Treading water

I'm still phoning things in until I can get steady access to the internet and stay abreast of media. In the meantime, here's some reading.

* To nobody's surprise, I hope, Bush decided to use last year's speech template on Iraq by iterating nothing new or worthy in a sermon at Fort Bragg on Tuesday.

* Anthony Cordesman, no wild-eyed analyst, decries the fact that Bush only offered up "spin, risk avoidance, and promises without cost" in his speech. "Normal perhaps by today's political standards," Cordesman concedes, "but scarcely the kind of realism and leadership that will inspire the continuing American support that U.S. forces, Iraq, and our allies will need during the difficult and uncertain years to come."

* Despite Dubya's pleadings, Americans would best be advised to heed the words of Robert Parry, who counsels, the "hard truth is that the American people have only two choices on what to do next: they can continue to send their young soldiers into the Iraqi death trap for at least the next several years and hope for the best, or they can build a movement for impeaching George W. Bush and other administration officials – and then try to make the best of a bad situation in Iraq."

* Patrick Cockburn looks at turning the corner in Iraq, one year on.

* ~1,700 dead in Iraq, illustrated.

* "Getting out of Iraq, it seems, is a lot harder than going in," observes Robert Dreyfuss. Nevertheless, he offers a two-part prescription.

* Billmon notes well some of the contradictions about "Negotiating With Terrorists."

* Dahr Jamail reports on the conclusion of the World Tribunal on Iraq hearings in Istanbul last week. Check out some of the testimonies and the jury's concluding statement.

* Woops. Iraq's now the perfect training ground for terrorists. That wasn't supposed to happen, was it?

* "While U.S. casualties steadily mount in Iraq," the AP reports, "another toll is rising rapidly on the home front: The Army's divorce rate has soared in the past three years, most notably for officers, as longer and more frequent war zone deployments place extra strain on couples."

* Kilgore would be proud. Still.

* In Salon, Gary Kamiya pens a memo to Fox News watchers: There's a war going on, ya know!

* Some Iraqi "terrorists" cheered Bush to victory in November 2004, according to the AP.

* Michael Smith lays out the story behind the story of the Downing Street memos for the LA Times and his own paper, the London Times.

* Hey, hey! Here's a relatively good article on the DSMs from the Washington Post. And, whattayaknow, it made page one! See also, as another reminder: "Why the DSM is important."

* Michael Klare reviews some of Matthew Simmons' findings in his new book, Twilight in the Desert. If Simmons is correct about the coming exhaustion of Saudi oil fields, Klare posits, "we can kiss the era of abundant petroleum goodbye forever." Earlier, I posted a review of the book by Kevin Drum, which nicely and simply summarized the "peak oil" issue.

* For the first time since January, the US army says it reached its recruiting goals for June. Looking through rose-colored glasses, that is. Plus: Matt Taibbi weighs in with his usual biting remarks on the recruiting shortfall.

* Expressing alarm at the loss of a humanitarian impulse in world affairs, even one that has a tendency to go off the rails, Tony Judt laments in the NYRB, "the US isn't credible today: its reputation and standing are at their lowest point in history and will not soon recover. And there is no substitute on the horizon: the Europeans will not rise to the challenge." He concludes, "President Bush sees 'freedom' on the march. I wish I shared his optimism. I see a bad moon rising."

* Views of the US around the globe continue on their downward path, according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes poll. Recall the 2003 and 2004 surveys.

* I'm not quite sure what part of the Hippocratic Oath states that a doctor should help facilitate torture, but -- surprise, surprise -- that's been going on at Gitmo.

* Outlining an action plan to reel in the US' torture policies, Elizabeth Holtzman concludes in The Nation, "there is no sure way to compel the government to investigate itself or to hold high-level government officials accountable under applicable criminal statutes. But if the public does not seek to have it happen, it will not happen. Those in the public who care deeply about the rule of law and government accountability must keep this issue alive. Failure to investigate wrongdoing in high places and tolerating misconduct or criminality can have only the most corroding impact on our democracy and the rule of law that sustains us."

* On the heels of the downing of a Chinook helicopter in the Hindu Kush, Carlotta Gall of the NY Times reports that violence in Afghanistan has "increased sharply in recent months, with a resurgent Taliban movement mounting daily attacks in southern Afghanistan, gangs kidnapping foreigners here in the capital and radical Islamists orchestrating violent demonstrations against the government and foreign-financed organizations."

* Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the Iranian presidential election this week. He's also been fingered as one of the ringleaders behind the 1979 seizure of hostages at the US embassy in Tehran. This has to make the warmongers even happier, since it'll make it easier to drum up fervor against the Iranians, if need be.

* "A Jew doesn't expel a Jew," says Cpl. Avi Bieber of the Israeli army. Maybe it's a bit unfair to say this, but I'll bet he doesn't have similar compunctions about expelling Arabs. See also: "Israeli Soldiers 'Getting Away With Murder'" and "Jewish settlers spark Gaza violence."

* "One month into President Robert Mugabe's brutal campaign of demolition and displacement [Operation Murambatsvina]," reports The Independent, "which has cost at least 400,000 people their homes and livelihoods, the scale of the humanitarian disaster is emerging. The victims of this forced expulsion - which has been compared to the devastating policies of Pol Pot in Cambodia - are arriving in the already famine-stricken countryside, where, jobless and homeless, they are waiting to die. Unofficial estimates obtained by The Independent suggest the death rate is already outstripping the birth rate nationwide by 4,000 a week."

* Sudan "is being consumed by a civil war that has already claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands," writes Thilo Thielke for Der Spiegel. "But despite the obvious crisis, the international community continues to drag its feet and refuses to intervene."

* Tom Engelhardt does yeoman's work updating that great conservative canard of "moral relativism" for today's political climate.

* Writing for In These Times, David Moberg explains what's missing from recent exposes of class inequality in America.

* The US is still ringin' the bell of freedom by incarcerating the most people on Earth, in comparison with other nations.

* Good news: Canada and Spain have legalized gay marriage.

* Why can't liberals get it right on eminent domain? wonders Sam Smith.

* Alan Dershowitz is still disgracing himself by his actions against Norman Finkelstein.

* Professor Kim has the goods on the Mexican stamp controversy.

* Time, Inc. is reportedly set to release reporter Mathew Cooper's notes on the Valerie Plame incident, which might reveal the identity of the leaker.