Urban Hamid's Tales of Tragedy

Discovered a poignant blog www.urbanhamid.com about what happened to an Iraqi man's uncle and cousin.

Because Rumsfeld threw out the 1400 page State Department report detailing how we could avoid the current disaster in Iraq, he - and we - unleashed a Pandora's box of revenge in Iraq. What none of us realized is that Saddam Hussein kept this kind of "revenge killing" under control because he was just as brutal.

But now there are hundreds of "Saddams" killing people right and left. The news has been even more horrific lately. Hundreds have been killed in just days.

It's pointless to waste energy ranting against Rumsfeld. Bush won't fire him nor ever admit he made a mistake there. Not, at least, until the American people stare him down as we did over Katrina. Only then will he admit error.

Forget Bush - he's a blind pawn who will never suffer any consequences for any of this other than going down in the world's history books as the worst president we've ever had. Fault finding just wastes our energy

The question is: How do we help the people of Iraq?

As horrible a bloodbath as it will be when U.S. troops leave Iraq, it will not be any worse than it is right now.

We need to get out. And you know what will happen? What has to happen? Another tyrant will take over. Another Iraqi who tortures and murders will gather up an army and stage a coup against the new Iraqi government.

And the Iraqi people will suffer doubly as another monster "out monsters" the terrorists to restore order.

But he'll restore order. And Iraq will be back where it was, only worse: with a destroyed infrastructure and thousands of families in mourning.

But as long as the U.S. is in there, the common person is torn. They are, I'm convinced, half on the side of those creating chaos because they - like we - know if there weren't terrorists blowing everything up, Rumsfeld would have marched through Iraq to Iran by now and be on his way to blow up Syria.

There's no fatwas issued against Bin Laden, et al because everyone - the people and the clerics - are caught between hell and a beheading. They don't want to live in an occupied homeland forever and they're being slaughtered by their own people who will do ANYTHING to get us out.

And there is that huge part of that population that wants revenge, was waiting for revenge against the Baathists, the Kurds, whoever.

Did you ever try to save some small and helpless creature only to tear its leg off or injure it mortally?

That's what we've done to Iraq.

God help us. We've got to stop tromping around creating more damage and just get out.

If you haven't written to Congress, to your representatives and senators, it's time.

And send a letter to the editor of your local paper. Say we can't afford Iraq and Katrina's cleanup, say whatever you want.

But the bottom line is that Iraq can't afford us there anymore.

And that includes the mercenary army we have there protecting contractors - not the Iraqi people - at both their and our expense.

Neo-Cons: A Long And Deadly Arm

The Bush Machine has a long and deadly arm. The destruction of institutions, environment, lives and careers goes on.

If you missed it, Elizabeth Reyes, an attorney for the Texas Secretary of State in Austin was fired last week. Why? She answered tax questions, that applied to Karl Rove, for a reporter.

From the AP:

"Rove received a homestead tax deduction on his home in Washington, even though he had not been eligible for the benefit. Rove was eligible for the deduction when he bought the home in 2001, but a change in the tax law in 2002 made the deduction available only to property owners who do not vote elsewhere. Rove is registered to vote in Texas.

The tax office admitted the mistake, saying it failed to rescind the deduction, and Rove agreed to reimburse the city an estimated $3,400 in back taxes, the Post reported.

Rove is registered to vote in Kerr County, Texas, where he and his wife own two rental homes that he claims as his residence. But two local residents told the Post they had never seen Rove there.

The Post reported Saturday that when its reporter called the Texas Secretary of State's office for her story, she was told the press officer was on vacation and she was transferred to Reyes.

The attorney told the reporter that it was potential vote fraud in Texas to register in a place where you don't actually live, and she was quoted as saying Rove's cottages don't "sound like a residence to me, because it's not a fixed place of habitation."

The story about Rove's tax deductions ran on September 3rd in the Washington Post . Ms. Reyes, 30, was quoted. She was subsequently fired. A superior told her that her bosses and Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, who had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Republicans and President Bush, were upset about the article.

The kicker? Reyes didn't know she was talking to a reporter and Rove's name was never mentioned.

The second kicker? There is no policy in the office of the Texas Secretary of State that bars Reyes or anyone else from speaking to the media.

This is the intimidation that has kept the media from descending upon Bush et all and exposing that the Emperor has no clothes.

Which is a nice segueway into this next tidbit.

