Democracy for New Mexico

A Tree With a Massive Knife On Top

Is it just me or is this one of the most profoundly disturbing statements to come out of the war zone of late? If this represents the mindset of a significant number of our troops in Iraq, where do we go from here? From an AP article:

At an Army outpost in Ramadi, the most-dangerous city in insurgent-dominated Anbar province west of Baghdad, soldiers decorated a full-size artificial Christmas tree with mines, smoke grenades and machine gun rounds and stuck a massive knife on the top.

"You can go anywhere in Iraq," grinned Staff Sgt. Jeremy Gann, a 24-year-old from Dallas, Georgia, who is part of the 1st Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment. "You won't find another Christmas tree like it."

Meanwhile, in the world outside The Decider's fake ranchette of denial, at least 2,978 members of the U.S. military have been killed in Iraq, at least 89 of them so far in December. And audits are revealing that Defense Department war contracting has resulted in tens of millions of dollars in fraud, abuse and waste and "routinely violated rules designed to protect U.S. Government interests." We all know this is just the tip of the iceberg and that the captain of today's version of the Titanic ship of state could care less. Full steam ahead.

Yuletide 2006: War is Over (If You Want It)

You'd think this song, originally written and performed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, would go out of style, at least lyrically. Unfortunately war seems almost eternally with us, largely because certain power blocs have much to gain from it -- politically, financially and in terms of making some dysfunctional individuals feel mighty manly. So here we go again: Merry Xmas, War Is Over If We Want It. Let's think about that as we listen to Sarah McLachlan's new version of the song off her recently released album, Wintersong, while seeing so many innocent children's faces in this video. And as more long, dirty, unnecessary wars rage on in the Middle East and many other places around the Planet Earth. Only we can stop them. Ava at Peace Takes Courage agrees.

(Click on image for larger version.)

Majority of NM Congressional Delegation Skeptical On Sending More Troops to Iraq

Are the realities on the ground in Iraq FINALLY penetrating even the minds of Republicans? According to an Albuquerque Journal article, the entire New Mexico congressional delegation, except for Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM-02), is voicing serious concerns about Bush's proposal to send up to 30,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq:

Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM):
"It's not going to do any good to send 30,000 more troops and equipment unless we know what we'll have them do. This war is taking a toll on many people. It's dragging on. I'm very hopeful that the president will come up with something better than this idea of a surge (in troops).

Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM):
"Putting more troops in Iraq is at odds with the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Iraq Study Group, and some top military leaders on the ground. I have very grave concerns about pursuing this option."

Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM-01):
Rep. Wilson "believes we need to clarify the mission and objectives before sending additional forces into Baghdad," said Enrique Carlos Knell, Wilson's communications director. "Over the last three weeks, Rep. Wilson has been meeting with experts inside and outside the government on the situation in the Middle East. She expects to have more to say in early January."

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM-02):
"The United States must do whatever it takes to achieve victory in Iraq. Increasing American troop levels could significantly help the security situation, which must improve for freedom and democracy to have a chance. More troops would demonstrate America's consistent resolve ... in the Global War on Terror."

Rep. Tom Udall (D-NM-03):
In an interview, Udall called for an immediate pullout of U.S. troops in Iraq with redeployment to other strategic locations in the Middle East. Udall said that option would take at least six to nine months. "I don't think this (proposed surge in troops) is a good idea," Udall said. "We should begin a phased redeployment of our troops outside of Iraq now."

... He said he is unsure if the new Democratic Congress will shut off the Iraq war's spending spigot. "I think it's too early to tell on that," Udall said, adding that Democrats will insist on "very specific" benchmarks and instructions for future Iraq spending.

Latest Polling:
According to the latest CNN poll, only 11% of those polled support sending additional troops to Iraq. Moreover:

Only 32 percent said they would support keeping U.S. troops in Iraq "as long as necessary" to hand over control to a new Iraqi government. By comparison, 21 percent said they wanted to see Americans leave immediately, and 33 percent said they wanted to see a U.S. withdrawal within a year.

And according to a McClatchy Newspapers article:

Bush's overall job-approval rating hovers in the mid-30s, but support for his handling of Iraq has plummeted to the low to mid-20s, with disapproval around 70 percent, according to three national polls in mid-December. Fully 62 percent said it was "a mistake" to send U.S. troops to Iraq, according to a CBS poll taken Dec. 8-10.

Guest Blog: Support NM Impeachment Effort

Submitted by guest blogger Terry Riley:
I am mad as hell and I am going to do something. I just got an e-mail from a friend of mine in Santa Fe. Leland Lehrman worked with me on the paper ballot / election reform legislation in the 2005 and 2006 legislative sessions. He is proposing that we get out state legislature to bring impeachment proceedings against President Bush. Please read his message. He is right, the states can initiate the action and then the "Democrats" will have to deal with it. Please read, and contact your legislator.

