The Fix Is In!

Banana Republic North: In the past few days, John McCain has stopped campaigning in states which were once seen as toss-ups; Barack Obama has started campaigning in states which were once seen as safe for McCain; Obama has picked up a major endorsement and a huge funding increase; McCain's campaign has been caught trying to pull off perhaps the most despicable political dirty trick since 9/11; McCain has been pandering to the ultra-rich; and -- according to the latest polls -- support for Obama has been imploding!

Obama's lead over McCain has dropped from 12 points on Thursday to 10 points on Friday, 9 points on Saturday, and 5 points on Sunday.

That's a seven-point decrease in three days. How can that happen?

Consider this: It's far easier to rig the polls than it is to rig the election.

How? The pollsters talk to a small and carefully selected group of people. They can get whatever result they want, just by tweaking the sample. And they do. All the time.

Consider this, too: the election could never be stolen unless there were polls indicating it would be close. Then all they need is a last-minute gaffe, or surprise, or al Qaeda videotape; and the pundits can claim this was the difference in a race that was otherwise too close to call.

Can't happen here? Try again! It happened four years ago. It happened eight years ago. It has happened in countless congressional elections in the past decade, and you can already smell it happening again.

And so ... Election Day approaches, with all the appeal of a multi-train collision.

The police are ready for action, and so is the army. Are you?

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Desperate Measures For Desperate Times: McCain Panders To Bush's Base

Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe gets it almost right in his editorial, "McCain's blatant pitch to the rich":

JOHN MCCAIN went to New Hampshire this week at a time when voters understand the limits of their state motto "Live Free or Die." They know the economy is dying on fat cats living far too free. Barack Obama leads in state polls by 7-to-13 percentage points.

Undaunted, McCain played the greed card. "Barack Obama wants to, quote, 'spread the wealth around,' " McCain said, with fingers in quotation marks as the audience booed at St. Anselm College in a speech shown on television. "We don't need government 'spreading the wealth. . .' " he said. McCain uttered variations of spreading the wealth 12 times.

He was cheered when he said, "The redistribution of wealth is the last thing America needs right now."

In Ohio, McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, called Obama "Barack the wealth spreader" and continued to drop the S-word: socialism.

There's a problem with the Palin/McCain campaign, and those with eyes can see it easily: there's what they say, and then there's what they do. And what they say makes no sense...

The problem for McCain, Palin, and the Republicans is that the majority of Americans beg to differ. Redistribution in some form is the first thing people want after two decades of runaway pay disparity between CEOs and workers, tax loopholes so wide that two-thirds of American corporations paid no income tax from 1998 to 2005, and the banking system now getting $700 billion from us to bail out its incompetence. All this while healthcare, gasoline, and college tuitions gobble up any raises regular folks get.

... and what they do shows quite clearly that they are our enemies.

These developments are so identified with the Republicans that every tactic McCain uses to escape them ends up with him making a mockery out of the party's claims to values. McCain's Ohio mascot Joe the Plumber turns out to be Joe the Unlicensed Plumber who owes back taxes. Palin is the self-proclaimed pit bull with lipstick, but the Republican National Committee was so freaked that the shtick was that of a hick that they Barbied her up at Nieman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue for $150,000. Talk about spreading wealth around. Not many hockey moms or wives of Joe the Plumber can drop three times the national median household income to look civilized.

Meanwhile, a CNN poll this week shows Obama leading McCain on the question of who would better help the middle class, 60 percent to 36 percent. A Washington Post/ABC News poll has the same question as 59 percent to 31 percent Obama. Obama has pulled away from a virtual tie with McCain on who would better handle taxes, into double-digit leads in some national polls. On who best will handle either the economy or the current fiscal crisis, Obama is beating McCain roughly 53 percent to 39 percent.

Only a miracle can save McCain's campaign now, but miracles are always available. How about a little terrorism?