Fox 5, a Fox affiliate television station in New York, rejected Brian Ellner's campaign commercial. One of nine Democrats running in a local primary, Ellner's 30-second ad pans the Republican party line, policies and, of course, their leader George Bush.

Bush's head is superimposed onto a bare torso and a voiceover states, "He claims he's a uniter, but New Yorkers know the emperor has no clothes."

The truth would hurt Bush if it got out, so Fox wouldn't air it.

The argument used was that the ad was "disrespectful" to the President.

Well excuse me, but Bush has been far more than just "disrespectful" of our country, our institutions, our people and our environment. And he deserves to be outed.

But these actions are what we've all grown to expect from a finely coordinated and highly oiled political machine that depends upon keeping itself and its actions hidden from the American eye.

We haven't begun to reap the repercussions of all the damage Bush has done in the last five years. The fallout from Katrina has revealed the tip of the iceberg.

In All The President's Friends Paul Krugman talks about FEMA being the shell of what it was prior to the Bush administration's budget cuts and personnel changes, prior to being made into a subservient arm of Homeland Security with a racehorse commissioner at its head.

His message is that what we have seen in regard to the ineptness of FEMA is a hint of things to come. Budget cuts, ill-advised appointments and personnel changes have also afflicted the EPA, PBS and The Treasury Department.

Even the Department of Homeland Security has seen budget cuts and, created by Bush, has been on shaky ground since day one when Bush attempted to put the agency in the hands of Bernard Kerik. Since then there has been a "steady exodus" of counterterrorism officials from the agency, thanks to Bush's embroiling us in his ill-conceived and disastrous war in Iraq.

Of the EPA, Krugman warns of the probability of an environmental cover-up going on as you read this, citing an interview in The Independent, the British newspaper, with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst in the agency's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response.

Kaufman, whom Krugman suspects is planning to join the exodus, was quoted as saying, "The budget has been cut and inept political hacks have been put in key positions."

We know Bush quietly changed 90% of our environmental laws through a process of re-regulating them and, thereby, rolling back health standards by forty years.

Of the U.S. Treasury, which has fallen in prestige and effectiveness since the 2000 election, Krugman writes that the "... symbol of that fall is the fact that John Snow, who was obviously picked for his loyalty rather than his qualifications, is still Treasury secretary."

"Less obvious to the public is the hollowing out of the department's expertise. Many experienced staff members have left since 2000, and a number of key positions are either empty or filled only on an acting basis."

"'There is no policy,'" an economist who was leaving the department after 22 years told The Washington Post, back in 2002. "'If there are no pipes, why do you need a plumber?'" So the best and brightest have been leaving.

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

The only explanation for all this damage and for involving us in a war that saps our strength and resources and kills our youth is this: Neo-Cons do not love America. They are simply using her. They do not love Americans, they see us as pawns in their game.

Next blog: Cheney plans to nuke Iran when the next terror attack occurs on U.S. soil - no matter who is to blame.

Don't Let Bush Reframe The Blame

In writing about Hurricane Katrina, George Lakoff states:

"This was not just incompetence (though there was plenty of it), not just a natural disaster (though nature played its part), not just Bush (though he is accountable). This is a failure of moral and political philosophy -- a deadly failure. That is the deep truth behind this human tragedy, humanly caused."

The fact is that right-wing conservatives are destroying our country.

Grover Norquist, policy crafter for the Republican Reich, spoke in a room of 4000 very wealthy Bush supporters after the results of the 2004 presidential election. He announced with glee that Republicans would now "stick a knife in government and kill it."

That is just what conservative and Republican politicians have been doing, and as we have seen with Hurricane Katrina, their policies are working, with devastating results. The reason? According to Lakoff it is because:

"Their main value is 'Rely on individual discipline and initiative.' The central principle: 'Government has no useful role.' The only common good is the sum of individual goods.

It's the difference between 'We're all in this together' and 'You're on your own, buddy.'

It's the difference between 'Every citizen is entitled to protection' and 'You're only entitled to what you can afford.'

It's the difference between connection and separation.

It is this difference in moral and political philosophy that lies behind the tragedy of Katrina."

"A lack of empathy and responsibility accounts for Bush's indifference and the government's delay in response, as well as the failure to plan for the security of the most vulnerable: the poor, the infirm, the aged, the children."

