I have many middle east links to put up but the reality is that they've been repeating for some time with no let up in sight. Out leadership, all our leadership, has no clue, are deluded, and are playing cheap politics with other people's lives. The hole they are digging is only getting deeper and all the diggers are digging more furiously than ever. And they will continue to dig until the hole collapses on us all.

Appropriate Disillusionment
The Despair of Cindy Sheehan and Andrew Bracevich

I have in front of me two documents of despair, of disillusionment with the American political system that allows this criminal war to continue. Andrew J. Bacevich in his Washington Post op-ed column and Cindy Sheehan in her statement on her blog express despair over the failure of the Democrats placed in power by an antiwar electorate to take firm measures to end the war in Iraq. Sheehan declares, as she announces her departure from the spotlight that "hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike," adding, "It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years" Professor Bacevich, now sharing Sheehan's personal grief, calls his earlier hopes that he and others might force the country to change course "an illusion," noting that "responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party." "Money," he notes bitterly, "maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent. This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works." If there is a positive aspect to this despair, it is this very realization: the system is the problem. It has not so much "failed" us as we have failed to understand what Sheehan and Bacevich are concluding: it isn't designed to work for us but for but for them. For those who can't bring themselves to say that the war is not a "mistake" but a crime. For those who can't call for immediate withdrawal in accordance with the wishes of the American and Iraqi people but talk about "benchmarks" for a gradual withdrawal. For those who want to shift the onus of the U.S. failure in Iraq to Iraqi politicians for their delays and bickering, and the Iraqi people for their bewildering Islamic sectarianism. It serves those who vote in bipartisan fashion to further vilify and isolate Syria and Iran---the fools who do not know the first thing about Islamic history and the divisions between Shiites and Sunnis, secularists and Islamists. It serves those lining up to embrace the fear-mongering Islamophobic neocon agenda for more confrontation with the Muslim world. It serves those who fear AIPAC more than the consequences of a strike on Iran. It serves the Democrats who want to keep an attack on Iran on the table, but assure President Bush that his impeachment is off the table because it's just too radical a prospect for them to consider. This is indeed the way the system works.

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Here are the two above mentioned documents.

"Good Riddance Attention Whore"
By CindySheehan

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

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I lost my son to a conflict I oppose. We were both doing our duty
By Andrew J. Bacevich

Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others - teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks - to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond. This, I can now see, was an illusion. The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people." To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me. To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove - namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.

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Then there is the festering sore that is the Israeli's treatment of the Palestinians. This piece is written by an Israeli.

To the Shores of Tripoli
The Sixty Year Wound
By Uri Avnery

The bloody battles that have erupted around the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli in Lebanon remind us that the refugee problem has not disappeared. On the contrary, 60 years after the "Nakba", the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948, it is again the center of attention throughout the world. This is an open wound. Anyone who imagines that a solution to the Israel-Arab conflict is possible without healing this wound is deluding himself. From Tripoli to Sderot, from Riyadh to Jerusalem, the Palestinian refugee problem continues to cast its shadow across the whole region. This week, the media were again full of photos of Israeli and Palestinian refugees fleeing from their homes and of mothers mourning the death of their loved ones in Hebrew and Arabic--as if nothing had changed since 1948.

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None of our fearful leaders will deal with the root cause because they are all part of it.

Evil Empire
Is Imperial Liquidation Possible for America?
By Chalmers Johnson

In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our Constitutional system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released on April 26, 2007, some 78% of Americans believe their country to be headed in the wrong direction. Only 22% think the Bush administration's policies make sense, the lowest number on this question since October 1992, when George H. W. Bush was running for a second term -- and lost. What people don't agree on are the reasons for their doubts and, above all, what the remedy -- or remedies -- ought to be. The range of opinions on this is immense. Even though large numbers of voters vaguely suspect that the failings of the political system itself led the country into its current crisis, most evidently expect the system to perform a course correction more or less automatically. As Adam Nagourney of the New York Times reported, by the end of March 2007, at least 280,000 American citizens had already contributed some $113.6 million to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, or John McCain. If these people actually believe a presidential election a year-and-a-half from now will significantly alter how the country is run, they have almost surely wasted their money. As Andrew Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism, puts it: "None of the Democrats vying to replace President Bush is doing so with the promise of reviving the system of check and balances.... The aim of the party out of power is not to cut the presidency down to size but to seize it, not to reduce the prerogatives of the executive branch but to regain them."

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Things don't look so good.