The Iraqi refugee crisis–and it is a crisis–continues to draw my interest, and, the refugees, my compassion.

Perhaps it is because of my personal involvement in another refugee crisis in the seventies; perhaps it is because, in my opinion, the tragedy is a direct, albeit unintended result of our disastrous decision to invade Iraq and our equally disastrous mismanagement of the subsequent, nearly six-year-long occupation.

While, according to some sources, the situation in Iraq seems to be improving, there is no near-term end in sight to the sheer misery that over four million displaced Iraqis are experiencing–in squalid camps in their own country and in equally sordid conditions, mostly in Syria and Jordan.

Regardless of my passion for this issue, it is always great when I come across other voices that are equally or more passionate, and especially much more eloquent and authoritative.

A few days ago, I related the expert opinion on this issue by Morton Abramowitz, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a board member of the International Rescue Committee.

Today’s New York Times had an opinion piece on the Iraqi refugees issue by none other than two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Nicholas D. Kristof.

I honestly can not think of another journalist–or for that matter, a politician or government official–who has focused more of the world’s attention on genocide, famine, global health, poverty and refugee issues in the developing world and elsewhere. Since 2004 Kristof has written dozens of columns about Darfur and visited the area eight times.

Thus, it should be no surprise that Mr. Kristof won his second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called “his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.”

In his column, “Books not Bombs,” Kristof calls attention to what he calls the “dirty little secret” of the Iraq war:

The dirty little secret of the Iraq war isn’t in Baghdad or Basra. Rather, it’s found in the squalid brothels of Damascus and the poorest neighborhoods of East Amman.

Some two million Iraqis have fled their homeland and are now sheltering in run-down neighborhoods in surrounding countries. These are the new Palestinians, the 21st-century Arab diaspora that threatens the region’s stability.

Many youngsters are getting no education, and some girls are pushed into prostitution, particularly in Damascus. Impoverished, angry, disenfranchised, unwanted, these Iraqis are a combustible new Middle Eastern element that no one wants to address or even think about.

Kristof also writes:

We broke Iraq, and we have a moral responsibility to those whose lives have been shattered by our actions. Helping them is also in our national interest, for we’ll regret our myopia if we allow young Iraqi refugees to grow up uneducated and unemployable, festering in their societies.

In one of my pieces on this subject I quoted one of the members of our compassionate Conservative administration expressing just the opposite opinion: “…our obligation was to give [Iraqis] new institutions and provide security…” and , we don’t “have an obligation to compensate [Iraqis] for the hardships of war.” You guessed it, this was our former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton

Kristof also bemoans how little the U.S. has done towards accepting more Iraqi refugees into our country. But he also has a suggestion that would help the refugees and at the same time would address the region’s security challenges instead of “devoting billions of dollars to permanent American military bases,” as American hawks would prefer doing:

A simpler way to fight extremism would be to pay school fees for refugee children to ensure that they at least get an education and don’t become forever marginalized and underemployed.

[…]

We have already seen, in the case of Palestinians, how a refugee diaspora can destabilize a region for decades. If Jordan were to collapse in part from such pressures, that would be a catastrophe — and the best way to prevent that isn’t to give it Blackhawk helicopters, but help with school fees and school construction.

If we let the Iraqi refugee crisis drag on — and especially if we allow young refugees to miss an education so that they will never have a future — then we are sentencing ourselves to endure their wrath for decades to come. Educating Iraqis may not be as glamorous as bombing them, but it will do far more good.

Amen, Mr. Kristof, and thank you for continuing to give “voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.”

These two headlines from Think Progress sum it all up:

– Kristol: Bush Might Bomb Iran If He ‘Thinks Senator Obama’s Going To Win’

– Bolton: Israel Will Attack Iran After U.S. Election But Before Inauguration, Arab States Will Be ‘Delighted’

So they both said on Fox News yesterday morning. (Of course.)

They and the warmongering neocons of their ilk have said much the same thing before, of course: There will be military action undertaken against Iran. What is new is the immediacy, in terms of the specific timing of an attack on Iran, of their warmongering rhetoric.

I don’t know if either one is right, that is, that either the U.S. or Israel will bomb Iran — the U.S. if Obama wins (and, presumably, if McCain wins, too), Israel after the election (supposedly with the approval of the monolith known as “the Arab states”) — but what is clear is that they are both pushing for war and talking about it as if it were a foregone conclusion.

What is also clear, according to Krazy Kristol’s own admission, is that a McCain presidency would be Bush III (and worse). Here’s Steve Benen’s response: “As Bill Kristol sees it, if John McCain wins in November (or the White House believes McCain will win in November), Still-President Bush is content leaving a confrontation with Iran to the future. If Barack Obama wins, or appears poised to win, Bush may go ahead and force the issue… All of this is, of course, a friendly reminder that when it comes to sticking to the status quo, and offering more of the same on international relations, Bush is counting on John McCain delivering four more years just like the last eight.”
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In “McCain: Four More Years of Mumbling?” Michael Reagan says, “…a quick look at the amazing progress in present day Iraq accomplished by the president reveals a greatness that offends liberals.”

While I agree with Michael Reagan that we definitely do not want “Four more years of mumbling,” and although I am not a “liberal,” I am offended, but–please–not by President Bush’s “greatness.” In fact let’s take a look at this president’s “greatness,” by examining what greatness is not.

“Greatness” is not taking our nation into a disastrous war based on lies, cooked intelligence, exaggerations and deception.

“Greatness” is not mismanaging such war at the expense of over 4,000 of our finest and bravest

“Greatness” is not Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture, waterboarding, black prisons and extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, the end of habeas corpus, kangaroo courts, warrantless NSA wiretapping on Americans…

“Greatness” is not Walter Reed, the Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch lies, neglecting our veterans, outing a CIA operative.

“Greatness” is not Katrina, the firing of U.S. Attorneys, the Terry Schivo “case.”

“Greatness” is not, “Osama Bin Laden, where are you?”, “Heckuva job, Brownie,” “We don’t torture,”

“Greatness” is not Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Doug Feith, John Bolton, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Tom Delay, Mark Foley, Larry Craig, David Vitter, Halliburton, Blackwater…

“Greatness” is not a vast increase in our budget deficit; an increase of over 60 percent in our national debt; attempts to privatize social security; pillaging Medicare, Medicaid, and children’s health care; declaring war on stem cell research, efforts to mitigate global warming, evolution science, abstinence programs; swift boating your political opponents.

“Greatness” is not the failure to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations; the failure to bring a modicum of peace and stability to the Middle East.

“Greatness” is not using signing statements (more than 150 of them) to obey and implement only those parts of the law one likes.

“Greatness” is not corruption, nepotism,cronyism, Dick Cheney’s secretive Energy Task Force, lost White House emails, ignoring subpoenas, stonewalling, subverting justice.

“Greatness” is not Recession, an economy in tatters, mounting fiscal deficits, tax relief only for the wealthy…

“Greatness” is not promising to “restore honor and integrity to the White House,” and doing just the opposite.

“Greatness” is not diminishing the image of and respect for our country abroad

“Greatness” is not, to begin with, getting selected by the Supreme Court with a little bit of help from Katherine Harris and “dimpled chads.”

Sorry, Michael, but this kind of greatness offends not only “liberals,” but every American.

Norman Podhoretz, John Bolton and Newt Gingrich are leading the charge in asserting that the National Intelligence Estimate that concludes Iran dismantled its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is misleading and damaging to the national interest. The report sure was a shocker, but do these most serious charges hold water?

Neocon pilgrim and Rudy Giuliani foreign policy advisor Podhoretz and former U.N. ambassador Bolton are horse’s backsides of the first water, so we’ll put their yammering aside. But Republican conservative political guru Gingrich, who is nobody’s fool but occasionally his own, is usually worth listening to.

