radio·free·donia

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Net Neutrality

I'm still reading up on this issue, but Net neutrality proponents and opponents alike agree that without Net neutrality,
broadband providers will be free to design their networks as they see fit and enjoy the latitude to prioritize certain types of traffic--such as streaming video--over others.
The problem is not that Verizon's streaming video will get priority over other Web traffic; the problem is that there'd be essentially no further limit to their use of their gatekeeper role in deciding whose voice gets priority, who gets heard through a small pipe, and -potentially - who gets shut off altogether.

This is about as fundamental a small-d democracy issue as you can get. Here on the Web, you can say anything you like, and how much you get heard (not very much yet, in my case :)) depends only on whether people like what you have to say, and link to you. It's a democracy of ideas, and the best ideas can win out.

This is very much unlike anything we've had in the media age, where broadcast and cable TV and radio offer only a limited number of alternatives, and many worthwhile and popular voices can't get on the air. The media gatekeepers decide whose ideas get play, and whose don't.

The Internet has been different, so far at least. It's time to fight to keep it that way.

That Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) was one of the Dems arguing for Net neutrality gives it a great deal of additional cred with me. Boucher's a very centrist sort of Democrat (he has to be; his district is in far southwest Virginia, which isn't exactly a hotbed of liberalism), but he's one of the most knowledgeable persons in Congress with respect to telecom issues. If he thinks this is important enough to fight for, it almost certainly is.

Click the link
for a short animation explaining why this is important.

Sign the petition.

Email your congressperson.

The proposed legislation that would kill Net neutrality. (WARNING: big-ass PDF.)

(Additional warning: I can't make head or tail of the legislation, so far. But supporters and opponents of the legislation agree on what it would do.)

Burns-Inouye Principles
proposed to protect Net neutrality. (Much smaller PDF.) See last paragraph, especially.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Shame on you, Washington Post, for publishing Melvin Laird's op-ed

Dear Fred Hiatt: I'm just wondering, do you guys vet pieces like this before you publish them, or does any Big Shot get unfettered access to your op-ed page anytime they ask?

Because that sure was a clinker.

More than anything else, I’m embarrassed on behalf of your paper. I feel a certain loyalty to the Washington Post, which I’ve been reading for over four decades, so I wince when it prints tripe like this.

Let's just look at that concluding paragraph:

We do not advocate a silencing of debate on the war in Iraq. But care must be taken by those experienced officers who had their chance to speak up while on active duty. In speaking out now, they may think they are doing a service by adding to the reasoned debate. But the enemy does not understand or appreciate reasoned public debate. It is perceived as a sign of weakness and lack of resolve.

Even a junior high school newspaper editor should be able to spot the contradiction between “the enemy does not understand or appreciate reasoned public debate. It is perceived as a sign of weakness and lack of resolve,” and “We do not advocate a silencing of debate on the war in Iraq.”

So if “reasoned public debate” undermines the war effort (which is what Laird and Pursley are saying), what sort of debate on Iraq is OK - unreasoned, hysterical debate?

That sure seems to be the only, erm, reasonable conclusion.

Monday, April 17, 2006

On Anti-Americanism

On a message board I've frequented for the past several years, [Poster K] recently asked:

[Poster S] sincerely seems to think you just like to blame America for various things, as some sort pf personal entertainment. You gonna set the record straight or what?

I thought this would be a good place to re-post my answer. If anyone ever gives me any BS here about hating America, I want the record to state just where I'm coming from.

Well, y'know, some people watch American Idol, and some of us sit at our computers and think of new things to blame America for.

Getting past the kidding, though:

I have, for all of my life, assumed America was the Good Guys in the world. My worldview in this regard was formed before Vietnam took center stage in our foreign policy in the mid-1960s, in a time when we were the country that won WWII (I'm talking about my perceptions as a kid, here, so no need to talk about Russia's role) and WWI before that, and was now protecting the world from the evils of totalitarian Communism.

And on account of that legacy, I expect America to live up to that sort of ideal, or at least give it its best shot. I demand of my country that it not be just strong, but to use its strength on the side of what is right and good.

