This blog will chronicle my comments and other critical articles, cartoons and videos. Time has come for us to put America first and Party 2nd. This page will have the good, bad and ugly of Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians alike, but will always offer pluralistic solutions effective June 8, 2012

Monday, May 25, 2015

Genocide in waiting in Iraq and Syria, what should we do?

SYRIA-IRAQ  WHAT SHOULD WE DO
VIDEO https://www.facebook.com/RudawEnglish/videos/797437973697441/

I feel her anguish and pain.  No human has to live in insecurity and non-stop threats, we the Americas screwed up big time and must own it up.

We have to do the following:
Secure the Christians, Yazidis and others who are being targeted. Muslims are praying for them. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-ghouse/muslims-to-dedicate-frida_b_5679118.html 

Gas the entire ISIS territory or 50 Square Miles area at one time, and knock out the ISIS terrorists for 24 hours, pick them up and put them on trial. Do not kill them, we have chance to uproot terrorism.  

http://americatogetherfoundation.blogspot.com/2015/05/press-release-muslims-challenge-al.html

Dick Cheney and George Bush need to be put on Trial, if they are not guilty, spare them or ask the nation what we need to do to them for destroying the world.

Mike Ghouse

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Ted Cruz fails to identify clitoris on female anatomy chart.

Almost all the stupidities come out of Republicans, I hope to see a few Democratic stupidities to balance it out.  Republicans don't know nothing about biology, nor maths.  These assholes don't believe in seeing the God's gift, but know only using it.

Mike Ghouse

“Presidential candidate Ted Cruz fails to identify clitoris on female anatomy chart.”

Chicago IL- Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz a popular Presidential candidate and elected Republican senator from Texas was recently embarrassed when asked to identify key components of female anatomy at a recent subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, U.S Senate Commerce Committee where Cruz currently serves as Chairman.
“I don’t know how the topic came up but it escalated quickly, before you knew it someone had produced a presentation diagram of the female reproductive system.” said one attendee
It appeared as an orchestrated attack on Cruz in order to highlight his incompetence. Senator Cruz has recently been criticized for his strong, right wing positions on a number of topics from religious beliefs to gay rights and gun control.
One attendee recounted the awkward exchange
“After mumbling and making broad sweeping gestures across the entire image, he finally settled on what appeared to be a randomly selected point below the vagina near the anus.”
The committee and attending press erupted and had to be called back to order before a line of questioning further confirmed Senator Cruz’s inability to locate or identify the female clitoris.
When asked for commentary while exiting the subcommittee hall Senator Cruz responded defensively
“If you don’t think I know where the clit is you’re crazy. How could I have two kids if I didn’t know where the clitoris is? This whole thing was a stunt perpetuated by the liberal media and carried out by Democratic members of the subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, U.S Senate Commerce Committee.”
Cruz did not respond to further questioning regarding the lack of the clitoris’s role in conception, fertilization and child birth.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

CIA Dy Director Michael Morell - Bush and Cheney Falsely Presented WMD Intelligence to Public

This is tough, no one will touch this, great for our democracy. Mike


George W. Bush's CIA Briefer: Bush and Cheney Falsely Presented WMD Intelligence to Public
On "Hardball," Michael Morell concedes the Bush administration misled the nation into the Iraq War.
—By David Corn | Tue May 19, 2015 7:25 PM ED



Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell is sworn in as he testifes before the House Intelligence Committee. 

For a dozen years, the Bush-Cheney crowd have been trying to escape—or cover up—an essential fact of the W. years: President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their lieutenants misled the American public about the WMD threat supposedly posed by Saddam Hussein in order to grease the way to the invasion of Iraq. 

For Bush, Cheney, and the rest, this endeavor is fundamental; it is necessary to protect the legitimacy of the Bush II presidency. Naturally, Karl Rove and other Bushies have quickly tried to douse the Bush-lied-us-into-war fire whenever such flames have appeared. And in recent days, as Jeb Bush bumbled a question about the Iraq War, he and other GOPers have peddled the fictitious tale that his brother launched the invasion because he was presented lousy intelligence. But now there's a new witness who will make the Bush apologists' mission even more impossible: Michael Morell, a longtime CIA official who eventually became the agency's deputy director and acting director. During the preinvasion period, he served as Bush's intelligence briefer.

