History's Verdict on Trump Will be Devastating

A biographer of Donald Trump has a column at CNN which lays out what any sentient American not motivated by racism, religious extremism and bigotry in general ought to know, namely that Trump is a disaster as president and that history will be brutal in its assessment of him.  This is particularly true of his utterly incompetent handling of the coronavirus pandemic where all of his defining traits - narcissism, lack of empathy, rejection of experts and objective fact, and divisiveness - are on constant display.  Hopefully, history will judge him extremely harshly,  But history needs to be equally harsh in its judgment of those who voted for him and, worse yet, continue to support him. Good, moral people cannot support an individual like Trump and his supporters - especially evangelical Christians - have shown their moral bankruptcy to the world. Here are column excerpts:

In a crisis, all is revealed.  After a lifetime devoted to avoiding responsibility and accountability -- for his lies, his deceptions, his hype, and his cruelty -- President Donald Trump has met his match in the pandemic of 2020. His bluff and bluster are powerless as thousands of Americans die and the blame falls, in part, on his failure to heed the warnings and execute a robust national response. This occurred even though a pandemic playbook had been left behind by the Obama administration.

On one level, Trump's failure can be traced to his original lie: the false image he sold to the American people in order to hide his shortcomings. Never a competent manager of complex organizations -- witness his many bankruptcies -- Trump rose to fame pitching the illusion that he was a great businessman. As he sought the presidency he used counterattacks, lies, and skillful denials to avoid answering for his record and gain the White House.

As someone who has studied Trump for years, I thought it was inevitable that he would eventually reach a moment of reckoning as president. I couldn't have imagined that it would come with the catastrophic consequences now facing the nation. . . . . Trump's profound personal shortcomings -- deficiencies of his heart and mind -- helped bring us to this moment.

The first of Trump's weaknesses? His lack of emotional intelligence and empathy, which causes him to struggle to relate to human suffering. The developer who made tenants miserable so they would move out allowing him to build luxury condos, became the president who downplayed hurricane deaths in Puerto Rico, and now barely speaks of those stricken and killed by the coronavirus. Instead, he obsesses over TV ratings . . . .
 The second of Trump's deficiencies is a habit of mind that discounts expertise and elevates convenient opinions supported by cherry-picked sources of misinformation. Businessman Trump exhibited this willful ignorance when, for example, he said the scientific connection between asbestos exposure and disease was a matter of a conspiracy carried out by mobsters. Candidate Trump discounted the expertise of experts leading the war on terror. [I]t puts America's fate into the hands of a man who was incapable of learning even from his own aides. Faced with an enemy that is literally killing people he stayed true to form as he pushed an unproven coronavirus treatment that's still under scientific review. Ignorant as he can seem, [Trump] the President seems to sense that this moment will establish his reputation in perpetuity. He said as much last week when he observed that, "the history books will never forget" America's response to the coronavirus. What he did not mention, however, is that his response to the pandemic will be examined in minute detail -- it is this prospect, the prospect of accountability, that looms over him now. Until this crisis, Trump had avoided accountability with remarkable consistency. Born into astounding wealth, he avoided accountability by persuading creditors that he was too big to fail even after he ran businesses into the ground. In politics, he deflected accountability by blaming others, especially the press and Democrats, for problems that occurred on his watch. Historians will eventually write books detailing what journalists already know about the Trump administration's dereliction of duty when the pandemic hit. America's Covid-19 death toll now passes 2,800 and the caseload exceeds 157,200 cases, But through much of the time that the number of cases was growing, the White House offered no coherent national response to the crisis. No federal agency is rallying health care workers to move to hot spots where they are needed. Instead of assertively coordinating and distributing vital equipment, the administration is letting states, hospitals, and federal agencies compete against each other. Recently Trump introduced a bit of personal petulance to this dynamic, suggesting that governors who aren't sufficiently deferential should be ignored by the White House. [Trump's] The president's complaints about not being appreciated remind us that he takes everything personally and that his personal qualities of heartlessness and intellectual dishonesty will hobble his response to our suffering. Acutely attuned to his own feelings, he's so numb to the pain of others that he avoids talking about it. . . . . Likewise, he remains devoted to discounting reliable scientific information that shows things getting worse in favor of happy talk. Meanwhile, governors across the country are demonstrating what competence, empathy, and intelligence look like. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for one, has used his televised briefings to offer accurate information and authentic human concern. . . . Where Trump repeats buzzwords and tries to sell himself as all-powerful, Cuomo demonstrates that he understands the pandemic and can communicate the facts. Cuomo has been reminding us that the worst of the crisis is just beginning. The same is true for history's assessment of President Trump. The coronavirus is immune to his manipulation and spin. It is the defining challenge of his presidency and of his life. Compared with other presidential crises, like the 9/11 attacks or Hurricane Katrina, it has occurred slowly, with ample warning, giving [Trump] the president many opportunities to act and, we see now, fail.
 The accounting will continue. And like the pandemic, it will be devastating.