"Eliminating as much as possible of the role of government accounts for the demotion of FEMA from cabinet rank, for Michael Brown's view that FEMA was a federal entitlement program to be cut, for the budget cuts in levee repair, for placing more responsibility on state and local government than they could handle, for the failure to fully employ the military, and for the lax regulation of toxic waste dumps contributing to a "toxic stew."

Incidentally, for those who are unaware, Bush appointed Michael Brown to his current post. Brown's expertise is not in disaster management, for he has no experience there. He was the judges and stewards commissioner of a racehorse association.

In his usual style, Bush ignores calls to fire Brown. (I'm waiting for him to give us the now familiar pep talk about what a great public servant Brown is.) Instead the right-wing machine is blaming the Mayor of New Orleans and local officials to try and get the heat off itself.

But Mayor Ray Nagin and his Police Chief, Eddie Compass are heroes. I don't think the American people are going to fall for Bush's lies, having seen and heard Nagin and Compass on television and heard their first-hand accounts.

In addition, Senator Mary Landrieu, after spending the last ten days in Katrina's wake in her home state, had this to say:

"If one person criticizes them" [local officials such as the Mayor of New Orleans] "or says one more thing" [to criticize local officials, even if it is]"...the president of the United States, he will hear from me...One more word about it after this show airs and I might likely have to punch him [the President]. Literally."

"Everybody anticipated the breach of the levee, Mr. President," Landrieu said, in contradiction of Bush's statement last week that no one "anticipated the breach of the levees." And as she addressed the U.S. Senate, she noted that even "...the clay figurine, Mr. Bill, from 'Saturday Night Live'" anticipated the breach, asking "How can it be that Mr. Bill was better informed than Mr. Bush?"

Simple. He has those wonderful right-wing values and principles: he doesn't care enough to be informed.

Unfortunately, Democrats are letting Bush spin it his way and, as Lakoff says, once the American people accept the spin, there will be no changing it.

So write to your Democratic representatives right now. Send them Lakoff's article and tell them: get with it or we'll have this type of tragedy again.

Republicans can't seem to help themselves, they just have no heart. Majority Leader Dennis Hastert doesn't believe money should be wasted on rebuilding New Orleans and Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) of Baton Rouge was overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

If we don't unite and start speaking in one voice to present an alternative to this mindset, we each will hold a much bigger share of the blame for the next disaster.

We must demand that the Democratic party create a compassionate progressive agenda for the American people to follow, based upon compassion and concern for the common good.

Judging from the amount of courage, compassion and bravery out there, the American people - our people - are ready, willing and waiting for it.

Ignorance + Tax Cuts = Chaos

In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as "among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country," directly behind a terrorist strike on New York City.

In 2002 two Louisiana reporters wrote an article predicting everything wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

Yet we have been caught unprepared. Why? 1) No one wanted to spend the money to prepare and 2) most people spend more time watching American Idol than in educating themselves about the issues they face as citizens in a Democracy and 3) we have no real leadership.

While Katrina was targeting New Orleans, President Bush decided to continue his vacation, stopping by the Pueblo El Mirage RAP and Golf Resort in El Mirage, California, to hawk his Medicare drug benefit plan.

On Sunday, President Bush said, "I want to thank all the folks at the federal level and the state level and the local level who have taken this storm seriously."

And this is the problem we have with President Bush and why he is such a terrible President. He is a figure head for corporations, not a leader of people. He delegates and remains blissfully unaware of the consequences of his actions.

President Bush is the pretty boy, the likeable guy recruited to get the votes for all the hard-nosed corporate defenders and empire builders who wanted to get control of the government.

Bush is not a bad man, he's an unaware man. He can't see the forest for the trees, so he believes in giving the okay when others want to cut them down.

According to AmericanProgress Report, two months ago, President Bush took an ax to budget funds that would have helped New Orleans prepare for Katrina. The New Orleans branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suffered a "record $71.2 million" reduction in federal funding, a 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels.

Reports at the time said that, thanks to the cuts, "major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. ... Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now."

In addition, since The Gulf Coast wetlands form a "natural buffer that helps protect New Orleans from storms," slowing hurricanes down as they approach from sea, President Bush pledged to uphold the "no net loss" wetland policy his father initiated.

He didn't keep his word. Bush rolled back tough wetland policies set by the Clinton administration, ordering federal agencies "to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands and an untold number of waterways nationwide."

