On the way home from a basketball game tonight I had the opportunity to spend a few minutes with Laura Ingraham who had this to say:
We need to take the country back from the elites!
Bush is an elite!
I wonder why it took her so long to figure this out.
Bilmon wrote a long and excellent essay on the history of the neoconservatives and their interplay with the foreign policy realists over the last 30 years.
Has neocon influence peaked? Is Wolfowitz the next Secretary of Defense or will he be gone from the Pentagon by February?
A must read if you are interested in US foreign policy.
Ah, a key reason why the bush administration is ready to bring Libya back into the fold:
In return for the promise to end its illegal weapons programme, the US will gradually lift its sanctions, freeing up Libya�s oil industry.
Well, freeing up Libya’s oil for US companies who can’t go there now:
At present there are no economic relations between the two countries and Washington has a ban on US passport-holders visiting Libya without official permission. That could now end if sanctions are lifted and, judging by Bush�s enthusiastic welcome of this about-turn, it cannot come soon enough.
And if bush doesn’t open it soon oil companies from other countries may get all the low hanging fruit:
Dr Kantsler said several of the world’s major international oil and gas companies, including Repsol, Agip of Italy, Total of France, Wintershall of Germany, and Petro-Canada, were already active in Libya.
And this would not make certain bush supporters happy:
During the 1980s , US firms were producing one million barrels of Libyan oil per day and, according to a recent report, new technology could see this double. One firm which would benefit from this is the Halliburton Corporation, whose chief executive until recently was the US vice-president, Dick Cheney.
Via Suburban Guerilla.
Not exactly what we might think of as the draft but the US is does not have an all volunteer army:
To many of the soldiers whose retirements and departures are on ice, however, stop-loss is an inconvenience, a hardship and, in some cases, a personal disaster. Some are resigned to fulfilling what they consider their patriotic duty. Others are livid, insisting they have fallen victim to a policy that amounts to an unannounced, unheralded draft.
Congress should immediately repeal their mistake:
Congress approved the authority for what became known as stop-loss orders after the Vietnam War, responding to concerns that the military had been hamstrung by the out-rotations of seasoned combat soldiers in Indochina.
In a country based on freedom, on the concepts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness slavery must not be allowed to exist.
Via Talkleft.
Update (12/29): Craig Cheslog has a good post on this. I disagree, though, with one point he makes: While the government has the right to treat our soldiers this way,… Nope, we should not grant the government any such right. The government is our servant not our master.
The bush administration could go a long ways in blunting its opposition by at minimum maintaining even the woefully poor previous levels of transparency. They, as the champions of freedom, would do even better if they broadened public access to government records and activities.
According to the Washington Post this does not appear to be the direction they have chosen:
…the Bush administration seems to be going in the other direction. The administration has been unusually successful keeping its policy deliberations out of public view, and millions of government documents — including many historical records previously available — have been removed from the public domain.
That the bush administration appears to feel an increasing need to hide the details of its activities from the public, even after the fact, seems to confirm that there is indeed something to hide.
Via Secrecy News.