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New York Times columnist Bob Herbert says “the very character of the United States is changing, and not for the better.”

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Kennedy argued that the U.S. would never launch a Pearl Harbor-style first strike. But now, “not only does the U.S. launch an unprovoked invasion and occupation of a small nation — Iraq — but it does so in response to an attack inside the U.S. that the small nation had nothing to do with.”

Torture, once “beyond the pale,” is now one of our techniques in what George W. Bush calls “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.” In today’s column, Herbert asks who are we? (Emphasis mine):

The president put us on this path away from the better angels of our nature, and he has shown no inclination to turn back. Lately he has touted legislation to try terror suspects in a way that would make a mockery of the American ideals of justice and fairness. To get a sense of just how far out the administration’s approach has been, consider the comments of Brig. Gen. James Walker, the top uniformed lawyer for the Marines. Speaking at a Congressional hearing last week, he said no civilized country denies defendants the right to see the evidence against them. The United States, he said, “should not be the first.”

And Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative South Carolina Republican who is a former military judge, said, “It would be unacceptable, legally, in my opinion, to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them.”

How weird is it that this possibility could even be considered?

…

We could benefit from looking in a mirror, and absorbing the shock of not recognizing what we’ve become.

If we are engaged in “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” I’d like us to be the good guys, please.

This ad opposing Senator George Allen (R – Virginia) by VoteVets.org is just stunning:

The Daily Show was off for the past two weeks. They returned Monday night, refreshed, full of fight, and knockin’ ’em out of the park. (One example at Crooks and Liars. Warning: strong language.) For fake news, they often do a much better job of getting to the heart of the issue than the so-called real news shows.

On Tuesday night, Gary Hart was on to promote his new book, The Courage of Our Convictions: A Manifesto for Democrats.

Jon Stewart: Are we at the point where someone needs to write a book telling Democrats what their convictions could be?

Hart: Yes.

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It’s not that difficult, because all we have to do is go back to the great presidents of the twentieth century, who were Democrats — Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson — and re-identify what they stood for, and what the Democratic Party stood for.

We were one nation, pursuing social justice. We believed in international alliances to make us secure. John Kennedy said we owed something to this country, and Lyndon Johnson restored equality and justice. And that’s all the Democratic Party needs to say, because all of those principles, those beliefs, are different from the Republican Party.

Tonight on The Daily Show, “Senior White House Correspondent” John Oliver tried to explain how the American people are simultaneously safe and not-safe. He assured us that the Bush Administration failed in response to Hurricane Katrina only because of a pre-8/29 mindset, and that those mistakes would not be repeated in a post-8/29 world. And he summed up by saying this:

George W. Bush is the right man to lead us in the era post whatever horrible calamity he leads us into next.

On Monday night, from the former site of the World Trade Center, Keith Olbermann talks about this hole in the ground, where thousands died, including four of his friends:

…[F]or me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are “soft,”or have “forgotten” the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

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The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

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How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death,  after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections?  How dare you — or those around you — ever “spin” 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero, so, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

Crooks and Liars has video.

Update: Olbermann said on Thursday’s show that, by popular demand, the segment will be repeated on Friday night’s show. (If you’re interested, that’s Countdown on MSNBC, 8 PM EDT.)

The New York Times’ Portraits of Grief remind us, with photos and short biographies, just how much we lost.

From Daily Kos, absolutely wrenching, THIS is What 9/11 Felt Like:

Suddenly, we are watching the first tower collapse upon itself. I used to work Downtown, and I know lower Manhattan like the back of my hand. I try to imagine what could be happening to the people who are outside the towers, and how far the collapsed tower would have fallen on the city blocks around it. Then, I get a call from a neighbor who tells me not to worry about my husband, who is at the ferry on lower Manhattan, trying to get to his car on the New Jersey side.  I continue to watch the television, as the second tower collapses. My babysitter’s daughter calls now, crying; she doesn’t know where her husband is, so I tell my babysitter to go home. She leaves, and suddenly, I hear jets scrambling directly over my house. For a moment, I think it may be a nuclear attack, because they are so fast, and so loud. I grab my two-year-old, and rush for the basement, thinking about my other two children just two blocks away. I sit under a doorway downstairs, try to calm my child, and pray.

