Nick Turse continues to pay tribute to the "Fallen Legion Wall," a proposal for a virtual "wall" made up of the seemingly endless and ever-growing list of top officials and beleaguered administrators, managers and career civil servants who have quit their government posts in protest or been defamed, threatened, fired, forced out, demoted or driven to retire by administration strong-arm tactics, cronyism and disastrous policies.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112805N.shtml

Paul Krugman writes that American workers at big companies used to think they had made a deal. They would be loyal to their employers, and the companies in turn would be loyal to them, guaranteeing job security, health care and a dignified retirement. Such deals were, in a real sense, the basis of America's post-war social order.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112805M.shtml

Bob Herbert writes that Jack Murtha is as tough as they come, but he's seen enough of the misguided, mismanaged, mission impossible war in Iraq to know that it's not sustainable, not worth the continued killing and butchering and psychological maiming of thousands of American GIs.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112805J.shtml

Marjorie Cohn writes that once again, at the 11th hour, the Bush administration has pulled its punches in the case of Jose Padilla. Using an approach that more closely resembles a game of chess than a system of justice, Team Bush has altered its strategy, while seeking to keep all options open. Its fancy footwork, however, may ultimately backfire.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112805I.shtml

Christian Science Monitor
by Daniel Schorr

11/24/05

Worried about flagging support for the war? The president tells his aides in a secret memo, 'Publicly we say one thing; actually, we do another.' That was not President Bush on Iraq, but President Nixon on Vietnam and Cambodia. It is only one line in some 50,000 pages of newly declassified Nixon-era documents from the National Archive. It is not surprising, but still a little unsettling, to learn how often a president will dissemble with the people...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1125/p09s01-cods.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The Nation
by Nicholas von Hoffman

11/23/05

When John Murtha, Democratic Repesentative from Pennsylvania, appeared on our television screens, what he had to say was shocking -- an old guard type declaring America must get itself out of Iraq and the war. In 457 words, he stood the country up and made it blink as he told the other of the House of Representatives, 'Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.' That was a shock and Murtha himself was a shock, a man from another era, from an America most of us may have heard about but have not visited. At 73 he has an Irish working-class accent of a kind which has all but died out. It speaks of grit and iron and hard times -- and there have been plenty of those in his Pennsylvania Congressional district, where the bituminous coal industry went down when Murtha was a young man and where the steel industry went down when Murtha was a middle-aged man, and in between there were two wars, both of which he signed up for and served in...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051212/vonhoffman


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Fox News/Cato
by Timothy Lynch

11/25/05

Washington is in high dudgeon these days over the events leading up to the Iraq war. Democrats charge President Bush with misleading the Congress and the electorate over prewar intelligence. Last week, Sen. John Kerry said Mr. Bush’s handling of the war was 'one of the great acts of misleading and deception in American history.' Bristling at the charge, Vice President Dick Cheney rejoined that such attacks are among the 'most dishonest and reprehensible charges that have ever been aired' in Washington. If anything good comes out of this heated debate, it is perhaps the consensus that on the momentous decision of war or peace, presidential deception is repugnant. Can this principle of presidential honesty and candor find an enduring place in our politics?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,176728,00.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Common Dreams
by Tom Hayden

11/23/05

Congress should call for a peace envoy to begin immediate peace talks with the Iraqi opposition after this week’s historic Cairo summit. The three-day meeting was the first attended by leading Iraqi political parties as well as a delegation linked to the insurgents, organized by former minister Ayham al-Sammarae. Overcoming the initial opposition of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, the conference ended with a call for American withdrawal and an endorsement of 'nationalist resistance' to foreign occupation. The conference will resume in Baghdad in February, where a stronger call for US withdrawal is likely. The February date is consistent with the four-month period that has been established to re-negotiate the Iraqi constitution to accommodate Sunni demands. It is clear that US proposals for token Sunni inclusion have failed, and that the peace deal emerging consists of incorporating the opposition into a new power-sharing arrangement...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1123-20.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

CounterPunch
by David Lindorff

11/27/05

Whether white phosphorus bombs -- what American troops call 'Willie Pete' -- is a chemical weapon or an incendiary weapon, may not seem like a very important distinction to a casual observer. After all, what it does -- burn flesh on contact and eat right down to the bone causing severe pain and, depending on what it eats through, death -- is as cruel and vicious as any poison gas. But it does matter to the Pentagon, and to the mainstream media that is covering the growing scandal of US military use of phosphorus bombs in the assault on Fallujah (and probably elsewhere in the Iraq War/Occupation). ... Why the fuss? Well, recall that the Bush/Cheney adminstration made use ad nauseum of how Saddam Hussein 'used chemical weapons against his own people.' So how would it look if the bombs we are using against Iraqis were also chemical weapons?

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff11262005.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Slate
by Michael Kinsley

11/26/05

Until last week, the anti-war position in the debate over Iraq closely resembled the pro-war position in the ancient debate over Vietnam. That is: It was a mistake to get in, but now that we're in, we can't just cut and run. That was the logic on which Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger took over the Vietnam War four years after major American involvement began and kept it going for another five. American 'credibility' depended on our keeping our word, however foolish that word might have been. In the end, all the United States wanted was a 'decent interval' between our departure and the North Vietnamese triumph -- and we didn't even get that. Thousands of Americans died in Vietnam after America's citizens and government were in general agreement that the war was a mistake. We are now very close to that point of general agreement in the Iraq war. Do you believe that if Bush, Cheney, and company could turn back the clock, they would do this again?

http://www.slate.com/id/2131029/



Is defeat now an option?

Human Events
by Pat Buchanan

11/28/05

'Is the United States now going to cut and run in Iraq?' asks Bronwen Maddox, foreign editor of the London Times. While the answer from President Bush remains a defiant 'No!' the question is now being raised by the most hawkish of his backers. And understandably so. For John McCain's call for sending 10,000 more troops to Iraq has been met with polite silence, while all signals out of this city point to withdrawal, beginning in 2006, of scores of thousands of U.S. troops, whether the insurgency has been defeated or not, whether an Iraqi democracy is assured or not...

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10521


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp