So what happened last week that hardly anyone knows about because of the 24/7 coverage of The Funeral? This morning I linked to a Guardian article about what's happening in Afghanistan, which is not good.

 

Preznit Bunnypants did another of his famous press conference meltdowns after the G8 conference this week. He was especially weak when questioned about The Memo:

Q Mr. President, the Justice Department issued an advisory opinion last year declaring that as Commander-in-Chief you have the authority to order any kind of interrogation techniques that are necessary to pursue the war on terror. Were you aware of this advisory opinion? Do you agree with it? And did you issue any such authorization at any time?

THE PRESIDENT: No, the authorization I issued, David, was that anything we did would conform to U.S. law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations. That's the message I gave our people.

Q Have you seen the memos?

THE PRESIDENT: I can't remember if I've seen the memo or not, but I gave those instructions. ...

Q Returning to the question of torture, if you knew a person was in U.S. custody and had specific information about an imminent terrorist attack that could kill hundreds or even thousands of Americans, would you authorize the use of any means necessary to get that information and to save those lives?

THE PRESIDENT: Jonathan, what I've authorized is that we stay within U.S. law. ...

Q Mr. President, I wanted to return to the question of torture. What we've learned from these memos this week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon lawyers have essentially worked out a way that U.S. officials can torture detainees without running afoul of the law. So when you say that you want the U.S. to adhere to international and U.S. laws, that's not very comforting. This is a moral question: Is torture ever justified?

THE PRESIDENT: Look, I'm going to say it one more time. If I -- maybe -- maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you. We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws, and that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions out of -- from me to the government.

Also at the press conference, our President showed that hope is eternal:

Q Mr. President, a year ago in Evian, there was an expectation that in the ensuing months, weapons such as chemical or biological weapons, would be found in Iraq. I wonder if you can share with the American people your conclusions, based on what you've learned over the past 15 months, sir, as to whether those weapons were -- existed and they were hidden, were they destroyed, were they somehow spirited out of the country, or perhaps they weren't there before the war, and whether you had a chance to share this with your G8 partners.

THE PRESIDENT: Right, no -- Bob, it's a good question. I don't know -- I haven't reached a final conclusion yet because the inspectors -- inspection teams aren't back yet. I do know that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons. I do know he's a dangerous person. I know he used weapons against his own people and against the neighborhood. But we'll wait until Charlie gets back with the final report, and then I'll be glad to report.

Also this past week, the Bushies got caught in another lie. This was about its 2003 terrorism report:

The State Department is scrambling to revise its annual report on global terrorism to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate, dangerously outmoded and politically manipulated by the Bush Administration.

The department said it was the second time the report, considered the authoritative yardstick of the prevalence of terrorism worldwide, has had to be revised. When the most recent Patterns of Global Terrorism report was issued on April 29, senior Bush Administration officials immediately hailed it as objective proof that they were winning the war on terrorism.

"Indeed, you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight" against global terrorism, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said.

But on Tuesday, State Department officials said they underreported the number of terrorist attacks in the report on 2003, and said they expected to release an updated version soon. Several US officials and terrorism experts familiar with that revision said the new report could show the number of significant terrorist incidents increased last year, perhaps to its highest level in 20 years. [Josh Meyer, The Age, June 10, 2004]

And then there is The Memo itself. This morning I went a-skipping about on the Right Blogosphere to see the expressions of indignation over The Memo and the Attorney General's refusal to provide Congress with his memos concerning torture -- as Molly Ivins called it, "the day the Constitution died." 

 

This is huge, people. But you know what? The Righties, even the ones who call themselves libertarians, didn't notice. Too busy wallowing in funerary splendor, I suppose.

 

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Four days on the death of a great statesman has you feeling this way, yet four weeks of blathering on about naked human pyramids didn't as much as make you lift an eyebrow?

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It is now impossible for the election to be held legally in September, the date for which both the interim government of President Hamid Karzai and the United Nations were aiming, itself a delay from the intended June polling day. It is understood that the new date is likely to be around October 5.

It has also emerged that not a single dollar pledged to pay for the elections has been given by donor countries, including members of the EU and the US. ... 

Mr Bush is anxious that Afghanistan should go to the polls before his own date with the electorate in November so that, with the condition in Iraq deteriorating, he can point to at least one foreign democratisation process.

The Guardian suggests the postponement of elections will be an embarrassment to the Bush Administration and possibly affect the November elections. To which I say, only if the swing voters notice this is going on, and of course they won't.

If we had an actual free press in this country, the situation in Afghanistan would be a problem for Bush. This news plus the recent murders of eleven Chinese construction workers by Afghanis thought to be loyal to a renegade warlord with ties to the Taliban ought to be a big red flag that the situation in Afghanistan could be better.

