by TChris

The right wing built its power by embracing extremism, but surely those who still claim to be “compassionate conservatives” will publicly oppose this hate mongering:

Members of a church say God is punishing American soldiers for defending the United States, a country that harbors gays, and they brought their anti-gay message to the funerals Saturday of two Tennessee soldiers killed in Iraq. …

The Rev. Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist Church in, Topeka, Kan., contends that American soldiers are being killed in Iraq as vengeance from God for protecting a country that harbors gays. …

The church members carried signs and shouted things such as "God hates fags" and "God hates you."

Remember when the left was denounced for “fuzzy thinking”? What about denouncing unthinking hatred?

by TChris

“Survivor” might be reality TV in the US, but it’s a way of life in Iraq. The invasion of Iraq has nonetheless given Iraq’s TV stations an opportunity to develop their own reality TV series. The bombing of homes spawned “Materials and Labor,” a show inspired by “This Old House” that might have been called “This Destroyed House.”

The same network also broadcasts a weekly show called "Congratulations!" featuring producers who help young, poor couples marry, and another that follows TV crews on road trips to hand out $1,000 to lottery winners.

This summer, a rival network, Sumeria, began running "Iraq Star," an amateur singing competition that bears more than a passing resemblance to "American Idol."

Here’s a sad commentary:

"This is the only good thing we've acquired from the American occupation," Majid al-Samarraie, the writer of "Materials and Labor," said as he watched the reconstruction of Ms. Ismail's home.

Via Crooks and Liars: Oh those high class Repubs:

One more you are all familiar with, but for me, as the mother of a kid who is in the draft-age range, it's the one that really gets my heartstrings going.

I think military recruiters who target teenagers in high school when our country is in engaged in an unnecessary war are the source of evil. My response to them as a mother is, "Over my dead body." True, I'm blessed to have a kid who realizes that repaying educational loans is preferable to promises of a free education by military recruiters. For kids who don't recognize the distinction, or who don't understand that loans are out there for everyone, ask yourselves, what's the benefit of a promise of a free future education if you're dead?

[second graphic via Buzzflash]

Frank Rich is still on a roll and his dice just get hotter and hotter. Don't miss "Echoes of Vietnam" (subtitled "The Vietnamization of Bush's Vacation")in the Sunday New York Times.

The Democrats are hoping that if they do nothing, they might inherit the earth as the Bush administration goes down the tubes. Whatever the dubious merits of this Kerryesque course as a political strategy, as a moral strategy it's unpatriotic. The earth may not be worth inheriting if Iraq continues to sabotage America's ability to take on Iran and North Korea, let alone Al Qaeda.

As another politician from the Vietnam era, Gary Hart, observed last week, the Democrats are too cowardly to admit they made a mistake three years ago, when fear of midterm elections drove them to surrender to the administration's rushed and manipulative Iraq-war sales pitch. So now they are compounding the original error as the same hucksters frantically try to repackage the old damaged goods.

There's a lot of tension and a big law enforcement presence in Crawford today as Bush supporters came to town. The Brad Show is broadcasting live with Air America radio now.

David Swanson of After Downing Street is in Crawford blogging about Camp Casey. He writes:

I came to Crawford today, and it's a little different from DC in several ways, but mostly it's hotter. I've been to both Camp Caseys, and am blogging this from the cool of the Crawford Peace House. At Camp Casey 1, I went across the road and talked to the half-dozen pro-war protesters. (There are police in the middle who have declared that there must be no interaction, but I didn't ask their permission.) I asked the pro-warers what they would tell Cindy Sheehan her son died for. Some of them couldn't come up with any reason for the war. A couple of them came up with this: Saddam Hussein would not have allowed Cindy Sheehan to protest on his road, and the war is being fought to protect that right in the US.

by TChris

Up against (and a bit beyond) another extended deadline, the Iraqi National Assembly is unlikely to vote on a draft constitution. The newly improvised plan: skip the vote and send the draft to the people in a referendum.

