"The president has failed: To explain clearly why our brave men and women

[understandinglife]

... in uniform should be ready to sacrifice their lives in a war on Iraq at this time; .....

And he added that this administration in its "unjustified use of force" was "giving birth to an anti-American century."

Letter of Resignation by John H. Brown, Foreign Service Officer

To: Secretary of State Colin Powell

March 10, 2003

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am joining my colleague John Brady Kiesling in submitting my resignation from the Foreign Service (effective immediately) because I cannot in good conscience support President Bush's war plans against Iraq.

The president has failed:

-- To explain clearly why our brave men and women in uniform should be ready to sacrifice their lives in a war on Iraq at this time;

-- To lay out the full ramifications of this war, including the extent of innocent civilian casualties;

-- To specify the economic costs of the war for ordinary Americans;

-- To clarify how the war would help rid the world of terror;

-- To take international public opinion against the war into serious consideration.

<clip>

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0312-11.htm

Despite the millions then demonstrating worldwide, Brown was part of a rather lonely crowd in American officialdom. (Only three State Department officials resigned in protest.) But how on target he proved to be. Now, viewing that rubble, all those wasted lives, and the trillion-dollar or more Afghan-Iraq wars, he writes directly to the President, calling on him to take some responsibility for what he has wrought. Tom

On Waking Up Sleepless in the Middle of the Night

By John Brown

April, 2006

TO: The President

FROM: A former American diplomat

SUBJECT: Waking up in the middle of the night

Mr. President: Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night? Do you? Do you ever wake up sleepless in the middle of the night?

What have you done in Iraq? Do you ever realize, in the middle of the night, what you've done? Do you?

<clip>

11. And, Mr. President, as you contemplate another war, this time against Iran, won't you ever wake up in the middle of the night, and stop more madness before it is too late?

Link to the full memo:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=79387

I am grateful to Tom Engelhardt for posting Mr. Brown's remarkable memo.


Never Forget: George W. Bush willfully violated National Security to cover-up his willful launch of a war of aggression and illegal occupation of Iraq.

[bryant69]

1. He's the Decider - not the Explainer

To have to explain himself - well, that admits too much to our democratic process.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Norquist Nemesis]

2. I'm surprised this wasn't a classified memo n/t

[understandinglife]

3. "It was the most dangerous moment in all human history." - Not any longer.

<clip>

It was lucky that JFK was determined to get the missiles out peacefully, because only decades later did we discover that the Soviet forces in Cuba had tactical nuclear weapons and orders to use them to repel a U.S. invasion. This would have meant a nuclear exchange. Instead, JFK used his own thousand days to give the American University speech, a powerful plea to Americans as well as to Russians to reexamine "our own attitude -- as individuals and as a nation -- for our attitude is as essential as theirs." This was followed by the limited test ban treaty. It was compatible with the George Kennan formula -- containment plus deterrence -- that worked effectively to avoid a nuclear clash.

The Cuban missile crisis was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in all human history. Never before had two contending powers possessed between them the technical capacity to destroy the planet. Had there been exponents of preventive war in the White House, there probably would have been nuclear war. It is certain that nuclear weapons will be used again. Henry Adams, the most brilliant of American historians, wrote during our Civil War, "Some day science shall have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race shall commit suicide by blowing up the world."

But our Cold War presidents kept to the Kennan formula of containment plus deterrence, and we won the Cold War without escalating it into a nuclear war. Enter George W. Bush as the great exponent of preventive war. In 2003, owing to the collapse of the Democratic opposition, Bush shifted the base of American foreign policy from containment-deterrence to presidential preventive war: Be silent; I see it, if you don't. Observers describe Bush as "messianic" in his conviction that he is fulfilling the divine purpose. But, as Lincoln observed in his second inaugural address, "The Almighty has His own purposes."

There stretch ahead for Bush a thousand days of his own. He might use them to start the third Bush war: the Afghan war (justified), the Iraq war (based on fantasy, deception and self-deception), the Iran war (also fantasy, deception and self-deception). There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war.

Link to perhaps one of the most important essays ever written by Arthur Schlesinger Jr:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/23/AR2006042301014.html

We must stop this messianic maniac and his fellow neoconsters from doing any more harm to America and humanity. They must be forced to resign and face the law.


Peace.

[WiseButAngrySara]

4. This, and your original post...excellent. knr. ....n/t

[understandinglife]

5. "In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush ...

... as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great -- as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.

From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.

Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration.

<clip>

Congress can awaken and discover that the Constitution is correct, that Congress is in fact a separate and equal branch of government. The American people will find a way to deal with the remainder of the radicals, whether at the ballot box, in the courts or in the Senate.

<clip.

More from Col Lawrence Wilkerson at:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.radical23apr23,0,7907127.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines

We've clearly passed the "tipping point" ...


"America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." - Alexis de Tocqueville

[AuntiBush]

6. That Article Says it All.

Chilling...

[understandinglife]

7. "And there is nothing that reveals the utter moral bankruptcy, the ...

... complete dehumanizing vacuousness of the right more than when it steps forward to defend torture and those who petulantly assert their right to engage in it as somehow "patriotic," and call for the elimination of all those who oppose it.

Much more of Jane Hamsher's The Dividing Line of Torture at:

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/04/24/the-dividing-line-of-torture

Just how far from "good" America now is is readily obvious in the fact that ANYONE claiming to be an American hasn't condemned EVERY act of torture, as well as, rendition, imprisonment without proper representation, and denial of habeas corpus.


Peace.

[understandinglife]

8. Steve Soto: "Maybe He Meant "Crusades" After All"

Did I miss that debate during the 2004 election? I must have missed the part where the voters sanctioned the foreign policy of the United States to resemble the Crusades, and a permanent presence for the United States in the heart of the Islamic world.


Link:

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/007468.php

No debate - that's true. As to intent, I've never questioned it.

And, I've written more than once on the absolutely crystal clear meaning of -- the hardened strategic bases, the extensive construction in the 'green zone,' the control of the Tigris-Euphrates basin that are at the core of why Bush, Cheney and their neoconster minions and corporate buddies have zero intention of ever leaving Iraq.


Peace.

[DemReadingDU]

9. Powerful articles, K&R