It looks like Bush is going to put another 30,000 soldiers into Iraq after the first of the year and hold the troop strength at 185,000 for two years. Think about our soldiers. In order to maintain this troop level the Pentagon will have to put every soldier and EVERY reservist into a tight rotation, much more than any individual can be expected to survive.

Save our Soldiers! Impeach Bush
Terry Riley
Veterans for Peace
Son of a Veteran
Veteran
Brother of a Veteran
Father of a Veteran
Father or a combat Veteran

Leland Lehrman's Email:

Friends and Legislators,
We're working on a resolution that will impeach President Bush at the NM State Level. According to Jefferson's Rules of the Federal House, if an impeachment resolution passes at the State Level, the Federal Government is required to stop all business and hear impeachment proceedings immediately.

Quoting from ImpeachFor Peace.org:
"In the House of Representatives there are various methods of setting an impeachment in motion: by charges made on the floor on the responsibility of a Member or Delegate (II, 1303; III, 2342, 2400, 2469; VI, 525, 526, 528, 535, 536); by charges preferred by a memorial, which is usually referred to a committee for examination (III, 2364, 2491, 2494, 2496, 2499, 2515; VI, 552); or by a resolution dropped in the hopper by a Member and referred to a committee (April 15, 1970, p. 11941- 2); by a message from the President (III, 2294, 2319; VI, 498); by charges transmitted from the legislature of a State (III, 2469) or Territory (III, 2487) or from a grand jury (III, 2488); or from facts developed and reported by an investigating committee of the House (III, 2399, 2444)."

According to Section 604 of the Manual, "direct proposition to impeach is a question of high privilege in the House and at once supersedes business otherwise in order under the rules governing the order of business." It does not lose its privilege just because "a similar proposition has been made at a previous time during the same session of Congress." On the other hand, "a resolution simply proposing an investigation, even though impeachment may be a possible consequence, is not privileged." Where, however, "a resolution of investigation positively proposes impeachment or suggests that end, it has been admitted as of privilege."

It is also possible to impeach through the submission of a memorial by any private citizen, given a Congressional Committee picks it up and acts on it. This type of initiative has been organized by Impeach for Peace here.

Furthermore, Impeachment of the President was passed with overwhelming support by the NM Democratic Party when it held its most recent statewide Platform hearings. It is an official policy of the NM Democratic Party to impeach President Bush.

We will have to repeat that over and over because it is not common knowledge.

Also, Georgia Dem. Rep. Cynthia McKinney has written articles of impeachment during the last few weeks of her term and we can use those at the State Level. I need everyone to call Senators John Grubesic and Gerry Ortiz y Pino (Santa Fe and Albuquerque) and ask them to support an impeachment resolution and to help us get it drafted before the January session. Rep. Peter Wirth is my target for the House, although we may have better luck with someone else. Please call your Legislators now, and email, mail or fax this information to them.

Grubesic and Wirth are Santa Fe's own, we can hopefully count on them. Ortiz y Pino is one of  the best legislators in the NM House overall; he is associated with the NM PACE and the Albuquerque Peace and Justice social fabric. A social worker by profession.

Grubesic: 820-1825
Ortiz y Pino: 505.250.1280
Wirth: 988-1668

Also, essential to success with be Speaker of the House Ben Lujan, Majority Leader Ken Martinez, Sen Majority Leader Michael Sanchez and President Pro Tem Ben Altamirano. Get familiar with them at the NM Legislature website. All are Democrats. The Governor will have to be invoved as well. With Democratic control of every governmental body in the State, NM has a good chance to make history here.

Please forward to all interested. I have yet to hear from anyone, but will be in their offices or on the phone again with them this week coming. Once we get the OK to draft, we will proceed to incorporate McKinney's articles of impeachment and those in the book, "The Case for Impeachment." Also, below, I include information compiled by of the Green Party, much of which is at the website ArticlesOfImpeachment.net where you can get completely sorted out about the legal methods and more.

Leland Lehrman (505) 982-3609

Editor's Note: This is a guest blog by Terry Riley. If you'd like to submit a post for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link at the upper left-hand corner of our main page.

Must See TV

Check out the video a(or text) at Crooks and Liars. You know it's bad when Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle express severe doubts about our president's sanity.