As Derrick Jackson points out, when

McCain rails against spreading the wealth in America, he runs right back to the man he says he is running away from, President Bush. In 2000, Bush the candidate greeted the well-connected audience at the Alfred E. Smith political roast in New York by acknowledging them as the top 1 percent. "This is an impressive crowd, the haves and the have mores," Bush said. "Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."

McCain is too late to turn that joke into serious political strategy.

Say what?

It wasn't a joke; it is a "serious political strategy", and it has carried the day in America for most of the past 30 years. But it might not be enough to compensate for the other shortcomings that are clearly visible in the Palin/McCain ticket, and in their campaign:

A recent survey by the American Affluence Research Center in Atlanta found the nation's wealthiest 10 percent to be tied at 48 percent each for McCain and Obama. What once was a campaign of a senator who reached across the aisle on campaign financing and global warming is now stoking selfishness into the silly zone.

Well, it would be silly except for the implications. If McCain is telling America's rich that their gains are utterly decoupled from the wealth disparities of fellow Americans, what does that foretell about foreign policy in his administration? The rest of the world has already told us. The Pew Global Attitudes Project found vastly more confidence in Obama than McCain.

That's a very generous way to phrase it. The rest of the world is much more scared of McCain than they are of Obama. But that doesn't mean they have any confidence in the Democrat. Those of us who have been paying attention have no confidence in him at all.

This is, of course, no concern to a campaign whose slogan is "America First." It is rapidly sounding like "Me First." How patriotic. That is too much even for the limited-tax Live Free or Die state.

Wanna talk about patriotic? How about this? (This, too!) Their lying knows no bounds; and it doesn't have to, because they're Republicans.

(Here is one of the biggest differences between the parties, in my view, and it's one of style: Democrats sometimes tell the truth, especially when they're talking about Republicans. But Republicans never tell the truth about anything, even -- especially! -- about the Democrats.

None of this is news; more than 50 years ago, in the midst of another rancid and rancorous campaign, Adlai Stevenson offered a solution to the animosity, saying if the Republicans would stop lying about the Democrats, the Democrats would stop telling the truth about the Republicans.

And to a certain extent -- sadly -- the Democrats have stopped telling the truth about the Republicans. But the Republicans have held fast to their long-established strategy. And it has worked for them. But I digress. The more important point here concerns redistribution of wealth.)

All systems of government redistribute wealth. It's inevitable. Every piece of legislation pertaining to tax law -- or any other aspect of the economy -- steals money from somebody and gives it to somebody else. What matters is the direction in which the money flows.

Some governments steal from the poor to give to the rich. Some do the opposite. In America, the government has been doing the opposite for a long time now. But in our mutant national politics, that's not called "redistribution of wealth"; it's not called anything at all.

It's never even mentioned, except in cliches and with approval. "Money makes money", the supposedly wise men say, and we, the thick-headed paupers, are all supposed to smile and nod -- as if it were perfectly acceptable for all the wealth of a wealthy society to flow to those who don't need it at all.

We're supposed to think it's right and proper, healthy and sane, for our government -- elected by our votes, and spending our money -- to assist that process. But it isn't, and we don't.

If John McCain thinks that appealing to the ultra-wealthy is his only chance, he's right.

With the failure of the Republican party to nominate a candidate who can even pretend to be level-headed, it's going to take a massive hack to deliver the proper result in this election. The inevitable backlash will be dealt with -- but the wealthy have to be onside. And McCain is doing his insane best to make sure they are.

My wife asked me the other day if I thought the weekend after the election would be a good time to travel. I said I didn't think so.

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White Man's Burden

From Reuters via Yahoo! News (and thanks to Bob in Prague)

US Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) reacts to almost heading the wrong way off the stage after shaking hands with Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) at the conclusion of the final presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, October 15, 2008. REUTERS/Jim Bourg (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008 (USA)

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Obama Gaining Strength Where It Counts

Support for Barack Obama has been rising among two segments of the American electorate whose support the Republicans usually count on: the rich and the filthy rich.

