It is utterly hopeless to expect the powerless and compromised and most likely under surveillance Congress or our thoroughly useless mainstream corporate media to do anything about these most recent horrid revelations of obscene Bush administration conduct and crimes.

The Federal government is in the hands of a rapacious evil lawless oligarchy.

It is time to solicit your state governments, even local governments, and get them to announce policies of resistance to Federal police powers. Local action is all that is left. National action is a complete waste of time.

I am aware that the neocons have been planning an overthrow of the existing situation (influence of liberalism) for some time, including control of the government and the media as you summarized. I recall Lewis Lapham writing in Harpers that Irving Kristol, Bill's father, was offering journalists and columnists in the 1980's money to present the neoconservative point of view. Lewis did not take the offer which was considerable. Irving Kristol once remarked that a neoconservative is a "liberal mugged by reality," one who became more conservative after seeing the results of liberal policies.

Amazing how the sons of those prominent neocons of the eighties are the main protagonists of the movement today. I think of Podhoretz and Kagan. So your point is well taken.

They have been around a long time and were known within the "Beltway Village" as the "crazies."

OK, so they spent years and years preparing the plan. That doesn't take away from the fact that they implemented it overnight.

Or so it seemed.

And it seems to me that they are still winning. If their goal is to protect Israel, it's working. They have nothing to lose and if the U.S.A. attacks Iran, then all the better for Israel. It took many years of planning, I agree. But it was an almost flawless implementation with the desired results.

They expect the nation, and I think correctly, to be as Britney declared. "The President was voted in so we have to trust him and do what he says."

I guess we should have patience and hope that slowly our "ship" goes back on the correct course (whatever that may be). In the mean time we have close to 4K dead soldiers, close to 1+million dead Iraqis, and 4+million displaced Iraqis. Of course, WE are safe, so we got lots of time to straighten out this mess. No blood lost over here. No disrupted power/water/road infrastructure. No sir. Yup, good that we can just blow some steam, log off, turn of the computer, go to bed, and wake up the next day to another grand day. No wonder the trolls come laughing...

No clue what I'm doing...

In spite of the tone of the post, I still feel compelled to point out the good news in that the NYT chose to publish the story at all. There's at least one faction within that organization that is going out on a limb to keep the story alive.

I'm also an Air Force retiree and I hope you keep coming back to this thread. I come daily and it has helped me be much better informed and gives me support for my optimistic pessimism as well as feel part of a very high class group.

I agree in most every sense with the brunt of the latest post, but something I see that is not being stressed is the importance of the money-power set. The people who wield much of the power in this country today are the wealthy elite. In a broad sense, they decide who governs us and what laws are crafted.

I think the only way to combat this power is through sheer movement numbers - albeit a very loose movement. A majority of this country already opposes much about our current leaders, political and military, but that energy must be brought to bear - not just polled. That energy can be employed not just through things like demonstrations, but through our wallets. Voluntarily.

A "values" decision about where to shop, or a decision to occasionally contribute to a cause you agree with is a good thing. One less customer for their wares, and one more contribution to something one actually values can actually yield results. And if enough people participate that influence is felt. After all, isn't that how grassroots movements work?

It is precisely what you wrote that inspires me to write what I write, about not giving in to defeatism. As someone else just wrote here, it's nearly impossible to be to the left of the wingnuts and not feel depressed and disillusioned at times, given all that's been going on. I certainly feel it often enough. Which is why I write these things, to remind others--as well as myself--that--to re-appropriate a phrase recently appropriated by the right to justify staying in Iraq--"defeat is not an option". Or, more precisely, it needn't be seen as inevitable. And unlike Iraq, this one's worth fighting for. I don't really hope to "convert" those who have completely given up--they seem to be the ones who get most upset with my words, curiously, making me think that defeatism is almost a crutch for them, and they're upset that I'm trying to take it away from them or make them feel ashamed for relying on it, which in a way I am--but I do have hopes of making some inroads with those who are feeling down, but not completely out.

I guess I have. Thanks. And hang in there. It's going to get better, I believe, eventually. Not by itself, but because people like us made it so. I personally believe that they can never really win, unless everyone concedes defeat and gives up. And not caving into defeat is, I believe, literally a form of resistance, even if it's just a start. So keep on believing--and resisting.

I think that you need to read up on some American history, because I don't know where you get the idea that the US has, until recently been a paragon of virtue and human rights. I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but there is a fairly long and dark history of the Us getting involved in some pretty nasty affairs, both at home and abroad, that pretty much dispel your idealistic view of US history. I'm not trying to single out the US as the central of all world evil, because it's clearly not--ALL nations have their dark histories, it's in the nature of all societies, and we're probably no better or worse, proportionately to our size, and I'm not endorsing the "blame America first" mantra that wingnuts often throw out as straw men arguments to make us seem like we hate this country, which we absolutely don't--but we've clearly not always been angels.

Some obvious examples are slavery, the ethnic cleansing and genocide of native peoples, the Mexican war, Spanish-American war, ovethrow or attempted ovethrow of various democratically-elected world leaders in Iran, Nicaragua, Chile and elsewhere, the firebombing of German and Japanese cities in WWII, and of course the two atomic bombs dropped, the mass bombing of Laos and Cambodia, and so on. We are, and never have been, angels.

And the neocons are but the latest manifestation of the odious stream of thought and action that has been present throughout US history that has held that might makes right and that we're somehow entitled to do as we wish because we can do as we wish, consequences be damned. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., are substantially no different from the leaders who were behind these previous actions. It's only because a generation or more of people have grown up with these things not being so prominent (even though they've always been going on to one extent or another), as well as because BushCo have revived this unproud tradition so quickly and aggressively, that many people are shocked at what's been going on. But there is nothing new, fundamentally, with all this. It's just hit us fast and hard, and we're still in shock.

As for turning this ship around, I stand by what I wrote. It's not going to happen as fast or east as we'd like. This is a huge ship, it's moving fast, it's not designed to be turned quickly, we're in turbulent and stormy waters, and the people running it are, to put it mildly, barely up to the task. But they're learning, I believe, and we're doing all that we can to help them. Plus, those who are trying to keep it on course are gradually coming undone. If you want yet another nautical metaphor, let's just say that they're falling overboard and getting caught up in the propellor blades as they try to gunk up the works.

It's a dangerous fallacy to believe in the linear course of history. It takes some rather odd turns. Neither the best nor worst of times last forever. Things change. And, often, they might seem to change suddenly, but only after a long period of gradual and barely noticeable under the surface changes--kind of like the "overnight music success" who took 20 years to hit the big time. The neocon transformation was decades in the making, and itself rested on a centuries-old tradition of such imperialistic and antidemocratic behavior. And now, I believe, its undoing is underway, and has been for several years. But it's going to take a while longer to have more visible and positive effect. To anyone who disagrees, just look at all the high-level administration departures since the Dems took over. Do you really think that Rove, Gonzo, Rummy, etc., would have left if they didn't have to?

Also, people shouldn't look TOO closely at similar historical events, because, as the saying goes, history repeats itself, but never in quite the same way. In certain ways ours is like the Nazi, McCarthy or Nixon eras. But only in certain ways, and so our path out of our current crises will follow its own, not quite identical path. But it will follow one, because history is not static.