Via The Australian:

Iraq war 'caused slowdown in the US'

Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent | February 28, 2008

THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $US3trillion ($3.3 trillion) compared with the $US50-$US60-billion predicted in 2003.

Australia also faced a real bill much greater than the $2.2billion in military spending reported last week by Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston, Professor Stiglitz said, pointing to higher oil prices and other indirect costs of the wars.

Professor Stiglitz told the Chatham House think tank in London that the Bush White House was currently estimating the cost of the war at about $US500 billion, but that figure massively understated things such as the medical and welfare costs of US military servicemen.

The war was now the second-most expensive in US history after World War II and the second-longest after Vietnam, he said.

The spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit.

"The regulators were looking the other way and money was being lent to anybody this side of a life-support system," he said.

That led to a housing bubble and a consumption boom, and the fallout was plunging the US economy into recession and saddling the next US president with the biggest budget deficit in history, he said.

Professor Stiglitz, an academic at the Columbia Business School and a former economic adviser to president Bill Clinton, said a further $US500 billion was going to be spent on the fighting in the next two years and that could have been used more effectively to improve the security and quality of life of Americans and the rest of the world.

The money being spent on the war each week would be enough to wipe out illiteracy around the world, he said.

Just a few days' funding would be enough to provide health insurance for US children who were not covered, he said.

The public had been encouraged by the White House to ignore the costs of the war because of the belief that the war would somehow pay for itself or be paid for by Iraqi oil or US allies.

"When the Bush administration went to war in Iraq it obviously didn't focus very much on the cost. Larry Lindsey, the chief economic adviser, said the cost was going to be between $US100billion and $US200 billion - and for that slight moment of quasi-honesty he was fired.

"(Then defence secretary Donald) Rumsfeld responded and said 'baloney', and the number the administration came up with was $US50 to $US60 billion. We have calculated that the cost was more like $US3 trillion.

"Three trillion is a very conservative number, the true costs are likely to be much larger than that."

Five years after the war, the US was still spending about $US50billion every three months on direct military costs, he said.

Professor Stiglitz and another Clinton administration economist, Linda Bilmes, have produced a book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, pulling together their research on the true cost of the war, which does not include the cost to Iraq.

One of the greatest discrepancies is that the official figures do not include the long-term healthcare and social benefits for injured servicemen, who are surviving previously fatal attacks because of improved body armour.

"The ratio of injuries to fatalities in a normal war is 2:1. In this war they admitted to 7:1 but a true number is (something) like 15:1."

Some 100,000 servicemen have been diagnosed with serious psychological problems and the soldiers doing the most tours of duty have not yet returned.

Professor Stiglitz attributed to the Iraq war $US5-$US10 of the almost $US80-a-barrel increase in oil prices since the start of the war, adding that it would have been reasonable to attribute more than $US35 of that rise to the war.

He said the British bill for its role in the war was about 20 times the pound stg. 1billion ($2.1 billion) that former prime minister Tony Blair estimated before the war.

The British Government was yesterday ordered to release details of its planning for the war, when the country's Information Commissioner backed a Freedom of Information request for the minutes of two cabinet meetings in the days before the war.

Commissioner Richard Thomas said that because of the importance of the decision to go to war, the public interest in disclosing the minutes outweighed the public interest in withholding the information.

I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all – a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.

Equality is a moral imperative. That’s why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws. I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment. But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage.

Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate. While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether. Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does. I have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.

The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense. We should have age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception. We should pass the JUSTICE Act to combat infection within our prison population. And we should lift the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. In addition, local governments can protect public health by distributing contraceptives.

We also need a president who’s willing to confront the stigma – too often tied to homophobia – that continues to surround HIV/AIDS. I confronted this stigma directly in a speech to evangelicals at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and will continue to speak out as president. That is where I stand on the major issues of the day. But having the right positions on the issues is only half the battle. The other half is to win broad support for those positions. And winning broad support will require stepping outside our comfort zone. If we want to repeal DOMA, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and implement fully inclusive laws outlawing hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace, we need to bring the message of LGBT equality to skeptical audiences as well as friendly ones – and that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. I brought this message of inclusiveness to all of America in my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention. I talked about the need to fight homophobia when I announced my candidacy for President, and I have been talking about LGBT equality to a number of groups during this campaign – from local LGBT activists to rural farmers to parishioners at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King once preached.

Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans. But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.

Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.

Barack Obama

Because people pay attention.  Seen at the corner of 14th Street and Valencia, Mission District:

Nsa

from ThinkProgress:

William F. Buckley died last night.  I've gone back and watched several speeches and debates of his during his heyday in the 60's and 70's (his debates with Noam Chomsky are especially interesting), and while i certainly don't agree with most of what he believed, i appreciated his quick humor and-- most of all-- his civility towards those he disagreed with.  He also was, as far as i am concerned, more grounded and consistent in his conservative philosophy than most so-called conservatives are today. 

Last year, Johann Hari of The New Republic did a piece on the annual "cruise" that The National Review puts on, where you can drop a few thousand to ride around the Caribbean on a large boat with columnists and bloggers from The National Review-- a publication founded by Buckley which serves as the standard bearer of conservative thought in America.

Hari's account of his trip (he wryly referred to it at one point as "the Muslims are Coming cruise") includes this passage that to me perfectly illustrates just how far the conservative movement has strayed from Buckley's vision:

A fracture-line in the lumbering certainty of American conservatism is opening right before my eyes. Following the break, Norman Podhoretz and William Buckley—two of the grand old men of the Grand Old Party—begin to feud. Podhoretz will not stop speaking—“I have lots of ex-friends on the left; it looks as if I’m going to have some ex-friends on the right, too,” he rants—and Buckley says to the chair. Just take the mike, there’s no other way.” He says it with a smile, but with heavy eyes.

Podhoretz and Buckley now inhabit opposite poles of post-September 11 American conservatism, and they stare at totally different Iraqs.  Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who traveled through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in America’s power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time.  Today, he is a bristling gray ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been “an amazing success.”  He waves his fist and declaims, “There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria. ….This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false.  It couldn’t have gone better.”  He wants more wars, and fast.  He is “certain” Bush will bomb Iran, and “thank God” for that.

Buckley is an urbane old reactionary, drunk on doubts. He founded National Review in 1955—when conservatism was viewed in polite society as a mental affliction—and he has always been skeptical of appeals to ‘the people,’ preferring the eternal top-down certainties of Catholicism. He united with Podhoretz in mutual hatred of Godless Communism, but, slouching into his eighties, he possesses a worldview that is ill-suited for the fight to bring democracy to the Muslim world. He was a ghostly presence on the cruise at first, appearing only briefly to shake a few hands. But now he has emerged, and his is fighting.

“Aren’t you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?” Buckley snaps at Podhoretz.  He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him that Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired.  “No,” Podhoretz replies. “As I say, they were shipped to Syria.  During Gulf War One, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran.”  He says he is “heartbroken” by this “rise of defeatism on the right.” He adds, apropos of nothing, “There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we are winning.”

The audience cheers Podhoretz.  The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused.  Doesn’t he sound like the liberal media?  Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley “a coward.” His wife nods and says, “Buckley’s an old man,” tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.

Ladies and gentlemen: I give you the modern conservative movement.

"There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush.  I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. … So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable."

"If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign." Buckley says.

-- William F. Buckley, when asked about the Iraq War and President Bush's foreign policy legacy.

My favorite movie of the year was the one about the heartless con man who's obsessed with finding oil.

Its called No End In Sight. 

-- Bill Maher

If the nation's top law-enforcement official and top intelligence official admit that President Bush broke the law, why can't we impeach him?
______________________________________________________________

Saturday February 23, 2008 08:46 EST

McConnell/Mukasey: Eavesdropping outside of FISA is "illegal"

(updated below)

The White House yesterday escalated its most brazen, Orwellian campaign of the last eight years -- shrilly accusing House Democrats of jeopardizing the nation's security by allowing the Protect America Act to expire even though it's the President and House Republicans who blocked any extensions of that law. As the Associated Press pointed out at the bottom of its story:

McConnell acknowledged last week that the White House's refusal to extend the wiretapping law was meant to pressure Congress to pass the Senate bill.