Last year, four environmental groups issued a joint report showing that administration policies had allowed "developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands."

The result? New Orleans may be in even greater danger in the future: "Studies show that if the wetlands keep vanishing over the next few decades, then you won't need a giant storm to devastate New Orleans -- a much weaker, more common kind of hurricane could destroy the city too."

On top of this, President Bush gutted the agency responsible for developing hurricane responses. Again, from American Progress Report (which has links to confirm their statements)

Forward-thinking federal plans with titles like "Issues and Options in Flood Hazards Management," "Floods: A National Policy Concern," and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management" would be particularly valuable in a time of increasingly intense hurricanes.

Unfortunately, the agency that used to produce them -- the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) -- was gutted by Gingrich conservatives several years ago.

As Chris Mooney (who presciently warned of the need to bulk up hurricane defenses in New Orleans last May) noted on August 29th, "If we ever return to science-based policymaking based on professionalism and expertise, rather than ideology, an office like OTA would be very useful in studying how best to save a city like New Orleans --and how Congress might consider appropriating money to achieve this end."

Of course we all know much of our National Guard - our first responders to a national disaster - is in Iraq.

Roughly 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is currently deployed in Iraq, where guardsmen and women make up about four of every 10 soldiers.

Additionally, "Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators" used by the Louisiana Guard are also tied up abroad.

"The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," Louisiana National Guard Lt. Colonel Pete Schneider told reporters earlier this month.

"Recruitment is down dramatically, mostly because prospective recruits are worried about deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan or another country," the AP reported recently.

"I used to be able to get about eight people a month," said National Guard 1st Sgt. Derick Young, a New Orleans recruiter. "Now, I'm lucky if I can get one."

President Bush continues to help fuel global warming which contributes to the earth's "need" for hurricanes to equalize temperatures. In fact, he still cannot grasp that a call to conserve gas, drive smaller cars and develop alternative energy sources would be in our best interest. Certainly we see it is madness to drill in the Gulf of Mexico considering the trend of more and stronger hurricanes.

Yet, there was no call for conservation during his speech today.

As the Progress Report has noted, data increasingly suggests that human-induced global warming is making these phenomena more dangerous and extreme than ever.

"The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service," science author Ross Gelbspan writes. "Its real name is global warming."

AP reported recently on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis that shows that "major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific ... have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent" since the 1970s, trends that are "closely linked to increases in the average temperatures of the ocean surface and also correspond to increases in global average atmospheric temperatures during the same period."

Yet just last week, as Katrina was gathering steam and looming over the Gulf, the Bush administration released new CAFE standards that actually encourage automakers to produce bigger, less fuel efficient vehicles, while preventing states from taking strong, progressive action to reverse global warming.

Bottom line, neither President Bush nor 80% or our electorate understand what's at stake with these decisions. They don't understand the science behind Global Warming, stem cell research or evolution.

In fact, according to the article Scientific Savvy? In U.S. Not Much one out of every 5 adult Americans believes the sun revolves around the earth, a concept disproved in the 17th century.

Our nation elected President Bush and elected him, mainly on a platform of tax cuts, not on facts about how he would proceed once he got in office.

Just as those who bothered to open their eyes could see the havoc that a category 5 hurricane like Katrina was going to cause, so did many people foresee the damage George Bush would do as President.

Still others of us saw the disaster that would grow out of waging an unwinnable war in Iraq.

One wonders if the average American is beginning to understand that a $300 tax cut is not a reason to elect a President. The irony is that the small cuts most people got were simply shills to cover the mammoth cuts for the rich and super rich.

But it's for sure we have an information deficit in this country that is even less amusing than our National Debt.

How do we counter a media that fills our minds, not with helpful information and facts, but with pap and misinformation that keep us ignorant and focused on "being entertained?"

How do we resurrect education as a valued goal when there seems to be open hostility to education - and especially science - as "elite" or "snobbish?"

How do underpaid teachers educate an unwilling population of children seduced by the mindlessness of television from reading and critical thinking?

These are huge challenges. We need to keep blogging and trying to spread the truth, as we understand it. In addition, we need to concentrate on brainstorming answers as opposed to complaining.

Meanwhile, donate to the Red Cross if you can.

Also, if you can offer housing to those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, MoveOn.Org is working to match up housing with those who need it.

Keep the faith.