"Bush," a Biography as Scathing Indictment

If one wants a reason to mistrust the GOP base - assuming it's racism, nativism, and general bigotry and extremism are not enough - "Bush," a new biography of George W. Bush, perhaps America's worse president ever, underscores the idiocy that is viewed with approval by Republican Party.  Given this track record for selecting losers, it's little wonder that Donald Trump is now the presumptive GOP nominee.  The New York Times has a review of the book.  Here are some excerpts:

Mr. Smith leaves no mystery where he stands on Mr. Bush’s place in history. The first sentence of his book: “Rarely in the history of the United States has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush.”

The last: “Whether George W. Bush was the worst president in American history will be long debated, but his decision to invade Iraq is easily the worst foreign policy decision ever made by an American president.”

In between are more than 650 pages of fast-paced if harsh biography. In this telling, Mr. Bush’s religious piety took on messianic fervor leading him to turn democracy promotion into a mission from God. He didn’t listen to the generals and diplomats. He badly bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. He presided over the diminution of American values by authorizing torture and bugging.

“Believing he was the agent of God’s will, and acting with divine guidance, George W. Bush would lead the nation into two disastrous wars of aggression,” Mr. Smith writes. “Bush’s personalization of the war on terror combined with his macho assertiveness as the nation’s commander in chief,” he adds later, “were a recipe for disaster.”

The value of Mr. Smith’s account is not original reporting but a thorough assimilation of the existing record. Mr. Bush declined to speak with him, as he has with other authors since leaving office. Mr. Smith spoke with both Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, but for the most part relies on the existing body of literature, for a complete history of Mr. Bush’s life.

Mr. Smith’s fundamental critique is his belief that Mr. Bush overreacted to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “The events of 9/11 were tragic, but scarcely catastrophic,” he writes. That led Mr. Bush, in his view, to advance policies that were not justified by the actual danger.

The Patriot Act, he writes, “may be the most ill-conceived piece of domestic legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.” In labeling Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil,” Mr. Bush “had spoken without weighing the consequences.” Mr. Bush’s refusal to face up to the fact that Iraq had no unconventional weapons “suggests a willfulness that borders on psychosis.” His second-term Inaugural Address making democracy promotion his major goal “must rank as one of the most ill-considered of all time.”

Jeb Bush's Biggest Weakness: His Idiot Brother

I know I have touched on this issue already, but I find it so delicious that The Donald id now exposing Jeb Bush's - and the GOP's - biggest weakness: the incompetent misrule of George W. Bush and Darth Vader Cheney.  The GOP establishment somehow foolishly thought that Americans had forgotten the disasters that the last Republican occupant of the White House brought down on America.  Donald Trump has been only too happy to remind even the reality challenged GOP base to recall who was in charge when America's worse terrorist attack took place.  Hillary must have cheered as Jake Trapper asked "If your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all [for the 9/11 attacks], how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?" Vox looks at Jebbie's idiot response.  Here are highlights:

I don't know if Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination. But even if he doesn't, it's increasingly clear he's going to destroy Jeb Bush before he loses.