Appearing on MSNBC's Hardball on Tuesday night, Morell made it clear: The Bush-Cheney administration publicly misrepresented the intelligence related to Iraq's supposed WMD program and Saddam's alleged links to Al Qaeda.
Host Chris Matthews asked Morell about a statement Cheney made in 2003: "We know he [Saddam Hussein] has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Here's the conversation that followed:
MATTHEWS: Was that true?
MORELL: We were saying—
MATTHEWS: Can you answer that question? Was that true?
MORELL: That's not true.
MATTHEWS: Well, why'd you let them get away with it?
MORELL: Look, my job Chris—
MATTHEWS: You're the briefer for the president on intelligence, you're the top person to go in and tell him what's going on. You see Cheney make this charge he's got a nuclear bomb and then they make subsequent charges he knew how to deliver it…and nobody raised their hand and said, "No that's not what we told him."
MORELL: Chris, Chris Chris, what's my job, right? My job—
MATTHEWS: To tell the truth.
MORELL: My job—no, as the briefer? As the briefer?
MATTHEWS: Okay, go ahead.
MORELL: As the briefer, my job is to carry CIA's best information and best analysis to the president of the United States and make sure he understands it. My job is to not watch what they're saying on TV.
The discussion went on:
MATTHEWS: So you're briefing the president on the reasons for war, they're selling the war, using your stuff, saying you made that case when you didn't. So they're using your credibility to make the case for war dishonestly, as you just admitted.
MORELL: Look, I'm just telling you—
MATTHEWS: You just admitted it.
MORELL: I'm just telling you what we said—
MATTHEWS: They gave a false presentation of what you said to them.
MORELL: On some aspects. On some aspects.
There's the indictment, issued by the intelligence officer who briefed Bush and Cheney: The Bush White House made a "false presentation" on "some aspects" of the case for war. "That's a big deal," Matthews exclaimed. Morell replied, "It's a big deal."
And there's more. Referring to the claims made by Bush, Cheney, and other administration officials that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda, Morell noted, "What they were saying about the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda publicly was not what the intelligence community" had concluded. He added, "I think they were trying to make a stronger case for the war." That is, stronger than the truth would allow.
Morell's remarks support the basic charge: Bush and Cheney were not misled by flawed intelligence; they used the flawed intelligence to mislead.

David Corn is
 Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and Facebook. RSS | 

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

WMD Lies - Jeb Bush Says His Brother Was Misled Into War by Faulty Intelligence. That's Not What Happened.

It was a despicable lie. It's hard to swallow that our president and vice president can lie and get away with it.  Mike Ghouse

He and other Republican presidential contenders have a new and bogus spin on how the Iraq War began. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/jeb-bush-marco-rubio-iraq-war-intelligence 

