iraqi clerics against u.s. bases

jstreet go after hagee and lieberman

Don’t Go, Joe! (JStreet)

Even after Sen. McCain renounced Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement last week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is still standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Pastor Hagee, the man who preaches Hitler was only doing God’s bidding. Watch the video where Joe Lieberman calls Pastor Hagee “a man of God” at Hagee’s group’s conference last year. Then, click here to sign our “Don’t go, Joe!” petition to Sen. Lieberman asking him to withdraw his commitment to speak at Hagee’s Israel Summit in July.

the u.s. jewish vote

Does Obama Really Have a Jewish problem?
Jennifer Siegel, Forward, May 29, 2008 (extracts)

[...] The fate of the “Jewish vote” has, by now, become a perennial election-year topic, and its general outlines are drawn from undeniably relevant political facts : except for Jimmy Carter in 1980, no Democratic presidential candidate has failed to win over a majority of American Jews since at least 1928. With a higher-than-average propensity for voting and concentration in such swing states as Florida and Pennsylvania, American Jews have often made a difference in national campaigns. The GOP, meanwhile, has courted the community aggressively in recent years, with debatable impact : according to a 2006 survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee, 15% of American Jews now identify as Republican and nearly 30% consider themselves independent. President George W. Bush captured 22% of the Jewish vote nationwide in 2004, and John McCain—buoyed by his long pro-Israel record and by campaign support from close friend Joe Lieberman—is hoping to capture the highest share of the Jewish vote by any Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan, who earned 39% of the Jewish vote in 1980.

Statistics show that Jews are one of Obama’s strongest white constituencies—a key base the Illinois senator is working overtime to shore up, rather than a uniquely problematic weak spot. While Catholics, for example, have supported Hillary Clinton over Obama to a greater degree than white primary voters overall, Jewish voters have actually been more supportive of Obama than whites in general in seven out of eight primary states with significant Jewish populations—Florida included. In New York, Clinton’s home state, Obama’s share of the Jewish vote lagged four percentage points behind his performance with white voters. Moreover, a Gallup Poll released in May showed that 61% of Jewish voters nationwide prefer Obama versus 32% for McCain, compared with a margin in the general population of 45% to 43% [...]

all about dana “pig missile” perino

I really like this Marcy Wheeler stuff on Dana Perino. It’s seriously personal. I couldn’t help wondering about the origin of the elegant nickname “pig missile.” Well, it’s this:

Appearing on NPR’s “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me,” which aired over the weekend of Dec 8-9, 2007, Perino got into the spirit of things and told a story about herself that she had previously shared only in private: during a White House briefing, a reporter referred to the Cuban missile crisis, and she didn’t know what it was. Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 US-Soviet nuclear showdown, recalled,

I was panicked a bit because I really don’t know about the Cuban missile crisis. It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure. I came home and I asked my husband. I said, ‘Wasn’t that like the Bay of Pigs thing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Dana.’

olmert’s cigars

My comment to Gidi Weitz : Olmert’s Memo

Talkback
Title: Cigar smoking Name: Rowan City: London State: England
Ms. Glick has also been making fun of Olmert’s cigar smoking, over at the other place. I like her when she gets sarcastic. Mind you, her argument is completely wrong, in my view, and it’s interesting : she is using the ImageSat affair to pretend that Talansky is non-political, a sort of Soros type. I argue against that, that he is a hard right torpedo, and he probably wanted ImageSat so that the Israeli secret service could eventually use it to feed false satellite imagery to the world’s press. After all, military deception is an Israeli forte.

bush sends musharraf kiss of death

Bush backs Musharraf as Pakistani leader’s support wanes
Saeed Shah, McClatchy, May 30, 2008

Bush reached out (yuk—hate that phrase—RB) Friday to support longtime ally Musharraf, calling the embattled Pakistani president to assure him of continued US backing. Musharraf’s demise is now considered almost a foregone conclusion in Pakistan, but Bush’s intervention appeared to be a powerful signal that Washington wouldn’t welcome Musharraf’s exit. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in Washington,

The president reiterated the United States’ strong support for Pakistan, and he indicated he looked forward to President Musharraf’s continuing role in further strengthening US-Pakistani relations.

Pakistan is abuzz with speculation that Musharraf’s attempts to cling to power have collapsed, as his enemies step up their attacks, and even his supposed allies have gone silent. The rumors reached fever pitch in the last few days, with stories of a rift between the president and army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, forcing Musharraf to deny any differences with the military. Dan Markey, a former State Department official, now at the CFR in Washington, said,

This (Bush call) is a shoring up, an effort to demonstrate continued support. I have heard no serious rumblings of a change from the Bush administration on Musharraf. My impression is that they feel that there is not a lot to gain from losing this ally now, as they would get no credit for it.

