There's just not much to say about the tragic news yesterday - twelve 13 dead and 30 injured as a result of a "lone gunman," now identified as an Army major. MAJ Nidal Hasan was a psychiatrist who had graduated from Virginia Tech in 1997 and spent six years at Walter Reed Army Medical Clinic before moving to Fort Hood. He was not a happy man.

In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.

"I know what that is like," she said. "Some people can take it, and some cannot. He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military, and they would not let him leave even after he offered to repay" for his medical training.
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He had been affected by the physical and mental injuries he saw while working as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed for nearly eight years, according to his aunt. "He must have snapped," Noel Hasan said. "They ignored him. It was not hard to know when he was upset. He was not a fighter, even as a child and young man. But when he became upset, his face turns red." She said Hasan had consulted with an attorney about getting out of the service.

On the rare occasions when he spoke of his work in any detail, the aunt said, Hasan told her of soldiers wracked by what they had seen. One patient had suffered burns to his face so intense "that his face had nearly melted," she said. "He told us how upsetting that was to him."

It's clear that this was not a simple case of "Vietnam Vet" syndrome. He was a prior enlisted soldier who got a commission through ROTC, and was promoted to major last year. Hasan had not deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, but he was faced with the aftermath of that conflict on a very personal basis. In a big organization like the Army, and on a huge and busy base like Fort Hood, it's clear that his colleagues and other people who probably saw his behavior worsen didn't see the opportunity to intervene. With big organizations, sometimes the system fails the individuals who need the most help. It's a horrible situation, but this is what war can lead to - the injuries aren't limited to the battlefield. Thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims at Fort Hood.

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Fox's Catherine Herridge has been reporting for a couple of weeks about the White House's change of policy regarding reporters' access to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which while problematic from a journalist's perspective has all the earmarks of a classic bureaucratic conflict with reporters.

Herridge ran an update yesterday on Fox's Live Desk with Marsha MacCallum, including a clip of a Pentagon spokesman being short with Herridge, evidently, over her persistent questions on the issue. It looks like a tempest in a teapot, but Herridge is a serious reporter and her beef has some legitimacy, especially when it comes to transparency for this White House.

The interesting part of this report, though, came immediately after Herridge's report, when MacCallum hosted our old friend Judith Miller, the woman who helped bring you that six-years-and-running disaster on wheels known as the Iraq War. Miller decided that this Pentagon spokesman was in need of upbraiding:

MacCallum: What did you think of the Pentagon response there to Catherine's question?

Miller: You know, I thought, it's very combative. Excuse me, Mr. Pentagon Spokesman, for Fox doing our job. We're supposed to be there, we're supposed to be reporting on what the Pentagon is doing to and for these prisoners, or detainees, as they prefer to be called. And if he doesn't like our going back and back to look in on those people, well, maybe we should just believe everything they put out.

I found it completely combative, unnecessarily so.

So now we're being lectured on the relationship of reporters to official sources by the woman who was the faithful stenographer of Bush's Pentagon -- particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in selling the public on the notion that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein. The woman who -- after the utter mendacity of her sources was revealed -- told an interviewer:

"[M]y job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal."

I don't have a problem with Fox reporters pushing for transparency from the Pentagon. I do have a problem with Judith Miller telling us how we should do that.

It sure is heart-warming, after all, to see Miller get concerned about looking into the accuracy of Pentagon claims -- though it does seem rather convenient that this is a concern of hers only now, now that we have a Democratic administration.

If she had demonstrated even an ounce of this concern during the Bush years, the nation might not have been talked into an outrageous, costly, and wholly unnecessary war.

James Moore wrote the ultimate survey of Miller's journalistic miscreancy.

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The Today Show had a moving piece on Bill Cahir with his widow Rene Browne this morning. Via Wikipedia:

Bill Cahir (pronounced “care”), 40, was a former newspaper correspondent for Newhouse Newspapers; a Congressional committee staffer for U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.); and a 2008 Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in Pennsylvania’s 5th District, when he was killed by a single enemy gunshot Aug. 13, 2009 while on active duty in Afghanistan as a U.S. Marines Reservist.

Cahir was working as a Washington, D.C.-based correspondent for Newhouse News Service when he notably joined the Marines at age 34—a move that required requesting an exception to the service’s age-restrictions. He cited a long-held interest in military service as well as the September 11 attacks as motivations for his enlistment, and subsequently wrote a first-person essay regarding his boot camp experience.

He married Rene Browne in 2006. She is pregnant with twin girls, and is due in December 2009.

A memorial fund was established to pay for the family’s needs at Bill Cahir Memorial Fund, Box 268, Alexandria, Va. 22313

Today is the 8th year since the Afghanistan War began.