| Tue May 19, 2015 10:09 AM EDT

Last week, Jeb Bush stepped in it. It took the all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate several attempts to answer the most obvious question: Knowing what we know now, would you have launched the Iraq War? Yes, I would have, he initially declared, noting he would not dump on his brother for initiating the unpopular war. "So would almost everyone that was confronted with the intelligence they got," Bush said. In a subsequent and quickly offered back-pedaling remark—on his way to saying he would have made "different decisions"—Bush emphasized that a main problem with the Bush-Cheney invasion was "mistakes as it related to faulty intelligence in the lead-up to the war." And as his Republican rivals jumped on Bush, they, too, blamed bad intelligence for causing the war. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), insisting that he would not have favored the war (if he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction), commented, "President Bush has said that he regrets that the intelligence was faulty." And former CEO Carly Fiorina noted, "The intelligence was clearly wrong. And so had we known that the intelligence was wrong, no, I would not have gone in."
But here's the truth Jeb Bush and the others are hiding or eliding: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, & Co. were not misled by lousy intelligence; they used lousy intelligence to mislead the public.
Throughout the run-up to the war, Bush, Cheney, and their lieutenants repeatedly stated assertions to justify the war that were not supported by the intel. They also hyped or mischaracterized existing intelligence to bolster their case for war. The book I wrote with Michael Isikoff,Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, chronicles the elaborate Bush-Cheney campaign to misuse and misrepresent the intelligence. Certainly, there was some information within the intelligence community (which turned out to be wrong) indicating that Saddam Hussein was trying to revive programs to develop biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. As the Bush White House was selling the possibility of war, the intelligence agencies did quickly produce a National Intelligence Estimate in October 2002 that said Iraq had "continued its weapons of mass destruction program." But there was other intelligence and analysis—some of it mentioned in that intelligence estimate—casting plenty of doubt on this. In fact, on many of the key elements of the Bush administration's case for war, the intelligence was, at best, iffy. Yet in this post-9/11 period, Bush and Cheney frequently declared there was no uncertainty: Saddam was pursuing WMD to threaten the United States, and, worse, he was in league with Al Qaeda.
Here are a few examples of how Bush and Cheney cooked the books:
  • In an August 2002 speech that kicked off the administration's campaign for war against Iraq, Cheney asserted, "Simply stated, there's no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." But earlier in the year, Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, had told Congress that Iraq possessed only "residual" amounts of WMD. There was no confirmed intelligence at this point establishing that Saddam had revived a major WMD operation. As Cheney made this claim, Anthony Zinni, a former commander in chief of US Central Command, was on the stage. He was stunned to hear Cheney say that Iraq was actively pursuing WMD. As he laterrecalled, "It was a shock. It was a total shock. I couldn't believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program." In other words, bad intelligence did not cause Cheney to make this categorical, bold, and frightening statement. He just did it.
  • In September 2002, Cheney insisted there was "very clear evidence" Saddam was developing nuclear weapons: Iraq's acquisition of aluminum tubes that were to be used to enrich uranium for bombs. But Cheney and the Bush White House did not tell the public that there was a heated dispute within the intelligence community about this supposed evidence. The top scientific experts in the government had concluded these tubes were not suitable for a nuclear weapons program. But one CIA analyst—who was not a scientific expert—contended the tubes were smoking-gun proof that Saddam was working to produce nuclear weapons. The Bush-Cheney White House embraced this faulty piece of evidence and ignored the more-informed analysis. Bush and Cheney were cherry-picking—choosing bad intelligence over good—and not paying attention to better information that cut the other way.
  • Cheney repeatedly referred publicly to a report that maintained that 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta had met secretly in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer—even though the CIA and FBI had dismissed this allegation. This is a damning example of Cheney citing discredited intelligence to score points. Intelligence experts had said there was nothing to this tale, but Cheney kept on mentioning the alleged Atta-Iraq connection to suggest Iraq was involved with the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 Commission later reconfirmed that this report of a Prague meeting was bunk.
  • The Atta allegation was part of a wider effort mounted by the Bush-Cheney administration to link Saddam to 9/11. In November 2002, Bush said Saddam "is a threat because he's dealing with Al Qaeda." Weeks earlier, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had claimed he had "bullet-proof" evidence that Saddam was tied to Osama bin Laden. In March 2003, Cheney asserted that Saddam had a "long-standing relationship" with Al Qaeda. The intelligence did not show this. As the 9/11 Commission later concluded, there had been no intelligence confirming significant contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Once again, Bush and Cheney were not being fooled by flawed intelligence; they were were pushing disinformation.
  • At a press conference at the end of 2002, Bush declared, "We don't know whether or not [Saddam] has a nuclear weapon." He clearly was suggesting that Saddam might already possess these dangerous weapons. Yet no intelligence at the time indicated that the Iraqi dictator had by then developed such weapons. The administration also insisted Saddam had been shopping for uranium in Africa, even though the intelligence on this point was dubious.
Bush and Cheney did not invade Iraq because they had been hoodwinked by bad intelligence. They claimed the intelligence was solid—when it wasn't. And they made stuff up. Days before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush told the American public, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Yet plenty of doubt existed. Intelligence analysts had registered uncertainty regarding all of the significant aspects of Bush's case for war. Moreover, Bush and Cheney had for months tossed out a series of claims that were not supported by any confirmed intelligence.
The Iraq war at its heart was not an intelligence failure. Bush, Cheney, and their comrades were hell-bent on invading Iraq—not because of inaccurate intelligence, but because of their own assumptions and desires. The war did not happen because of bad intel. Consequently, asking whether the invasion should have happenedknowing what is now known is an irrelevant exercise. For the Bush-Cheney gang, it truly did not  matter what the intelligence said. They were not victims. They were the perps.