Pakistan’s fragile coalition government, which came to power after elections in February, has taken an increasingly hard line against Musharraf, who rose to power in a 1999 military coup. Under Pakistan’s original constitution, power is supposed to rest with the prime minister and his government, with the president merely a ceremonial head of state. Musharraf has baulked at the government’s attempts to cut the powers he’s awarded himself, especially the ability to dismiss parliament and appoint the army chief. Hamid Gul, a retired general who formerly headed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, said,

The mandate (from the elections) was surely for getting rid of Musharraf. The Americans are trying to overturn the mandate of the people, but I don’t know if even Bush can save Pervez Musharraf from his current crisis.

Musharraf has been a crucial partner for the US in the anti-terrorism fight since Sept. 11, reversing Pakistan’s previous policy of supporting the Taliban. Pakistan’s instability under the new government—with intense political infighting in Islamabad and a failure to grapple with the country’s severe economic crunch—has alarmed Washington. The new administration also is negotiating peace deals with Pakistani militants along its border with Afghanistan. Such agreements in the past have led to increased attacks against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan [...]

that mclellan anecdote wasn’t about plame

McClellan’s Bush-to-Libby leak allegation
Eric Brewer, Raw Story, May 30, 2008

In Scott McClellan’s recent statements to the press regarding his apostasy, he says that one of the things that pushed him over the edge was the revelation on April 6, 2006, that President Bush had secretly authorized the selective release to reporters of classified information, something that both the president and his then-spokesman McClellan had been vigorously condemning in their public statements about the Valerie Plame leak case. McClellan told the Today Show’s Meredith Viera on Thursday morning,

I walk onto Air Force One and a reporter had yelled a question to the president trying to ask him a question about this revelation that had come out during the [Libby] legal proceedings. The revelation was that it was the president who had authorized, or enabled, Scooter Libby to go out there and talk about this information. And I told the president that that’s what the reporter was asking. He was saying that you, yourself, were the one that authorized the leaking of this information. And he said, ‘Yeah, I did.’ And I was kinda taken aback.

So “taken aback” evidently that he announced his resignation thirteen days later. At Friday’s morning gaggle in the White House briefing room I asked Press Secretary Dana Perino whether McClellan’s claim about what Bush said to him on Air Force One was true. The classified information McClellan was talking about was the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq, portions of which were leaked to reporters in the summer of 2003 as part of the Bush administration’s counter-attack on Joe Wilson, who had accused the White House of using twisted intelligence to support the invasion of Iraq. Yesterday, another reporter asked a similar question, but had interpreted Scott’s remark as referring to the Plame leak, which is not a claim McClellan explicitly makes. Today I asked Perino the following question (note: the gaggle was off-camera, and no official transcript was provided by the White House):

Me: Yesterday you were asked about Scott’s assertion that in early April 2006 he relayed to President Bush a reporter’s question about whether the president had personally authorized Scooter Libby’s leaking of classified information, to which the president replied, according to Scott, “Yeah, I did.” Did the president make that statement?
Perino : The question I got was whether or not the president had authorized the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity. That’s not what the book says. That’s what the question was, that’s not what the book says. And that’s the question that I didn’t answer because I knew that’s not what the book says.
Me: But can you answer my question, right now?
Perino : I didn’t understand your question, because you asked me about a question I was asked yesterday that was mischaracterized.
Me: Well, Scott has asserted that in early April of 2006 he relayed to President Bush a reporter’s question about whether the president had personally authorized Scooter Libby’s leaking of classified information, to which the president replied, according to Scott, “Yeah, I did.” Did the president say “Yeah, I did” to Scott?
Perino : I have no idea whether he said that or not.
Me: Well, have you asked him?
Perino : No, I haven’t. And I think it’s kind of unreasonable to expect anyone to remember a specific conversation like that. But let me just say one thing. That’s commenting specifically on the Libby and Plame case. Because it’s still a matter of civil litigation, I’m not going to get myself embroiled in that. I don’t think there’s anything improper about pushing back on the public record when it needs to be pushed back on. And the case that you’re talking about is the NIE on Iraq, and that was declassified.

At least that’s the story put out by the Bush administration and by Scooter Libby, who was convicted of two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements to the FBI, and one count of obstruction of justice. In reality, the NIE was “officially declassified” (those are Scott McClellan’s words, by the way) on July 18, ten days after Scooter Libby leaked it to the New York Times’s Judy Miller in their meeting in the St. Regis Hotel. But there was something else that Scooter leaked to Judy at that July 8 meeting. As firedoglake’s Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, Scooter Libby was asked to leak something to Judy Miller on July 8 that was so unprecedented, so hush-hush, so on the Q.T., that he wasn’t willing to do it until he had gotten assurances from Vice President Cheney that the president himself had authorized it. It doesn’t make sense that he would have been that worried about leaking the NIE, because he had already leaked the NIE twice before, to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post on June 27, and to David Sanger of the New York Times on July 2. So what was it then that made Scooter so nervous? The other thing he leaked to Judy that day at the St. Regis was that Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

no wonder the world hates america’s freedoms

FLDS raid appears to have backfired
Miguel Bustillo, Nicholas Riccardi, L A. Times, May 31, 2008

ELDORADO, TEXAS — As officials haggled Friday over how to return more than 400 children to their parents, it was becoming increasingly clear that Texas’ audacious attempt to rein in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had backfired–and become a lesson in the difficulty of cracking down on the 10,000-member polygamist sect. If you want to make any change … it has to go case by case, one child at a time,” said Ellen Marrus, co-director of the Center for Children, Law and Policy at the University of Houston. “It’s going to be very slow.”