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Andrea Mitchell ask Barney Frank if he will support a bill that will as Mitch McConnell claims, but Medicare by nearly half a trillion dollars and without a public option. Frank rejects McConnell's accessment and says Obama's mistake was trying to get any bipartisan support. He then states something that should be said over and over again.

Frank: Let's just put it this way. If we hadn't waged that foolish, expensive, devastating war in Iraq we could have paid for health care two times over, so I reject the notion that there's no other way to find the funds for health care.

Amen brother.

Via Teddy Partridge at FDL, the shocking news that military weapons are now being deployed against civilians in the United States, just as many of us predicted:

You think your town hall meeting's law enforcement presence was authoritarian and heavy-handed?

Check this out: San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore deployed (but did not use) military type sonic crowd-control devices at two town hall meetings, one held by GOP Darrell Issa and the other by Democrat Susan Davis. These devices are the same as those used to control crowds of insurgents in the Iraq war theatre and have been linked to ear and brain injury.

Both town halls took place without incident; however the use of the military device concerned San Diegians. The LRAD [Long-Range Acoustic Device] crowd control is primarily used in Iraq to control insurgents and can cause serious and lasting harm to humans.

According to the manufacture, American Technology Corporation, the LRAD provides “military personnel the capability to transition through the rules of engagement to determine a target’s intent and also provides greater assurance that innocent lives on both sides of the device are not lost due to miscommunication.”

[...]“It’s very concerning,” Kevin Keenan, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “ It is fine for the Sheriff’s Department to have new less-than-lethal weapons, but for their interactions with individuals these still-dangerous weapons need to be used only as substitutes for firearms. They can’t be used as just another tool on the tool belt. As we’ve seen with tasers and pepper spray, these types of weapons are being used to subdue people even though they pose the risk of serious physical harm.”

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David Sirota takes on Florida GOP Chairman and Obama school speech fear monger Jim Greer on Don Lemon's weekend show on CNN. This time the topic is the collective freak out by people at these Tea Bag protests now that the scary black man has been elected.

Sirota asks Greer where the protests were when Bush was trampling all over our constitution and running up the deficit and you've just got to love Greer's response here -- deflect and denial.

First Greer cites Bush's terrible poll numbers and tries to conflate the protests going on now to the people protesting the Iraq War, who as Sirota correctly points out were completely different protesters and not the people taking to the streets now.

After admitting that they are different people Greer tries to paint the Tea Baggers as just every day Americans from all political walks of life, and not the fringe right of the conservative movement.

Then Greer tries to pretend that race isn't part of the problem with these protesters, which Don Lemon calls him out for.

LEMON: David, what's happening here?

SIROTA: Well, again, I think that there's a segment of the population that does not want to accept President Obama as a legitimate president. And I think that you can tell that this is really a partisan lynch mob by understanding that these people were not out making the exact same criticism of President Bush. Where were the people who were worried about the constitution when President Bush trampled the constitution with the Patriot Act? Where were these people talking about government spending when President Bush inflated the deficit to record proportions?

LEMON: Jim, that's a good question.

SIROTA: Where were they?

GREER: Well, I think you saw where they were when the polls showed that unfortunately from a Republican standpoint, President Bush was down in the 20s. I mean, the American public -

SIROTA: Where were the protests?

GREER: Well, you know, there were people protesting President Bush because I saw them quite often as I traveled the country.

SIROTA: Do you think conservative tea partiers are protesting --

LEMON: I do have to say no that people did protest the Iraq war. I saw a lot of that. I covered a lot of it.

GREER: A lot of that.

LEMON: People said they had pictures of President Bush. They hung things of him in effigy. They put it in on fire, lit them on fire. So there were things, but they were protesting a war, and that they were looking for evidence that never turned up. So it's kind of a different thing, but he was protested.

SIROTA: Those are different protesters.

GREER: Where we are today --

Well, they may be different protesters, but you asked me, where were they? And there were people protesting President Bush. Where we are today, Don, David, is that this administration has tried to radically change the role of government in our daily lives and the role of government in major industries that have made this country great. And that is why Americans, not just Republicans, but Americans are frustrated. They can't get answers to their questions. They're concerned about President Obama's views of what America should look like today and what it will look like in the future. And they just reject that. And they're angry. They're frustrated because it's not the America that they brought up to have great respect for, and they're concerned.

