As of 7/1/04: 860 Americans killed and nearly 5400 wounded and an estimated 3,200 to 11,300 Iraqi civilians killed.
Over 235 cities and towns have passed resolution defying Ashcroft's very un-American Patriot Act.

For the first time, a majority of Americans say it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq.  A new CBS-New York Times poll puts Bush's approval rating at 42 percent, the lowest of his presidency.  (details)

In a Washington Post-ABC News poll asked who could be labeled "honest and trustworthy," 52 percent of the respondents chose John Kerry; only 39 percent picked Bush.

In Iraq, only 2 percent of the people view the United States as liberators (details) and 90 per cent of Iraqis object to US troops on their soil (details).

"The invasion of Iraq together with no action on the Israeli-Palestinian issue has only served to inflame the Muslim population and given rise to disputation in other countries. It's more unstable today and I think we're in more danger today than we were before the invasion," -  General Joseph Hoar, a  former senior commander who worked on Middle East planning

In the 20th century, every nationalistic insurgency movement to expel invaders was successful.

Democracy only very rarely flows down the barrel of a gun.

Back in 2000 a friend of mine warned me that if I voted for Al Gore, and he won, the price of gasoline would go sky-high, the national debt would rise, we'd lose millions of jobs, we would lose respect in the world and our military would be underpaid and totally overstretched.  Well, I'll be damned. I voted for Al Gore, he won, and my friend was right-  all those things came true!

"Upon the handing of power to his handpicked Iraqi government, President Bush said, "The Iraqi people have their country back." He said nothing about how long it will take for us to get our country back".  (from a Derrick Z. Jackson column in the Boston Globe

"Future historians studying the decline and fall of America will mark this as the time the tide began to turn - toward a mean-spirited mediocrity in place of a noble beacon".  - Ted Sorenson, a former aide to President John F. Kennedy, in a commencement speech at the New School University in New York on May 21, 2004  (full text)

Sign on a post office door on the day of Reagan's funeral:  "This post office will be closed today in honor of a great American- Ray Charles"

"Democrats are outraged over the public immorality of George W. Bush and his administration -- its justifications, denials and lies about everything from corporate complicity to the reasons for invading Iraq.   Republicans seem far more consumed by private morality -- gays who seek the "normalcy" of marriage, women who confront the difficult choice to end a pregnancy, and, paradoxically, the sex life of their own Jack Ryan...  given the stakes, I'm more concerned with the public fool than the private philanderer."   (from a  Minneapolis Star Tribune piece by Susan Lenfestey)

"The Bush administration, rejecting international human-rights entanglements out of concern for "sovereignty," has been all too willing to undercut US sovereignty and domestic laws protecting consumers and workers, via the World Trade Organization and NAFTA, when  the beneficiaries are its corporate clients".   (from a Robert Kuttner column in the Boston Globe)

"The Iraq Program Management Office, which oversees the $18.4 billion in US reconstruction funds, has contracted with British mercenary firm Aegis (for $293 million) to protect its employees from "assassination, kidnapping, injury and"-- get this--"embarrassment ...  I'd say mission already accomplished. The people in charge of rebuilding Iraq can't be embarrassed, because clearly they have no shame. "  (from a Naomi Klein article in The Nation)

"Those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government. No other depositories of power have ever yet been found, which did not end in converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their charge."   Thomas Jefferson

"...in 1991 we concluded that we “had won the Cold War.”   No.   We simply didn’t lose it as badly as the Soviets did".... "By an American empire I mean 725 military bases in 138 foreign countries circling the globe....   the unit of European imperialism was the colony. The unit of American imperialism is the military base.

"But there was never a plan to leave Iraq because there is no intention of leaving Iraq. We are currently building 14 bases there. Dick Cheney can’t imagine giving up that oil. And the military can’t imagine giving up those bases. That’s why they can’t come up with a plan to leave. "

Just before Memorial Day, Veterans Affairs  Secretary Anthony Principi said, "Our active military  respond better to Republicans" because of "the  tremendous support that President Bush has  provided for our military and our veterans." The  same day, the White House announced plans for  massive cuts in veterans' health care for 2006.

