Author: Jonathan Schwarz

I see Stephen “Case Closed” Hayes has written a biography of Dick Cheney.

I think the world would be a better place if from now on everyone began referring to Hayes as “W.W. Beauchamp.”

Tom Engelhardt: “Wrong Again! Bush’s Logic and Ours”

Nick Turse: “Planet Pentagon: How the Pentagon Came to Own the Earth, Seas, and Skies”

Dahr Jamail: “Iraq on My Mind: Thousands of Stories to Tell — And No One to Listen”

Sam Husseini points out it was twenty years ago today that this peculiar exchange took place during the nationally televised Iran Contra hearings:

REP. BROOKS: Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the “continuity of government” in the event of a major disaster?

SEN. INOUYE: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch on that, sir?

REP. BROOKS: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

SEN. INOUYE: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I’m certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.

Sam goes on to explain how this turned him into a radical.

Yesterday Barbara Boxer said on the Ed Schultz Show that impeachment “should be on the table” and “this is as close as we’ve ever come to a dictatorship.” I’ve stuck a transcript and mp3 here.

(If you haven’t already, sign the ImpeachCheney.org petition and the Moveon impeachment petition.)

What now-prominent political pundit wrote this in 1976?

An Arab country with the second largest proven oil reserves, a fierce revolutionary ideology, a large and recently-blooded army, and a leadership composed almost entirely of men in their thirties is obviously a force to be reckoned with. Iraq, which has this dynamic combination and much else besides, has not until recently been very much regarded as a power. But…its political voice is being heard more and more….And it has a leader — Saddam Hussain — who has sprung from being an underground revolutionary gunman to perhaps the first visionary Arab statesman since Nasser.

Answer here.

Now that this has come to light, I can’t wait to see the scorn and vitriol that Christopher Hitchens will pour upon this appalling Saddam-lover.

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