That view of America has taken some hits over the years, of course. It's had to survive Vietnam, Nixon-Kissinger realpolitik, our support of numerous anticommunist tinhorn dictators like Marcos, Pinochet, Somoza, Saddam, and the Shah, and that flock of neocon surrogate wars during the 1980s: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Angola. I had to believe there was a better way of fighting Communism than by supporting 'authoritarian' (you're welcome, Jeane Kirkpatrick) thugs around the world: we got democracy; El Salvador got Roberto D'Aubuisson.

But I didn't think America was evil; America was good, but for often difficult to understand reasons, it was doing wrong. What do you do about it? You call a spade a spade: you say what's wrong and what's right, and you expect your country to get back on the right track.

And there were some positive developments along the way. Jimmy Carter, for all his other failings, insisted that we look at how all countries, not just Communist ones, were falling short on human rights, and take that into account in our foreign policy. The Helsinki Accords, excoriated by conservatives at the time, gave us some leverage to demand of the USSR that some degree of human rights be accorded to its Warsaw Pact vassals.

And while Reagan had far too many neocon nutcases running his foreign policy (Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams), Reagan's heart really was in the right place - he believed in freedom not just as a slogan but as a fundamental human right - and his policies gradually caught up. Along about 1983, he and his team came to the realization that D'Aubuisson was a murderous thug, and lined up behind Duarte instead; when crunch time came in the Phillippines in 1985, he helped nudge Marcos out; in 1987, he and Carter combined to hornswoggle Daniel Ortega into holding elections - and honoring them, when they didn't go his way [turned out that while writing from memory, I got this detail wrong; that election was in 1990, when Bush I was in office]; and, most significantly, when he finally had a Soviet opposite number in Gorbachev who actually believed Communism should benefit the people living under it, he had the right combination of willingness to take diplomatic chances while maintaining public pressure to hasten the moment when the Wall would come down - a moment that most of us who grew up during the Cold War weren't sure we'd live to see.

And then of course Clinton, without a Cold War foe to reckon with, gradually found his footing, and put the United States on the right side of things in Bosnia and Kosovo.

So I believe America can do great things in the world when it is good as well as strong. And I believe that when America is doing evil, and we call it by its name, America will eventually respond, and find its way back to the light.

So when America turns into a swaggering bully in the world, invading other countries without knowing WTF it's doing and what forces it's unleashing, let alone having a plan to deal with them, I will call it evil, and demand that America stop doing evil and do good. I will do the same when we imprison people for years when we have zero evidence that they've done anything hostile to us, and when we torture people, and send them off to other countries to be tortured. And when we bomb the shit out of civilians along with insurgents - insurgents who would have had little support for their insurgency if we simply weren't there. And when our government spies on its own people without any legal authority or oversight. I want the country I've lived in all my life to deserve to wear the white hat again, and I want leaders who believe in the goodness of America in a way that causes them in turn to demand the best out of America - rather than believing that whatever America does is automatically good because it's America that's doing it.

So if I'm critical of America, it's because I'm a fucking idealist, and for some reason, despite everything I've seen in my life where it's fallen short, America is still one of the things I'm an idealist about. It's totally irrational, and it makes no sense, but there it is.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The Week in Bush/GOP Apologetics, WaPo-Style

I've already published this as a Kos diary (that's where the link goes, this time), but hey, this is my blog and I'll republish it here because I want to.

The WaPo has been getting a bit of heat lately for some of its bending backwards to be kind to the Bush Administration and the GOP, and it deserves every bit of it. However, some instances of such kindness, just in the past week, have slipped under the radar. I thought I could help by furnishing a more complete accounting of the past week in Bush apologetics, WaPo-style.

So down the page, I'll say more about:

1) DeLay Parting On Own Terms (Wednesday, April 5)
2) Obstructionist Dems Block Compromise on Immigration (Saturday, April 8)
3) 'A Good Leak' (Sunday, April 9)
4) Cheney Booed for Bad Throw (Tuesday, April 11)
5) WaPo Pretends That Bush Isn't Anything Like Bush (Wednesday, April 12)

1) DeLay Parting on Own Terms
Congressman Wanted to Win GOP Primary Before Announcing Resignation

As I mentioned at the time, this was the heading and subhead on the front page of last Wednesday's WaPo print edition. No, really.