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Anyone who is aware of all Internet traditions has by now seen the footage of Barney Frank taking down the Larouchie who asked him if he would support a "Nazi policy" by asking her, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" But Rep. Frank was in rare form that night, standing up to the uninformed shrieking of the right and offering a real lesson in how to argue with conservatives. Rep. Frank's office provided C&L with the tapes of that town hall meeting in Dartmouth from last week, and I put together a sort of greatest hits reel.

Frank explains what deficit hawks should concern themselves with:

"I am struck by those who say, well, you don't care about the deficit. No, I do. I do care about the deficit. That's one of the reasons, not the only one, why I voted against the single most wasteful expenditure in the history of America. The Iraq war. If we hadn't gone to the war in Iraq, which I thought was a terrible mistake and voted against, we would have had more than enough money to pay for health care."

He argues with a "tenther" who thinks that Congress isn't authorized to provide health care for their citizens:

Frank: Do you think Medicare is unconstitutional, sir?

Teabagger: I think that Medicare needs to be reformed.

Frank: Do you think it's unconstitutional? You said that the Constitution doesn't give us the authority to do it, but Medicare was done. And, do you think Medicare is unconstitutional?

Teabagger: I think that Medicare needs to be reformed.

Frank: But you won't tell me whether you think it's unconstitutional, which you said--

Teabagger: I am not a Constitutional scholar-

Frank: Then why did you start off arguing about the Constitution?

That's really a fantastic exchange, where Frank digs an inch below the surface and finds nothing. He insists on having this questioner back up the rhetoric he cribbed off of Free Republic or wherever he got it, and the guy just couldn't do it.

And this is my favorite part:

Teabagger: Can you pledge to all of us here tonight, that if a new government single-payer system is instituted, that you will opt out of your Cadillac insurance?

Frank: Yes I am in favor of single payer, and that's why I like Medicare. (yelling) You act as if you people have discovered it is August. I have been a co-sponsor of the single payer bill, I think it would be better...

Teabagger #2: But we watch tapes of Obama and everyone else secretly say they're in favor of an eventual single pay system.

Frank: I haven't... sir, it's been 21 years since I've had a secret. (Laughter) And I don't have one now! You have discovered that I'm for single payer! I've been a sponsor of single payer for years!

What you see here is several things: 1) Rep. Frank is always in control; 2) he concedes nothing; 3) he allows his opponents to hang themselves with the outlandish logic of their own claims; 4) he knows when to throw in a well-timed bon mot. At one point, Frank says, "When you say things that people can't refute, they try to drown you out. That's understandable." That's someone who is confident in their beliefs. Democrats could learn something from that.

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Ron Reagan Jr. and Joan Walsh on Hardball reminding Chris Matthews that reality seems to have a liberal bias. As they both point out, once again, the Villagers were wrong, and the "loony left," as the media likes to dismiss any of us as, were right.

I disagree with both of them on one point, though. There is nothing "honorable" about what Tom Ridge is doing. He didn't quit and speak up when he was first asked to do this. And now that he's got a book to sell, suddenly he's feeding the public some half truths about what went on to gin up some interest in it.

Glenn Greenwald and Marcy Wheeler have had a bit of an interesting exchange with The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder over his reaction to Ridge's latest revelation that are well worth the read on the topic of how the Villagers treat the left.

Greenwald: Fringe leftist losers: wrong even when they're right:

Just as is still commonly said about opponents of the Iraq War (even though they were right, they were still wrong and unSerious because their motives were bad), Ambinder acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends (he has no choice but to acknowledge that now that Ridge admits it), but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and "journalist" scorns.

Wheeler: Ambinder: Sorry I Was So Stupid, But I Was Right To Be Stupid:

Mark Ambinder takes the opportunity of Ridge's confirmation that the terror alerts were one big political game to claim he was justified in believing that we DFHers were wrong about the alerts--and in doing so, demonstrates what is so wrong with so much of Village journalism.

Be sure to check out the rest of both posts if you haven't already. Reagan and Walsh should read them as well if they haven't. By showing such deference to Ridge they're simply feeding into the narrative they're attempting to beat back here.

Sam Seder filling in for Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks takes a call from a conservative who resents paying for health care for his fellow citizens, but doesn't mind paying for the Iraq War. Why in the hell is this man not on the radio every day of the week?

(click here to see Mark's very revealing video about the phony terror alerts back in the Bush years)

This is a big deal because it's coming from the horse's mouth. Tom Ridge admits in his new book what we've known for a long time and what has been reported years ago.

Former US homeland security chief Tom Ridge charges in a new book that top aides to then-president George W. Bush pressured him to raise the "terror alert" level to sway the November 2004 US election.

Then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and attorney general John Ashcroft pushed him to elevate the color-coded threat level, but Ridge refused, according to a summary from his publisher, Thomas Dunne Books.