Iraq Outrage of the Day: Americans in Secret Custody

Another unbelievable tale of the Iraq fiasco is revealed in this recent New York Times article. It provides an overview of what it's like in one of our secret maximum security military prisons in Iraq. The account is provided by an American who was a whistleblower to the FBI after discovering problems within the Iraqi security company where he worked. He and another American were wrongly seized by U.S. authorities and imprisoned for 97 awful days in Baghdad. His story offers yet another upsetting view into the chaotic, confusing labyrinth of allegiances, secrets and illegalities that defines what's going on in Iraq three plus years into our "cakewalk."

Read it and consider carefully the horrors being performed in our names, ostensibly to nurture freedom and democracy, allegedly to protect our citizens, supposedly to show the world what America is all about. How much worse will it get if BushCo gets away with escalating our blind and completely ineffective militarism instead of working to excise the fast-growing tumor of an aggressive cancer that's almost all of our own making?

Excerpt from article:

The story told through those records and interviews illuminates the haphazard system of detention and prosecution that has evolved in Iraq, where detainees are often held for long periods without charges or legal representation, and where the authorities struggle to sort through the endless stream of detainees to identify those who pose real threats.

“Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had,” said Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated. “While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.”

Richardson: McCain is Dead Wrong; Must Get Troops Out in 2007

According to The Hotline, Gov. Bill Richardson had this to say today in New Hampshire about Iraq and McCain:

“The leading advocate for escalating the war is Senator John McCain. I have served with John in Congress and I respect him. But John McCain is wrong, dead wrong to think that we can solve Iraq’s political crisis through military escalation.”

“There are no quick or easy answers to the crisis in Iraq. Our choices are between bad options and worse ones. Some prefer military escalation. Some choose staying the course. These options are illusions. The only realistic choice we have is to stand down militarily and let the Iraqis stand up and face the political crisis which only they can resolve.”

“I’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan. I worked in this region...we should harbor no illusions. This withdrawal will not be pretty. People will die. But fewer will die than if we stay. There are no guarantees that our departure will end the civil war, but it is sure to continue so long as we stay. The Iraqis might, or might not, resolve their political crisis. It is up to them. They distrust and fear one another, and this makes it very tough. But they share one goal – they don’t want to destroy their own country. To save it, they need to stop killing each other and start compromising. And we need to get out of the way.”

The Boston Globe has more, including:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Saturday that the administration should set a date to withdraw American troops from Iraq in 2007 and criticized Sen. John McCain's call for boosting troop levels there.

"This is not cut and run," he said. "What I'm proposing is something that I believe will work. A fixed withdrawal date. You redeploy those troops."

A withdrawal should be coupled with a political solution and a reconciliation conference with ethnic groups in Iraq, he said. He said it would allow the Pentagon to redeploy forces to Afghanistan and bolster efforts to combat international terrorism.

Bayh Out, Edwards In
In other news in the race to be the 2008 Dem presidential candidate, Evan Bayh won't run (phew). And John Edwards will soon make his announcement to run while standing in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, which I find very cool given his emphasis on poverty. The only officially declared Dem candidate is Iowa's Tom Vilsack, not exactly a charisma machine.

Donate Now to Help Wounded and Sick Veterans With a Phone Card

From Working Assets Act for Change:
Support the veterans who've served our country by sending them a phone card so they can call their loved ones over the holidays. Click here.

Veterans Administration (VA) budget cuts in recent years have left many of our nation's veterans at VA hospitals without the means to call their families over the holidays. These long distance calls are generally not covered by the VA, and many vets just don't have the financial resources to call all their loved ones.

So Working Assets, Veterans for Peace, CODEPINK, Iraq Veterans Against the War and Gold Star Families for Peace have teamed up on a project to thank our veterans by sending them phone cards loaded with 125 minutes of domestic long-distance calling time. We'll purchase these cards and deliver them to VA Medical Facilities all over the country on December 18th. (If you want to join in delivering the cards to a VA hospital near you, just click on the link you'll see after making your gift.)

$10 will cover the cost of phone cards for three veterans. $20 will buy six phone cards. $33 will buy ten cards. $100 will buy phone cards for 30 veterans to call home over the holidays. 100% of your gift will go directly to buying phone cards -- so please give as generously as you can.

Heather Wilson: Naive & Simplistic (Redistrict Now!)

This is a guest blog by a New Mexican who goes by the name 'Land of Enchantment' that is cross-posted here by permission. It was posted originally as a diary at Daily Kos:

Congresswoman Heather Wilson (NM-01) - a member of the House Intelligence Committee - has criticized the Iraq Study Group report as disappointing, with some of its suggestions naive and simplistic, and others blindingly obvious.  I have not found any more specifics as to which parts she ascribes these various characterizations.