Reuters reports on a close race between the two candidates, even at the highest levels of the American kleptocracy:

Jim Taylor, vice chairman of the Harrison Group, a market research and strategy firm in Waterbury, Conn ... who produces a quarterly "Survey of Affluence and Wealth in America," said the wealthy were once a solid Republican majority. "It's not anymore," he told the Reuters Wealth Management Summit on Tuesday, citing the findings of his latest survey of 614 affluent individuals taken September 19-23.

That showed McCain had 40 percent of the "affluent and wealth vote," compared with 33 percent for Obama, and given the recent stock market slide Taylor says he would be surprised if Obama's support hadn't risen further in the past few weeks.

In the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, in contrast, about 80 percent of the wealthy supported the Republican nominee, Taylor said.

The Republican nominee happened to be George Bush, but people who support Republicans -- the people who did the most to put him in a position of power -- avoid mentioning his name whenever possible these days. Big surprise.

The collapse of Republican support is even more dramatic among the filthy rich:

For the wealthiest American households, who have at least $1.6 million set aside each year for discretionary spending, McCain was favored over Obama by 49 percent to 28 percent.

"That may sound like a lot but but there was a time when it was 100 to zero percent," Taylor said.

That may sound like a lot? Actually, what sounds like a lot is $1.6 million discretionary spending, minimum, per household.

Even among the most ambitious discretionary spenders, the notion that a Palin-McCain administration would hold the line on taxes and thus provide greater prosperity is not flying particularly well these days:

"Everybody believes that taxes are going up ... no matter who gets elected," said Timothy Vaill, chairman and chief executive of the wealth management arm of Boston Private Financial Holdings, a money-management firm.

So now it boils down to other things, Obama is looking more appealing all the time, especially abroad:

Some wealthy foreign investors with big investments in the United States are unnerved by McCain's running-mate, Alaska governor and self-described 'hockey mom' Sarah Palin, said Charles Lowenhaupt, chairman of St. Louis-based Lowenhaupt Global Advisors, which advises ultra-high-net-worth families.

"The non-U.S. wealth-holders I've talked to, in India for example, were feeling very negative on Obama. And all of sudden the Palin thing has flipped that because as naive as Obama looked they think Palin looks more so," he said.

He said wealthy individuals in India are highly critical of Obama's willingness to strike against terrorists in Pakistan without approval from Islamabad.

"They would say 'oh, Obama is terrible.' I just kept running into that when I was there. But when McCain chose Palin, they said 'oh Palin.' They just don't understand the whole culture around her, the 'hockey mom' idea."

Reuters won't mention it, but Obama's status among the well-to-do is certainly not damaged in any way by the fact that he owes his soul to Wall Street.

Congratulations, Barack. You're a real white boy now!

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TV Debate Blues

I went down to the vomitorium
thought I'd watch some of the puke-a-thon
yeah I went down to the vomitorium
thought I'd watch some of the puke-a-thon
but my stomach couldn't take it, baby
I switched it off soon as the sound came on

[repeat and fade away]

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An Unconscionable Act Of Betrayal

Here's John McCain [photo] on withdrawing from Iraq:

"It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal."

Here's Winter Patriot on the same topic:

"It WAS an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, THAT WE CHOSE TO INVADE IRAQ AT THE EXPENSE OF the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that WE KNEW would follow a reckless, irresponsible and UNNECESSARY INVASION."

Backstage, Barack Obama is still refining his position.

Subtle: Candidates Exploit Our Fears, But Not Too Baldly

There's been some interesting fallout from Charlie Black's assertion that a terrorist attack against America "would be a big advantage" for John McCain [photo], the candidate for whom Black strategizes.

Black's frank admission set off alarm bells for those who believe it would be easy for such an attack to be made to happen (on purpose, as it were).

In addition to alarm bells, Black's comment has stirred up some of the finest doublethink you're likely to find (until the next time you read a mainstream "news" article about this subject, or anything else). I had fun watching Michael Cooper tie himself up in knots in the New York Times:

In Balancing Act on National Security, a Stumble

It was the journalist Michael Kinsley who changed Washington’s understanding of gaffes with his observation that a gaffe occurs not when someone lies, but when they say what they really think.

