lumpenscholar

This is a collection point for links to well-reasoned, relevant posts and articles, as well as primary documents, relating to the war in Iraq.  It will be updated whenever I have new links.

Legality

Gabriel Malor on war powers, w/ links to his three posts on AUMF

General Reasoning and Debate Links

Owen Harries Primer for Polemicists

Trace Adkins sings the Star Spangled Banner.

I hope everyone had a great Fourth.

Apparently in my haste to post and general fatigue, I see that I have misspelled Barack Obama’s name several times on this blog.  My apologies.

Simon Owens at Bloggasm is reporting that a number of anti-Obama blogs were shut down after complaints:

After some digging it became apparent that several Blogspot accounts had been shut down because of similar spam issues, and nearly all of them had three things in common: Most were pro-Hillary Clinton blogs, all were anti-Barack Obama, and several were listed on justsaynodeal.com, an anti-Obama website.

I haven’t verified it, but since PUMA blogging seems to have become my thing recently, I thought I’d note it.

h/t Protein Wisdom

###

Update (2008 July 1): An article in the NYT gives more information.  Google (which owns Blogspot) claims it was a problem with their spam filters.  The PUMAs don’t buy it.

Related: PUMA: more wild and wacky election fun, Obambi: hatin’ on Obama

Obambi is an eye-opening site that shows there is some serious Obama hatred around. I ran across it looking through PUMA sites I mentioned previously.

Posts include things like Barack Hussein Obama: 10 Things to Fear and Unity My Ass: Say It Ain’t So Hillary, Barack Obama is a Vile Socialist. But what grabbed my attention most were the graphics. Juxtaposing words like “racist,” “nope,” and “idiot” with images of Obama, and clearly photoshopped images of Obama with Iranian leader Ahmadinajad, really make an impression, of some kind.

Then there’s The Kilzone, which is worse.  Images there mix swastikas, sickle and hammer themes, and other objectionable symbols with Obama images.  Whatever one thinks of Obama, or any of the candidates, none of them are comparable to Nazis or communists, and this kind of imagery is sickening.

back in 2002, from the Washington Post:

. . . long before “waterboarding” entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

There were Democrats who knew all along what Bush was doing. They had the same intel he had about Iraq and supported Saddam’s overthrow. They knew about the interrogation techniques and, except for one, approved. The Democrats were a full party to the War on Terror, until it became politically expedient to claim they had been fooled.

Just got introduced to PUMA - Party Unity My Ass. Apparently, these are the “dead-ender” Clintonistas (insurgency implications included). Here’s some quotes from two PUMA sites:

PUMA Power:

Now is not the time to put a love object in office, a weakling who will be entirely dependent on his power elite enablers. Or worse, he may be a dissembler who has barely disguised his contempt for the voters.

There will be a lot of calls for “Unity!”. But let us acknowledge what this really is. “Unity” is a weapon that the party is going to use against us. It is the emotional blackmail of the teenager. “If you don’t let me have my way, it will be all YOUR fault if something bad happens!” “If you don’t get in line, it will be YOUR fault if we lose.

Cannonfire (toward the end of the post):

The Obot journals have published a few pieces on how to talk to the PUMA partisans. All of these pieces show them to be just as clue-free as Garrett and Dan were in that old skit. None of these pieces suggests that the progs might make some headway if they showed some humility. Here’s a suggested start:

“We spread lies against Clinton. We acted like Freepers. We’re sorry.”

Pure ego forbids them from making this admission. Indeed, the Lightbringer himself has said that he had to “bite his tongue” in dealing with Hillary — as though he were the offended party, as though he were on the receiving end of a smear campaign!

There’s no humility in Obotland. As these reponses to Traister’s piece exemplify, they remain mired in their revolting Messianic adulation of the Lightbringer (even though they no longer even try to defend him against charges of serial prevarication) and in their hatred of all things Clintonian . . .

What a really interesting campaign this continues to be.

Update (2008 June 28 ): US News mentioned this phenomenon, noting that more than 100 anti-Obama blogs have been created in the last 20 days.

Update (2008 June 29): The Confluence has a photo essay on a PUMA protest at a Unity event with both Obama and Hillary. Very interesting. Here’s Just Say No Deal, Party Unity My Ass, Democrats 4 McCain, DNC Monopoly, PUMA Party, and there’s a lot more out there.

Also, I have a new post up about Obambi.com and other hate sites.

Update (2008 June 30): Anti-PUMA activities?

Sudan is free to commit genocide because it supplies China with oil.  As a permanent UNSC member, China has veto power over all UNSC resolutions, so actually doing anything to stop the genocide in Sudan would be impossible to do legally.

In a similar way, the UN system is responsible for supporting tyrants and oppression around the world.

###

part 1

In the comments to a post at abu muqawama (a good COIN blog), there is a discussion of the role of the UN in world security. I take the position that it has recently made the world a more dangerous place. Here is my argument, which is also posted in abu muqawama’s comments. (The whole post is worth a read as well.)

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a direct result of the UN’s corruption during the sanctions period. If the UN had authorized the removal of Saddam in 1998 when the inspectors decided he was making their job impossible, they could have given him one last chance and he would have made good on it, or not. Whether Saddam complied or not, and been removed or not, the UN would have been both effective and seen as effective, and it would have kept the proper relationship between US military force and the UN. This would have probably been the best resolution.

Instead, when Butler and his inspectors left Iraq, the UN did nothing, and effectively the Coalition did nothing. Of course, by that time three of the permanent members of the UNSC had been bought by offers to allow their oil companies to develop Iraqi oil fields once sanctions were lifted. Since the US had made a big show of following the UNSC, Saddam considered himself safe to do as he pleased.

What pleased him was causing pretty big numbers of Iraqis to die due to malnutrition and lack of proper medical care after he had corrupted the Oil for Food program. The UN officials he bought looked the other way, and he and his cronies got wealthier while his propaganda machine exploited the deaths he caused to build hatred against the US. AQ cited Iraqi deaths under sanctions as one reason they attacked the US, I believe, and I am fairly certain Saddam’s propaganda on the sanctions helped recruit anti-US terrorists in the late 90s and early 2000s.

At the same time, Saddam was funding and supporting terrorist groups, particularly ones that targeted Israel. Since the Isreali-Palestinian issue is seen as key to peace in the ME, Saddam’s influence was for more war and less peace.

The UN was Saddam’s main protector, regardless of what he did, what laws he broke, or how many deaths he caused, because he bribed the relevant components of it. This contributed far more to violence and instability than to peace, law and order. Clearly the UN increased the threat of violence in the ME and the world during that decade, and it has not apparently improved in the meantime.

###

part 2

or squirrely veterans, whichever.