Huge Turnout for Anti-US Rally in Iraq

Bush also giving a pro immigrant speech(cheap labor) today.

They are probably screaming right now. "Why does W wanted us all to lose our elections and create a permanent democratic majority"?

So much for those flowers, huh?

Did they EVER greet the troops with that nonsense?

And though tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people : Hannah Arendt, from her book The Origins Of Totalitarianism p.

in the way it is supposed to be used, to let the government know how the people feel and to demand that their concerns be addressed. They have once again proven that in some ways, they have more respect for their rights and cherish them more than we do. We may have created hell on earth over there, but I think those people show more courage and determination that the vast majority of americans. I heard today that they tracked down the guy who was taking a sledgehammer to the giant Saddam statue 4 years ago today, and he said that even though life under Saddam was absolutely terrible, the life under US occupation is far, far worse.

The One-Trick Pony Of Immigration

It takes a village to have an idiot - Actor212

http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/04/paul-krugman-sweet-l...

Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official claims about big issues, because they can’t picture their leaders being dishonest about such things.

But there’s another political lesson I don’t think has sunk in: the power of the Little Lie — the small accusation invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another, and another. Little Lies aren’t meant to have staying power. Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that the person facing all these accusations must have done something wrong.

For a long time, basically from 9/11 until the last remnants of President Bush’s credibility drowned in New Orleans, the Bush administration was able to go big on its deceptions. Most people found it inconceivable that an American president would, for example, assert without evidence that Saddam and Al Qaeda were allies. Mr. Bush won the 2004 election because a quorum of voters still couldn’t believe he would grossly mislead them on matters of national security.

Before 9/11, however, the right-wing noise machine mainly relied on little lies. And now it has returned to its roots.

The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate. At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff members trashed the White House on their way out.

Each pseudoscandal got headlines, air time and finger-wagging from the talking heads. The eventual discovery in each case that there was no there there, if reported at all, received far less attention. The effect was to make an administration that was, in fact, pretty honest and well run — especially compared with its successor — seem mired in scandal.

Even in the post-9/11 environment, little lies never went away. In particular, promoting little lies seems to have been one of the main things U.S. attorneys, as loyal Bushies, were expected to do. For example, David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, appears to have been fired because he wouldn’t bring unwarranted charges of voter fraud.

There’s a lot of talk now about a case in Wisconsin, where the Bush-appointed U.S. attorney prosecuted the state’s purchasing supervisor over charges that a court recently dismissed after just 26 minutes of oral testimony, with one judge calling the evidence “beyond thin.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070409/iraq

BAGHDAD — Tens of thousands draped themselves in Iraqi flags and marched peacefully through the streets of two Shiite holy cities Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall. Demonstrators were flanked by two cordons of police as they called for U.S. forces to leave, shouting "Get out, get out occupier!"

Security was tight across Iraq, with a 24-hour ban on all vehicles in Baghdad starting from 5 a.m. Monday. The government quickly reinstated the day as a holiday, rescinding its weekend order that had decreed that April 9 no longer would be a day off.

The Najaf rally was ordered by Muqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite cleric who a day earlier issued a statement ordering his militiamen to redouble their battle to oust American forces, and argued that Iraq's army and police should join him in defeating "your archenemy."

Demonstrators marched from Kufa to neighboring Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad. Those marching were overwhelmingly Shiite, but Sunnis _ who are believed to make up the heart of Iraq's insurgency _ have also called for an American withdrawal.

Some at the rally waved small Iraqi flags; others hoisted a giant flag 10 yards long. Leaflets fluttered through the breeze reading: "Yes, Yes to Iraq" and "Yes, Yes to Muqtada. Occupiers should leave Iraq."

"The enemy that is occupying our country is now targeting the dignity of the Iraqi people," said lawmaker Nassar al-Rubaie, head of al-Sadr's bloc in parliament, as he marched. "After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded."

A senior official in al-Sadr's organization in Najaf, Salah al-Obaydi, called the rally a "call for liberation."

"We're hoping that by next year's anniversary, we will be an independent and liberated Iraq with full sovereignty," he said.

Al-Sadr did not attend the demonstration, and has not appeared in public for months. U.S. officials say he left Iraq for neighboring Iran after the Feb. 14 start of a Baghdad security crackdown, but his followers say he is in Iraq.

Iraqi soldiers in uniform joined the crowd, which was led by at least a dozen turbaned clerics _ including one Sunni. Many marchers danced as they moved through the streets.

The demonstration ended without violence after about three hours, but two ambulances could be seen moving slowly with the marching crowd, poised to help if violence or stampedes broke out.

Col. Steven Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman and aide to the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, praised the peaceful nature of the demonstration, saying Iraqis "could not have done this four years ago."

"This is the right to assemble, the right to free speech _ they didn't have that under the former regime," Boylan said. "This is progress, there's no two ways about it."