All the remarkable moments in modern politics have come when somebody accidentally told the truth. This tells us something about how often they lie.

And more than a few politicians and pundits were put in mind of the classic Kinsleyian gaffe this week after Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Senator John McCain, was quoted in a magazine interview saying that another terrorist attack in the United States would “be a big advantage” for Mr. McCain in the upcoming election.

Whether such an attack would work in favor of McCain is debatable; there are several possibilities and Michael Cooper can't even list them (if he wants to keep his job). But there can't be any question that it's dangerous when a senior adviser to a presidential candidate thinks a terrorist attack would help his candidate.

In recent years we've been treated to barrage of nonsense -- embodied in phrases like "the criminalization of politics" -- sanctifying the notion that politicians are above the law, or that politics is war and therefore all's fair.

So to have a major politician whose strategic adviser thinks a terrorist attack would be a big advantage ... is not only very dangerous ... but it's far too honest a thing to say, isn't it?

McCain thinks so.

Mr. McCain immediately disavowed the remark on Monday, saying: “I cannot imagine why he would say it. It’s not true.” And Mr. Black quickly announced that he “deeply” regretted the remark. But on some level Mr. Black’s assertion was the logical extension — if somewhat tackily and impoliticly expressed — of the McCain campaign’s premise that Mr. McCain is best suited to keep the nation safe from terror.

And this is exactly the point. No matter what happens, whether there's a terrorist attack or not [or two], both candidates will strive to portray themselves as best able to fight terrorists.

Making that case, of course, can be a balancing act, the challenge being how to position Mr. McCain as the candidate who will keep people safe without seeming to be baldly exploiting people’s fears — a balance that has not always been struck in recent political campaigns.

The problem, as you can see Michael Cooper struggling not to spell out, is how to keep exploiting people’s fears without seeming to do so baldly.

The Obama campaign struck back hard, questioning the premise that the Republicans who favored invading Iraq have expertise in fighting terrorism and labeling Mr. Black’s remark as part of a “cynical and divisive brand of politics.”

The really interesting question -- the question that's never asked -- is whether the Republicans are more interested in fighting terrorism or fomenting it. But of course it would be cynical and divisive to ask it, so don't expect to hear it from Obama anytime soon.

Instead, through his chosen mouthpiece, he takes a different tack:

“The fact that John McCain’s top adviser says that a terrorist attack on American soil would be a ‘big advantage’ for their political campaign is a complete disgrace and is exactly the kind of politics that needs to change,” Bill Burton, a spokesman for Senator Barack Obama, said in a statement. “Barack Obama will turn the page on these failed policies and this cynical and divisive brand of politics so that we can unite this nation around a common purpose to finish the fight against al Qaeda.”

Well, of course, saying a terrorist attack would be good for your candidate is cynical and divisive. But it's not nearly as cynical and divisive as staging one. And that's a balance that hasn't always been struck, either.

On the other hand, Obama says he wants "to finish the fight against al Qaeda", and that's some pretty macho talk, but it's a big problem too, because so far he hasn't shown any understanding -- or even any curiosity -- about what al Qaeda is ... or isn't!

And -- not to put too bald a point on it -- there are only two things that that could "unite this nation around a common purpose to finish the fight against al Qaeda".

One of them, of course, would be a large-scale "terrorist" attack. But rather than helping McCain or Obama, such an attack may merely serve as a pretext for the cancellation of the election. So it would be a risky card to play, even for an old shark like Charlie Black.

There's another way in which a sharp and honest president could possibly "unite" the nation and "finish" the war against al Qaeda, but it definitely won't happen, because it involves serious education.

I'm referring, of course, to a large-scale campaign to inform the American public about exactly what al Qaeda is, who created it, who sponsors it, and whose policy aims it serves.