The decision by the Shiite leadership to bypass the Sunni Arabs provoked threats from the Sunnis that they would call on their people to reject the constitution when it goes before the voters in October.

This isn't the plan the Bush administration has been hawking.

Barring some last-minute deal, the decision by the Shiites to move ahead without the Sunni Arabs would mark a huge blow to efforts by the Bush administration to bring the leaders of the Sunni community into the negotiations over the Iraqi constitution.

What happened to the "do-over" plan?

Former CIA Analyst Larry Johnson writes over at David Corn's site:

Staying the course and enduring further casualties while the insurgency grows stronger is an insane policy. If we persist on that front we will end up strengthening the hand of Islamic extremists and their role within the Iraqi insurgency.

Our choice is simple--either we invest in the military resources and personnel required to defeat the Sunni insurgents and allow the Shia and Kurds to consolidate power or we withdraw and let the Shia, Sunni, and Kurds find their own solution. We cannot ask our soldiers and Marines to give their lives and sacrifice their bodies for a new Islamic state.

Gary Hart has an op-ed in today's Washington Post about the war in Iraq. It's wrong. It was a mistake. We are "light-years" from the original purported mission. It's a "hornet's nest." He asks, who will say "no more?"

The op-ed also takes a swipe at the complicit Democrats. This is not the way to resurrect the party, Hart argues.

But what will history say about an opposition party that stands silent while all this goes on? My generation of Democrats jumped on the hot stove of Vietnam and now, with its members in positions of responsibility, it is afraid of jumping on any political stove. In their leaders, the American people look for strength, determination and self-confidence, but they also look for courage, wisdom, judgment and, in times of moral crisis, the willingness to say: "I was wrong."

To stay silent during such a crisis, and particularly to harbor the thought that the administration's misfortune is the Democrats' fortune, is cowardly. In 2008 I want a leader who is willing now to say: "I made a mistake, and for my mistake I am going to Iraq and accompanying the next planeload of flag-draped coffins back to Dover Air Force Base. And I am going to ask forgiveness for my mistake from every parent who will talk to me."

It's a very good read.

Update: Kevin Drum offers similar thoughts about who will be first among the Democrats in this op-ed in today's LA Times.

Equality Now reports that the rights of women in Iraq are in great danger in light of the current draft of the constitution of Iraq.

They are asking people to contact the following individuals immediately, as the next 24 to 48 hours are critical. All of them are playing or can play strong advisory roles in the drafting of the new constitution. Ask them to use all of their influence to support Iraqi women’s call for a constitution that protects their equality and human rights.

• President Jalal Talabani
  Baghdad, Iraq
  E-mail: presidentialprotocol.iraq@gmail.com
  Address letters to: “Dear President Talabani,”
  

Cindy Sheehan writes at Huffington Post that she's going back to Crawford.

I'm coming back to Crawford for my son. As long as the president, who sent him to die in a senseless war, is in Crawford, that is where I belong. I came here two and a half weeks ago for one reason, to try and see the president and get an answer to a very simple question: What is the noble cause that he says my son died for?

Good. We need her there.

Move over, John Walker Lindh. You no longer hold the title of "American Taliban." Daily Kos explains - it's because the American Radical Right has taken the title.

Is there any doubt that the American Taliban has more in common with our Islamic fundamentalist enemies? They're cut from the same cloth -- the belief that a system of secular rules and laws must be replaced with "God's laws".

And while the religions may be different, the core of them is not -- opposition to rival faiths, hostility to science, interference in people's private lives, control over women's bodies, an irrational belief in the supremacy of the male over female, militancy, anti-intellectualism and a rejection of logic, an unassailable belief in their own righrousness, and the deifying of certain unelectable, unaccountable individuals as "spokesmen for god", be it Pat Robertson or the Ayatollahs.

The American Taliban wants for the U.S. no less than what Iran has, and Iraq will soon have.