The fact that DeLay announced his upcoming resignation on Monday, April 3, the primary had been on Tuesday, March 7, and DeLay's former deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, had pled guilty and turned state's evidence on Friday, March 31, should have at least somewhat aroused the WaPo's skepticism. You'd think they just might've mentioned that DeLay was on the run like a man with the sheriff on his trail, which was pretty much the case. But instead, they spun it just the way Tom DeLay would have liked them to. Mighty kind of them.

2) Obstructionist Dems Block Compromise on Immigration wasn't the actual headline of the WaPo lead editorial on Saturday, but it might as well have been:

THE SENATE COULD have left town yesterday with a workable, if imperfect, immigration bill that would have let millions of people living here illegally come out of the shadows. It had before it a deal that could have attracted 70 votes; it had the backing of the White House and the support of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), despite his previous, enforcement-only stance.

But after two weeks of slogging toward compromise, the deal blew up over a procedural standoff on whether to move forward with voting for amendments, as Republicans were demanding, and if so, for how many. Republicans blamed Democratic obstructionism aimed at keeping voters' attention focused on the punitive, Republican-sponsored House bill.

"It's not gone forward because there's a political advantage for Democrats not to have an immigration bill," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Democrats blamed Republican bad faith and said Republicans refused to impose a reasonable limit on amendments. "The amendments were being offered by people who didn't want the bill," said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

Both of those assertions contain elements of truth. But Democrats -- whether their motive was partisan advantage or legitimate fear of a bad bill emerging from conference with the House -- are the ones who refused, in the end, to proceed with debate on amendments, which is, after all, how legislation gets made.


And:

The measure wasn't perfect, and certainly there are risks in going to conference with the House and its enforcement-only approach. But Democrats putting political self-interest over solving a serious policy problem ought to worry that their actions will backfire with the very people whose interests they are purporting to protect.

'Risks' in going to conference? Risks??

Excuse the fuck out of me, Washington Post, but isn't it part of your basic job description to know how politics is played these days? We know what happens in conference, because it's happened so many times already: an OK bill from the Senate and a horrid bill from the House collide; the House bill wins, plus a few nasty amendments get added in conference that were too rank to have even gotten through the House the first time.

Plus the GOP-run Senate gets to unilaterally amend the bill before it even gets to conference. First we compromise; then we get to turn the compromise bill into whatever we want.

But the Dems are somehow the bad guys here, for wanting some modest assurances that the compromise they agreed to would survive in some recognizable form.

Not only are the WaPo editors pandering to the GOP, but they apparently still think Congress works the way it did in 1986. Can anybody wake up Rip van Hiatt?

3) A Good Leak: this is the one where the WaPo said it was a good thing that Bush declassified parts of the NIE which Libby then clandestinely shared with Judith Miller. Since everyone from Jane Hamsher to DailyKos' georgia10 has already teed off on the WaPo over this one (and did they ever deserve it), I don't feel a deep need to say anything but: what they said.

4) Cheney's Muffed First Pitch Draws Boos, said the WaPo, when actually he was booed from the moment he started onto the field. Again, this one's been done; nothing to add; just wanted it in the list.

5) WaPo Pretends That Bush Isn't Anything Like Bush wasn't the title of this morning's lead editorial, but it might as well have been.

The subject of the lead editorial in this morning's WaPo was how Bush can rescue what’s left of his term in office. Before getting to the meat of it, the editorial talks about:

the poisonous partisanship in Washington, with Democrats united in their desire to see Mr. Bush fail while his erstwhile Republican allies scurry for cover.


That’s right - according to the WaPo, the Dems are viciously spouting venom, while the poor, innocent, helpless GOP runs for cover. Maybe they live in an alternate universe.

And then the piece discusses what Bush might actually do to save his Presidency. Here’s what they recommend he do:

1. Actually do something about global warming.
2. Get behind “comprehensive, generous” immigration reform.
3. Become a champion of lobbying reform.
4. Do something real about poverty in the U.S..
5. End Iraq/GWoT detainee abuse.

I know you’re ROFL by this point, but no, really - that’s what the WaPo suggested! Serious alternate universe, huh?

