ORZALA ASHRAF: What would you expect from those children who lost their feet or their arm or their mother or their father during that kind of bombing? What would you expect from them? Do you expect them to join the peace process? Do you expect them to say, “I have excused you”?… –Rethink Afghanistan: Filmmaker Robert Greenwald Launches Film Opposing Escalation of War

In addition to having a better temperament, Mousavi hasn’t yet been fitted for his custom-made caricature. If he miraculously ends up becoming Iran’s president, it will take America’s Mideast hegemonists a few months to affix the Haji Hitler mask to Mousavi’s unfamiliar visage, which may be enough time to head off new sanctions or an Israeli air strike. Moreover, it will be difficult, though hardly impossible, for all the establishment commentators who have made a secular Bodhisattva of Mousavi to take it all back when he, unsurprisingly, protests the U.S. encirclement of his country and insists on Iran’s rights to nuclear energy. In fact, if the mullahs were crafty chess masters, they would invalidate the election results – regardless of who actually won – and install Mousavi immediately. This would be an enormous boost to their domestic credibility (they could blame all the fraud on Ahmadinejad), and it would leave their international critics speechless – again, at least for a while.

But, sadly, that probably won’t happen, so it’s best for those who want peace to emphasize the primacy of negotiations with the Iranian government over the proper composition of that government. And to those who suddenly know, know, KNOW everything about Iranian politics and society: please acquire some self-awareness and humility. A lot of you guys knew, knew, KNEW everything about Iraq seven years ago, and we see the glorious dividends of your omniscience today. If you sincerely want to help your newfound friends in Iran, your first priority should be making sure that our own government (or the one in Jerusalem that it funds and backs to the hilt) doesn’t out-murder the Basij a thousand times over with bombs and missiles.

To be fair, that is literally progressive.

Life in Washington is one damn paradox after another.

Kudos to the American Civil Liberties Union for their lawsuit that compelled the disclosure of the torture memos yesterday. But these are probably only the tip of the iceberg. Hopefully the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and supporters of disclosing Bush-era crimes will have sufficient clout to force the government to reveal far more information on the torture scandal. Obama becomes complicit for all the crimes he covers up.

I will be curious to see if the revelations of how the Justice Department tortured the law and rationality to set loose the CIA will have any broader impact on how Americans view the federal government. I ain’t holdin’ my breath.

Why?

Perhaps this explains it:

So, while a few die hard “24″ fans — and Alberto Gonzales, and Michael Mukasey — might still claim confusion about waterboarding being torture, nearly everyone else would agree that having your penis sliced with razors once a month IS torture.

According to the close-the-barn-door-late theory, should official confirmation of this behavior escape the U.S. establishment cone of silence, it would be a PR disaster. That, not the perennial whine of “National Security,” is the source of the pressure the British Judges felt.

There is a lot of smoke around the L.A. Times article suggesting Barak Obama’s Executive Order ending extraordinary renditions was bogus.

But even if Mr. Obama did end the extraordinary brand of renditions, according to a Democracy Now! interview with Michael Rattner of The Center for Constitutional Rights, there is still a hole big enough to drive tour busses full of victims into the Gulag.

Will this be another big disappointment like Mr. Obama’s plans to double the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan — and his authorization of Predator drone strikes on the tribal people of Pakistan? And will we meet other Binyam Mohameds in the future, this time created by the Obama Administration?

Please let the incoming presidential administration know that you demand real change in our interventionist foreign policy. Ask President Elect Barack Obama to make a stand for peace by dumping Bush appointee Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. You can easily let the transition team know your thoughts on this matter by calling 202-540-3000 or pasting the letter below into this form.

Dear President Elect Obama:

You sailed to victory on the promise of change and hope. For those of us who love peace, a change in foreign policy must come with a change in the key personnel who supported and argued for the continued occupation of Iraq. President Elect Obama, we want change in the Pentagon. We ask you to not to give former CIA Director Robert Gates another term as Secretary of Defense.

Respectfully,

[Antiwar.com Reader]

For instance, one of the recent headlines that continues to run across the network tickers is Barack Obama’s visit to Europe and the Middle East — to boost his foreign policy credentials.

Exactly how does visiting heads-of-state, for mere hours, boost ones credentials?  Remember, these are the same officials that never drive themselves, use their own Blackberry’s or ride the very public transportation that they champion at election time — let alone breath the same air as hoi polloi.

In fact, I have spent the last year living and working in Korea and Taiwan yet I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on anything but the ability to find the nearest washroom (and McDonalds).

Thus, what about the foreign policy credentials of backpackers, retirees, businessmen and other expats who at least lived with and regularly dialogued with the local taxpayers?   If Obama or McCain visited a nuclear power plant for an hour, do they receive a engineering bump and are now capable of  designing reactor cores?  Dare one relish the day when the politicos visit a brain surgeon or OBGYN?

See also: The Rise of the Imperial Class

A basic logic lesson and please forgive me if you think I’m talking down to you. I’m really not. It’s just that I’m shocked at how many people, including McCain, don’t seem to get logic. If I say, “All crows are black” and I also say, “That bird is a crow,” then I’m saying that that bird is black even if I don’t say so explicitly.

On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday, April 20, John McCain called William Ayers “an unrepentant terrorist.” What was McCain’s evidence? McCain said that Ayers “was engaged in bombings which could have or did kill innocent people…” So McCain is saying that someone who engages in bombings which could have killed or did kill innocent people is a terrorist.

Now consider what McCain did. McCain flew a bomber, an A-4E Skyhawk, over North Vietnam. I don’t know whether he actually dropped his bombs before being shot down. But certainly he was engaged in actions that, if he had succeeded, could have killed innocent people. Which makes McCain, in his own words, a terrorist.

Now McCain could argue that that’s different because, as he said elsewhere in the interview, “I had a reconciliation with the Vietnamese, when we normalized relations.” Did he apologize to them? He didn’t say. If he did, that would make him a “repentant terrorist.” Too bad Stephanopoulos didn’t challenge him.

But the remarks [by Rev. Jeremiah Wright] that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

Pure PC piffle. As for the rest of the speech, eh, not so bad. As Jesse Walker noted,

If you don’t have a friend — a real friend, someone who means something to you and sometimes influences your decisions — who occasionally expresses a nutty opinion (”The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color”) or an impolitic truth (”a country and a culture controlled by rich white people”), then you really, really need to get out more.