DAVID CORN

Washington Bureau Chief
David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and FacebookRSS | 

Jeb Bush, beat it! You are dead politically.


Note to the Media: Media is welcome to post this by simply giving credit to the writer and the site. Thanks

Jeb Bush, these are your words, "A 'tolerant country' should allow discrimination based upon 'religious beliefs." You said that.  Nincompoop is a word I can slap it on you.


In case, you don't know it, America is God's own country, a miniature universe represented by all of God's intentional creation.  We need to take pride in our country.  I don't want you to mess with it, men like you have come and gone messing up the balance in a given society.  

Among us, we see God as one, none and many; and in every form; male, female, genderless, existent and non-existent, being and non-being, nameless and with innumerable names.

We are also blessed with every season, rivers, snow, desert, forests among things, and every race, ethnicity, language, culture and native traditions among people.
We are indeed Americans, honoring and respecting each others' pursuit of liberty, justice and happiness. We are the land of the free and the brave.

All of us have worked hard to make this truly a God's country and you are causing it to be unGodly again? That we can discriminate based on faith? 

You have never been a minority of any kind, so you simply don't have the brains or empathy to understand that. If you really understand the anguish and apprehension the Black Americans, Jewish Americans, Gay Americans, Hispanic Immigrants and Muslim immigrants feel, and what the Mormons, Catholics and even the Baptists felt here - you'd appreciate the collective wisdom of our founding fathers, that we are all created equal.

We are a safe and secure nation and we have made significant progress. 
I don't want America to go back to 16th century, let alone the days prior to Abraham Lincoln. 

The people of faith - yes, the same people of faith you are talking about had justified  (I am not using the shameful language here) abusing Black Americans, genocides of Native Americans, mistreating Catholics, Mormons, keeping the Jews out of the midst, and mass murdering people who did not believe like they did.  Every representation of faith has done that in one place or the other,  whether it is Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus, Buddhists or others.

It is time to leave behind our shameful history and rejoice what we have created; respect, dignity, equal opportunity and equal access for every human in public square.

Keep your religion at your home and behave in the public for the common good. America will continue to prosper and will remain a model for other nations to emulate. 

We should have the freedom, but should not have the freedom to discriminate, watch first 7 minutes of this video to understand what an "authorized discrimination would do?

"In a sit-down interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Saturday, potential GOP presidential nominee Jeb Bush explained that a "tolerant country" should make room for "people of faith" to discriminate against others. Saying the best of all religious beliefs is when people of faith act on their values to help others, Bush nonetheless defended the rights of those same people to deny "services" to people whose lifestyles they oppose." Raw Story
Thank you

mike

Mike Ghouse, Speaker
Motivation | Pluralism | Human Rights | Religion.
(214) 325-1916 text/talk

...............................................................................................................................

Mike Ghouse is a public speaker, thinker, writer and a commentator on Pluralism, Islam, India, Israel-Palestine, Politics and other issues of the day. He is a human rights activist, and his book standing up for others will be out soon | He is producing a full feature film " Sacred" to be released on 9/11 and a documentary "Americans together" for a July 4 release.  He is a frequent guest commentator on Fox News and syndicated Talk Radio shows and a writer at major news papers including Dallas Morning News and Huffington Post. All about him is listed in 63 links at www.MikeGhouse.net and his writings are at www.TheGhousediary.com - Mike is committed to building cohesive societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. 

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Did George W Bush Create ISIS? Jeb Bush faces Ivy Ziedrich

A good piece to read, the writer Dexter Filkins has thrown questions from both sides, and that is good journalism indeed - he puts the responsiblity on reader to make up his or her mind. 

 # # #

Did George W Bush Create ISIS? Jeb Bush faces Ivy Ziedrich
Courtesy The New Yorker

The exchange started like this: at the end of Jeb Bush’s town-hall meeting in Reno, Nevada, on Wednesday, a college student named Ivy Ziedrich stood up and said that she had heard Bush blame the growth of ISIS on President Obama, in particular on his decision to withdraw American troops from Iraq in 2011. The origins of ISIS, Ziedrich said, lay in the decision by Bush’s brother, in 2003, to disband the Iraqi Army following the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s government.