"After that episode, I knew I had to follow through with my plans to leave the federal government for the private sector," Ridge is quoting as writing in "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... And How We Can Be Safe Again."

Some of Bush's critics had repeatedly questioned whether the administration was using warnings of a possible attack to blunt the political damage from the unpopular Iraq war by shifting the debate to the broader "war on terrorism," which had wide popular appeal.
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He later publicly acknowledged that much of the information underpinning the new alert was three years old, stoking Bush critics' charges of political manipulation.

Ridge also charges that he was often "blindsided" during daily morning briefings with Bush because the FBI withheld information from him, and says he was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings.

Here's what Ridge's book says:

Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is releasing a book on September 1 titled, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again.” U.S. News’ Paul Bedard reports that, in the book, Ridge reveals that he considered resigning because he was urged to issue a politically-motivated security alert on the eve of Bush’s re-election:

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

This was first reported way back when by the Washington Post in 2004:

The mixing of anti-terrorism policy with the 2004 presidential campaign is becoming destructive. It is creating a vicious cycle of hype, skepticism and mistrust that puts the country's security at risk.

The dangers of politicizing terrorism were clear in this month's announcement about potential attacks on financial centers in the New York area and in Washington. When Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge disclosed the threats on Aug. 1, he faced immediate skepticism about whether the intelligence was valid. Sadly, the Bush administration had helped create this climate of public suspicion by overusing its elaborate, color-coded system of terrorism warnings. After a terrorism advisory by Attorney General John Ashcroft last spring was pooh-poohed the same day by Ridge, some people wondered whether these warnings were being used for political effect.

Bush used the terror alerts to win the election against John Kerry and it's a breach of his oath of office as far as I'm concerned.

And don't forget about the release of the Osama Bin Laden tape right before the election. As we were getting closer to Nov. 4th, Kerry was picking up momentum before this happened.

On October 29, 2004, at 21:00 UTC, the Arab television network, Al Jazeera, broadcast excerpts from a videotape of Osama bin Laden addressing the people of the United States, in which he accepted responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks, condemns the Bush government's response to those attacks and presents those attacks as part of a campaign of revenge and deterrence motivated by his witnessing of the destruction in the Lebanese Civil War in 1982.

John Kerry admitted as much on MTP:

Senator John Kerry said on Sunday that the attacks of Sept. 11 were the "central deciding thing" in his contest with President Bush and that the release of an Osama bin Laden videotape the weekend before Election Day had effectively erased any hope he had of victory.

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From The Daily Show:

Obama needs to stay on message with health care reform like the Bush administration did when they sold Americans the Iraq war.

Global News Blog [Christian Science Monitor]:

It takes a certain amount of courage to attend a church in Iraq.

In the past 24 hours, bombs exploded outside of six churches in various Baghdad neighborhoods, killing at least four people, and wounding more than 30, according to a Reuters report from the Iraqi capital.

Sunday’s attacks were among the worst, in terms of the death toll. But many of these same churches have been bombed before. On Jan. 6, 2008 – also a Sunday – seven churches (four in Baghdad, three in Mosul) were hit in a similar round of bombings. Two years earlier, four churches (three in Baghdad, 1 in Kirkuk) were bombed – also on a Sunday in January.

The Assyrian (Christian) International News agency reports that 52 Assyrian churches have been bombed in Iraq between June 2004 and the end of 2008.

The latest attacks come in the wake of the US withdrawal of combat troops (on June 30) from most Iraqi cities.

read more...

[Shawn Stuart, Iraq War veteran, at a 2006 neo-Nazi rally in Olympia, WA.]

Remember how the right-wingers screamed and yelled about that Homeland Security bulletin which indicated that white supremacists might be recruiting Iraq war veterans or pushing recruitment within military ranks?

Remember how the ensuing hissy fit ended with Janet Napolitano apologizing (for a report that originated in the Bush administration)? Notice how even now, after the report has been proven prescient in its warning about "lone wolf" domestic terrorists, guys like Joe Scarborough are still trying to claim that it "insulted our veterans"?

Well, Matt Kennard at Salon has an eye-opening report that should permanently shut up the right-wing whining, because it demonstrates clearly the broad nature of the problem -- namely, not only are veterans being actively recruited, but neo-Nazis and other radicals are actively joining up to fight -- and the military is turning a blind eye to it:

Since the launch of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has struggled to recruit and reenlist troops. As the conflicts have dragged on, the military has loosened regulations, issuing "moral waivers" in many cases, allowing even those with criminal records to join up. Veterans suffering post-traumatic stress disorder have been ordered back to the Middle East for second and third tours of duty.

