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?

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

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.

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

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)

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

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!

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

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]

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

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.

Did Terrorists Cause The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse?

At least seven people were killed and another 60 injured when an eight-lane bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River during evening rush hour in Minneaopolis on Wednesday.

Investigators haven't even arrived yet and already the speculation is rampant. Was it terrorism? metal failure? a design error?

Everybody from here to Malaysia wants to know, sort of, especially since if it was a terrorist attack then that means war with Iran, and possibly even Pakistan, even if neither of these countries had anything to do with it.

The mainstream media is giving us nothing to go by, saying things like "No hint of terrorism" and "Cause of collapse unknown". Fortunately we have history to guide us.

The easiest way to tell whether or not this was a terrorist attack is to watch what happens to the wreckage.

If the debris is not preserved for a forensic investigation but cut up and shipped off to be recycled instead, or even used to fill potholes, then the cause of the collapse is Islamo-Fascist terrorism, we should attack Iran and Pakistan immediately if not sooner, and Barack Obama is a genius.

Otherwise we will have to wait a little longer to find out what happened and John McCain is right.

Larisa: 'Rove Determined To Strike In The US'

Larisa Alexandrovna has been away -- either on vacation [?!] or chasing a big story [!?] -- and we've certainly missed her. As regular readers of her blog already know, she's also been ill, and I'm sure I speak for a great many people when I wish her better health immediately.

The good news is: She's ba-a-a-a-ck!! Savagely funny and right-on-the-mark in her latest blog item:

"Karl Rove determined to strike in the US"

Karl Rove apparently has direct access to terrorists or at least their play book, because he knows something that even experts seem not to know: what the terrorists are thinking.

"We are foolish if we think we can turn away from this threat and draw inward, and they will not come," President Bush's chief political strategist told an audience of about 400 at the Mount Union Theater. "If we lose, they will follow," he said.

I think this advice should have been taken during the end of the Nixon era in which apparently our national nightmare had just begun. Had Nixon not been pardoned, then his little mob would have likely followed him to the slammer, including Mr. Rove. Instead, "they" have followed us for the last 30+ years. But I will ask again, and continue to ask, since no member of Congress appears to have this question on the tip of his or her tongue for some odd reason: why does a political hit man running campaigns have the highest level clearances?

That question is easy to answer, at least from the point of view of those who want the political hit man to have the highest level clearances: Because knowledge is power. It's really that simple.

The more difficult question, the one Larisa is surely asking, is: Why do we allow it?

And the answer to that one, I believe, was best articulated by Joseph Heller, when asked about all the interwoven themes of his novel Catch-22. Heller interrupted the question, saying there was only one theme:

They can do anything that we can't prevent them from doing.

Once again it really is that simple.

What can we do to prevent it? That's why they do it.

As for the question of how Karl Rove knows what the terrorists intend to do, I was wondering the same thing about John McCain a few days ago when he made essentially the same statement, and three possibilities came to mind:

1) He's clairvoyant.
2) He's bluffing.
3) He's in cahoots with the terrorists.

Let's look at this with dispassionate logic: If we dismiss the possibility of clairvoyance, the only available options amount to treason in one way or another. In other words, either he's bluffing -- threatening terrorism for political advantage -- or else ... well we don't want to think about that, do we?

Seriously: What difference does it make? The statements made by Rove, McCain, Cheney and Bush (among others) -- not just recently but continuously since 9/11, and especially whenever they feel threatened -- amount to an ultimatum: a threat of terrorist action against the United States in the event that Congress, reflecting the will of the American people, forces an end to this war-of-choice, which (apparently we were supposed to forget) was started deliberately on the strength of a pack of carefully constructed lies and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising.

But we haven't forgotten. And we really can dismiss the possibility of clairvoyance. Because if Bush, Cheney, Rove et al. are clairvoyant, 9/11 would never have happened unless they wanted it to.

Therefore we know exactly what these threats represent: a protection racket of the vilest sort:

Give us full control of your country -- the budget, the legal system, the military, the works! -- or else you will be attacked by terrorists -- again!

And so. The treason is obvious. The Guillotine Department is standing by. What are we waiting for?

McCain Paints Himself Into A Corner

According to Michael D. Shear in the Washington Post, McCain Ties His Prospects to the War

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) refuses to hide from what he calls "the elephant in the room," despite knowing full well that the issue he talks most about these days is one that could sink his campaign for the White House.