Of course, the basic idea that the whole business isn’t working hardly comes as news to anyone whose IQ is greater than their shoe size.  Houston Chronicle cartoonist Nick Anderson, for example, illustrates what should have been "blindingly obvious" long ago:

The plain spoken Russ Feingold has more sense in his little finger than Heather Wilson’s exhibited in her entire political career.  From the Detroit News:

"Maybe there are still people in Washington who need a study group to tell them that the policy in Iraq isn't working, but the American people are way ahead of this report."

An interesting question, and one I don’t know how to answer, is why Heather Wilson is perhaps the widest-quoted member of Congress about the report.  From the International Herald Tribune (the Paris-based NY Times affiliate via the AP), to Imus in the Morning, to NPR.  I’m guessing everyone’s going with AP coverage, as I’ve not found any statement on Wilson’s official website.  But NPR’s site carries quotes from sixteen members of the House & Senate sourced to AP.  So it might just be a case of tit-for-tat journalism, and Wilson gave the most pointedly critical quote.

Wilson’s been a "stay the course", rubber-stamp kind of Republican.  From the Albuquerque Tribune:

Now that she's had the electoral scare of her life, Donald Rumsfeld's out and President Bush is talking options, has Heather Wilson's view on Iraq changed?

No, and here's why.

"Elections are about choices between candidates. They don't change policy positions," the Albuquerque Republican said Tuesday after returning to the House for the postelection session of Congress.

We do know that Wilson hasn’t used the expressions "naive" and "simplistic" about policies in Iraq before.  Not about:

• The insurgency is in its "last throes"
• They’ll greet us as liberators, with candy and flowers
• "Mission Accomplished"
• The purple fingers show it’s all successful
• The war wouldn’t last more than 6 months, max
• Iraqi oil revenues would pay for reconstruction
• Trumped up "intelligence" on Saddam’s WMDs

Just two months ago, Wilson was profiled for the midterm election by the Albuquerque Tribune:

What is your stance on the Iraq War and how the U.S. should proceed?

The U.S. military has done an outstanding job defeating Saddam Hussein and helping the Iraqi people have the first free election in decades. All Americans, including me, want American troops to come home from Iraq. My opponent wanted to immediately withdraw all U.S. troops almost a year ago - before free elections, before the Iraqi Army was ready to provide security, before the establishment of a unity government, and before we killed the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Even now, if we immediately retreat from Iraq, the terrorists will see it as a sign of weakness, and it will embolden them to commit more terrorist attacks.

I believe our troops should be reduced through an orderly transition to the Iraqi Army as Iraqis take more responsibility for governing and security in their own country. I also believe that decisions on troop withdrawal schedules should be driven by U.S. commanders on the ground in Iraq, not politicians in Washington. The Iraqi Army is starting to stand on its own. We can't cut and run. We need to finish the job.

This looks like formulaic, simplistic pablum to me.  Look at all that’s happened since this statement was published on October 10.  It strikes me as a tad naive to assert that the Iraqi army’s "starting to stand on its own".  Even the most hawkish guy around, John McCain, says American troops shouldn’t be embedded with the Iraqi military due to "questionable loyalties" - just heard reported on MSNBC earlier this morning.

On the occasion of her vote for war authorization in 2002, Wilson said the following on the House Floor:

I am voting to authorize the use of force against Iraq because it possesses and is further developing weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver those weapons and because I believe that Iraq intends to use those weapons against Americans.

At that time, she stated that other reasons were not adequate to go to war: Having WMD without the intention to use them against the US, oppression and human rights atrocities against minorities in Iraq, or violations of sanctions.  Considering that she serves on the House Intelligence Committee, she was in a position to ask penetrating and skeptical questions about those WMD and Saddam’s intention to use them against the US.  She did not.

Since then? According to a Wilson press release of 11/18/05, things were going so well in Iraq that we could expect substantial troop reductions through out 2006.  Perhaps a bit "naive"?  (Again keeping in mind that she’s got an inside track on intelligence...)

I expect U.S. forces will continue to stay in Iraq through December's elections at roughly their current level.  But as I’ve said, if political and security progress continues on roughly the course we are on, American forces should be able to start being drawn down in significant numbers during the course of next year.  These redeployments should be based on conditions in the field.  As the Iraqis stand up, we can stand down.

Wilson also voted against benchmarks for success in Iraq.  From the DCCC:

In 2005, Wilson voted against an effort to require President Bush to submit a plan for success in Iraq, supply the military with adequate equipment and other resources to complete their mission, and provide veterans with adequate health care services. Had the plan passed, it would have required the president to outline benchmarks for success in Iraq - including the adoption of a constitution, free and fair elections, and a plan for economic development - that could be used to determine when Iraq is sufficiently stable to allow for the return home of American soldiers. The motion also noted that the lack of a clear strategy for success in Iraq could undermine the morale of U.S. troops.