And the Bushies are piddling away an actual victory, or a close fascimile to one, because they don't have enough money and resources and attention span to give to Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time.

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Ronald Reagan had not passed from this life for 48 hours before proponents of human embryonic stem-cell research began to suggest that such ethically questionable scientific work should be promoted under his name. But this cannot honestly be done without ignoring President Reagan's own words and actions.

Ronald Reagan's record reveals that no issue was of greater importance to him than the dignity and sanctity of all human life. "My administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land," he said in 1983. "And there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning." One of the things he regretted most at the completion of his presidency in 1989, he told me, was that politics and circumstances had prevented him from making more progress in restoring protection for unborn human life.

In 1967, as governor of California, "circumstances" inspired Reagan to sign the most liberal abortion law of the times, allowing freedom of choice during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. This was six years before SCOTUS decided Roe v. Wade.

President Reagan indeed made lots of anti-choice noise and used the abortion issue to pander to the Religious Right, but as President he didn't really do that much about the abortion issue, other than pay lip service. This suggests that his views on abortion may have been more about political expedience than moral conviction.

Further, stem cell research was pretty much the stuff of science fiction in those days and not an issue to be seriously considered. What Reagan might have really thought about stem cell research is pure speculation. However, Nancy Reagan has been crystal clear where she stands on the subject. The toadies and wingnuts could have at least let Mrs. Reagan bury her husband before they bitch slapped her.

If you feel so moved, please donate to the organization of your choice that supports embryonic stem cell research. If you don't want to do it for Ronnie, do it for my late mother. She had Alzheimer's, and tomorrow would have been her birthday.

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The great American news industry, the Pekinese of the Press with so much room and time and nothing to say, compared Reagan to Lincoln and Hamilton, they really did. This is like claiming that the maintenance man wrote the Bill of Rights. And almost all the reporters agreed that Reagan was the man who brought down Russia in the Cold War.

Just saying this is absolutely sinful. The Cold War was won by a long memo written by George Kennan, who worked in the State Department and sent the memo by telegram about the need for a "Policy of Containment" on Russia. Kennan said the contradictions in their system would ruin them. Keep them where they are and they will tear themselves apart. We followed Kennan's policy for over 40 years. The Soviets made it worse on themselves by building a wall in East Berlin. When they had to tear it down and give up their system, Kennan was in Princeton and he sat down to dinner.

The media's weeklong coverage of the passing of President Reagan has produced some of the most rapturous remembrances in modern times. Given Reagan's long illness, few expected the gloss to be pierced by examinations of his past as an FBI informant, his support for the apartheid regime of South Africa, America's covert alliance with Saddam Hussein, or the killing fields of Central America. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of media-stoked adoration has been a bit startling to those who are keepers of the flame of objectivity.

By midweek, a few news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post, had at least addressed some of the more controversial aspects of Reagan's public life. But for the most part, the reports, particularly on the 24-hour news channels, remained uniformly worshipful, as the elaborate funeral cortege, orchestrated after years of planning by Reagan's old image-makers, marched through the entire week, accompanied by rhetorical flourishes.

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Here's a sample version of the legend: according to a recent article in The Washington Times, Ronald Reagan "crushed inflation along with left-wing Keynesian economics and launched the longest economic expansion in U.S. history." Actually, the 1982-90 economic expansion ranks third, after 1991-2001 and 1961-69 — but even that comparison overstates the degree of real economic success.

The secret of the long climb after 1982 was the economic plunge that preceded it. By the end of 1982 the U.S. economy was deeply depressed, with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. So there was plenty of room to grow before the economy returned to anything like full employment.

The depressed economy in 1982 also explains "Morning in America," the economic boom of 1983 and 1984. You see, rapid growth is normal when an economy is bouncing back from a deep slump. (Last year, Argentina's economy grew more than 8 percent.)

And the economic expansion under President Reagan did not validate his economic doctrine. His supply-side advisers didn't promise a one-time growth spurt as the economy emerged from recession; they promised, but failed to deliver, a sustained acceleration in economic growth.

Inflation did come down sharply on Mr. Reagan's watch: it was running at 12 percent when he took office, but was only 4.5 percent when he left. But this victory came at a heavy price. For much of the Reagan era, the economy suffered from very high unemployment. Despite the rapid growth of 1983 and 1984, over the whole of the Reagan administration the unemployment rate averaged a very uncomfortable 7.5 percent.