They’re saying, in effect, “If Bush wasn’t really Bush, but was instead some completely different person with much more reasonable goals and motivations than he actually has, he might do one or more of these five things to save what’s left of his Presidency.”

And if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his tail. Sheesh.

When you put it all together, it's a picture of a newspaper that's decided whose side they're on - and it's not ours.

The supposedly liberal Washington Post - consistently whoring for Bush and the GOP.

And this was all just in the past week.

Employment: Keeping Score

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were approximately 2.5 million more jobs last month than there were in January 2001, when Bush took office.

That's not very good. First of all, the economists say that the economy has to create between 130,000 and 150,000 new jobs a month, just to keep up with population growth. If we take the lower end of that range and multiply, the U.S. economy needed to create over 8 million new jobs in the past 62 months.

Obviously 2.5 million is way short of that.

But it gets even worse. Only 1.4 million of those jobs have been generated by the private sector. The other 1.1 million are new state and local government jobs, mostly local. (Federal employment has declined slightly since January 2001.) So nearly half the already paltry number of jobs created since Bush took office have been your tax dollars at work.

Sixty-two months into Bush's Administration, with tax cuts and corporate subsidies galore that were supposed to generate new employment, and all this activity has only created 1.4 million private-sector jobs. Pretty sad.

Obviously the Bush economic theory isn't working. (Well, maybe it's working just fine, but I'll leave that for another post.)

By comparison, 62 months into Clinton's presidency, the private sector had created 14 million new jobs. No decimal point. Fourteen million, not one point four million. Ten times as many. And that's after an upper-bracket tax hike that was supposed to choke off investment and cause the economy to do a belly-flop.

As The Onion satirically 'quoted' Bush as saying back in January 2001, "Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over." Who knew they were prophesying?


NOTE: to obtain the referenced stats for yourself, click the post title, which will take you to a BLS page with a bunch of check boxes. In the right-hand column, click the top two boxes, and the one about tenth from the bottom, in the row that says "Government." Then click the "Retrieve data" button at the bottom. That'll give you the number of people employed in every month for the past ten years, in three compact tables: one for overall, one for private sector, and one for government.

Once you get those tables, at the top of that page you can change the years so that it covers the Clinton years too. Do that, and click 'Go.' Getting BLS labor statistics is easy once you know how.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

U.S. as Great Power: Iraq and Iran as a Case Study

Besides power, one trait of a Great Power is a willingness to think, plan, and act with the long term in mind. A Great Power that doesn't do this, isn't likely to remain a Great Power very long.

For instance, let's talk about the U.S. in the Cold War. For all the abuses that we used that conflict to excuse (the removal of left-leaning but noncommunist leaders like Allende and Mossadegh; our support of strongmen from Somoza to Marcos to Savimbi, as well as dozens of others), the fundamental strategy of containment was a good policy in service to a good end - confining the reach of the Soviet Union's power. It was a policy we pursued across the decades. It worked, and we ultimately won.

Once upon a time, we also pursued a long-term policy with respect to nuclear proliferation. The point of this is clear: one can kill hundreds or thousands at a time through conventional, biological, or chemical weapons. One can kill hundreds of thousands at once with just one nuclear bomb in just one city. And the more nations that have nukes, the more likely it is that eventually nukes will fall into the hands of a leader that doesn't give a whit about the balance of power or the effects of retaliation on his country. (We'll pretend we're the Bush Administration and stick to rogue states as our threats, ignoring terrorists except for occasional use as a boogeyman.) So there are damned good reasons why we don't want nukes to fall into the hands of an Iran or a North Korea - and why nukes in the hands of Pakistan should make us lose sleep at night.

President Bush and his crew are worried (sort of) by the possibility of a nuclear Iran, and are contemplating air attacks on Iranian facilities, possibly including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, on account of that. But there's only one problem: we're bogged down next door in Iraq, which is a majority-Shi'ite country.

Iran and Iraq are closely connected here in two important ways:

1) Right now: if we attack Iran, as the guy quoted in Sy Hersh's story says, "the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle." We're fighting a slo-mo losing battle against the Sunni insurgency as it is; if we get the Shi'ites mad at us, it'll be time to have those helicopters ready to evacuate the Green Zone.

