Arlen Specter ‘hearts’ Santorum

Arlen feels so strongly about Sen. Santorum that he wrote a Letter To The Editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, saying he’s making it his ‘top priority’ to make sure Ricky’s elected.

So, now we know Specter subscribes to ‘Republikanische Partei über alles‘. [Republican Party over everything.] If you are a Republican group, your sole duty is to re-elect an incumbent Republican. If you are a Democratic group, you will be silenced. Dissent is not allowed.

From the March 14th edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

I strongly disagree with the comments of Jennifer Stockman, on behalf of the Republican Majority for Choice, criticizing U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (“S. Dakota abortion law is an assault,” March 8 ).

While Sen. Santorum and I disagree on issues, I believe that he has done an excellent job for Pennsylvania and ought to be reelected. Without his support, I would not have won the 2004 Republican primary. Sen. Santorum’s reelection is my top priority in 2006.

The organization which identifies itself as the Republican Majority for Choice ought not to be actively seeking to defeat Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter

Washington, D.C.

This raises some questions, the main one being: What does this mean for our chances to pressure Specter – as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee – into holding hearings and investigating the President’s authorization of illegal wiretapping and law-breaking?

Not to be a defeatist – just a realist – I’d say our chances are somewhere between slim and none.

‘Partei über alles‘.

Party over everything.

Today’s Doonesbury

Worth the read. Click here.

Now, ask yourself – which is worse? A president who lied about getting a blowjob from a consenting adult, and also oversaw the creation of 23 million jobs, a balanced budget, and a budget surplus.

Or a president who blew that surplus within one year of taking office; lied about another country’s links to Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden (still free after nearly 4 years); failed to protect the country from attacks despite warnings; lied about a country’s WMD capabilities and invaded that country – which did not attack us; failed to plan for the insurgency despite warnings; failed to provide proper equipment to the troops; oversaw the largest deficit in history; ignored the Constitution and the laws and lied about it, then when caught, says he’ll continue doing it; approves of torture and extraordinary rendition; approves of holding American citizens and others incommunicado in secret and not-so-secret prisons without charges and without access to legal counsel to be tried by military tribunals undercover of secrecy…

And the list goes on.

Sanity paging Mr. Rumsfeld…

From the ‘Is He Serious?!’ files:

Most everyone these days has heard of Godwin’s Law* and it’s corollaries, so I guess this makes it official. The administration has just effectively killed it’s own arguments.

The War King…The Master of War Planning….The Secretary of Defense wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post that leaving Iraq now would be like giving ‘post-war Germany back to the Nazis’.

Reuters:

Leaving Iraq now would be like handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a column published on Sunday, the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.

‘Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis,’ he wrote in an essay in The Washington Post.

Rumsfeld said ‘the terrorists’ were trying to fuel sectarian tensions to spark a civil war, but they must be ‘watching with fear’ the progress in the country over the past three years.

But for another point of view, from the same article:

In London, former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on Sunday that Iraq is in a civil war and is nearing the point of no return when the sectarian violence will spill over throughout the Middle East.

‘It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is,’ he told BBC television.

And back to Rummy:

Rumsfeld’s view was that the Iraqi insurgency was failing.

‘The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case,’ he wrote.

He said 75 percent of all military operations in Iraq include Iraqi security forces.

The full article from Reuters is here.

If you can stomach it – have the Alka-Selzer and Pepto handy – Rummy’s op-ed is here. [Registration's required, but if the feds aren't onto you, and you want to keep it that way - use jpk131@yahoo.com, password: 123456]

*From Wikipedia:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread in which the comment was posted is over and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.

Bringing Freedom to Iraq

Three years after the start of the war, we have to look back and ask, “What have we accomplished?”

The answer depends on your political party, your religious views, etc. Most Dems will say we’ve accomplished nothing but destroying the country’s political, physical, and economic infrastructure. A lot of Republicans will tell you we’ve given Iraqis a free government, saved them from Saddam and his reign of terror, and started down the road to a stable Middle East.

And then, there’s the real answer. It comes from people like Haider Khaleel and Hawra Mohammed. Iraqis. Shi’ite Iraqis living in a Sunni neighborhood.

