minister Stockwell Day repeatedly, without any conclusive investigation (many of which are now underway), referred to those claims as being "false". This is the same Day who, in 2002, accused Arar of having possible terrorist ties in parliament. Day was reminded by opposition members that his propensity for jumping to conclusions serves absolutely no one but himself and his party hacks, from the PM on down, who are now using the false equivalency argument that torture allegations are undermining Canadian troops when what's really demeaning to our soldiers is the fact that these conservatives are trying to blow off serious claims by calling all of the individuals involved members of the Taliban (when they don't even know if that's true), seemingly making it okay then to somehow justify their possible torture and diminish their status as human beings with rights.

They did that with Mr Arar too. You'd think that experience would have taught them something.

Mr Arar's inclusion in the "Heroes and Pioneers" section of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People issue ought to be a very sobering reminder to all (and that includes you, George Tenet) that the use of torture is never justified and that every single case involves a person who does not deserve to be proclaimed guilty before being proved innocent. Far too many victims are never heard from. How many have died? How many are still in secret prisons around the world?

Mr Arar is a symbol for all of the wrongfully accused that have been subject to severe abuse as a result of the overwhelming fearmongering and paranoia that so permeates our societies today thanks to an atmosphere of panic and the unwillingness of those in authority to see past the otherness of people who they believe fit their criminal profiles as defined by their skin colour, religion, political affiliations or beliefs.

During the 40s and 50s, it was the "commies". The 60s and 70s brought attacks against hippies and the anti-Vietnam crowd. The 80s - communists again. And now it's anyone deemed to be a possible "terrorist". There are always people who must be viewed as being less than in order to rationalize their treatment as sub-human subversives by those with the power to demean them. Meanwhile, the lives of countless innocent people are destroyed and sacrificed in order to "protect" the many. Funny though, that when asked for real evidence that the ends really did justify the means, that information is "top secret". In other words, the failure rate and the waste of lives is too high to admit.

Mr Arar lived through his horrendous experience. Who's dying, who's being tortured as we speak today? And who's doing something about it?

Related: Maher Arar's site
 

Tenet Justifies Torture

Via an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: I have to ask you a question on allegations the CIA, your agency, engaged in torture. You've said there was no torture. You won't describe what the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used against al Qaeda suspects involved.

But Khalid al-Masri[sic], a German citizen born in Lebanon, he wrote a piece in the "L.A. Times" saying this: "I was handed over to the American Central Intelligence Agency and was stripped, severely beaten, shackled, dressed in a diaper, injected with drugs, chained to the floor of a plane and flown to Afghanistan..."

Is that true?

TENET: I don't believe what he says is true. But let me say this. Let me say this about this whole torture question. In the after math[sic] of 9/11, we lived with a palpable fear of how much we did not know about what was going on in our country.

Senator McCain started a great debate here. Here's what I would ask people. I know that the program we engaged in saved lives, thousands of lives. I know it helped us against al Qaeda.

Policymakers, the president, the Congress determine where you want to be in the moral continuum. We are a country of laws and a country of values. Tell us where you want to be. Make it very, very clear to us. Have consensus on it.

Don't let the pendulum swing back and forth. Give you intelligence community clear instructions, and we'll follow them.

BLITZER: In a war, if American POWs were exposed to the same "enhanced interrogation techniques" that these expects were exposed to, would that be appropriate?

TENET: Well, you never -- look, Wolf, I would never -- I don't know what they'd be exposed to. And I don't want to talk about techniques. Here's the only thing I would say to you again.

Make a determination of where you want us to be. Tell us what the right thing to do is. We'll do it.

I know that in that time period after 9/11, we understood the risks. We understood we were on new territory. The president authorized. The attorney general said it was legal.

We briefed the chairman and ranking member of our oversight committees. Nobody was hiding anything. We were in a -- we were in a tough environment.

If you don't want to do it, that's fine with us.

BLITZER: One example. Could you give us one example? Because you say it saved thousands of lives. These techniques? Can you give us an example?

TENET: Well, we found out about additional airline plots against the East and West Coast of the United States.

BLITZER: Thanks to these techniques?

TENET: Thanks to these techniques. We found out about that surveillance of financial institutions in New York thanks to these techniques. We found out about plots in Karachi thanks to these techniques. We identified people we never knew about who were planning further terrorist attacks against the United States thanks to these techniques.

BLITZER: So if you had to do the techniques over again, you'd do them?

TENET: Well, it's not that you would do them. If you're authorized and it's legal and it's briefed -- and we play in a system of laws and governance. It's not just us.

You know, in the time period that I lived in, and the threats that we faced, and the issues we were dealing with, and -- Wolf, where are you going to be if you're holding someone who you know is coming to kill you and your family tomorrow afternoon, and you didn't do what you thought you needed to do to get the data? What would you be saying to me today?

You would be saying me, you didn't do your job and you didn't save lives. Well, that's extreme, isn't it? Well, that's what we were living with at the time.

So, all Tenet needed was clearance from Bush, which he got thanks to Gonzales and Yoo - all of them in panic mode after 9/11 - although the CIA's history of using so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" goes back decades.

Tenet chooses, conveniently, not to believe El-Masri whose lawsuit has been thrown out of court on "state secrets" grounds and even though the CIA admitted that it had mistaken him for an al Qaeda member named al-Masri when it kidnapped him.

In April 2004, CIA Director George Tenet learned that El-Masri was being wrongfully detained. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice learned of his detention shortly thereafter in early May and ordered his release.[3] El-Masri was released on May 28 following a second order from Rice.[3] American authorities met with him and agreed to release him if he agreed never to tell the story of his ordeal to anyone.