We'll lose Iraq, and we'll lose most of our residual support in the Arab Middle East as well. BIG strategic blunder. For what? A temporary setback for Iran and its nuclear program.

We aren't going to force regime change on them, not without troops on the ground - which we don't have. And we won't be able to do this twice; if we do it once, nobody in the region will be letting us base there, or letting us put aircraft carriers in their territorial waters.

2) Three years ago: our invasion of Iraq made explicit Iran's and North Korea's need for nukes. We created an environment where any country that the U.S. regards as hostile will want nukes if they can get 'em.

Up until 2003, we lived in a world where countries like the United States didn't just go around invading other countries out of the blue. Then with Iraq, we went from their not being publicly on our radar as a concern, to being the biggest threat in the world, in fourteen months: the time from Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, and the beginning of the Iraq invasion. And we did so on the basis of a U.N. resolution that only we and Great Britain regarded as any sort of authorization to act. We went in essentially on our own, with no clear threat to quash, with no international consensus that this needed to be done.

What potentially hostile nation could look at our actions in Iraq and conclude that the same thing wasn't going to happen to them? We gave the two other 'Axis' partners, Iran and North Korea, every reason to believe we could come for them next if we damned well felt like it. And especially after Saddam opened his nation to inspectors, which the U.S. chased out of there when they didn't turn up anything worrisome, we left them two safe alternatives: total submission - going well beyond what Saddam provided - or going nuclear.

If you're one of the world's bad actors, which would you choose?

No matter what else was or wasn't true about the justifications for invading Iraq, this alone makes our invasion of Iraq the U.S.' biggest strategic blunder of the nuclear era. We've opened the door to a dog-eat-dog world where nukes are the only proof against invasion, and as a result, all the wrong people feel a much greater need to have them than they ever would have felt otherwise.

By invading Iraq, we've created a far more dangerous world, just in this manner alone.

That's what happens when you lose sight of what your long-term objectives are. Or should be, since I'm not sure Bush & Co. really care about nonproliferation.

The United States as a Great Power

Libruls like me, according to the caricature, really aren't supposed to value America's position as a Great Power in the world. I do. I don't know if that makes me an exception or not. Maybe it's all the years I played DiplomacyTM.

But the U.S. can be a potent force for good in the world - at least, when Bush is not running the show - and quite often has been so. And that potential is worth preserving for the future.

So what defines a Great Power? Power, obviously. Our power to affect the larger world, and our relative immunity from the rest of the world's ability to make us jump at their command.

The problem right now is, we've got just one out of two. We've got plenty of power to make a difference in the world, but our immunity to the manipulations of other countries is increasingly an illusion, for two simple reasons: oil and debt. We're more dependent than ever on foreign oil, and we're more dependent than ever on a host of other countries' central banks continuing to buy U.S. treasury bills - to continue loaning us new money.

For oil, that of course means Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the other Middle East oil exporters, but also countries like Venezuela and Nigeria. World oil supplies are really tight these days, which is why crude is selling for $65 a barrel. (Remember back in 2000 when Bush complained about the price of crude, then $28, being too high, and how if he were President, he'd jawbone the Saudis into reducing prices? Har har! But enough about Bush, for the moment.) Any hiccup in the supply chain can send gasoline prices up.

What this means is that a number of countries - Saudi Arabia in particular - have us by the balls. We can talk all we want about democracy promotion in the Middle East, but when it comes to the House of Saud, we don't really mean it; we can't afford to. And everyone over there knows it too, which undermines our claims of 'promoting democracy' right from the start.

It also undermines our Iran saber-rattling. If we attack Iran, their annual 2.5 billion barrels of exported oil will go off the market, and we'll see $100/barrel oil, or close to it.

Similarly with debt. We have to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars each year to finance our budget deficits. The central banks of many governments are helping to prop up the dollar by buying our treasury bills as fast as we can print them. The Saudi equivalent in this sphere is China, which loans the U.S. huge quantities of money every year. They're joined by a number of the other East Asian economic powerhouses such as South Korea, and also by the Middle Eastern oil countries, which have even more money to lend than usual, with oil at $65 a barrel.