Over the past week, Trump and Bush have been in an argument that basically boils down to the question of was George W. Bush president on 9/11/2001?

Trump insists that Bush was president both prior to and during the 9/11 attacks, and he was therefore at least partly responsible for the security failures that permitted the tragedy. And to Trump's credit, there is considerable evidence that George W. Bush was president on 9/11/2001.

Jeb Bush's position is harder to parse: he argues that his brother was only responsible for what happened after 9/11, suggesting, perhaps, that someone else bore the responsibilities of the presidency on 9/11/2001. 

The result is this absolutely brutal interview CNN's Jake Tapper conducted with Bush. "If your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all," Tapper asks, "how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?"

Bush's response is almost physically painful to watch.

Trump has pulled Bush into an even more dangerous quagmire: his brother's presidency. Trump is reminding every Republican voter that nominating Jeb Bush will mean running a general election campaign with two disadvantages. First, Republicans will have to answer for George W. Bush's failures in a way they wouldn't if they nominated Marco Rubio or Carly Fiorina or Donald Trump, and second, they'll need to somehow explain why they're holding Hillary Clinton responsible for Obama's presidency even as they don't hold George W. Bush responsible for George W. Bush's presidency.

 

And Trump, having realized how weak Bush is on this issue, isn't stopping. He's moved from 9/11 to the Iraq War:

Jeb, why did your brother attack and destabalize the Middle East by attacking Iraq when there were no weapons of mass destruction? Bad info?

I cannot stand The Donald, but I love the fact that he is showcasing the horrible consequences GOP rule has had on the nation.   I hope he keeps pounding away at Jebbie.

Jeb Bush: As Dumb as His Idiot Brother

It speaks volumes about the intellectual bankruptcy - and plain lack of common sense - that the so-called GOP establishment still sees Jeb Bush as its savior and standard bearer.   But then again, these are the same geniuses who welcomed the Christofascists and white supremacists into the GOP with no thought about the long term peril it would pose to the party as the nation's demographics turned against tide of shrinking numbers of angry white Christian extremists on which the party's future was staked.  As for Jeb! himself, he talks about the Florida economy under his governorship leaving out the major fact that it was largely built on a housing bubble that hit Florida very hard.  And then there's Jeb! continued lunatic efforts to say that his idiot brother's years of misrule were a good thing.  A piece in Salon looks at the debacle.  Here are highlights:

One of the most entertaining spectacles of this election cycle is watching Jeb! Bush try to marry his genial, moderate patrician demeanor to the kind of sneering, condescending Tea Party dialogue that, having incubated for years in right-wing media, has now burst out of the host Republican Party’s abdominal cavity to spray acid in the eyes of anyone who dares get near it. It’s the same awkward fusion Mitt Romney attempted four years ago, though no one really noticed until the general. Jeb has the decency to do it during the primaries so we’ll all have more time to enjoy watching him flail.

Bush followed up his recent “hey black people, no more free stuff for you!” moment by sitting for an interview with John Harwood on CNBC, and hoo boy, does the former Florida governor sound like a man so far down the rabbit hole he might emerge on the other side of the planet. 

 Over the course of just a few minutes, he manages to twist himself into so many knots trying to rescue his brother’s legacy while simultaneously suggesting that President Obama is several steps to the left of Vladimir Lenin, by the end you could salt him and sell him from a Times Square pretzel cart.

Take this answer to Harwood’s question about why the country has seen more economic growth when Democrats have held the White House versus Republicans over the last 35 years.

BUSH: First of all, I think you have to factor in that policies have long-term impacts. So the tax reform of the 1980s created an environment that President Clinton took advantage of. The PAYGO budget compromise, where there was an increase in taxes, but there was, more importantly, a rule that every dollar of additional spending required a cut in spending, was very effective in restraining government during the Clinton era, as well.