Last January, Bush praised veterans during a visit to  Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The same day, 164,000 veterans were told the White House was  "immediately cutting off their access to the VA  health care system."

 In January 2003, just before the war, Bush said, "I  want to make sure that our soldiers have the best  possible pay." A few months later, the White House announced it would roll back increases in "imminent  danger" pay (from $225 to $150) and family  separation allowance (from $250 to $100).

 In October 2003, the president told troops, "I want to  thank you for your willingness to heed the important  call, and I want to thank your families." Two weeks  later, the White House announced it opposed a  proposal to give National Guard and Reserve  members access to the Pentagon's health insurance system, even though a  recent General Accounting Office report estimated that one out of every five  Guard members has no health insurance.

A month before the war started, the White House proposed cutting $1.5  billion from funding for military housing. The House Armed Services Committee had concluded that thousands of military families were living "in  decrepit and dilapidated military housing."

"We are losing because of the misguided war on Iraq and the upsurge in terrorism it has engendered".

The Iraqi adventure is "an unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat."

"There is nothing that bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq."   Also, the US has "waged two failed half-wars and, in doing so, left Afghanistan and Iraq seething with anti-US sentiment, fertile grounds for the expansion of al-Qaeda and kindred groups."

 "Iraq, with or without a transfer of power, will be a mujahedin magnet as long as whatever government is there is dependent on America's sword,"

In a LA Times report, the book's author noted that CIA analysts were ordered repeatedly to redo intelligence  assessments which concluded that Al Qaeda had no operational ties to Iraq.  Asked if he attributed the demands to an eagerness among officials at the White House or the Pentagon to find  evidence of a link, he said: "You could not help but assume that was the case. They knew the answer [they wanted] before they asked the question."

Per a 7/1/04 piece by Maureen Dowd, Paul Bremer scuttled out of Baghdad so fast, he didn't even wait for the new ambassador, John Negroponte, to arrive so he could pass along some safety tips.

And the flunky chosen to lead the interim Iraq govt. was once a loyal henchman who helped bring Saddam to power.  He headed European operations for the Baath Party and its intelligence arm during the early 1970s, when he lived in London.  He reportedly ran a hit team that hunted down several of Saddam's critics in Western Europe. He then turned against his former comrades for whatever reasons, working first for Britain's MI6 and then for the CIA. The Agency had him and his Iraqi National Accord stage terrorist attacks inside Iraq. They called him a freedom fighter.  That would make the current batch of terrorists in Iraq freedom fighters.   A former CIA case officer said  "his strongest virtue is that he's a thug."  (more details)

According to several former intelligence officials interviewed by the New York Times this month, the political group run by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in the 1990s, but financed by the CIA, "used car bombs and other explosive devices smuggled into Iraq" in an attempt to sabotage and destabilize Hussein's regime.   (details)

In the 48 hours since the "turnover" four American soldiers lost their lives and at least eleven more were wounded.

Ambassador to Iraq, John D. Negroponte, specialty is not diplomacy, it is mass graves. As US Ambassador to Honduras during the Reagan administration, he was the Iran-Contra point man in the region.   Money was coming in from the sale of arms to Iran, the CIA was training death squads to kill anyone who opposed the Reagan agenda, and someone had to coordinate those efforts. That someone was John D. Negroponte. (details)

Perhaps most remarkable of all was Mr Allawi's demand that "mercenaries who come to Iraq from foreign countries" should leave Iraq. There are, of course, 80,000 Western "mercenaries" in Iraq, most of them wearing Western clothes- US contractors....    US and other Western businesses have legal immunity from Iraqi law- when a British or American mercenary shoots dead an Iraqi, he cannot be taken to an Iraqi court.  (details)

It had already been made clear that Allawi was pondering martial law   Who was the last man to impose martial law on Iraqis?   Wasn't it Saddam?   (from a Robert Fisk article)

1)   A clip of  Bush speaking before a well-heeled, black tie crowd.  Bush says they are "the haves and the have mores"  and "Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."