The children, who have been in foster homes scattered around the state, were set to be reunited with their families beginning Monday. But the deal was complicated when a trial judge late Friday refused to approve it unless dozens of parents filed pledges not to leave Texas — a process that could take several days. Legal analysts said reuniting the FLDS families will make it harder to prove any children were abused. “It’s very hard to talk to a child about what’s going on in a household,” Marrus said, “when they’re in that household.”

Authorities raided the FLDS compound in April after receiving an anonymous phone call. Although they did not find the girl who said she was being sexually abused — the call appears to have been a hoax — officials said they discovered evidence that all of the children there were at risk. But an appellate court last week found that child-welfare officials had overstepped their authority. The Texas Supreme Court agreed, and on Thursday ordered the children released. Now, activists who long have complained that officials looked the other way while the sect practiced “divinely inspired” underage marriage are at a loss. “Who’s going to ever touch them again?” asked Flora Jessop, who fled a polygamous marriage as a teen. She was on the verge of tears Friday morning. “For something like this to happen, it kind of makes you wonder why you fight for stuff in this country.”

But state officials said they would seek to remove FLDS children from their parents’ custody on an individual basis, as well as pursue possible cases of abuse. “The child custody issues and other court proceedings do not impact the ongoing criminal investigation,” said Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for the Texas attorney general’s office. “The evidence collected from the polygamist compound and reviewed by investigators will dictate the direction of this investigation.” And Arizona authorities on Friday issued a warrant to collect DNA from the sect’s spiritual leader, Warren Jeffs, who is being held for trial there on sex abuse charges. Jeffs is believed to have fathered a child with a 12-year-old girl at the ranch, according to an affidavit. He was convicted last year in Utah of forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her adult cousin, and received a sentence of up to life in prison.

The Texas raid was not be the first time that the government had moved against the sect — which long ago broke away from the mainstream Mormon Church — and been disappointed by the results. In 1953, Arizona authorities arrested the sect in its entirety — then about 400 people — in the hamlet of Short Creek on the Utah border. They put the 236 children into foster care. Images of sobbing mothers sparked a backlash that cost the then-governor his reelection. Scarred by memories of that raid, officials in Utah and Arizona have preferred to prosecute individual abuse cases against FLDS members who live in their states. On Friday, they warned that history may repeat itself. “For 50 years, [the sect] used the Short Creek raid as a reason to keep their people secretive and isolated,” Utah Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff said in an interview. “We said that was not going to happen again. Well, it has happened again.” FLDS leaders, Shurtleff said, likely will cite the Texas raid “as a reason why they should not trust the government, and instead go to their [religious] leaders first” with complaints of sexual abuse.

The sect built its Yearning for Zion Ranch just outside Eldorado, a dusty west Texas hamlet, four years ago. Its members attracted attention from locals, who were unnerved by the sight of FLDS women in body-length prairie dresses coming and going from the walled compound. Many here cheered the raids, but on Friday residents were fuming at the outcome. “I absolutely don’t agree with what they do,” Curtis Phillips, 33, said of the FLDS as he worked the register at the town’s feed and mercantile store. “But blowing in that ranch like cowboys and taking all those kids — that was just stupid. That’s why people like me don’t trust the government.”

Curtis Griffin, 45, owner of the local fuel depot, counts many FLDS members as customers. He blamed Sheriff David Doran, who is up for reelection, for mischaracterizing the entire sect as pedophiles. “I said from the word go, if there’s sex with underage girls, nail their butt,” said Griffin, 45. “But nail the right people. We’re going to wind up with a $30-million bill here in this little county because these people didn’t have their ducks in a row.” The town also was abuzz over an anticipated mass voter registration by the FLDS. Hours after the court first ruled against the state, two members of the sect walked into the county clerk’s office with what amounted to a declaration of war. The men requested 300 voter registration forms, a potentially tide-turning number in a county with 1,800 voters. Doran, who has been sheriff here for 12 years, tried to downplay the threat. “I’m not worried about it. The citizens have always stood behind me, and if the community feels this is an attempt to take over Schleicher County ( that’s all it needed – RB), I know they’ll stand together,” Doran said. “Once we begin impaneling some grand juries and the criminal case comes to light, we’ll see the tide turn once again.”

talansky’s satellite investments

My comment to
Padded Pocket Politicians
Caroline Glick, JPost, May 30, 2008

11. I knew about this satellite business weeks ago

I have kept it in mind, for exactly the reasons that Caroline G. suggests, but the evidence that Talansky is a hardcore rightist is overwhelming. Therefore, it is more logical to assume that his purpose regarding ImageSat was to enable it to be used as a channel for our friends in Herzliya to feed false images to the world press at some future date.

Rowan – England (05/30/2008 19:02)

more pastor problems for obama