“It was when thirty thousand individuals who were part of the Iraqi military were forced out—they had no employment, they had no income, and they were left with access to all of the same arms and weapons.… Your brother createdISIS,’’ she said.
“All right,’’ Bush said. “Is that a question?”
“You don’t need to be pedantic to me, sir,” she said.
“Pedantic? Wow,” Bush said.
Ziedrich finally came forth with her query: “Why are you saying that ISIS was created by us not having a presence in the Middle East when it’s pointless wars, where we send young American men to die for the idea of American exceptionalism? Why are you spouting nationalist rhetoric to get us involved in more wars?”
Jeb replied by repeating his earlier criticism of President Obama: that Iraq had been stable until American troops had departed. “When we left Iraq, security had been arranged,” Bush said. The removal of American troops had created a security vacuum that ISIS exploited. “The result was the opposite occurred. Immediately, that void was filled.”
“Your brother created ISIS” is the kind of sound bite that grabs our attention, because it’s obviously false yet oddly rings true. Bush didn’t like it: he offered a retort and then left the stage. Meanwhile, Ziedrich had started a conversation that rippled across Twitter, Facebook, and any number of American dinner tables. Who is actually right?
Here is what happened: In 2003, the U.S. military, on orders of President Bush, invaded Iraq, and nineteen days later threw out Saddam’s government. A few days after that, President Bush or someone in his Administration decreed the dissolution of the Iraqi Army. This decision didn’t throw “thirty thousand individuals” out of a job, as Ziedrich said—the number was closer to ten times that. Overnight, at least two hundred and fifty thousand Iraqi men—armed, angry, and with military training—were suddenly humiliated and out of work.
This was probably the single most catastrophic decision of the American venture in Iraq. In a stroke, the Administration helped enable the creation of the Iraqi insurgency. Bush Administration officials involved in the decision—like Paul Bremer and Walter Slocombe—argued that they were effectively ratifying the reality that the Iraqi Army had already disintegrated.
This was manifestly not true. I talked to American military commanders who told me that leaders of entire Iraqi divisions (a division has roughly ten thousand troops) had come to them for instructions and expressed a willingness to coöperate. In fact, many American commanders argued vehemently at the time that the Iraqi military should be kept intact—that disbanding it would turn too many angry young men against the United States. But the Bush White House went ahead.
Many of those suddenly unemployed Iraqi soldiers took up arms against the United States. We’ll never know for sure how many Iraqis would have stayed in the Iraqi Army—and stayed peaceful—had it remained intact. But the evidence is overwhelming that former Iraqi soldiers formed the foundation of the insurgency.
On this point, although she understated the numbers, Ziedrich was exactly right. But how did the dissolution of the Iraqi Army lead to the creation ofISIS?
During the course of the war, Al Qaeda in Iraq grew to be the most powerful wing of the insurgency, as well as the most violent and the most psychotic. They drove truck bombs into mosques and weddings and beheaded their prisoners. But, by the time the last American soldiers had departed, in 2011, the Islamic State of Iraq, as it was then calling itself, was in a state of near-total defeat. The combination of the Iraqi-led “awakening,” along with persistent American pressure, had decimated the group and pushed them into a handful of enclaves.
Indeed, by 2011 the situation in Iraq—as former Governor Bush said—was relatively stable. “Relatively” is the key word here. Iraq was still a violent place, but nowhere near as violent as it had been. The Iraqi government was being run by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a fervent Al Qaeda foe and ostensible American ally.