So President Clinton, who raised the top marginal tax rate from 31 percent to 39.6 percent in 1993 (after Bush’s own father George H.W. Bush had raised it from 28 to 31 percent in 1990) got lucky by taking advantage of…Ronald Reagan’s tax reforms that lowered the top rate to 28 percent in the first place?

And considering that domestic programs have been cut to the bone during the wild budget battles of the Obama era, can Bush name what he’ll cut in order to lower tax rates and keep the deficit down? I’d have liked to hear that answer.

The Congressional Budget Office, of course, has consistently found that Obamacare will not increase the deficit in the medium- to long-term. Medicare Part D blew a huge hole in the deficit that part of Obamacare in fact has tried to fix. To put the two programs in the same category is disingenuous at best.

[I]t’s an article of faith on the right that he [Obama] hates America and wants to destroy it from within, so Jeb! Bush has to pay lip service to that idea. Even though he knows deep down that it is nuts. 

Jeb goes on to yada yada his brother’s terrible economic record in order to push his line that hey, forget about history, this time tax cuts will work, trust me! He would have made a fortune as a travelling hair tonic salesman in the Old West.

If his polls are any indication, even the Republican base isn’t falling for the Bush family con job this time around. But there is still plenty of time before the voting starts.

Jrb Bush's Iraq Nightmare is Just Beginning

What do you do when you want to be president and your older brother ranks as one of the worse U.S.S presidents ever having (i) turned a budget surplus into a huge deficit, (ii) presided over the worse economic disaster since the Great Depression, (iii) taken America based on known lies and thrown away thousands of American lives and left countless more maimed for life, (iii) fanned the culture wars, and (iv) set the stage for the ongoing nightmare in the Middle East?  Most would say, run screaming from your brother and disavow his failed presidency.  But not Jebbie Bush.  No, Jebbie has said that his idiot brother is who he consults on Middle East policy and that he'd go to war in Iraq all over again even knowing what is now known. And remember, Jebbie is supposed to be "the smart brother."  It is frightening and, belatedly, Jebbie seems to be realizing the disaster he has launched for himself as he now is lying and claiming he "misheard the question."  A column in the Washington Post looks at why Jebbie is going to be hard pressed to avoid his brother's toxic shadow.  Here are excerpts:

Last night Fox News aired an interview in which Jeb Bush was asked the question about Iraq that every major politician should have answered by now. Somehow it seemed to catch Bush less than completely prepared. His answer generated the expected attacks from Democrats, but even some Republicans were critical. GOP consultant Ana Navarro now says Bush confided to her that he “misheard the question,” which suggests he’ll be clarifying what he really thinks soon.

This was bound to come up before long. The way it’s now playing suggests that Bush — along with many other Republicans — can’t quite figure out how to answer a question that for most people is pretty straightforward.

If you want to believe that Bush “misheard” the question — and thus answered as though the question was “what would you have done then?” instead of “knowing what we know now” — then you’re more generous than I. 

On one hand, it’s unlikely that he’ll deliver an implicit rebuke to his brother and his administration, all the key figures of which continue to argue to this day that the world is still better off for the war having taken place. What’s more, the imperatives of GOP politics push candidates toward tough talk and a refusal to admit that any Republican administration ever made a mistake about anything.

Yet at the same time, there are some prominent Republicans who don’t accept that line. . . . Byron York wrote: “If Jeb Bush sticks to his position — that he would still authorize war knowing what we know today — it will represent a step backward for the Republican Party.” . . .
If you ask the question by mentioning the cost in money and lives, over 60 percent of Republicans say it wasn’t worth it.

At the moment, the only GOP candidate who has said it was a mistake is Rand Paul. 

Does Bush have a way out? He may well continue to evade.  

Because of who his brother is, it was to be expected that Bush would be the first to confront this question. But now that it has happened, all the candidates are likely to be asked — including Hillary Clinton. There was no more damaging issue to Clinton in 2008 than her vote to authorize the war.