From Reuters:

Hawra and Haider began their married life cowering under the ’shock and awe’ American bombardment of Baghdad in March 2003.

When it was over, and Saddam Hussein had fled, they believed ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ had delivered a bright new future, free of fear and the economic sanctions that impoverished them.

Three years on, as they celebrate their third wedding anniversary, those dreams have died as insurgency and rising sectarian violence have brought new fears, and more poverty.

Haider Khaleel, then aged 26 and married for three weeks when the first bombs fell on his city on March 20, was working as a house-painter. He thought his degree in mathematics might finally land him a well-paid job in business when peace came.

Hawra Mohammed, 10 years younger than her husband, believed the opening of Iraq’s sanctions-bound oil wells, would make gray Baghdad bloom like Dubai and other wealthy cities on the Gulf.

‘I dreamt of being the local agent for an international company. I would be able to travel and make a fortune,’ Haider said as he labored in the small grocery store he now runs.

‘But the bombings and shootings have killed all my dreams.’

‘After the war, I thought the situation would be better than in Saddam’s time,’ said Hawra, sitting in the kitchen at their modest home nearby. ‘I wanted to travel freely with my husband abroad … to live as other people all over the world do.’

‘I imagined Baghdad would be like Dubai or even better,’ she said, laughing at her own fantasy. ‘But that was just a dream.’

The arrival of two children has brought happiness, but also more worry about what fate holds for them: ‘I can’t say what our future is,’ she said. ‘Our dreams have vanished.’

[snip]

As a Shi’ite in the mainly Sunni Saidiya neighborhood within mainly Shi’ite east Baghdad, Haider is acutely aware that he is vulnerable as Iraq slides toward sectarian civil war. In the past month, following the bombing of a major Shi’ite shrine that set off bloody reprisals, the victims of the ‘dirty war’ are becoming more numerous and more visible. Dozens of bodies are dumped in Baghdad every day; many have been tortured.

‘I live in Saydiya. I am a Shi’ite and I might be targeted as many others have been. So I can’t move around and expand my business,’ said Haider, talking of his fear every time he sets foot outside his door. ‘I hope everything will be fine and a new government can settle everything.’

Three months after an election hailed as a new beginning for Iraqi democracy, leaders are still deadlocked on forming a unity government that many believe is a last hope for peace.

‘We just can’t live like other married couples in other cities in the world,’ said Hawra. ‘After three years of war we are imprisoned again by our fears.’ [emphasis mine]

So tell me again…what has the war in Iraq accomplished?

Read the full story here.

Jenn’s Sunday Sermon

I was surfing Google last night, looking for some sort of inspiration for this post. I wanted to come up with something as good as last week’s. [eaten by WP gremlins and probably never to be repeated because -of course, it took me darned near three hours to write and edit.]

As I surfed, I wondered why – three years into this mess – there are no protest songs against the war. Or if there are, I’m not hearing them on the radio. I did a quick search on ‘Gulf War Protest Songs’, and after multiple clicks through multiple websites, following tantalizing clues and excerpts, I came across this.

John Davies is a curate in Liverpool, England, and has this posted on his website.

A song, written in 1991 during the first Gulf War. I’ll let it speak for – and by – itself.

IF THE WAR GOES ON

If the war goes on
and the children die of hunger,
and the old men weep
for the young men are no more,
and the women learn
how to dance without a partner
who will keep the score?

If the war goes on
and the truth is taken hostage;
and new terrors lead
to the need to euphemise,
when the calls for peace
are declared unpatriotic,
who’ll expose the lies?

If the war goes on
and the daily bread is terror,
and the voiceless poor
take the road as refugees;
when a nation’s pride
destines millions to be homeless,
who will heed their pleas

If the war goes on
and the rich increase their fortunes
and the arms sales soar
as new weapons are displayed,
when a fertile field
turns to-no-man’s-land tomorrow,
who’ll approve such trade?

If the war goes on
will we close the doors to heaven,
if the war goes on,
will we breach the gates of hell;
if the war goes on,
will we ever be forgiven,
if the war goes on….

Words & music John L. Bell & Graham Maule, music John L. Bell, copyright @ 1999, 2001, 2002 WGRG, Iona Community Glasgow G2 3DH, Scotland.