But, as the last Americans left Iraq, there came the great uprising in Syria that pitted the country’s vast Sunni majority against the ruthless regime of Bashar al-Assad. Syria quickly dissolved into anarchy. Desperate and seeing an opportunity, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, dispatched a handful of soldiers to Syria, where, in a matter of months, they had gathered an army of followers and had begun attacking the Assad regime. Suddenly, Baghdadi’s group—which had been staggering toward the grave only months before—was regaining strength. In 2013, the I.S.I. became the Islamic State of Iraq in Syria. ISIS was born.
Finally, in June, 2014, legions of ISIS fighters swept out of Syria and grabbed huge swathes of northern and western Iraq. That prompted President Obama to order American troops to help save the Iraqi Army—indeed, to help save Iraq itself—and American pilots to bomb ISIS’s positions. Baghdadi, in proclaiming himself the caliph of the Islamic State, had assembled around himself a group of leaders, many of whom were once soldiers in Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Army.
In this sense, Ziedrich is right again, at least notionally: some of the men fighting in ISIS were put out of work by the American occupiers in 2003. Still, it’s not clear—and it will never be clear—how many of these Iraqis might have remained peaceful had the Americans kept the Iraqi Army intact. One of the Iraqis closest to Baghdadi was Ibrahim Izzat al-Douri, a senior official in Saddam’s government until 2003. (Douri was reported killed last month—it’s still not clear if he was or not.) It’s hard to imagine that Douri—or any other hardcore member of Saddam’s Baath Party—would have ever willingly taken part in an American occupation, whether he had a job or not. So, in this sense, Ziedrich is overstating the case. While it’s true that George W. Bush took actions that helped enable the creation of the Iraqi insurgency, and that some leaders of the insurgency formed ISIS, it’s not true that he “created” ISIS. And there’s a good argument to be made that an insurgency would have formed following the invasion of Iraq even if President Bush had kept the Iraqi Army together. He just helped to make the insurgency bigger.
But let’s get to Governor Bush’s assertion—that Iraq went down the tubes because of President Obama’s decision to pull out all American forces, and that Obama could easily have left behind a residual force that would have kept the peace.
I took up this issue last year in a Profile of Maliki, the Iraqi leader we left in place. Maliki didn’t really want any Americans to stay in Iraq, and Obama didn’t, either. But—and this is a crucial point—it seems possible that, if Obama had pushed Maliki harder, the United States could have retained a small force of soldiers there in noncombat roles. More than a few Americans and Iraqis told me this. They blame Obama for not trying harder. “You just had this policy vacuum and this apathy,” Michael Barbero, the commander of American forces in Iraq in 2011, told me, describing the Obama White House.
So, on this, Governor Bush isn’t entirely accurate, but makes a good point: the Obama Administration might have been able to keep some forces in Iraq if it had really tried.
And what if the Americans had stayed? Could a small force of American soldiers have prevented Iraq from sliding back into chaos, as Governor Bush claims? Americans like Barbero—and a number of Iraqis, as well—argue that the mere presence of a small number of American troops, not in combat roles, could have made a crucial difference. The idea here is that after the American invasion, which destroyed the Iraqi state, the Iraqi political system was not stable enough to act without an honest broker to negotiate with its many factions, which is the role that the Americans had played.
This much is clear: after 2011, with no Americans on the ground, Maliki was free to indulge his worst sectarian impulses, and he rapidly and ruthlessly repressed Iraq’s Sunni minority, imprisoning thousands of young men on no charges, thereby radicalizing the Sunnis who weren’t in prison. When, in June, 2014, ISIS came rolling in, anything seemed better than Maliki to many of Iraq’s Sunnis.
Could all that have been prevented? It’s impossible to know, of course, although President Obama, by sending American forces back to Iraq, seems at least implicitly to think so. Historians—along with Governor Bush and Ivy Ziedrich—will be arguing about the question for a long time.