Monday's demonstration marks four years since U.S. Marines and the Army's 3rd Infantry Division swept into the Iraqi capital 20 days into the American invasion.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Monday that "mistakes were made" after Saddam Hussein's regime was ousted four years ago.

"The main mistake was a vacuum left in the fields of security and politics, and second mistake was how liberating forces became occupation forces," Zebari told Al-Arabiyah television.

Cars were banned from Najaf for 24 hours starting from 8 p.m. Sunday, said police spokesman Col. Ali Jiryo. Buses idled at all entrances of the city to transport arriving demonstrators or other visitors to the city center. Najaf residents would be allowed to drive, he said.

In a statement distributed in Najaf on Sunday, al-Sadr called on Iraqi forces to stop cooperating with America.

"You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don't walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy," the statement said.

Al-Sadr, who commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government, urged his followers not to attack fellow Iraqis but to turn all their efforts on American forces.

"God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them _ not against the sons of Iraq," it said.

Al-Sadr had reportedly ordered his militia to disarm and stay off the streets during the Baghdad crackdown, though he has nevertheless issued a series of sharp anti-American statements, demanding the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Sunday's statement was apparently issued in response to three days of clashes between his Mahdi Army militiamen and U.S.-backed Iraqi troops in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad.

American troops continued operations in Diwaniyah on Monday, detaining four guards at the office of a Shiite political party and scouring two neighborhoods in the city's northern and eastern sections, police said. At least 24 suspects were detained and one civilian was killed, police said. U.S. officials had no immediate comment.

On Sunday, thousands of residents in Baghdad's largest Shiite slum, Sadr City, boarded buses and minivans bound for Najaf.

Iraqi flags flew from most houses and shops in Sadr City. Drivers and motorcyclists affixed them to their vehicles. Police escorted convoys of pickup trucks overflowing with young boys waving Iraqi flags, en route to Najaf.

Despite the curfews, violence persisted Monday. In southern Baghdad, a sniper killed a civilian and a policeman, and a mortar round killed one person and wounded two others, police said.

Police in Buhriz, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, said clashes broke out between unknown gunmen and al-Qaida fighters _ leaving 30 people injured.

U.S. forces captured 14 suspects in raids across Iraq on Monday, targeting al-Qaida in Iraq members and car bomb-makers, the military said in a statement.

And though tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people : Hannah Arendt, from her book The Origins Of Totalitarianism p.

I didn't think anyone could trump Michael Richard's racist rant or more specifically "the N word", but Imus proved me wrong.

http://www.mediabistro.com/news/mb_feature/imus_nappy_hos_apology_unacce...

No worries Imus, right wing state radio will come to your defense.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040907K.shtml

By Charles J. Hanley
The Associated Press

Monday 09 April 2007

In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country - a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."

"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press.

Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.

The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.

First came the "monumental ignorance" of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.

What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis, steps Allawi and many others see as blunders:

* The Americans disbanded Iraq's army, which Allawi said could have helped quell a rising insurgency in 2003. Instead, hundreds of thousands of demobilized, angry men became a recruiting pool for the resistance.

* Purging tens of thousands of members of toppled President Saddam Hussein's Baath party - from government, school faculties and elsewhere - left Iraq short on experienced hands at a crucial time.

* An order consolidating decentralized bank accounts at the Finance Ministry bogged down operations of Iraq's many state-owned enterprises.

* The CPA's focus on private enterprise allowed the "commercial gangs" of Saddam's day to monopolize business.

* Its free-trade policy allowed looted Iraqi capital equipment to be spirited away across borders.

* The CPA perpetuated Saddam's fuel subsidies, selling gasoline at giveaway prices and draining the budget.

In his 2006 memoir of the occupation, Bremer wrote that senior U.S. generals wanted to recall elements of the old Iraqi army in 2003, but were rebuffed by the Bush administration. Bremer complained generally that his authority was undermined by Washington's "micromanagement."

Although Allawi, a cousin of Ayad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister in 2004, is a member of a secularist Shiite Muslim political grouping, his well-researched book betrays little partisanship.

On U.S. reconstruction failures - in electricity, health care and other areas documented by Washington's own auditors - Allawi writes that the Americans' "insipid retelling of 'success' stories" merely hid "the huge black hole that lay underneath."

For their part, U.S. officials have often largely blamed Iraq's explosive violence for the failures of reconstruction and poor governance.

The author has been instrumental since 2005 in publicizing extensive corruption within Iraq's "new order," including an $800-million Defense Ministry scandal. Under Saddam, he writes, the secret police kept would-be plunderers in check better than the U.S. occupiers have done.

As 2007 began, Allawi concludes, "America's only allies in Iraq were those who sought to manipulate the great power to their narrow advantage. It might have been otherwise."

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And though tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people : Hannah Arendt, from her book The Origins Of Totalitarianism p.