Two-thirds of the American people disagree with McCain's support for the Iraq war and the president's decision to send additional troops to the conflict. As McCain seeks the presidency, it would make sense for him to change the subject -- to health care, to the economy, to social issues, or just about anything else.

But McCain and his top advisers have concluded that to do so would seem evasive and inauthentic for a military man whose life story is built around his experiences in the Vietnam War. They have decided that -- for good or ill -- he has no choice but to plead with voters for their understanding about his decidedly unpopular position on the subject.

"How can you really, you know, with a straight face, walk into a town hall meeting and not talk about the issue that is costing American lives as we speak?" McCain asked reporters gathered around him last week on the 2007 version of the Straight Talk Express, the rolling gimmick that made him famous during his first presidential campaign in 2000. "That's why I have to do what I have to do, foolish as it may be."

How can you really, you know, with a straight face, still support this miserable, unprovoked, unwinnable and unjustifiable war?

"Foolish" is an understatement.

But it's a good one. It describes the man, the war, and the campaign.

"Is it hard and tough? Yes. Is it difficult? Yes. Can we win, succeed? I believe we can," he told the crowd. "Can I guarantee you success? No. But I can guarantee the consequences of failure. The consequences of failure are chaos, genocide and, sooner or later, we go back."

The audience was largely quiet, even somber, as McCain spoke. Even in conservative places such as this, where polls suggest that a majority of Republicans still back the war effort, discussion of Iraq does not produce a reliable applause line. But that does not stop McCain from devoting more than a third of his stump speech to the subject.

"I am convinced that if we lose this conflict and leave, [the terrorists] will follow us home. It's not Iraq they are trying to take," he tells the audience. "Whether it was before, it is now part of this titanic struggle between good and evil, between radical Islamic extremists and their efforts to destroy everything we believe in."

It's too bad he still hasn't realized that the extremists who are trying to destroy everything we believe in are Christians, not Muslims; Americans, not foreigners; and still in office.

Oh well. I told you "foolish" was an understatement.

Or as Tom Toles sees it:



Please treat this as an open thread while I try to figure out what the next one's going to be about.

The Must-Do List -- First Steps On The Road To National Sanity

I've been nodding and smiling at something I've been reading on the Editorial page of the New York Times, and thinking "These are some of the first steps on the road to national sanity".

Now I could be wrong; I've been wrong before, and to tell you the truth, sanity is not exactly my strong suit. But I've got a deadline, so let's look at the piece together anyway...

It's called "The Must-Do List" and it starts out like this (with emphasis added):

The Bush administration’s assault on some of the founding principles of American democracy marches onward despite the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. The new Democratic majorities in Congress can block the sort of noxious measures that the Republican majority rubber-stamped. But preventing new assaults on civil liberties is not nearly enough.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America’s global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

It will require forceful steps by this Congress to undo the damage. A few lawmakers are offering bills intended to do just that, but they are only a start. Taking on this task is a moral imperative that will show the world the United States can be tough on terrorism without sacrificing its humanity and the rule of law.

Today we’re offering a list — which, sadly, is hardly exhaustive — of things that need to be done to reverse the unwise and lawless policies of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Many will require a rewrite of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, an atrocious measure pushed through Congress with the help of three Republican senators, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham and John McCain; Senator McCain lent his moral authority to improving one part of the bill and thus obscured its many other problems.

The bulk of the editorial consists of sections with the following headings:

Restore Habeas Corpus
Stop Illegal Spying
Ban Torture, Really

Close the C.I.A. Prisons
Account for ‘Ghost Prisoners’
Ban Extraordinary Rendition

Tighten the Definition of Combatant
Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively

Ban Tainted Evidence
Ban Secret Evidence
Better Define ‘Classified’ Evidence
Respect the Right to Counsel

The concluding paragraphs are mostly quite good, in my view:

Beyond all these huge tasks, Congress should halt the federal government’s race to classify documents to avoid public scrutiny — 15.6 million in 2005, nearly double the 2001 number. It should also reverse the grievous harm this administration has done to the Freedom of Information Act by encouraging agencies to reject requests for documents whenever possible. Congress should curtail F.B.I. spying on nonviolent antiwar groups and revisit parts of the Patriot Act that allow this practice.

The United States should apologize to a Canadian citizen and a German citizen, both innocent, who were kidnapped and tortured by American agents.

Oh yes, and it is time to close the Guantánamo camp. It is a despicable symbol of the abuses committed by this administration (with Congress’s complicity) in the name of fighting terrorism.