Dexter Filkins joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2011.


Rape and Republicans - Brian Kurcaba

Republicans are either insensitive or do not care to learn about science, shamefully, their counterparts in India by the name BJP do and say the very same things.I am glad I am not a Republican. Read my article Republican no more on this site.

Mike Ghouse, Independent
Center for American Politics
# # #

West Virginia Republican says rape can be ‘beautiful’ if it produces a child

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/02/west-virginia-republican-says-rape-can-be-beautiful-if-it-produces-a-child/comments/

Del. Brian Kurcaba (Facebook.com)
West Virginia Republican says rape can be ‘beautiful’ if it produces a child
DAVID FERGUSON
06 FEB 2015 AT 09:25 ET
Republican state lawmaker in West Virginia said on Thursday that while rape is horrible, it’s “beautiful” that a child could be produced in the attack.
According to Huffington Post, Charleston Gazette reporter David Gutman was on the scene when Delegate Brian Kurcaba (R) said, “Obviously rape is awful,” but “What is beautiful is the child that could come from this.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Kurcaba made the remarks during a House of Delegates discussion of a law outlawing all abortions in the state after 20 weeks’ gestation. At 20 weeks, anti-choice activists and lawmakers allege, a fetus can feel pain and is therefore too viable to abort.
The bill was passed by West Virginia Republicans in 2014, but vetoed by Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. Now the state GOP has revived the bill and voted to remove an exception for victims of rape and incest.
Kurcaba’s remarks echo a string of embarrassing statements by Republicans regarding rape and women’s bodies.
In 2012, Missouri’s Rep. Todd Akin said that pregnancy can’t result from rape because “If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”
Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said that while sexual assaults are unfortunate, the resulting pregnancy is a “gift from God.”
Libertarian favorite Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) made statements of his own implying that women routinely fabricate rape stories in order to get abortions.
“If it’s an honest rape,” said Paul, physicians should allow the victim to abort, but otherwise, women should not be able to terminate their pregnancies just because they claim to have been raped.
Republican leaders convened an emergency meeting in 2013 urging the rank and file to stop talking about rape altogether lest it further alienate women voters, who have been abandoning the Republican Party in droves.

Nonetheless, Kurcaba — a financial advisor who was elected in 2014 — appears eager to bring discussions of rape back into the dialogue about women’s access to reproductive health care.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

GOP Candidates always low on intelligence, here is CNN

A while back they did not know what GOP stood for, I guess intelligence is not required to be a GOP Candidate - Mike Ghouse
# # #

Donald Trump, Bobby Jindal, and Ted Cruz all picked Ronald Reagan, refusing to give the nod to Democrats or Bushes.
The majority of Republican candidates asked who the greatest living President was picked a man that’s been dead for ten years.
All in all it’s a hilarious look at just how screwed up the Republican field is and just what kind of buffoonery we can look forward to as the primaries arrive. Dontcha just love those Republican debates? Personally I think Chris Moody should moderate. Why listen to two hours of right-wing rhetoric and bible verses when we can all have a good laugh instead?

Watch CNN’s Chris Moody make fools of the Republican GOP candidates.



Friday, May 15, 2015

Why Jeb Bush Had to Ditch Dubya

A very good piece about Jeb Bush.
"Jeb Bush is just too decent a guy to get elected."

Yes, he has got to speak up, that he his not like his brother in any shape other than having shared genes.

Mike Ghouse
An independent American
http://CenterforAmericanPolitics.blogspot.com
# # # 