In other words, this administration doesn't want those real "techniques" exposed because they know the damage that'll cause. It doesn't matter what Tenet does or doesn't choose to believe. If Bushco had any credibility and faith in its policies that it claims saved so many lives, it wouldn't be so afraid to have to defend them in court.

Tenet - just another man named George who doesn't want to take responsibility for anything and who believes that torture is justified without providing any proof that it actually works.
 

Bush: The 9/11 Hijackers Were 'Kids'

Yes, that's what he called them on Wednesday morning not once, but twice:

I worry about a situation where if radicals took control of a country like Iraq, they would have oil resources to use at their disposal to try to achieve their objectives. You can attack a nation several ways. One, you can get 19 kids to fly airplanes into buildings, or you can gain control of something a country needs and deny that country access to that, in this case, oil, and run the price of oil up, all attempting to inflict serious economic damage.
[...]
Finally, it's necessary for free societies to emerge -- free societies in the image of a country's own history and tradition. And why is it in our interest that that happen? There is a root cause, there is a reason why 19 kids got on an airplane to come and kill us, and that is because societies in that part of the world have bred resentment and lack of hope.

Kids?

Thinkquest lists their ages as being between 20 and 38. Why is Bush calling them "kids"?
 

Bush: 'I'm the commander guy'

Not satisfied with just being The Decider, Bush gives himself a promotion:

By the way, in the report it said, it is -- the government may have to put in more troops to be able to get to that position. And that's what we do. We put in more troops to get to a position where we can be in some other place. The question is, who ought to make that decision? The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear -- I'm the commander guy.

(predictably boring speech link)

Watch for Commander Guy dolls coming soon to toy store shelves near you.
 

Bush's Veto

Bush vetoes the Iraq spending bill and then spouts hypocrisy like only he can (although there are several runners up in that category):

The veto was only the second of Mr. Bush’s presidency. In a six-minute televised speech from the White House, the president called the measure a “prescription for chaos and confusion,” and said, as he has for weeks, that he could not sign it because it contained timetables for troop withdrawal.

“Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure, and that would be irresponsible,” Mr. Bush said. He said the measure would “impose impossible conditions on our commanders in combat” by forcing them to “take fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, D.C.”

Oh let's get real here. Look up "chaos" and "confusion" in the dictionary and you'll find this:


And isn't he one of those Washington politicians who's giving the troops their "fighting directions" (what kind of phrase is that?) from the comfort of his cushy oval office while pretending to actually give a crap about the troops?

Seriously...

On Thursday, Oliver Stone and Moveon.org will release an ad attacking Bush for his veto.

The Stone directed ad, which airs nationwide on CNN Thursday, features an impassioned interview with Bruhns as he attacks the administration's treatment of soldiers. [Ron] Kovic [of "Born on the Fourth of July" fame] provides voiceover for the ad.

"I feel that my patriotism has been used and exploited," says former US Army Infantry Sergeant Bruhns. "I am very proud of my military service, but I'm very disappointed in the civilian leadership and administration for sending us needlessly into combat."

Bruhn's interview was selected by the public as part of VideoVets: Bring Our Troops Home. The project features 20 video interviews of soldiers and family members critical of the American occupation in Iraq. Over half a million MoveOn members and others watched the videos. The public voted to select one video to be directed by Oliver Stone. The project is sponsored by MoveOn.org and VoteVets.org. VoteVets is the only political action committee headed by veterans of the war in Iraq, dedicated to electing other veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to public office.

Here's Bruhn's interview:


So, the Democrats made their symbolic move - which took far too long. Bush vetoed it, as expected. What's next?

Democrats concede they do not have enough votes to override the veto. But, speaking in the Capitol shortly after Mr. Bush’s remarks, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, and the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said they would not be deterred from pushing the president as hard as they could to bring the troops home.

“If the president thinks by vetoing this bill he will stop us from working to change the direction of the war in Iraq, he is mistaken,” Mr. Reid said. He added, “Now he has an obligation to explain his plan to responsibly end this war.”

Riiight...and pigs will fly. Stay tuned.

The next chapter begins Wednesday, when Congressional leaders are expected to meet Mr. Bush at the White House to open negotiations on a new bill. They are expected to look for ways to preserve the benchmarks for Iraqi progress that were included in the initial bill while eliminating the timetables for troop withdrawal that Mr. Bush has emphatically rejected.

Several Republican leaders said Tuesday that they were likely to support such benchmarks, and White House aides said Tuesday that Mr. Bush, who has supported goals and benchmarks for the Iraqi government, might back such a measure — but only if the benchmarks are nonbinding.

[Insert swear words here.]
 

Mission Accomplished: 4 Years Later

May 1, 2003

The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the "beginning of the end of America." By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.

In the Battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban, many terrorists, and the camps where they trained. We continue to help the Afghan people lay roads, restore hospitals, and educate all of their children. Yet we also have dangerous work to complete. As I speak, a special operations task force, led by the 82nd Airborne, is on the trail of the terrorists, and those who seek to undermine the free government of Afghanistan. America and our coalition will finish what we have begun.

From Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down al-Qaida killers. Nineteen months ago, I pledged that the terrorists would not escape the patient justice of the United States. And as of tonight, nearly one-half of al-Qaida's senior operatives have been captured or killed.

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of al-Qaida, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.

In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused, and deliberate, and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th — the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - dead.
Over 3,600 coalition troops - dead.
Tens of thousands of people - wounded.
Over 2 million Iraqis - displaced.
An unknown number of Iraqis - disappeared, abused, tortured.
Almost $500 billion - spent.
Justice - none.
Held accountable - no one.

War is what they got.