I agree with every point except the last.

In July of 2005 I expressed my disagreement with those who were saying we should close Guantánamo, and since that time I have not seen any reason to change my mind on this point.

Why do I disagree? At the risk of quoting an unreliable source, the piece was called "Unpopular Thoughts About Popular Causes" and the relevant passage ran:

I was [...] asked last week to promote an effort to force the administration to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, which is, of course, notorious for reports of torture as well as the issue of indefinite confinement without charge or trial or right to appeal or contact with family or a lawyer. Who could support such a thing? Even if the prisoners [whom the administration chooses to call "detainees"] weren't being abused, who could support such a thing??

"Close Gitmo", goes the cry. And who could resist? This was not spam; the plea came from an online friend, whose work I admire. But I was not moved.

Regular readers of this space will know that this cold and lowly blogger rails against the administration's policy of ever-spreading torture chambers above all else ... still the Winter Patriot does not support the movement to "Close Gitmo".

Why? First of all because of the reasons that are usually given by those who want Gitmo closed. "It gives propaganda opportunities to America's enemies" and so on. Maybe I could think about supporting the movement if I heard a lot more of "THIS IS WRONG" and a lot less of "THIS MAKES US LOOK BAD". But not likely.

It's deja vu all over again: and I've seen the same mistake before, too. Most recently it was a little boy picking his nose. His mother reprimanded him, saying: "Stop that; it's disgusting. Who wants to see that? I don't want to see that! If you want to pick your nose then go up to your room and pick your nose where I don't have to look at you." But the father said: "Knock it off! Don't pick your nose; it's disgusting."

You see what I'm saying? If they close Gitmo and keep torturing people in Abu Ghraib, Bagram, other places we don't even know about; plus ships at sea or anchored at Diego Garcia; plus so-called "extraordinary rendition", where people are kidnapped and shipped to foreign countries to be tortured by proxy ... as long as they do ANY of these things, we should be shouting "Stop The Torture!"

Not "Torture People Elsewhere!"

Not "Do That Where I Don't Have To Look At It!"

But a good straightforward "Knock It Off!!"

As long as they are unwilling to knock it off then I say they should keep Gitmo open. I think if they're going to keep doing these things then they should keep them doing them where we can see them. So the world will know what sort of evil lurks in the hearts of the monsters who have taken over our country.

Tarpley: Beware The Ides Of March -- Mobilize Now!!

Stop Sectarian Squabbles
Stop Moping
Time To Mobilize Against World War III

by Webster Tarpley, author of "911 Synthetic Terror"

[from Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth; edited slightly for clarity, emphasis added]

We are very close to a nuclear attack on Iran, meaning a Middle East regional war and a slide towards thermonuclear World War III. Beware the Ides of March, and the New Moon a few days later, the favorite time for Anglo-American sneak attacks. Stop wasting your time with sectarianism - it gets you nowhere. Compared to the world catastrophe now in sight, these petty quarrels sink into microscopic significance.

Putin's Munich Wehrkunde speech is a clear warning that we are on the brink of general war - worse than the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. This is Putin's War Warning.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 1 explicitly warns that terrorist actions inside the US are being prepared which will be blamed on Iran -- for use as pretexts to attack Iran within the framework of a multi-step neocon war scenario. (Zbig wants WWIII via an attack on Moscow, not Teheran -- that is his objection.) This means a new 9/11 with WMD: it will be MIHOP, state-sponsored, false flag, synthetic terrorism, for those who still do not get that crucial point.

We urgently require united front action by the 9/11 truth movement to accomplish the following:

1. Take back the airwaves. Call in to C-SPAN, Larry King, Limbaugh, Ed Shultz, Hannity, O'Reilly, etc. to cite Zbig's warning that the Cheneyacs are preparing a new 9/11 war provocation. Inoculate people not be stampeded. Ridicule the 9/11 myth being conjured up once again by Republicans like Boehner today in the House.

2. Form 9/11 truth squads and confront the 25+ declared presidential candidates on this same issue. Top priorities: Hillary the hypocrite warmonger, McCain the butcher, and Mr. 9/11, Giuliani. Challenge them to condemn new 9/11, attack on Iran, film them when they refuse to. Easiest to do in New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, and South Carolina, but possible and necessary everywhere. Two people ask questions, a third runs the camcorder or cell phone camera. Send results to youtube, 911blogger, 911truthsquads.com. Don't let them dodge the life and death questions. We are the new alternative media, as Time mag told us.