There may well be foreign policy issues that come up between now and next November — on Iran, Syria, or anyplace else — where she [Hillary] takes a position at odds with liberal Democrats. That could be a genuine problem for her. But it probably won’t amount to as big a problem as Jeb Bush now faces.

Unless and until Jebbie admits that the Iraq War was a disaster that should NEVER have been launched, it will confirm that he is utterly unfit for the White House. He may be even dumber than his idiot brother.

Is Obama Drinking George W. Bush's Kool-Aid?

Other than perhaps America's bungled intelligence that allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked 73 years ago today and the Vietnam fiasco which began in earnest 50 years ago, perhaps the biggest military/foreign policy mistakes America has made during the last century is the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Anyone with any knowledge of the history of the region and not blinded by American hubris should have known from the outset that these invasions would end in disaster.  Yet, after working to get American troops out of the nightmare Bush/Cheney created, Barack Obama seems headed towards throwing away more American lives and squandering billions more of American tax dollars.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at Obama's moves to commit more American resources to this fool's errand.  Here are highlights:

No one has sounded more determined to extricate the United States from Afghanistan than President Obama. It is “time to turn the page,” he said in May when he announced plans to reduce American forces to 9,800 troops by the end of December, with a full withdrawal by the end of 2016. That goal appeared to be on track — until now. Mr. Obama’s recent turnabout and other developments seem to be sucking America back into the Afghan war, a huge mistake.

First, Mr. Obama authorized a more expansive mission for the American military in 2015 than originally planned. His order would put American troops right back into ground combat by allowing them to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militants. He had previously said that the residual force would be engaged only in counterterrorism operations aimed at remnants of Al Qaeda. The new order also permits American jets and drones to support Afghan military missions.

Already, the number of American troops to remain in Afghanistan after December has been increased by 1,000, up to 10,800. NATO allies are supposed to provide 4,000 troops next year, bringing the total of foreign forces to 12,000 to 14,000. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that any additional American troops above 9,800 are temporary and are merely covering for NATO allies that are still trying to decide how many forces to contribute.  But if NATO fails to contribute sufficient troops, then what?

Mr. Obama seems to be having second thoughts about his Afghan strategy after the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the sudden collapse of the Iraqi army. He may be trying to avoid blame if something similar happens in Afghanistan, where Taliban attacks are on the rise.

But he should resist the advice of military commanders, who are again pushing for broader involvement. They were unable to defeat the Taliban when more than 100,000 American troops were in the country; there is no reason to think that a very limited American force will be more effective now.

One lesson learned over the last 13 years is this: No amount of foreign assistance — not tens of thousands of troops, billions of dollars or unlimited amounts of military equipment — will make any real difference if the Afghans cannot or will not pull together a functioning, relatively uncorrupt and competent government, and take primary responsibility for themselves and their country.

Administration officials are still insisting “the combat mission ends” by the end of this year, but that’s simply not credible. Mr. Obama should stick to his original plan. . . .

Living in an area with a huge military presence, one thing you learn quickly is that military commanders will ALWAYS claim that with more troops and more money they can succeed no matter how much such claims are opposed to objective reality.  Anyone who believes these commanders is a fool - or drinking Bush/Cheney Kool-Aid. 

Why There’s a Debt Stalemate - A Lack of Leadership

As it looks more and more likely that the Super Committee will fail to reach an agreement, Robert Samuelson has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the real underlying cause: a lack of leadership, particularly in the White House. I've noted time and time again over the last almost three years how rather than be a leader and rather than use the pulpit of the presidency to rally public support for on issues, Barack Obama merely punts the problem to Congress in the hope that someone will find a solution. And time and time again, what we've seen is a continued mess rather than a path to moving the country forward. This lack of leadership is one of the reasons I'd rather not see Obama re-elected unless the alternative is one of the knuckle draggers from the current GOP crop of would be nominees. Things might be so very different if we had leadership in the White House. But sadly, we do not. Here are highlights from Samuelson's column:

We haven’t had the robust democratic debate about the role of government that lies at the heart of America’s budget stalemate. The truth is that most Democrats and Republicans want to avoid such a debate because it would force them into positions that, regardless of ideology, would be highly unpopular. This does not mean that the congressional supercommittee, charged with making modest cuts in deficits, need fail. There is a basis for honorable compromise. Squandering it — as seems increasingly likely — would confirm politicians’ preference for fighting over governing.