Why Jeb Bush Had to Ditch Dubya
Courtesy of Daily BeastUS President George W. Bush (L), joined on stage by his brother Florida Governor Jeb Bush, waits to be introduced at the National Training Conference on Human Trafficking 16 July, 2004, Florida. The United States has a "particular" duty to lead the worldwide fight against the illicit trade in people for sex and forced labor, Bush said calling it "an affront to the defining premise of our country."
George W. Bush was able to successfully show us where he split with his dad. The future of Jeb’s candidacy depends on his ability to pull off a similar trick.
A while back, my friend and boss, Tucker Carlson, refused to condemn his brother for some inappropriate comments that were accidentally made public. “You know what, if my brother committed a mass murder, I would not criticize him in public,” Carlson later explained. “He’s my brother. Period. Under no circumstances will I criticize my family in public—ever. That’s the rule, and I’m not breaking it.”
As an only child, I can’t fully identify with this fraternal loyalty. But I respect the hell out of it. It’s a dangerous world, and if your brother doesn’t have your back, who will? But there are consequences to adhering to this sort of code. And right now, Jeb Bush is finding out that his reluctance to publicly criticize and break with his brother could potentially doom his presidential bid.
On Thursday he finally pulled the trigger and stated the obvious: No, he now says, he wouldn’t have invaded Iraq given what we know now. It was an important moment in his campaign. It was also flat-footed—his fourth answer to the question in a week—and probably didn’t go far enough. But it had to be said.
In the last 48 hours or so, we’ve seen Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and John Kasich all say that—knowing what we know now—the war was a mistake. And, of course, Rand Paul has been pushing this line all along (without need of the “knowing what we know now” caveat). Jeb lagged far behind the rest of the field on what should have been an easy question.
But of course—because the man who ordered the invasion was his brother—Jeb finds himself in a unique situation. And so, he spent several news cycles failing to adequately answer a serous question about what might be the most important foreign policy decision of the early 21st century.
Jeb’s “I’m my own man act was, of course, never going to fly. Not without proof. And it wouldn’t have flown for Dubya, either, even though his father—the last Republican president (you always have to distance yourself from the last guy)—wasn’t as much of an albatross in 2000 as W. is today. In fact, a big part of the reason Dubya succeeded is that he broke with his dad, who still had a toxic reputation on the right, what with the tax hike and the disdain for “voodoo economics” and the losing to Bill Clinton.
Poppy made his bones in the GOP as a pro-choice moderate, an ally of Nixon and Ford; George W. ran as the personification of the religious right.
In all theatre, including politics, the first rule isshow, don’t tell. And George W. Bush didn’t just tell us he was different; he showed us he was different. He spoke differently. He wasn’t a WASP from the northeast; he was a born-again evangelical from Texas. “There is a higher father that I appeal to,” he once told Bob Woodward. Poppy made his bones in the GOP as a pro-choice moderate, an ally of Nixon and Ford; George W. ran as the personification of the religious right.
And guess what? It worked. George W. Bush managed to get elected and, unlike his dad, re-elected. In one fell swoop, Dubya avenged his father’s defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton—by simultaneously disowning his father. Jeb’s reluctance to make a similar break with his brother’s legacy cost him dearly this week, and despite his comments on Thursday, it will dog him for months.
Granted, what Dubya pulled off was a difficult trick. Despite sending the aforementioned signals to everyone that he would be more like Reagan than his own old man, he never completely threw Poppy under the bus. In fact, it was pretty clear that he loved his dad, even as he surrounded himself with Poppy’s old enemies like Don Rumsfeld. And then, just as he would do what his dad couldn’t do electorally, he would also finish the job in Baghdad.
Not to play Maureen Dowd pop psychologist here, but how much of the last few decades can be explained by the psychological need to avenge George H.W. Bush’s presidency—not by means of revisionist history, but by means of reliving it …getting it right this time?
The irony, of course, is that 41 did a good job of winding down the Cold War and effectively neutering Saddam. As you’ll recall, after H.W. Bush managed to assemble an impressive coalition, and refused to get bogged down in some quagmire. But no good deed goes unpunished. He wins a war, and some lecherous hillbilly from Arkansas takes his job? And to add insult to injury, Saddam tried to have Poppy assassinated.
So here you have this interesting psychology whereby George W. Bush is willing to publicly distance himself from dear old dad, do things dad wouldn’t approve of, in order to avenge him. This would be fascinating enough, were it not for John Ellis Bush.
Another weird twist to this story is that Jeb, always the favorite son, is probably more like 41 than 43 in temperament and outlook. And maybe that means that, had Jeb been elected president in 2000, instead of his brother, he wouldn’t have gotten us involved in the Iraq War, while he simultaneously lacks the killer instinct to tell us that. Maybe—just as 41 had the governing skills, but lacked the political instincts that might have made him a two-term president—Jeb Bush is just too decent a guy to get elected.
But here’s the bottom line: Jeb has to really distance himself from his brother, albeit in some respectable manner, if he wants to be president. He needs us to show us how he’s different, what he’d do differently, and where he and his brother diverge on issues both foreign and domestic. Where does he stand on the bailouts, the massive growth in government spending, the Medicare expansion, and all the other facets of the Bush presidency that still anger conservatives? He has to make a break with all that if he wants to make it to the nomination and, ultimately, the White House.
This insanely difficult choice—whether to stay with his brother or leave him behind—will largely define Jeb’s candidacy. The Bushes have always prized loyalty, but for Jeb, absolute loyalty to his brother—and winning the presidency—might be mutually exclusive. Some presidents would run over their own mother if that’s what it takes to win an election. What is Jeb willing to say about his brother’s policies—if push comes to shove?