3. Start a weekly demo to protest the new 9/11 fakery and the wider war with Iran and Syria. Start now with whatever you have. Then build it from week to week. Go for visibility. Invite the peace movement and all persons of good will to attend. Get the media. A series like this in Leipzig, Germany in 1988-89 went from 10 people to 250,000 people and what amounted to a national general strike, bringing down the East German communist regime. Maybe it is our turn to get lucky too.

4. The neocons have wars plans; we need war plans of our own. Every group in every city needs to have a pre-arranged meeting point for a protest demo when the false flag provocation goes off, and then on the first day that war starts. In Washington, we all know that if the new 9/11 goes off and/or the bombs begin to fall, we go to Lafayette Park at the White House and say no to the new neocon insanity. Get pictures of protestors saying no to national suicide on the evening news, to counterbalance the hysteria. Make sure a sympathetic antiwar local reporter is briefed and won over in advance. In the first hours, there will be a titanic struggle to control and manipulate the popular mind. Get ready to act effectively at the drop of a hat.

For the medium and longer term: Get ready to turn the imperialist world war into a new era of human progress.

WGT

Please share this message as widely as possible.

Tom Toles: McCain Is Just Swerving

Howza bouta nother open thread?

US Interference In Nicaraguan Election May Have Backfired

For the past few days, even with everything else that's been going on, I've been thinking about updating my earlier (short, rushed) post about the Nicaraguan presidential election, which, as you probably already know, was won by Daniel Ortega.

I was thinking about the enormous American effort to interfere with that election, which appears to have backfired, when I stumbled upon an article in Time Magazine which used that very same word: "backfired".

Imagine my horror! Was I thinking along the same lines as the master spinners?

In a short word, no!

Time Magazine: Ortega's Victory: Another Administration Blunder?

The U.S. Congress wasn't the only place the Bush Administration suffered electoral embarrassment this week. In Nicaragua, cold-war bogeyman Daniel Ortega — whose Marxist Sandinista government had been an obsession of the Reagan Administration — was elected president again on Sunday despite frantic U.S. lobbying for his defeat. By most accounts, the yanqui politicking — which included a threat to cut off U.S. aid to impoverished Nicaragua if Ortega won — backfired miserably, actually helping boost the Sandinista leader to his first-round victory. That such U.S. pressure tends to work in favor of its opponents is a lesson Washington seems woefully unable to learn in a post-Cold War Latin America whose electorates have unexpectedly turned leftward in recent years.

The election of Ortega — who won with 38% of the vote, about 8 points ahead of his U.S.-backed opponent, conservative banker Eduardo Montealegre — is no doubt a concern. After he and Sandinista guerrillas toppled Nicaragua's brutal dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, in 1979, Ortega led an authoritarian, Soviet-backed regime that wrecked the economy and fought a civil war with U.S.-backed contra rebels that killed some 50,000 people. [...]

It could be argued that it was the war that wrecked the economy, and that it wasn't a civil war at all, but an attack-by-proxy conducted by the USA. Time Magazine is definitely not interested in going there. But fortunately, there are others who are much less gun-shy when it comes to telling the truth. So let's pay attention to a few of them, shall we?

Here's Tom Regan in the Christian Science Monitor: US fails in effort to derail Ortega presidential bid

In what critics call another sign of waning American influence in Central and Latin America, an "all-out" effort by the United States to convince Nicaraguans not to elect former Sandinista president Daniel Ortega to a second term has apparently failed.
...
"They did everything but threaten to invade," said Mark Weisbrot, a Latin America expert at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

The American campaign against Ortega hit a crescendo shortly before Sunday's vote. US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez warned that all US aid for Nicaragua could be at stake. Other officials said the country could be left out of the Central American Free Trade Agreement and that remittances sent home by Nicaraguans living in the United States could be blocked.

By contrast, [Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a friend of Ortega's] promised to step in with economic aid and cheap oil for a leftist Sandinista government. In the end, many voters decided to give Ortega another chance.

"Nicaraguans worry that bad relations with the United States can have really negative consequences," said William LeoGrande, a professor at American University in Washington. "But some were offended (by the US interference) on nationalistic grounds and were more likely to vote for Ortega."

There's much more here and I encourage you to read the entire article, and follow the links.