Via Crooks and Liars: I don’t know how much confidence I have in Andrew Sullivan, a conservative columnist with a blog at time.com.

Next week, I’m informed via troubled White House sources, will see the full unveiling of Karl Rove’s fall election strategy. He’s intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse McCain, Warner and Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies. This is his “Hail Mary” move for November; it’s brutally exploitative of 9/11; it’s pure partisanship; and it’s designed to enable an untrammeled executive.

Hail Mary and to hell with America? That sounds just like Karl Rove. It sounds just like Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest of that rotten bunch.

Is it true? We shall see.

I suppose this has become a 9/11 tradition here.

Back in 2001, I enjoyed visiting a light-hearted Macintosh news and rumor parody site called As the Apple Turns. Sadly, the site was last updated in October of last year, and the search engine and some of the links there don’t seem to be working now. So this link, from September 12, 2001, comes by way of the WayBack Machine:

This, Too, Shall Pass? (9/12/01).

I can’t give you a brief excerpt. You have to go read the whole thing.

It’s a 9/11 tradition.

Via This Modern World, this looks interesting.

The propaganda that drew us into this war is now guaranteeing our defeat. The deception isn’t over. The deception is continuing.

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the United States defeated itself by believing its own spin. In military terms, it’s called “incestuous amplification.” It means believing your own propaganda.

More info at The Best War Ever. (This same video auto-plays over there, so you can skip playing the video here if you’re going to follow this link.)

Via Daily Kos, here’s how we’re reducing violence in Baghdad:

U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren’t counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country’s sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.

It is said that when war comes, the first casualty is truth.

In the Bush Administration, it’s death by torture. Then the body is mutilated and dragged through the street as a warning to the other virtues.

In a blog post a few days ago, I linked to a map showing declines in median incomes across the U.S. Now I see The Washington Monthly reports a problem with the map.

they used a different measure for the 1999 figures than for the 2005 numbers, and that made the decline look worse than it was.

There is a chart (no map this time) at the Washington Monthly site with more consistent data.

I’ve heard it’s a good practice to correct your errors. Might as well give it a try.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman:

Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, and let’s have an unprecedented wartime tax cut and shrink our armed forces. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, but let’s send just enough troops to topple Saddam — and never control Iraq’s borders, its ammo dumps or its looters. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, but rather than bring Democrats and Republicans together in a national unity war coalition, let’s use the war as a wedge issue to embarrass Democrats, frighten voters and win elections. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism — which is financed by our own oil purchases — but let’s not do one serious thing about ending our oil addiction.

Hey, why should Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld get all worked up and lose sleep or quality leisure time to get this war right? It’s just the little people fighting and dying there.

Remember the Social Security fight? It ain’t over, baby:

In an interview published today in The Wall Street Journal, President Bush told editorial page editor Paul Gigot that next year he plans on partially phasing out Social Security and replacing it with private accounts, and that he thinks he can do it as long as the Republicans retain control of Congress, which he thinks they will.

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It’s also no accident he raises the issue in an interview with conservative columnist Gigot. The White House doesn’t want to broadcast his interest in phasing out Social Security. But they very much do want to create what amounts to a paper trail so that after a potential Republican victory they can argue that they contested the election on the basis of privatization and their win gives them a mandate.

If the Republicans hold onto their Congressional majorities by even a single vote, they will declare a mandate for their Dark Ages agenda. That is why they must be defeated.

Why, oh, why did we have such inadequate post-war plans when we went into Iraq? Here’s why:

Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said “he would fire the next person” who talked about the need for a post-war plan.

…

“The secretary of defense continued to push on us that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we’re going to take out the regime, and then we’re going to leave,” Scheid said. “We won’t stay.”

Scheid said the planners continued to try “to write what was called Phase 4,” or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like security, stability and reconstruction.

Even if the troops didn’t stay, “at least we have to plan for it,” Scheid said.

“I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that,” Scheid said. “He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war.”

Rummy’s views have matured in the years since. Now that we’re in, the American public can go fly a kite.

(Via Think Progress.)

A great old cartoon from Tom Tomorrow.