In other words, a progressive and honest president might require his fellow citizens to take a break from their standard television fare and watch -- no! study! -- a BBC documentary called "The Power of Nightmares". Here's an excerpt:

McCain's Chief Strategist Says Another Terrorist Attack "Would Be A Big Advantage"

A terrorist attack on America before the November election "would be a big advantage" to John McCain, according to his chief strategist, Charlie Black [photo].

Black's comment may have been a bit too candid, but it illustrates one of the great strengths of the American political system: its BS quota is infinite!

No lie is too transparent to be repeated over and over until it becomes part of the national fabric, a web of officially sanctioned lies that grows larger and more toxic every day.

George W. Bush, having refused to protect us in any way in 2001, made mountains of political hay out of his alleged ability to protect us.

And now, according to Charlie Black, John McCain would benefit from another failure of the "national security" apparatus he has supported for all these years -- because it would turn the focus to his "strength".

If that's the case, the next move is obvious: somebody needs to turn off America's security alarm, the way they did it back in 2001, and make sure John McCain gets elected!

That'll keep us safe!

Juan Cole says:

We don't need any more of this politics of fear that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Bush gave to us.

It doesn't matter what we need, of course. The only thing that counts is what they want us to have.

Juan Cole continues:

That McCain has such people around him is yet another indication that he is too close to Bush and Bushism to be allowed anywhere near the White House.

But this is backwards as well.

Nobody can be allowed near the White House unless he has such people around him!

That Barack Obama is busy surrounding himself with shameless predators indicates that the race might be a close one after all.

Tom Toles: Steadfast Digging

Nobody knows how deep the hole will get before the sides cave in.

Are we there yet? Not quite.

Government Propaganda? Not Here, Surely -- Must Be Chinese!

William Blum:

The Washington Post recently ran a story about how the Chinese people largely support the government suppression of the Tibetan protesters. The heading was: "Beijing's Crackdown Gets Strong Domestic Support. Ethnic Pride Stoked by Government Propaganda."

He's not kidding: here's the link.

Blum writes:

The article spoke of how Beijing officials have "educated" the public about Tibet "through propaganda".

Indeed. Here's Edward Cody in the Washington Post:

In the West, the name Tibet has long evoked unspoiled Himalayan landscapes, cinnamon-robed monks spinning prayer wheels and a peace-loving Dalai Lama seeking freedom for his repressed Buddhist followers.

Here in China, people have embraced a different view; they regard Tibet as a historical part of the nation and see its sympathizers in the West as easily fooled romantics. Thanks to government propaganda, but also to ethnic pride, most Chinese see the Dalai Lama and his monks as obscurantist reactionaries trying to split the country and reverse the economic and social progress that China has brought to a backward and isolated land over the past 58 years.

The violent protests by Buddhist monks and other Tibetans that exploded in Lhasa on Friday, therefore, have generated widespread condemnation among the country's majority Han Chinese. In street conversations, Internet discussions and academic forums, most Chinese have readily embraced the government's contention that the violence resulted from a plot mounted by the Dalai Lama from his exile headquarters in India.

Blum again:

Imagine the Post or any other American mainstream media saying that those Americans who support the war in Iraq do so because they've been educated by government propaganda. ... Ditto those who support the war in Afghanistan. ... Ditto those who supported the bombing of Yugoslavia. ... Ditto scores of other US invasions, bombings, overthrows, and miscellaneous war crimes spanning more than half a century.

Can you imagine? Internet discussions where people speak out in favor of war crimes? Street conversations? Academic forums?

Cody says the people are even urging the government to be more vicious:

Against that background, the Communist Party has met with broad popular approval in vowing to crack down on the rioters -- most of whose victims were Han Chinese -- and in qualifying the "impudent" Dalai Lama as a "master terror maker" who has hoodwinked the West with his appeals for peace. While the rest of the world invokes the Beijing Olympics and advises restraint, Chinese specialists and the public have urged the government to move decisively...

And it all seems so familiar ... Are we sure we don't have any propaganda here?