2)   After noting that only one out of 535 members of Congress has a child in the armed forces in Iraq, Moore and a Marine (who has refused to go to Iraq  "to kill other poor people") asking Congressmen to enlist their sons and daughters in the military.  It's funny to see them scurry away.

3)   After noting that Congress hadn't read the Patriot Act before passing it, Moore drives around the Capitol in an ice cream truck while reading it through the truck's sound system.

1. That actor who played the president was totally unconvincing.
2. It oversimplified the way I stole the election.
3. Too many of them fancy college-boy words
4. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported.
5. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger.
6. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true.
7. Not sure - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe.
8. Where the hell was Spiderman?
9. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth.
10. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball!"

With a note attached, "I saw what you did last summer".

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Other movies critical of Shrub which I want to see: "Control Room," "WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception", "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War".   "The Hunting of the President" which recounts conservative-led investigations of Clinton's conduct in office is likely worth seeing also.

This week, the justices ruled that the unelected strongman they appointed president in December 2000 does not have the unqualified right to arrest people without charges and put them in a dungeon forever -- at least not without allowing his victims to float up briefly in some conveniently undefined judicial "process." Not necessarily "a regular civilian court," mind you -- maybe a military tribunal, the justices suggested helpfully. And the defendants will be presumed guilty unless they can somehow prove themselves innocent -- with only limited, government-monitored contact with their attorneys. But at least the Bushists will have to produce a scrap of paper now and then to justify their body-snatching operations.

Except, of course, for the countless people now being "disappeared" in secret CIA prisons around the world or "rendered" to the rape rooms and torture pits of Bush's foreign tyrant pals. These wretched souls fall entirely outside the scope of the Court's rulings, which apply only to those areas where the United States holds "territorial jurisdiction," such as Guantanamo Bay, legal website Scotus.com reports. Doubtless there will now be a mass dispersal of the Guantanamo captives to the CIA gulag and other foreign parts. In fact, the newly "sovereign" client state of Iraq -- run by the unelected CIA terrorist and ex-Baathist stalwart, Iyad Allawi, now busy preparing martial law for his "liberated" people -- could prove invaluable in this regard....

.....just after the Sept. 11 attacks Bush initiated a series of executive orders giving himself the authority to order the death of anyone he deems a terrorist -- or even a "terrorist suspect." No hearing or evidence or notice is required for this dread judgment; there is no oversight, no appeal. In 2002, he extended this arbitrary license to kill to lower-ranking CIA agents, who can strike on their own initiative and even add targets -- including U.S. citizens -- to the hit lists without any presidential supervision, the New York Times reports.

An Iraqi-born Swede's allegations of rape, sexual humiliation and abuse in Abu Ghraib prison were added Thursday to an ongoing lawsuit in San Diego against U.S. defense contractors.

The man, identified only by his last name, Saleh, says during his three months in captivity last fall he saw guards fire into a crowd of inmates, killing five. He says he also witnessed the rape of two young male detainees by one of his captors, said his lawyer, Shereef Akeel.

Eight other Iraqis and the estate of an Iraqi man who allegedly was tortured to death are suing San Diego-based Titan Corp. and CACI International Inc. of Arlington, Va. Employees of the two firms worked as government translators and interrogators.

Some of the torture Saleh endured:

A belt tied around his neck and he was dragged 70 feet;

Left naked and hooded for extended periods of time;

Urinated on and sodomized while his hands were tied over his head;

Shot in the chest with plastic bullets as he tried to pray;

Roped by the genitals to 12 other naked prisoners;

His penis was stretched with a rope and beaten with a stick.

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Maybe related to the prisoner abuse scandal:  an article about a Pentagon report which estimates that about one-third of recruits had arrest records and many were not detected and most of those that were detected were allowed to enlist anyway.