The problem is not that we have already borrowed money from these folks; the problem is our continuing need to do so in the future. We can't tell China what we really think of its policies because we need them to loan us more money next month, and the month after, and the month after that, and so on indefinitely into the future.

Right now we can buy a lot of stuff from the rest of the world because the value of the dollar is high, propped up by all that borrowing. If the dollar were worth less, Americans would suddenly have less buying power. A year ago, South Korea said they were reconsidering investing so much of their surplus in Treasury bills, and the value of the dollar dropped by about a European nickel overnight. Fortunately, South Korea's our ally, and they reconsidered their reconsideration, the dollar stabilized, and life was good again. But that's how vulnerable the dollar is.

In short, we're not so much of a Great Power as we used to be. A lot of countries have us over a barrel (or a T-bill). And we aren't doing anything about either of our two big vulnerabilities, by reducing our oil dependence, or reducing our deficits.

Even during those years when Bush looked like a strong leader, it was hollow underneath. Pray that we don't suddenly find out just how hollow.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Washington Post's Parting Gift to DeLay

DeLay Parting on Own Terms, reads the WaPo headline in this morning's early edition.
Congressman Wanted to Win GOP Primary Before Announcing Resignation, reads the subhead.

I'm not sure the WaPo's even in the same universe as the rest of us. DeLay announced his resignation this Monday, April 3. The primary was back on March 7.

On the other hand, DeLay's former deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, pled guilty on Friday, March 31, and turned state's evidence. DeLay had three and a half weeks to resign between his primary win and Rudy's guilty plea, and didn't. But he announced his resignation on the first working day after Rudy's plea.

Primary, schmimary; this looks to all the world like a guy who's quitting before trouble catches up with him. The WaPo could have at least slipped in some skepticism about DeLay's alleged motivations, rather than taking his story at face value.

And it's not like they can claim that a bad choice of headline was made due to deadline pressure: DeLay resigned on Monday night, and this story was in Wednesday's paper. They had plenty of time to decide what their spin was. And apparently it was to unquestioningly accept whatever bullshit Delay fed them.

Sometimes the folks at the WaPo act like they were born yesterday - and not early in the day, either.

But I'm sure DeLay appreciated their putting the best possible face on his departure.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

A-Bomb-Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran

Seems the U.S. and Britain are getting more serious about bombing Iran's nascent nuke program. Per the link:

It is believed that an American-led attack, designed to destroy Iran's ability to develop a nuclear bomb, is "inevitable" if Teheran's leaders fail to comply with United Nations demands to freeze their uranium enrichment programme.

....A senior Foreign Office source said...."If Iran makes another strategic mistake, such as ignoring demands by the UN or future resolutions, then the thinking among the chiefs is that military action could be taken to bring an end to the crisis. The belief in some areas of Whitehall is that an attack is now all but inevitable."

How stupid is attacking Iran? Extremely stupid.

If we attack Iran, we will almost certainly lose the tacit cooperation of Shi'ite Iraq.

Right now we can't even handle the Sunni insurgency. If we lose the Shi'ites, it's game over in Iraq. As in helicopters lifting the last Americans out of the Green Zone just ahead of the insurgents' moving in.

Our 'enduring bases' ought to hold out a little longer, but mostly because they're away from population centers and have runways for C-130 cargo planes.

But all in all, bombing Iran is pretty damned stupid. And that's if the Iranians themselves do absolutely zilch to retaliate.

And they can do a great deal in the way of retaliation. For starters, they can cease oil exports for a few months, watch the price of oil double to $130/barrel, and make out like gangbusters when they resume oil sales...at half their previous output. For seconds, they could send a good chunk of their army into eastern Iraq, on the pretext of restoring order to Shi'ite Iraq - and our scattered, overburdened military would have a much harder time responding than you'd think. For thirds, they just might be able to instigate some terrorist attacks.

When you add it all up, bombing Iran right now would be incalculably stupid; it would be stupid raised to the power of the cardinality of the continuum.

Sometime in the future, I'd like to live in a country that's run by people who have a clue or two to rub together.

Iraq: Denial and Deception

Three years later, that's still the logo on all the White House webpages from the run-up to the Iraq war.

Truth in advertising. Sure, it's completely unintentional, but from this Administration, you take what you can get.