How big a government do we want? What’s the balance of fairness between young and old? How much should other programs be reduced or taxes raised? Many Democrats duck the fundamental policy questions and reject any benefit cuts.

Only President Obama can start such a debate. He has the bully pulpit, but he hasn’t used it. . . . Noncommittal gibberish. There is no leadership from the nation’s “leader.”

The president won’t talk specifics, but government consists of specifics. The reason we cannot have a large budget deal is that Americans haven’t been prepared for one. The president hasn’t educated them, and so they can’t support what they don’t understand. Left or right, there are no comfortable positions. No one relishes curbing Social Security or Medicare benefits. But without changes, taxes will go way up, the rest of government will shrink dramatically or huge deficits will persist.

Toomey’s concession created a basis for a negotiation, if both sides wanted an agreement. Small successes today could rebuild trust, leading to larger successes tomorrow. Failure will further corrode the public’s already rock-bottom confidence in its political “leaders.”

Once Again Obama is Playing on the Wrong End of the Field

Reading various blogs and op-ed pieces, it seems that I am hardly the only one disgusted with weak kneed, Jell-O spine Barack Obama. While Mitt Romney is being pummeled with questions of whether he truly believes in anything, the same could well be said of Obama. Indeed, some are making the argument that Obama needs to be challenged in a primary fight for the Democratic Party nomination. Obama's approach time and time again seems to be to give up 50% of the farm before he even begins to confront the extremists of the GOP who care nothing for average citizens and want to restore the economic brutality of the Gilded Age of the robber barons. It drives me crazy and I worry what he will give away of Medicare and other social safety net issues! Ruth Marcus has a piece in the Washington Post that lays into Obama for precisely this reason. Here are some highlights:
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I’m no sports nut but I’ve spent enough time at kids’ soccer games to understand that it’s impossible to score if you’re playing on the wrong side of the field. Which is why I have found the White House strategy for dealing with Republicans on the deficit so befuddling.
*
The fight over spending this fiscal year is a case in point. The prospect of a Republican takeover of the House was evident well before the election. The inevitable result was going to be more draconian cuts than would have been required if the spending bills were passed beforehand.
*
In the aftermath of the Democrats’ losses, the entire debate played out in terms they were destined to lose. If the argument is framed solely in terms of budget cuts, Republicans always win: They are willing to out-cut Democrats. That inescapable tilt was exacerbated by the virtual absence of a White House message about the impact of a shutdown or the cuts themselves.
*
In the final hours, Democrats rallied their troops with complaints about a Republican “war on women” — and held fast against eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood. But how many people knew that the House-passed budget would have eliminated all federal money for family planning? Hardly anyone — because the White House and Democrats weren’t telling them.
*
A second, maddening example of the White House allowing the other side to frame the debate involves the longer-term fiscal picture. The president convened a commission on the topic and then abandoned it. First, he did not lift a finger to help his co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, assemble the 14 votes necessary to get the commission’s plan a congressional vote. Then, when the plan was released, the president pointedly declined to express a view.
*
If the White House had weighed in on Simpson-Bowles before Ryan released his plan, it could have staked out an argument that the framework — a combination of spending cuts and tax increases — was correct but that some specifics (the precise mix of the two, the details of the Social Security fix) went too far in the conservative direction. Now the “reasonable” compromise would be between Simpson-Bowles on the leftward side and Ryan on the right.
*
It [the White House]hurriedly arranged for a speech and slapped together what seems to be shaping up less as an Obama plan than as an endorsement of the Gang of Six approach. I’m all for the president weighing in — in fact, I’ve been recommending it for months. But I question the haste and timing: If the Gang of Six looks like the Democratic alternative to Ryan, its Republican members will be out on a limb. Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss, who convened the gang along with Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, said the White House “threw us a little bit of a curveball” with its surprise Sunday announcement. And if the White House was going to support the Simpson-Bowles framework all along, why not do it earlier and take advantage of the momentum?
*
The country desperately needs a leader, but in Obama we only have a follower. The lost opportunities resulting from his refusal to be a leader are staggering.