But now we turn to Chris Floyd: Sandinista! How Will Bush Make Nicaragua Pay for its Disobedience?:

Ortega ran and won with the backing of several prominent ex-Contras, including Jamie Morales, his own running mate. Morales had been the Contras' spokesman in Washington during the Reagan years when, with the direct involvement of VP George Bush, the Administration joined hands with the mullahs of Iran and the druglords of Central and South America to fund, arm and train a terrorist army to overthrow the Sandinista government. Although this exercise in mass state terrorism failed on the battlefield, the Reagan-Bush policy of economic terror managed to reduce Nicaragua to dire poverty, with the open threat that the stranglehold would go on until the Sandinistas were gone.

Of course, the stated reason for the Reagan-Bush hatred of Ortega was that he was an evil Commie tyrant and dictator who opposed democracy. However, oddly enough, when a majority of Nicaraguans bowed to the American blackmail in 1990 and voted against Sandinistas, these evil, anti-democratic Commie tyrant dictators....left office. They obeyed the obviously coerced but democratically expressed will of the people. And now, Ortega -- no shining knight but, in the end, a rather typical politician eager for power but with at least an inclination toward mitigating some of the most pernicious effects of predatory crony capitalism -- has been returned, democratically, to power...without "robocalls," without "push-polls," without strangely malfunctioning voting machines that only make "mistakes" in favor of one party, with "voter roll purges," etc. etc.

What will happen now? It's obvious: the Bush II administration -- which is clotted with many of the same Constitution-hating state terrorists who threw in with druglords and Islamic extremists during the Contra War -- has already announced its intention to resume the old economic terrorism against the wretchedly poor people of Nicaragua. American officials stated plainly that trade restrictions and cutbacks, if not cut-offs, in U.S. aid were in the cards if the Nicaraguans exercised their democratic rights in favor of the Sandinistas. They even sent Oliver North down to tour the country before the election -- the clearest possible signal for the rabble to get in line, rather like having Frank Nitti drive through the neighborhood to remind the shopkeepers to pay up their protection money to Al Capone.

The only question remaining is whether the Iran-Contra criminal gang now restored to the White House will be content with economic sabatoge of the Nicaraguan government. After all, this time Ortega will have the backing of Venezeula's Hugo Chavez, who has promised cheap oil and other economic benefits to the Sandinistas. The Washington squeeze play won't be quite as effective this time around. So will they move on to more physical methods of destabilization? Will they sponsor another mass-murdering civil war? Or will it be confined to covert ops? After all, the great googily-moogily of American intelligence, John Negroponte, made his bones in the region during the Reagan-Bush reign of terror, operating out of Honduras as the United States spread war and repression across Central America.

Horrendous, isn't it? But don't get me started! Instead, I'd prefer to leave the last word (or several of them) to William Blum:

For 27 years, the most powerful nation in the world has found it impossible to share the Western Hemisphere with one of its poorest and weakest neighbors, Nicaragua, if the country's leader was not in love with capitalism.

From the moment the Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the US-supported Somoza dictatorship in 1979, Washington was concerned about the rising up of that long-dreaded beast -- "another Cuba". This was war. On the battlefield and in the voting booths. For almost 10 years, the American proxy army, the Contras, carried out a particularly brutal insurgency against the Sandinista government and its supporters. In 1984, Washington tried its best to sabotage the elections, but failed to keep Sandinista leader Ortega from becoming president. And the war continued. In 1990, Washington's electoral tactic was to hammer home the simple and clear message to the people of Nicaragua: If you re-elect Ortega all the horrors of the civil war and America's economic hostility will continue. Just two months before the election, in December 1989, the United States invaded Panama for no apparent reason acceptable to international law, morality, or common sense (The United States naturally called it "Operation Just Cause"); one likely reason it was carried out was to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua that this is what they could expect, that the US/Contra war would continue and even escalate, if they re-elected the Sandinistas.

It worked; one cannot overestimate the power of fear, of murder, rape, and your house being burned down. Ortega lost, and Nicaragua returned to the rule of the free market, striving to roll back the progressive social and economic programs that had been undertaken by the Sandinistas. Within a few years widespread malnutrition, wholly inadequate access to health care and education, and other social ills, had once again become a widespread daily fact of life for the people of Nicaragua.

Each presidential election since then has pitted perennial candidate Ortega against Washington's interference in the process in shamelessly blatant ways. Pressure has been regularly exerted on certain political parties to withdraw their candidates so as to avoid splitting the conservative vote against the Sandinistas. US ambassadors and visiting State Department officials publicly and explicitly campaign for anti-Sandinista candidates, threatening all kinds of economic and diplomatic punishment if Ortega wins, including difficulties with exports, visas, and vital family remittances by Nicaraguans living in the United States.

