COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Pelosi visiting Syria is dead wrong. The dead will be US troops.


There is no direct evidence, but since the House and Senate set up deadlines on a US exit from Iraq, reported violence seems to have accelerated. Over 400 Iraqi people have been killed over the past four days, AFP reported Iraqi officials and medics as saying.

125 people were killed in a series of coordinated marketplace blasts in Baghdad and town of Khalis on Thursday.

In a separate incident at least 82 men, women and children were slain in blasts as two suicide bomber tore through a market place in the Al-Shaab, in Baghdad on Thursday.

The blasts came just days after former US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told a farewell news conference that violence had fallen by 25 percent in and around Baghdad since 80,000 Iraqi and US troops deployed under the new security plan.

Another 43 were killed were killed in a series of vehicle bombs, roadside bomb and mortar attacks in the town of Khalis in Diyala province on Thursday.

On Tuesday, doctors and army officers said 160 Iraqis were slaughtered in the northern town of Tal Afar, 85 in a suicide bombing targeting a crowd waiting for food rations and another 75 men shot dead.

The announced visit to Syria by Nancy Pelosi, over White House objections is foolish and irresponsible and will only encourage increased violence and sectarian turf wars. Supporting the troops will get a lot more killed.
____________________________________________________________
White House Criticizes US House Speaker's Plan to Visit Syria
By David Gollust VOA
State Department
30 March 2007

The Bush administration Friday criticized plans by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to visit Syria. Pelosi and a delegation of other House Democrats are expected to go to Damascus early next week as part of a broader Middle East trip. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.

Officials here say Speaker Pelosi and her delegation are getting all the customary logistical support from the State Department, including a policy briefing on Syria.

But in an unusual move, the Bush administration has publicly criticized the speaker's travel plans, saying the visit will undermine U.S.-led efforts to isolate the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Congressional aides say Pelosi and her colleagues began the mission Friday in Jerusalem where they were to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and would go on to Syria, then Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

Pelosi, who as House speaker is just behind Vice President Dick Cheney in the presidential line-of succession, would be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Syria in several years.

At the White House, Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino said the visit was a very bad idea that can only help the Syrian government, which the United States accuses of meddling in Lebanon, supporting Palestinian extremists, and allowing foreign fighters to cross its borders into Iraq.

At a news briefing here, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said the Assad government showcases visits of this kind to try to conceal its own political isolation:

"We don't think it would be appropriate for high-level visitors, even those from the Congress to pay a visit to Syria right now," he said. "The typical Syrian MO [mode of operation] on this is to use these visits to tell the rest of the world, to say: look, there's nothing wrong. We're having all these visitors coming to Damascus. There's no problem with our behavior. And they point to the visits as proof that there is no problem with their behavior and they are not, in fact, isolated."

McCormack said the administration's advice on visiting Syria would be the same to both Democrats and Republicans, while stressing that travel decisions are ultimately made by the legislators themselves.

Though it maintains diplomatic relations with Syria, the United States withdrew its ambassador from Damascus in 2005 after Syrian officials were implicated in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Ellen Sauerbrey was in Damascus earlier this month in the highest-level State Department visit there in two years.

But McCormack said her talks were limited to her counterparts in the Syrian government and strictly confined to the issue of Iraqi refugees.

The Pelosi delegation also includes, among others, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Lantos and first-term Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress.

A group of Senators from both parties visited Damascus in December after the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended greater U.S. dialogue with Syria and Iran in efforts to end Iraqi violence.


21 comments:

  1. Rep. Pelosi Tours Jerusalem Holy Sites
    ---
    Cum Together!
    "Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison said his presence -- as a Muslim -- on the trip sent a message to Israelis and Palestinians that ''people can come together.''

    ''Reconciliation is possible,'' he said.
    "
    (Shame on 'Rat for Scoffing and Doubting)

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  2. 2164th: There is no direct evidence, but since the House and Senate set up deadlines on a US exit from Iraq, reported violence seems to have accelerated.

    Over the course of several weeks the needles from pine trees along the Wombat River fell into the water. Shortly thereafter, many dead fish washed up on the river banks. When the Bush Administration investigated, they determined the pine needles had indeed killed the fish. "It is a lie of the environmento-wacko Left that the Wombat River Chemical Company's toxic wastes caused both the trees and the fish to die," a statement from the EPA concluded.

    The announced visit to Syria by Nancy Pelosi, over White House objections is foolish and irresponsible and will only encourage increased violence and sectarian turf wars.