The Sad Truth About the Failed War in Afghanistan

The leaking of secret documents released on the Internet by WikiLeaks is being condemned by some - including the White House - when in reality, I believe the leakers have done a service to USA voters and exposed this failed fool's errand in many ways for what it is. Other than a quick mission to capture the members of Al Qaeda linked to the 9-11 terror attack, the USA had no business trying to nation build in a country that has shown for thousands of years that it cannot be conquered. Sadly, that did not stop American hubris and the squandering of billions of dollars and countless lives when one adds in the civilian death toll. The other warped aspect of the leaks is that a suspected leaker will likely face years of imprisonment while nothing is done to punish those documented to have killed civilians and to have lied to U.S. politicians and the U.S. public. It's ass backwards in my view to say the least. Nowadays, "classified" when applied to military and political documents translates to information that needs to be hidden so that the public doesn't know the truth. Here are highlights from yesterday and today's New York Times, respectively:
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A six-year archive of classified military documents made public on Sunday offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.
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The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday.
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The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.
*
As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.
*
The reports — usually spare summaries but sometimes detailed narratives — shed light on some elements of the war that have been largely hidden from the public eye:
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• The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
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• Secret commando units like Task Force 373 — a classified group of Army and Navy special operatives — work from a “capture/kill list” of about 70 top insurgent commanders. These missions, which have been stepped up under the Obama administration, claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment.
*
• The military employs more and more drone aircraft to survey the battlefield and strike targets in Afghanistan, although their performance is less impressive than officially portrayed. Some crash or collide, forcing American troops to undertake risky retrieval missions before the Taliban can claim the drone’s weaponry.
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• The Central Intelligence Agency has expanded paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan. The units launch ambushes, order airstrikes and conduct night raids. From 2001 to 2008, the C.I.A. paid the budget of Afghanistan’s spy agency and ran it as a virtual subsidiary.
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Over all, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war. But in some cases the documents show that the American military made misleading public statements — attributing the downing of a helicopter to conventional weapons instead of heat-seeking missiles or giving Afghans credit for missions carried out by Special Operations commandos.
*
They [the leaked documents]suggest that the military’s internal assessments of the prospects for winning over the Afghan public, especially in the early days, were often optimistic, even naïve.
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And in today's paper these are some of the highlights:
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The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.
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In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure.
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“We don’t know how to react,” one frustrated administration official said on Monday. “This obviously puts Congress and the public in a bad mood.”

*Mr. Obama is facing a tough choice: he must either figure out a way to convince Congress and the American people that his war strategy remains on track and is seeing fruit — a harder sell given that the war is lagging — or move more quickly to a far more limited American presence.
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As the debate over the war begins anew, administration officials have been striking tones similar to the Bush administration’s to argue for continuing the current Afghanistan strategy, which calls for a significant troop buildup.
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The White House appeared to be focusing some of its ire toward Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, the Web site that provided access to about 92,000 secret military reports spanning the period from January 2004 through December 2009.
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White House officials e-mailed reporters select transcripts of an interview Mr. Assange conducted with Der Spiegel, underlining the quotations the White House apparently found most offensive. Among them was Mr. Assange’s assertion, “I enjoy crushing bastards.”
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At a news conference in London on Monday, Mr. Assange defended the release of the documents. “I’d like to see this material taken seriously and investigated, and new policies, if not prosecutions, result from it,” he said.
*
The admission that the USA is on a fool's errand instigated by Chimperator Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney and a military brass always only too ready to rush headlong into war would be a good start. I also agree with Assange that prosecutions are needed. The whole Afghanistan debacle is like a slow re-run of Vietnam. Will the U.S. military never learn from its past fiascos?