In the 2001 election, shortly after the September 11 attacks, American officials tried their best to tie Ortega to terrorism, placing a full-page ad in the leading newspaper which declared, among other things, that: "Ortega has a relationship of more than thirty years with states and individuals who shelter and condone international terrorism." [Nicaragua Network (Washington, DC), October 29, 2001 -- and New York Times, November 4, 2001, p.3]

That same year a senior analyst in Nicaragua for the international pollsters Gallup was moved to declare: "Never in my whole life have I seen a sitting ambassador get publicly involved in a sovereign country's electoral process, nor have I ever heard of it." [Miami Herald, October 29, 2001]

Additionally, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) -- which would like the world to believe that it's a private non-governmental organization, when it's actually a creation and an agency of the US government -- regularly furnishes large amounts of money and other aid to organizations in Nicaragua which are opposed to the Sandinistas. The International Republican Institute (IRI), a long-time wing of NED, whose chairman is Arizona Senator John McCain, has also been active in Nicaragua creating the Movement for Nicaragua, which has helped organize marches against the Sandinistas. An IRI official in Nicaragua, speaking to a visiting American delegation in June of this year, equated the relationship between Nicaragua and the United States to that of a son to a father. "Children should not argue with their parents." she said.

With the 2006 presidential election in mind, one senior US official wrote in a Nicaraguan newspaper last year that should Ortega be elected, "Nicaragua would sink like a stone". In March, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the US Ambassador to the UN under Reagan and a prime supporter of the Contras, came to visit. She met with members of all the major Sandinista opposition parties and declared her belief that democracy in Nicaragua "is in danger" but that she had no doubt that the "Sandinista dictatorship" would not return to power. The following month, the American ambassador in Managua, Paul Trivelli, who openly speaks of his disapproval of Ortega and the Sandinista party, sent a letter to the presidential candidates of conservative parties offering financial and technical help to unite them for the general election of November 5. The ambassador stated that he was responding to requests by Nicaraguan "democratic parties" for US support in their mission to keep Daniel Ortega from a presidential victory. The visiting American delegation reported: "In a somewhat opaque statement Trivelli said that if Ortega were to win, the concept of governments recognizing governments wouldn't exist anymore and it was a 19th century concept anyway. The relationship would depend on what his government put in place." One of the fears of the ambassador likely has to do with Ortega talking of renegotiating CAFTA, the trade agreement between the US and Central America, so dear to the hearts of corporate globalizationists.

Then, in June, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said it was necessary for the Organization of American States (OAS) to send a mission of Electoral Observation to Nicaragua "as soon as possible" so as to "prevent the old leaders of corruption and communism from attempting to remain in power" (though the Sandinistas have not occupied the presidency, only lower offices, since 1990).

The explicit or implicit message of American pronouncements concerning Nicaragua is often the warning that if the Sandinistas come back to power, the horrible war, so fresh in the memory of Nicaraguans, will return. The London Independent reported in September that "One of the Ortega billboards in Nicaragua was spray-painted 'We don't want another war'. What it was saying was that if you vote for Ortega you are voting for a possible war with the US." [The Independent (London), September 6, 2006, and "2006 Nicaraguan Elections and the US Government Role. Report of the Nicaragua Network delegation to investigate US intervention in the Nicaraguan elections of November 2006"]

Per capita income in Nicaragua is $900 a year; some 70% of the people live in poverty. It is worth noting that Nicaragua and Haiti are the two nations in the Western Hemisphere that the United States has intervened in the most, from the 19th century to the 21st, including long periods of occupation. And they are today the two poorest in the hemisphere, wretchedly so.

Here's a late update, from USA Today: U.S. seeks better ties by aiding militaries

Concern about leftist victories in Latin America has prompted President Bush to quietly grant a waiver that allows the United States to resume training militaries from 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries.

The administration hopes the training will forge links with countries in the region and blunt a leftward trend. Daniel Ortega, a nemesis of the United States in the region during the 1980s, was elected president in Nicaragua this week. Bolivians chose another leftist, Evo Morales, last year.

And so on.

If at first you don't succeed...

When will our so-called leaders realize that you can't "blunt a leftward trend" by killing people?

Don't answer that unless you want to.