The lax regulations have also opened the military's doors to neo-Nazis, white supremacists and gang members — with drastic consequences. Some neo-Nazis have been charged with crimes inside the military, and others have been linked to recruitment efforts for the white right. A recent Department of Homeland Security report, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," stated: "The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today." Many white supremacists join the Army to secure training for, as they see it, a future domestic race war. Others claim to be shooting Iraqis not to pursue the military's strategic goals but because killing "hajjis" is their duty as white militants.

Soldiers' associations with extremist groups, and their racist actions, contravene a host of military statutes instituted in the past three decades. But during the "war on terror," U.S. armed forces have turned a blind eye on their own regulations. A 2005 Department of Defense report states, "Effectively, the military has a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy pertaining to extremism. If individuals can perform satisfactorily, without making their extremist opinions overt … they are likely to be able to complete their contracts."

Carter F. Smith is a former military investigator who worked with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command from 2004 to 2006, when he helped to root out gang violence in troops. "When you need more soldiers, you lower the standards, whether you say so or not," he says. "The increase in gangs and extremists is an indicator of this." Military investigators may be concerned about white supremacists, he says. "But they have a war to fight, and they don't have incentive to slow down."

Tom Metzger is the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and current leader of the White Aryan Resistance. He tells me the military has never been more tolerant of racial extremists. "Now they are letting everybody in," he says.

Now, much of this, in fact, we have already reported at C&L. Indeed, this is not a new problem, as Kennard makes clear:

Following an investigation of white supremacist groups, a 2008 FBI report declared: "Military experience — ranging from failure at basic training to success in special operations forces — is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement." In white supremacist incidents from 2001 to 2008, the FBI identified 203 veterans. Most of them were associated with the National Alliance and the National Socialist Movement, which promote anti-Semitism and the overthrow of the U.S. government, and assorted skinhead groups.

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From Bill Moyers Journal:

From a billion dollars sought for embassies in Pakistan and Afghanistan to May's highest casualties for US forces in Iraq since September, the wars abroad are taking their toll on our nation. Bill Moyers sits down with award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill to examine the human and financial costs of America's wars.

This didn't air here, so I didn't get a chance to record it, but someone else put it up at You Tube. Well worth the watch. Scahill has done some wonderful investigative reporting and has not allowed a change in administrations to keep him from pushing back against U.S. imperialism in the Middle East and the use of private contractors to fight our wars for us.

As Scahill notes, President Obama inherited a huge mess, and he's no George Bush. That does not mean that he should be given a pass on escalating our military presence in Afghanistan and on the continued and dangerous reliance on these contractors who are fighting wars for profit.

Full transcript below the fold.

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From Washington Journal June 4, 2009. Lindsey Graham is told by a caller that the Republican party should apologize for the invasion of Iraq. Graham refuses to apologize and defends the invasion.

Graham: I am very proud of what we've been able to accomplish in Iraq and I am very sad that we made so many mistakes on the way. We never had enough troops. We were stubborn about adjusting our policies on the ground, but we finally did. I am very proud of President Obama understanding that we have to get it right in Iraq.

I am glad Saddam Hussein is out of power. I am glad he's dead. And I am glad the Iraqi people, Sunni, Shia and Kurds have a chance to start over. I think it would be a wonderful thing for this world to have a representative democracy in the heart of the Mid-East in the Arab world and I wish, quite frankly, in Cairo President Obama would have acknowledged the bravery of the Iraqi people to turn on al Qaeda. I think we underestimate what happened in Iraq.

One of the great stories of the Iraqi war here has been that the population in Iraq took up arms against al Qaeda and that's the way we win this war. We can't kill all the terrorists to win the war. We try to empower moderate people. People like exist in Iraq of different groups to stand up against these thugs and murderers that would oppress women and children and people all over the world that would take us into the dark ages.

So I have no apology for what we're doing in Iraq. I regret the mistakes we made, but I'm proud of the Iraqi people and I'm proud of our soldiers who have helped them chart a new way that will make you safer and make me safer and President Obama has got I think the correct view about how to move forward.

By Senator Graham's standards, just how many other countries would it be alright for the United States to invade? Graham of course is still trying to conflate Saddam Hussein with the attacks on 9-11 without coming out and saying as much. Graham also refuses to address the number of dead and displaced Iraqis that are a result of the U.S. invading a country that was never a threat to us.

There is plenty of blame to go around and a great number of people on both sides of the aisle in Washington D.C. who owe the Iraqis an apology for invading their country. Senator Graham is not willing to accept any of it. Color me not surprised but still disgusted. It would have been nice if the caller had some time left in the show to follow up with him.