Phony Health Care Reform

Two op-ed pieces - one in the New York Times and one in the Washington Post look at the captiulation of Obama and many Congressional Democrats to the health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies as average citizens in dire need of health care reform are sold down the river. As John Aravosis stated at America Blog, maybe Hillary Clinton was right during the primary campaign of accusing Obama of not being tough enough to get the job done. So far he looks like slick talking gutless wonder when it comes to delivering REAL and MEANINGFUL health care reform and/or civil rights for LGBT Americans. I am increasingly feeling that I should have supported Hillary - at least she had some balls. First, here are highlights from Bob Herbert's piece in the NYT:

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It’s never a contest when the interests of big business are pitted against the public interest. So if we manage to get health care “reform” this time around it will be the kind of reform that benefits the very people who have given us a failed system, and thus made reform so necessary.

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Forget about a crackdown on price-gouging drug companies and predatory insurance firms. That’s not happening. With the public pretty well confused about what is going on, we’re headed — at best — toward changes that will result in a lot more people getting covered, but that will not control exploding health care costs and will leave industry leaders feeling like they’ve hit the jackpot.

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The hope of a government-run insurance option is all but gone. So there will be no effective alternative for consumers in the market for health coverage, which means no competitive pressure for private insurers to rein in premiums and other charges.

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Giving consumers the choice of an efficient, nonprofit, government-run insurance plan would have moved us toward real cost control, but that option has gone a-glimmering. The public deserves better. The drug companies, the insurance industry and the rest of the corporate high-rollers have their tentacles all over this so-called reform effort, squeezing it for all it’s worth.

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So much for real change. Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post likewise laments Obama's selling out the public for the benefit of those already reaping fortunes. It is a truly disgusting situation - no wonder Virginia is likely to return to red this fall if this is all that a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democrat in the White House can accomplish. One would think the GOP had drafted this "plan." Here are highlights from Robinson's column:

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It's true that politics is the art of the possible, but it's also true that great leaders expand the scope of possibility. Barack Obama took office pledging to be a transformational president. The fate of a government-run public health insurance option will be an early test of his ability to end the way Washington's big-money, special-interest politics suffocates true reform.

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Giving up the public option would send many of Obama's progressive supporters into apoplexy, yet the administration has sent clear signals that this is the path of less resistance it's prepared to take. . . . Where, if anywhere, does Obama draw a line in the sand? For reform to be meaningful, there must be some components that a final package absolutely should include. What on Earth might they be?

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Clearly, the White House feels itself on the defensive. But why? Consider the political landscape. Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress. No matter how disciplined Republicans are in opposing any reforms -- even if Republican objections are accommodated -- they don't have the votes to kill a final bill. If conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats are successful in nixing a public health insurance option and watering down other reforms, progressive voters have a right to ask why they went to such trouble to elect Democratic majorities and a Democratic president.

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What the president hasn't done is the obvious: Tell Congress and the American public, clearly and forcefully, what has to be done and why. Take control of the debate. Consult less and insist more. Remind the Blue Dogs who's president and who's not. Giving up on the public option might be expedient. But we didn't elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one.

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Candidly, unless Obama makes some changes in course almost immediately, I am beginning to greatly fear that he is well on the road to a failed presidency. Yes, it is early in his term, but if this mess is the best he can do with commanding advantages, then all those who wanted to believe that he would deliver real change will likely feel that there is no need to support him or the Democrats going forward if they are so eager to sell out the public. Indeed, should the GOP somehow nominate a non-nutcase - a long shot I know given the way the GOP base controls nominations - Obama might well see himself not re-elected in 2012.