The Morning Buzz

post from TPMCafe - The Coffee House feed on 08 February 2007 12:46:47 AM. © TPMCafe - The Coffee House feed

What do you get when you combine the right-wing echo chamber with a complicit mainstream media, a confused presidential campaign and netroots credibility in the balance? An absolute flood of discussion.

I'm not crazy enough to try to summarize all of the commentary on the Edwards blogger issue yesterday, but suffice it to say pretty much everyone chimed in on this one and it's not over yet.

A few other things got people talking...

Michael Crowley and Sam Rosenfeld each had thoughts on the lameness of the Senate in light of their failure to pass even a non-binding resolution in the midst of a war, Garance Franke-Ruta followed up on whether Edwards is pandering, retreating, or just lost on Iran by pointing out that Israeli hawks still seem happy, and Mark Schmitt jumped back into the conversation he started yesterday on health care by going back to the history books to discover that policy positioning during a campaign doesn't have much to do with policy proposed when elected.

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Military Says No Gitmo Prisoner Abuse Found

post from TalkLeft on 08 February 2007 12:12:00 AM. © TalkLeft

The Pentagon announced today that an investigation of prisoner abuse claims at Guantanamo were unfounded. Of course, they didn't bother to interview any of the detainees.

The investigation was initiated after Marine Sgt. Heather Cerveny advised the military that she heard a conversation among guards at a bar in which "they described beating detainees as common practice."

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The Trouble with Propaganda -- Part 11,243

post from Once Upon a Time... on 08 February 2007 12:01:00 AM. © Once Upon a Time...

The trouble is that it works:

Many adults in the United States believe their country will enter a conflict against Iran, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 57 per cent of respondents think it is very or somewhat likely that the U.S. will be at war with Iran within the next year.

Note these other numbers from the poll:

How likely is it that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons?

Very likely 42%

Somewhat likely 33%

Not very likely 11%

Not at all likely 2%

"Soon." Note that the word is very helpfully left undefined. In addition, no evidence whatsoever has been presented, publicly or privately, that Iran is in fact pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. To the contrary, all knowledgeable experts agree that any "Iranian threat" continues to recede farther into the future. Well, never mind. We have a wider war to get started. No time to lose.

So more than half of Americans believe we may be at war with Iran within the next year, and three-quarters of them think Iran will "soon" develop nuclear weapons. Yet public life goes on in its uninterrupted stupor. As I recently wrote:

[T]he war chants rise once again, this time directed at Iran. If we should attack Iran in the near future, much of the world will treat us as we will fully deserve: as a barbarian, pariah nation, which no one can trust and which will join the most monstrous countries in history.

Is there a massive protest from Americans about the route we may follow? No. Are the Democrats who now control Congress at least trying to avert this catastrophe, which may be the last? No -- because they fully share the belief in American "exceptionalism" and in our "right" to worldwide hegemony. Is there even one prominent voice in America regularly explaining the horror of what we have already done, and what we may still do? No.

If this remains unchanged, and if we launch another war of blatant, unforgivable aggression, we will deserve everything we get -- and more. Historians, if there are any in the years to come, will see what we were and what we did, and they will judge us accordingly.

It's as if the last five years never even happened.

Remarkable. Horrifying. Stupefying. Utterly unbelievable.

And unforgivable.

See: Becoming a Barbarian, Pariah Nation: What Are You Waiting For?

Morality, Humanity and Civilization: "Nothing remains...but memories"

The Missing Moral Center: Murdering the Innocent

Time Has Run Out -- and the Choice Is Yours

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Late Night

post from Eschaton on 08 February 2007 12:01:00 AM. © Eschaton

Rock on.

video details and more

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11 dead in two days while GOP Senators prevent
debate

The GOP Senators, who have enabled the Iraq War by never, ever challenging Bush, are now preventing even having a debate. It's sick that in America, elected officials won't even talk about a war where the death toll continues to mount. Via Reuters:

Four U.S. Marines were killed in combat in two separate attacks in western Anbar province, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

Wednesday's deaths took to at least 11 the number of U.S. servicemen killed in Iraq in the last two days.

The most pathetic Republicans are the Senators who are now for the anti-escalation resolution before they were against it before they were for it. Or something like that. John wrote about those seven losers last night:

The Washington Post is reporting that seven GOP Senators, five of whom successfully filibustered the Warner Iraq resolution earlier this week, are now demanding - simply demanding - that the Senate Democratic and Republican leaders permit the Warner resolution to come up for a vote.

Uh, okay. It was your own party that filibustered the Warner resolution, and one of the guys who joined the filibuster was Senator John Warner (R-VA) himself - yes, he filibustered his own resolution - and then two days later Warner is now a signatory of a letter demanding that his resolution not be filibustered. Kind of pathetic that this is what passes for courage in what remains of the Republican party.

The GOP is playing political and procedural games while soldiers are dying. It's sick.