Ponder what it says about our press corps that the White House knows it can (a) block all attempts to extend the PAA and then (b) spend the next several weeks blaming Democrats for helping the Terrorists by allowing the PAA to expire. I know I've made that point before, but this one is so brazen, so transparent and audacious, that it just hasn't yet ceased to amaze.

In any event, the two honorable, apolitical, completely trustworthy Bush cabinet members -- DNI Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey -- yesterday released a letter addressed to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes which is basically a written adaptation of the scary 24 video produced this week by the House Republicans, breathlessly claiming that the nation "is now more vulnerable to terrorist attack and other foreign threats" because of the PAA's expiration.

The letter contains the now-standard fear-mongering claims that telecoms will stop cooperating (and even have stopped cooperating already) with government surveillance in the absence of the PAA (an absence caused single-handedly by the President) -- i.e., "we have lost intelligence information this past week," etc. But there was one passage in the letter which seems significant and worth highlighting.

In the letter from Chairman Reyes to which McConnell and Mukasey are responding, Reyes pointed out that under the still-existing FISA law, the Government is free to commence surveillance without a warrant where there is no time to obtain one. In response, McConnell and Mukasey wrote:

[You imply that the emergency authorization process under FISA is an adequate substitute for the legislative authorities that have elapsed. This assertion reflects a basic misunderstanding about FISA's emergency authorization provisions. Specifically, you assert that the National Security Agency (NSA) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) "may begin surveillance immediately" in an emergency situation. FISA requires far more, and it would be illegal to proceed as you suggest].

Wow, what a blockbuster revelation. Apparently, as it turns out, in the United States it's "illegal" for the Government to eavesdrop on Americans without first complying with the requirements of FISA. Who would have known? It's a good thing we don't have a Government that would ever do that, or a Congress that would ever tolerate such "illegal" behavior. And it's so moving to hear the Bush administration earnestly explain that they are so hamstrung by FISA's requirements that we are all deeply vulnerable to the Terrorists, but they have no choice but to comply with its burdensome provisions -- because to do otherwise would be "illegal."

According to Bush's Attorney General and DNI, then, this is what is called "illegal" behavior:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 -- Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said.

So, you see, the Bush administration is in a really tough bind here, because they would really like to eavesdrop outside of FISA because they want to protect us all and keep us safe, but they just can't do that, because eavesdropping without complying with FISA's requirements is "illegal," and that's something they would never, ever do.

UPDATE: The claim in the Mukasey/McConnell letter that telecoms aren't cooperating now turns out to be completely untrue since, as The Washington Post reports, "administration officials told lawmakers that the final holdout among the companies had relented and agreed to fully participate in the surveillance program."

But even if telecoms were refusing to cooperate, the reason for their refusal was not because they don't have retroactive immunity, but rather, it's because there is alleged uncertainty over the legality of current surveillance requests, and uncertainty over the ongoing validity of the prospective immunity provided by the PAA, because the PAA expired. If the PAA had been extended, they would be completely protected with prospective immunity for future surveillance cooperation. And, of course, the PAA would not have expired had Congressional Democrats had their way -- they wanted to extend it until they could agree to a new bill. Thus, any alleged refusal on the part of telecoms to cooperate is exclusively the fault of Bush and House Republicans for forcing expiration of the PAA. That's just true as a matter of basic logic.

But leave all of that aside for a moment. Since Mike Mukasey himself just said in this letter that spying outside of FISA is "illegal," and since it's indisputable that the Bush administration did just that for years, doesn't that compel him as Attorney General to commence a criminal investigation into this "illegal" conduct?

UPDATE II: C&L has produced an excellent video response to the House Republicans' 24-copying, "Give-us-what-we-want-or-die" video from earlier this week. And, as I've linked to before, this animated video on telecom amnesty and FISA by Mark Fiore is basically perfect:

UPDATE III: This might be the best GOP FISA quote yet, from Sean Conway, the chief of staff for Colorado Republican U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard (h/t Zappatero):

And the House has just simply said, we're not going to accept this, because we want to have, you know, terrorists be able to sue phone companies if they're listening to our conversations. It's insane.

The most difficult job in America -- it's really impossible -- is satirizing Republican exploitation of Terrorism. No matter how far the satire goes, the actual fear-mongerers always easily surpass it. House Democrats want Terrorists to be able to sue the phone companies. That's what this is about.