Sen. Chuck Hagel sharply criticized the Bush administration in an interview, saying that the war in Iraq appears to have hurt America in its battle against terrorism.   He also said the United States is going to have to consider restarting the draft to maintain its many military commitments abroad.   In a sharp critique of the leader of his own party, Hagel said he believes the occupation of Iraq by the American military was poorly planned and has spread terrorist cells more widely around the world.   "This put in motion a new geographic dispersion" of the terrorists, said Hagel.   "It's harder to deal with them because they're not as contained. Iraq has become a training ground."   He noted the war has created more terrorists and given them more targets - American soldiers.   "We are pushing away our friends, our allies, the next generation around the world," Hagel said.

During the last 15 years, Congress has given itself pay raises totaling more than $68,000 and catapulted its members into the top 5% of wage earners in America at an annual salary of over $158,000. Today, almost no one in America has better heath and retirement benefits than members of Congress. In a nation where some serving in the military rely on handouts to feed their families, where military veterans sometimes have to wait up to a year for a doctor appointment, and where over 40 million people remain uninsured, should our representatives be taking far better care of themselves than they are of the rest of the country?

In 1930 a new treaty was signed which aimed to satisfy Iraqi aspirations for the coming 25 years, but the British retained their power, through military bases, advisers and control of oil. The monarchy proved an oppressive regime under which many opposition leaders were executed and thousands more were imprisoned. Elections were managed, corruption was widespread, bombing and military force was used against popular uprisings, chemical weapons were used against the Kurds. Popular uprisings followed in 1930, 1941 1948, 1952 and 1956. Between 1921 and 1958 Iraq had an astonishing 38 cabinets, some of them only lasting 12 days. The mainstay of a corrupt and docile regime was the presence of British forces on the ground.

"As lawmakers, we must assure the people of America that our nation will not experience the nightmare of the 2000 presidential election,"  The lawmakers said in the letter that in a report released in June 2001, the US Commission on Civil Rights "found that the electoral process in Florida resulted in the denial of the right to vote for countless persons."

If, as now seems likely, top White House aides leaked the identity of an American undercover agent, they may have committed an act of domestic terrorism as defined by the dragnet language of the Patriot Act their boss wanted so much to help him catch terrorists.  Under the Patriot Act, as Sam said to me with a chuckle, all the FBI has to do is tell a judge that it would "impede their investigation" to give the White House notice, and they could sneak into the Oval Office without warning -- carrying approval from a secret court, granted in secret.  "Maybe if the president or his aides were investigated under this law they would understand what they are doing," Sam declared.

Consider the outside world as viewed from Tehran.   George Bush delivers his 2002 State of the Union address, and of all the countries in the world he singles out three as constituting an "axis of evil."   He announces his intent to instigate unilateral preemptive wars against any nation that his Administration subjectively determines to be a potential threat.   Defying almost universal world opinion, he actually commences such a war against one of those three -- decapitating its regime, killing the supreme leader's sons, and driving that leader himself into a pathetic hole in the ground.   And he surrounds Iran on all four sides with bristling American military power -- Iraq to its west, Afghanistan to its east, sprawling new American bases in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia to its north, and the unchallengeable U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf to its south.

...the great international irony of the Bush era is that both the Iraq war specifically and the preemption doctrine generally were supposed to be directed at curtailing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, in all likelihood, they have exacerbated -- in both frequency and intensity -- the quest by others to acquire them.

Today a group (Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change) of former senior diplomatic officials and retired military commanders--several of whom are the kind who "have never spoken out before" on such matters--issued a bracing statement arguing that George W. Bush has damaged the country's national security and calling on Americans to defeat him in November....  The vast majority of the signatories are, in fact, either conservative Republicans who served under Reagan and Bush 41 or they are bipartisan, consensus-driven ex-diplomats...     Just last month a separate group of fifty-three ex-diplomats and other high-level national security officials wrote a letter to Bush in which they excoriated the President for sacrificing America's credibility in the Arab world and squandering America's status as honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

The problem with the great communicator was the content of his messages. Reagan was a pay shill of the plutocrats, who used his charm and acting skills to hawk, like soap, mean spirited social policies and sell a fantasy version of the American Dream  to common folk that trusted him.

Iraq Body Count tallys the civilian deaths  in the Iraq war and occupation.