    Gramma Pelosi is two heartbeats away from the Oval Office, according to the Constitution. She is the head of a co-equal branch of government (the one holding the purse strings) making her second trip to the Middle East, and is visiting an important player that the Bush Administration has shunned. Proponents of an imperial presidency prefer that she just stay on the Hill, shut up, and accept briefings from the White House on the Syrian situation. This would ill-serve the Republic, assuming we still have a republic.

    Supporting the troops will get a lot more killed.

    That's precisely why she wants to bring them home.

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  3. When the Bush Administration investigated, they determined the Bullshit had indeed killed the Trish.

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  4. "and is visiting an important player that the Bush Administration has shunned"
    ---
    The Negligence of the Administration was not in the shunning, but the absence of bombing.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. In the Manyawhna Administration, everything that was eminently possible at the time, has in time become "impossible."
    (or so they say, not w/o evidence)
    ...the embeds would have given good coveraged of the air-raids on Syrian and Iranian Arms suppliers back in the day.
    But the day has long since passed.

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  7. It is not Speaker Pelosi's call as to who the executive branch talks to or does not. For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers successfully separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the central and state governments. The balance is critical to the designated powers of the individual branches. The rights and obligations of each branch is to prevent the infringement of powers by either of the other two.


    The Constitution reserves the rights and obligations of treaties and foreign affairs to the Presidency.

    Article II, section 2 of the US Constitution is clear, when speaking to the power vested into the executive branch:

    "He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."

    No such power is given to the House of Representatives, and with good reason. Pelosi is wrong, dead wrong and should be called on it.

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  8. Interesting Yawning Facts
    The average yawn lasts about six seconds.
    Your heart rate can rise as much as 30 percent during a yawn.
    55 percent of people will yawn within five minutes of seeing someone else yawn.
    Blind people yawn more after hearing an audio tape of people yawning.
    Reading about yawning will make you yawn.
    Olympic athletes often yawn before competition.

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  9. Observing the Manyawna Admistration Prosecute a Non-War will make a nation yawn,
    and opt-out.

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  10. Doug, you do amazing things as Elephant Cincpac. Worthy of a post, if I can come up with one.

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  11. We have some very strategiclly placed assets with DR in the southwest, Bobalharb in deep injun country, T at Norpac, Allen in pine straw heaven and Whit et al in gatorland, sam in oz, rufus in ol miss, and many many others in the galactic cluster of WWW.

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  12. 2164th: It is not Speaker Pelosi's call as to who the executive branch talks to or does not.

    Indeed, but it also works the other way around, it is not President Bush's call as to who the legislative branch talks to or not.

    Article II, section 2 of the US Constitution...He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties...No such power is given to the House of Representatives..."

    Nancy Pelosi is not wasting her time in Syria trying to get Baby Doc Bashir Assad to sign a treaty. She is, in the absence of any move by the Executive, looking at ways the neighboring nations in the area could fill in the gap left when she puts a time limit on the use of the land and naval forces of the US, in accordance with her constitutional role.

    Section 8: The Congress shall have power...

    To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;


    Case dismissed.

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  13. Doug: Interesting Yawning Facts...The average yawn lasts about six seconds.

    Three clinical psychiatrists had a paper in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry entitled "Unusual Side Effects of Clomipramine Associated with Yawning," describing 4 patients who, while taking the the anti-depressant drug Clomipramine (brand name Anafranil) reported the unusual side effect of spontaneous orgasm every time they yawned.

    The first case of this was a female patient who had been depressed for 3 months, but under treatment "Complete symptom remission occurred within 10 days". She then asked how long she would be allowed to go on using the drug, since she had observed that every time she yawned she had an orgasm, and she was able to experience orgasm by deliberate yawning.

    Apparently it can work for guys too. One male patient said that while he found the repeated climaxes "awkward and embarrassing", he elected to continue the medication because of the therapeutic benefit he obtained. The awkwardness and embarrassment were overcome by continuously wearing a condom."

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  14. On the next page the Huts have double roofs.
    ...we didn't have thos in Korea.

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  15. Is the depression cured by the drug, or the "side effects?"

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  16. Hers a trivia question. what was the designation of those kerosene burning stoves? In my mind I can smell them but cannot see the designation.

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  17. Doug: Is the depression cured by the drug, or the "side effects?"

    All I know is that the FDA is moving to regulate Clomipramine as a Class III recreational drug because too many people are popping the pills and listing to Al Franken podcasts from Err America Radio.

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  18. Deuce:
    Other far flung EB'ers: Harrison in Singapore and Lord Acton in Alaska.

    And of course from the nation/continent of Australia, please excuse me for not recognizing you by your nom de plume.

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