Conway also beat his chest and said this:

I don't know about you, but if I'm a Democrat out there, you'd best, better hope that something does not happen in this country while this bill lapses.

Republicans like Conway are so eager for a Terrorist attack to happen that you can almost hear them drooling in anticipation over the political gain they imagine they'll be able to squeeze from it.

-- Glenn Greenwald

For all President Bush's high-minded talk of spreading democracy abroad, which is necessary-- according to his reading of scripture, is because "freedom is a gift from an Almighty to every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth"-- he certainly has a novel interpretation of exactly what this supposedly sacrosanct gift of the Divine means:

Exclusive: U.S. urges Pakistanis to keep Musharraf, despite election defeat

By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers 

Wed Feb 20, 6:45 PM ET

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.

U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party's rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation.

The U.S. is urging the Pakistani political leaders who won the elections to form a new government quickly and not press to reinstate the judges whom Musharraf ousted last year, Western diplomats and U.S. officials said Wednesday. If reinstated, the jurists likely would try to remove Musharraf from office.

Bush's policy of hanging on to Musharraf has caused friction between the White House and the State Department , with some career diplomats and other specialists arguing that the administration is trying to buck the political tides in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.

Officials in the White House and the intelligence community fear that the longer Pakistan remains without a new government, the deeper the gridlock, threatening the progress made in the elections toward greater stability and helping the country's Islamic extremists.

One Western diplomat said, however, that the strategy could backfire if Pakistanis feel betrayed after voting to kick Musharraf from office.

"This is dangerous," said the diplomat.

The officials spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss internal government debates.

The effort to persuade Pakistan's newly elected parliament not to reinstate the judges could be perceived in Pakistan as a U.S. attempt to keep Musharraf in power after voters overwhelmingly rejected his Pakistan Muslim League-Q political party.

"There is going to be an uprising against the people who were elected" should opposition parties agree to the plan, warned Athar Minallah, the lawyer of ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry , whom Musharraf has under house arrest.

A close aide to Nawaz Sharif, whose Pakistan Muslim League-N party won the second highest number of seats in the 342-seat National Assembly, said the former prime minister is under growing Western pressure to drop his demands for Musharraf's immediate resignation and the reinstatement of Chaudhry.

"The suggestion has been there from Western countries for some time," said the aide, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "We are not willing to compromise on our stance. It would be against the interests of the Pakistani people."

There may also be personal reasons for Sharif's demands: He was ousted as prime minister when Musharraf led a 1999 coup against him.

The Bush administration has long praised Musharraf as an "indispensable" ally against al Qaida and Islamic radicals waging a guerrilla war and suicide bombing campaign from the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Bush, traveling in Africa, on Wednesday expressed appreciation for Musharraf.

"It's now time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government, and the question then is, will they be friends of the United States , and I certainly hope so," he said at a news conference in Ghana .

But many Pakistanis consider Musharraf a U.S. puppet for stepping up counter-insurgency operations in the tribal areas that have claimed the lives of women and children.

Experts cite that cooperation as a key reason for the devastating losses suffered by Musharraf's political allies, who retained only 38 of 132 National Assembly seats.

The party backed Musharraf's ouster of Chief Justice Chaudhry , the arrests of thousands of critics, the muzzling of the independent press and a state of emergency last year.

Amazing, really.  The man who has made "spreading democracy" the supposed cornerstone of his foreign policy is urging the government and people of Pakistan to, for all intents and purposes, ignore the results of the election they just had, and keep the dictator-- who they just ousted with overwhelming numbers-- in power.

Need anyone anymore evidence to prove to them that Bush's claims of wanting to foster "democracy" and "liberty" overseas-- especially in middle-eastern and Muslim countries-- are as credible as his warnings of Iraqi chemical weapons-armed drones, yellowcake from Niger, or mushroom cloud-shaped smoking guns?  Indeed, the fact that the President claimed "fostering the spread of democracy" in the Middle East as yet another justification for the Iraq war-- even though his own State Department warned before the invasion that this was a fantasy-- should have been all we needed to know about his so-called commitment to democracy.