Blum again:

A recurring theme of Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency has been that she has more of the right kind of experience needed to deal with national security and foreign policy issues than Barack Obama. The latest play on this is her advertisement telling you: It's three a.m. and your children are safe and asleep; but there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing; something really bad is happening somewhere; and voters are asked who they want answering the phone. Of course they should want Hillary and her marvelous experience. (If she's actually explained what that marvelous experience is, I missed it. Perhaps her near-death experience in Bosnia?)

Typical of Clinton's growing corps of conservative followers, the Washington Times recently lent support to this theme. The right-wing newspaper interviewed a group of "mostly conservative retired [military] officers, industry executives and current defense officials", who cite Mr. Obama's lack of experience in national security.

And so it goes. And so it has gone for many years. What is it with this experience thing for public office? It was not invented by Hillary Clinton. If I need to have my car repaired I look for a mechanic with experience with my particular car. If I needed an operation I'd seek out a surgeon with lots of experience performing that particular operation. But when it comes to choosing a person for political office, the sine qua non consideration is what their politics are. Who would you choose between two candidates -- one who was strongly against everything you passionately supported but who had decades of holding high government positions, or one who shared your passion on every important issue but had never held any public office? Is there any doubt about which person almost everyone would go for? So why does this "experience" thing keep coming up in so many elections?

A recent national poll questioned registered voters about the candidates' "approach to foreign policy and national security". 43% thought that Obama would be "not tough enough" (probably a reflection of the "experience" factor), while only 3% thought he'd be "too tough". For Clinton the figures were 37% and 9%. The evidence is overwhelming that decades of very tough -- nay, brutal -- US policies toward the Middle East has provoked extensive anti-American terrorism; the same in Latin America in earlier decades, yet this remains an alien concept to most American voters, who think that toughness works (even though they know it doesn't work on Americans -- witness the reaction to 9/11).

John McCain, who is proud to have dropped countless bombs on the people of Vietnam, who had never done him or his country any harm until he and his country invaded them, who now (literally) sings in public about bombing the people of Iran, and who tells us he's prepared to remain in Iraq for 100 years, is still regarded as "not tough enough" by 16% and "too tough" by only 25%. What does it take to convince Americans that one of their leaders is a bloody psychopath? Like the two psychos he may replace. How has 225 years of our grand experiment in democracy wound up like this? And why is McCain regularly referred to as a "war hero"? He was shot down and captured and held prisoner for more than five years. What's heroic about that? In most other kinds of work, such a record would be called a failure.

Winston Churchill said that "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." And if that doesn't do it for you, try a five-minute conversation with almost any American politician. This thing called democracy continues to be used as a substitute for human liberation.

One parting thought about Obama: Is he prepared to distance himself from Rev. Martin Luther King as he has from his own minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright? King vehemently denounced the Vietnam War and called the United States "the most violent nation in the world". Like Wright, he was strongly condemned for his remarks. As T.S. Eliot famously observed: "Humankind can not bear very much reality."

Blum gives his readers quite a few things to think about. Here's a sampling:

Expressing elementary truths about the oppression of the poor by the rich in the United States runs the risk of being accused of "advocating class warfare"; because the trick of class war is to not let the victims know the war is being waged.

What do the CEOs do all day that they should earn a thousand times more than schoolteachers, nurses, firefighters, street cleaners, and social workers? Re-read some medieval history, about feudal lords and serfs.

The campaigns of the anti-regulationists imply that pure food and drugs will be ours as soon as we abolish the pure food and drug laws. ...

The more you care about others, the more you're at a disadvantage competing in the capitalist system.

To say that 1% of the population owns 35% of the resources and wealth, is deceptive. If you own 35% you can control much more than that.

How could the current distribution of property and wealth have emerged from any sort of democratic process? ...

Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will somehow produce the most good. ...

Communist governments take over companies. Under capitalism, the companies take over the government. ...

How much reality can you bear?

Read the rest here.