TIME FOR REDISTRICTING
I think it’s time for a little redistricting in New Mexico.  We’ve got a Democratic Governor, and both chambers of the legislature are Democratic.  Election results this time around:

• NM-01 . . . . Rep - 50.2% . . .  Dem - 49.8%
• NM-02 . . . .  Rep - 60% . . . . . Dem - 40%
• NM-03 . . . . Rep - 25% . . . . . Dem - 75%

Statewide: Rep - 44% . . . . Dem - 56%

With those numbers statewide, there’s really no excuse for only one out of three seats to be held by a Democrat.  A little tinkering with the districts could make NM-02 65% Republican and NM-03 70% Democratic.  Which would add ten points of Democratic clout to NM-01, and settle the whole business to better match the electorate.

This is a classic case of Democratic votes being concentrated in a way that reduces Congressional representation.  Since the State Legislature has been Democratic in both Houses for as long as anyone can remember, and Democratic Governor Bill Richardson has just been re-elected to a second term, this could easily change.

Feingold on ISG Report: No Input From Those Who Opposed Invasion

Mr. Bush, tear down your wall of denial....

It might help bolster the credibility and creativity of recommendations if advisory panels like the Iraq Study Group included a truly diverse membership, wouldn't it? Although I think the report does a good job of describing the horrors on the ground produced by Bush and his enablers (including many Dems), their "comprehensive solution" suggestions seem like way too little, way too late, and way too consistent with conventional Washington wisdom. Sen. Russ Feingold had this to say about the ISG report last night on Countdown:

The fact is this commission was composed apparently entirely of people who did not have the judgment to oppose this Iraq war in the first place, and did not have the judgment to realize it was not a wise move in the fight against terrorism. So that's who is doing this report. Then I looked at the list of who testified before them. There is virtually no one who opposed the war in the first place. Virtually no one who has been really calling for a different strategy that goes for a global approach to the war on terrorism.

So this is really a Washington inside job and it shows not in the description of what's happened - that's fairly accurate - but it shows in the recommendations. It's been called a classic Washington compromise that does not do the job of extricating us from Iraq in a way that we can deal with the issues in Southeast Asia, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia which are every bit as important as what is happening in Iraq. This report does not do the job and it's because it was not composed of a real representative group of Americans who believe what the American people showed in the election, which is that it's time for us to have a timetable to bring the troops out of Iraq. (Video at Crooks and Liars.)

I've been watching the reactions of many talking heads since the report was released and my Maybe I'm Amazed Prize goes to Meet the Press mogul Tim Russert. In a clip last night he was truly FLABBERGASTED and UPSET with the surprising -- nay, SHOCKING -- news that Iraq is a tinderbox, deteriorating into utter chaos and uncontrollably brutal violence caused in no small part by U.S. troop presence and Bush's utterly hubristic and misguided strategies. Who knew? I wonder where Tim has been for 4 years. That beltway bubble must be even more all-encompassing than even I thought it was.

I'm with this guy: excerpt from post by Marty Kaplan on Huffington Post:

September 11th, as it turns out, was not the death of irony. It was the death of maturity, and the death of democracy. It began the time of magical thinking, when theories become true if only we clap harder. It inaugurated the era of reason as treason, dissent as defeatism, and stop-and-think as cut-and-run. It enforced penalties on open discourse and political opposition so severe that neither Mao nor Stalin would have trouble recognizing their handiwork. September 11th infantilized us, intimidated us, and today, as we begin to rouse from our slumber and stupefaction, we can hardly believe the horror we have enabled.

So now we have placed the nine Fabulous Baker Boys, plus the Justice not replaced by Harriet Miers, in some sacred circle where they will have ten minutes to tell the truth and not be called America-haters.

But alas, there will be no happy ending in Iraq. Like parrots squawking "Victory!" and "Finish the Job!" and "Achieve our Objectives!" in a burning house, Bush and Cheney are determined to remain the punchline of a sick joke. Without a military draft, there will be no American force large enough to impose martial law, let alone democracy, on Iraq. Without a return to earth of the Prophet himself, may his name be blessed, there will be no political solution in our lifetime to centuries of Islamic division and violence. All that lies ahead is a nightmare of slaughter, for them and for us; all paths lead to generations of instability, not just in Iraq, but across the region.

Read the rest.

Click to download a copy of the complete ISG report or just the Executive Summary (PDF).