Tom Engelhardt looks at the permanent American bases being built in Iraq and draws the conclusion that the administration is lying about plans to withdraw from Iraq in order to help Republicans in the 2006 mid-term elections.

Interestingly, he makes an argument which fits in nicely with the way things have gone over the course of the past three years:

The bases, however, fit snugly with other Pentagon plans, already on the drawing boards. For instance, Saddam’s 400,000 man military was to be replaced by only a 40,000 man, lightly armed military without significant armor or an air force. (In an otherwise heavily armed region, this insured that any Iraqi government would be almost totally reliant on the American military and that the U.S. Air Force would, by default, be the Iraqi Air Force for years to come.)

In a post-9/11 world, could the administration have decided that it needed to “own” a piece of the middle east? Perhaps Colin Powell’s “Pottery Barn Rule” - you break it, you buy it - was more prescient than we could have understood at the time? In the end, perhaps it was the administration’s plan to “break” Iraq so that our presence would be required for the long-term, giving us a foothold we could never have had in Saudi Arabia or Qatar?

If this was the reason, it would have been nice had the administration made the case to us clearly and let the American people decide, rather than embellishing weak intelligence on WMDs or al Qaida ties in order to bamboozle us into war.

Today is just one of those days, and I’m feeling a bit negative about the direction of our country. In addition to the release of more Abu Ghraib torture pictures, an adminstration bent on pulling apart the social safety net piece by piece, and the contempt held by our government for basic civil liberties, we have a new U.N. report telling us to stop torturing people and shut down Abu Ghrab.

It’s hard to keep your head up on a day like today…

Apparently our Congress believes that the Constitution is “quaint,” as our Attorney General viewed the Geneva Convention after 9/11. Today we get this double-whammy: The Patriot Act will be renewed without any significant civil liberties protections being added, and the Senate is refusing to hold hearings into the President’s unconstitutional spying program.

It’s good to know they take their oath of office so seriously.

Our military tortured people in Iraq, as a consequence of our administration’s departure from the Geneva Convention and the norms of human decency in its post-9/11 policies.

Last year, the Bad Domestic Policy Proposal of the Year Award went to Bush’s Social Security plan. This year, it appears that his healthcare proposal will take the prize. Kevin Drum summarizes the President’s plan:

Current system (for those with insurance): When you get sick you go to the doctor. When your kids get sick, they go to the doctor. You don’t have to quibble over costs or spend time second guessing your doctor over whether a test he recommends is really necessary. As Bush himself says, it seems like a pretty good deal.

Now here’s what Bush is trying to sell: When you get sick, you should spend a lot of time shopping around for doctors to find one you can afford. You should put off tests that he recommends if they’re expensive. You should haggle over the cost of drugs as if you were buying a used car. And when you get home you should worry about whether you made the right decision or not.

The Republican Party: making your life a bigger pain in the ass, one policy at a time.

In the last days of Martin Luther King’s life, with his expressed opposition to the war in Vietnam and his renewed focus on bringing justice to the poor of all colors with his “poor people’s campaign,” much of America closed its ears.

It was one thing to expose “those people” who were doing such horrible things to blacks in the South. But quite another when he called the rest of the country to account.

As we can see by the fact that so many conservatives are outraged that people would have taken the opportunity of Coretta Scott King’s funeral to advocate for the causes she and Dr. King gave their lives to, those ears are still closed.

Yes, the Kings were instrumental in shaking the foundations of the unjust system of segregation in our country. But to focus solely on that piece of their life is to miss the fact that primarily, they wanted to see God’s kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven, here and now.

And you can’t have God’s kingdom when so many children go to bed hungry every night. When so many adults sleep on the streets. When so many in the world live on less than $1 per day. And you can’t have God’s kingdom when “our” side decides to blow up “their” side. When you sell other nations swords when you should be helping them buy plowshares.

Was it appropriate to criticize the policies of the current administration at the funeral of Coretta Scott King? Absolutely. In fact, I suspect that Mrs. King and her husband wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Old Testament prophets generally weren’t very well received either when they “spoke truth to power…”

Via the Sojourners email list, I received the text of Bono’s challenege to our country and the church at the National Prayer Breakfast. This quote in particular really moved me, but read the whole thing:

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. “If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom with become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places.”

Once again, it boils down to this: tax cuts for the rich, budget cuts for the poor and middle class:

House Republicans eked out a victory on a $39.5 billion budget-cutting package on Wednesday, with a handful of skittish Republicans switching their votes at the last minute in opposition to reductions in spending on health and education programs.

Don’t kid yourselves - this is the Republican party’s platform. Mr. Bush asked his party to “make the tax cuts permanent” a couple days ago, which means, if the Republicans get their way, these cuts in services for the poor and middle class are only the beginning.

Once again, I will have to say - those aren’t “moral values” in my book.