New Study finds No Link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda

Conspiracy theorists have been saying for years that there was no link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda; that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were antagonists; that Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of 9/11. It may not seem like a big deal, since after all Saddam [seen here in a sandbagged bunker] is now dead, and the attacks of 9/11 happened a long time ago. But these assertions are at odds with statements made repeatedly by the president, the vice president, many other White House officials, and other supporters of the ongoing war in Iraq.

As you may recall, two main reasons were given to "justify" the American invasion and subsequent occupation of a defenseless oil-rich country. One of them was an alleged tie between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, possibly evidenced by a purported meeting between an Iraqi intelligence official and the putative lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta.

The other reason, of course, was Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction. The president, in one of his most delightful moments of levity, has admitted that this claim was only a joke.

And now the claim of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda, long challenged by opponents of the war, has been thoroughly debunked in a comprehensive study made by -- no! not another conspiracy theorist! -- the Institute for Defense Analyses, under contract with the Pentagon itself.

We weren't supposed to see the report. We weren't even supposed to see the press release announcing the release of the report. Well, guess what?

ABC News (of Australia) carried this story from AFP:

No link between Saddam and Al Qaeda: Pentagon

A detailed Pentagon study confirms there was no direct link between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda network, debunking a claim US President George W Bush's administration used to justify invading Iraq.

The US administration tried to bury the release of the study, limiting distribution of the report and making it available only at individual request and by mail - instead of posting it on the internet or handing it out to reporters.

Indeed. But that lame attempt failed dismally -- and here's the report, a 94-page PDF, courtesy of ABC (US) News via TPM via Gandhi!

The AFP report from Australia continues:

Coming five years after the start of the war in Iraq, the study of 600,000 official Iraqi documents and thousands of hours of interrogations of former Saddam Hussein colleagues "found no smoking gun between Saddam's Iraq and Al Qaeda," said the study, quoted in US media.

Other reports by the blue-ribbon September 11 commission and the Pentagon's inspector general in 2007 reached the same conclusion but none had access to as much information.

"The Iraqi Perspective Project review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism" and "state terrorism became a routine tool of state power" but "the predominant target of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens," said a summary of the Pentagon study.

Mr Bush, US Vice President Dick Cheney and top aides have insisted there were links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, citing the alleged ties as a rationale for going to war in Iraq.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Mr Bush said in June 2004.

Can we talk about impeachment now? Can we talk about war crimes and crimes against humanity? How about some justice? How about some restitution?? How about some punishment????

Oh no! It's not possible, because we live in a democracy and we have a choice: We can have John McCain and troops in Iraq for another hundred years; or we can have Hillary Clinton and troops in Iraq forever; or we can have Barack Obama and be very very nice to everyone you meet and hope it will all work out fine in the end.

Bush Endorses McCain; McCain Appreciates It

I'm not sure about you, but if I were running for national office, I would definitely appreciate the support of a man who started a war based on deliberate lies which killed at least a million people and laughed about it!

And I'm sincere when I say that.

A guy just doesn't stand a chance these days without some war criminals in his corner.

Visions Of Endless War

USA Today: Fla. win cements McCain's front-runner status

Republican John McCain completed an improbable journey from written off to front-runner Tuesday by winning Florida's presidential primary.

The Arizona senator's third win in the four primaries so far, political analysts say, makes him the favorite for the nomination as the candidates head into a 22-state national primary on Feb. 5.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had the most at stake in Florida from a momentum standpoint. He has delegates from wins in the Michigan primary and the Wyoming and Nevada caucuses, and his deep pockets — a legacy of his years as a venture capitalist — will allow him to keep fighting.

"It's not completely over, so long as Romney has a big bank account," said former House GOP aide John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College. But he said McCain will be difficult to stop.

Though McCain's campaign was broke and in disarray last year, he returned to the underdog approach he used in 2000 and, town meeting by town meeting, scrapped his way back into contention.

Sure, he did. Sure, he did. Town hall meetings it is, then.

All you have to do in this country is start talking about staying in Iraq for a hundred years and you can miraculously start winning elections!

Of course it doesn't hurt if you're a former torture victim who supports torture.