In other words, it all played out just as "left-wing Keynesian economics" predicted. [Paul Krugman, "An Economic Legend," The New York Times, June 11, 2004]

Please read the whole article, and note the next-to-last paragraph:

It's a measure of how desperate the faithful are to believe in the Reagan legend that one often reads conservative commentators claiming that the Clinton-era miracle was the result of Mr. Reagan's policies, and indeed vindicated them. Think about it: Mr. Reagan passed his big tax cut right at the beginning of his presidency, and mainly raised taxes thereafter. So we're supposed to believe that a tax cut passed in 1981 was somehow responsible for an economic miracle that didn't materialize until around 1997. Apply the same timing to the good things that happened on Mr. Reagan's watch, and you'll discover that Lyndon Johnson deserves the credit for "Morning in America."

It will be odd for Iraqis to watch TV tonight (power cuts permitting) and hear the eulogies to freedom-loving Ronald Reagan at his state funeral. The motives behind US policy towards their country have always been a mystery, and if Iraqis sometimes explain to westerners that Saddam Hussein was a CIA agent whose appointed task was to provoke an American invasion of Iraq, it is largely thanks to Reagan's legacy.

Although Saddam was still a junior figure, it is a matter of record that the CIA station in Baghdad aided the coup which first brought the Ba'athists to power in 1963. But it was Reagan who, two decades later, turned US-Iraqi relations into a decisive wartime alliance. He sent a personal letter to Saddam Hussein in December 1983 offering help against Iran. The letter was hand-carried to Baghdad by Reagan's special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld. [Jonathan Steele, "He Lied and Cheated in the Name of Anti-Communism," The Guardian, June 11, 2004]

Here's the punch line:

It was detente that made the end of the cold war possible, and without Reagan's blind anti-communism it could have come at least four years earlier.

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Ronald Reagan's administration helped empower Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, removing Iraq from the State Sponsored Terrorism list and channeling loans and expertise to the country.

And remember, Ronnie did this knowing that Saddam was gassing his own people.

Ronald Reagan's administration armed and funded the fundamentalist Afghanis who became the Taliban when they were fighting the Soviet Union. In fact, the surface to air missles shot at our planes by the Taliban were Stingers provided by Reagan.

Ronald Reagan's administration armed and provided logistical and political support to Osama bin Laden when he was emerging as a leader of the anti-Soviet forces in the middle east. This support raised bin Laden's profile as he developed the al Queda network.

Ronald Reagan's administration sold weapons to Iran in order to raise funds to fight communists in Central America.

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Yesterday’s passage of the United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq was a model of compromise, not just another exercise in coercion and confrontation. There wasn’t a single dissenting vote. It sure is nice to hear the word “unanimous” again, after so much feckless unilateralism.

Washington, you’ll recall, could have had pretty much the same U.N. resolution nine months ago. The French and Germans offered in September to recognize the sovereignty of the U.S.-appointed regime—many of whose members are the same people in the “new” interim government. But Washington dismissed the suggestion as premature. The Bush administration insisted the Iraqis just weren’t ready for that sovereignty stuff.

Then came the bloody month of November, when the insurgency really started to take off and American casualties mounted dramatically. Suddenly, the Bush administration decided the Iraqis actually might be ready for, well, some kind of sovereignty. A grand design for a tightly managed transition was drawn up, with a June 30 deadline. The date stuck, but most of the rest of the grand plan has been discarded or postponed,  piece by piece, as the situation in Iraq has grown steadily worse. The killing is now so commonplace it’s just so much background noise on the news.

First, because the transfer of sovereignty is largely symbolic. The United States will still be responsible for Iraq's security if only because it has an army there and Iraq does not. The real transfer of sovereignty will be a much slower process.

Second, the security situation there remains dicey, at best. Because we have too few troops there to maintain security, those who oppose an elected Iraqi regime will do everything they can to prevent it from happening, and it will be difficult to stop them. And the support of the allies at the UN does not mean any of them will be sending a significant number of troops or even money to Iraq. They won't.

Third, because the fight for power among the different ethnic factions - and within those factions - will only intensify in the coming weeks and months. It's all up for grabs now. Already, there are rumblings from the Kurds who fear that the Bush administration has given in too much to the Shia. And the Sunnis, who ran the country in the most brutal fashion under Saddam Hussein, fear retribution from the Shia majority.

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• According to the Institute of Medicine, 18,000 Americans die each year because of lack of medical care.
• Healthcare costs are involved in 50 percent of bankruptcies, which have risen 400 percent in the past twenty-five years.

... health insurance is about more than treating an immediate illness. Lack of insurance can precipitate an avalanche of trouble: job loss, debt, bankruptcy, more illness, inappropriate charity treatment that worsens the original problem, prescription drug addiction, homelessness. ...[I]f you think of those 43.6 million uninsured as embedded in families, you have to count the privations endured by everyone in them as part of the true cost of the status quo.