This is what Gingrich had to say on ABC’s This Week about the report:

“What you have is a release which, first of all, could not have been written to be more damaging to the Bush administration than it was. And the three people who wrote it are all three former State Department employees . . . they’re all three people who dislike what Bush is doing. I think they deliberately undermined the administration. I think this is the equivalent of a coup d’etat by the bureaucracy. If you actually read what they said . . . even the unclassified version doesn’t say what the front, what the headline said. The unclassified version says that there’s a big civilian program, they have at least 3,000 centrifuges already working — and 3,000’s enough to produce one bomb a year. They have a clear commitment to get nuclear weapons; there’s no evidence they’re going to give up that commitment. What the report technically said was that there was one particular program that was secret that we were certain was ongoing, we’ve now had a defector, that’s my guess, and the defector’s told them this, and my question is: How do we know that defector’s not a plant?”

Let’s break down these thoughts point by point.

* The estimate could not have been more damaging to the Bush administration and was intentionally so.

It is difficult to believe that there has not been more squawking, including the usual well-placed leaks from inside the White House, if this charge had real merit. Besides which, it’s yet another example of conservatives staking out a policy position and then automatically disagreeing with, ignoring or hiding anything that goes against that policy, which has been a signature of the Bush administration.

* Iran still has a big civilian nuclear program capable of producing a bomb a year.

No argument here. But we are led to believe by administration insiders that release of the NIE was held up because skeptics insisted that fresh evidence that the weapons program had indeed been dismantled — if not merely put on hold – be obtained. It was and confirmed the original assessment.

* How do we know that Gingrich’s alleged defector is not a plant?

We certainly don’t know that. But it beggars belief that an estimate based on the work of the CIA, DIA, FBI and NSA, among other agencies known for their independence and readiness to fight turf battles, came down to the say of one defector/plant and not the unanimous judgment of all those agencies based on multiple sources.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

The video and YouTube age makes if more difficult for cover stories. One of the images literally flashing around the world is of Cameraman Nagai Kenji being shot dead from the back. It’s there for everyone to see - a graphic document of repression:

Once upon a time if outrages occurred, they could be contained. Governments, organizations, celebrities or security forces could put out tidy cover stories and most people wouldn’t notice.

But then came the video camera revolution which spread the word throughout the county and often beyond. Then came the 24-news cycle with cable news networks craving more new info and images to fill hours naysayers once scornfully said pioneer CNN could NEVER fill and keep audiences.

And now we’re into the YouTube era, where anyone official or otherwise can post an image on the Internet that will be carried throughout the world — not just influencing those (particularly young people) who increasingly get news online, but television programs, print news editors and television news directors who find interesting tidbits that spark program or story ideas.

Myanmar is now being pitchforked into the headlines with more and more stories each day. For instances, as you read this:

Former U.S. UN Ambassador John Bolton says China is the key to Myanmar, not the UN:

China is the key to political change in Myanmar, not UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari who has met the military junta, the former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said here.

But there was no sign that Beijing would change tack and pressure the junta, Bolton told BBC television while attending Britain’s opposition Conservative party conference in Blackpool, England.

‘I think it’s very unclear that (Gambari) will be able to achieve anything. I have a lot of respect for Ibrahim Gambari personally but he’s in a very difficult position because the Security Council is divided,’ he said.

Gambari was dispatched to Myanmar at the weekend by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to intervene after the junta unleashed a military campaign to shut down mass protests several days ago, leaving at least 13 dead and hundreds arrested.

And Gambari has met with an opposition lead. Meanwhile, the Pope has spoken out:

A worried Pope Benedict XVI added his voice Sunday to calls from abroad for Myanmar’s military leaders to peacefully end their crackdown on protesters demanding democracy.

Benedict made his first public comments on the deadly crackdown a few hours after a U.N. envoy met with some Myanmar government leaders and detained opposition leader Aung San Sui Kyi, whose steadfast, peaceful challenge to the regime earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She has spent years under house arrest.

“I am following with great trepidation the very serious events” in Myanmar, the pope told pilgrims at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo outside Rome.

He expressed his spiritual closeness to the “dear” people of Myanmar during their “painful trial” and he asked the entire Catholic Church to follow his lead in praying intensely for them.

He said he “strongly hoped that a peaceful solution can be found for the good of the country.”

And he should worry: according to Al-Jazeera, the military’s control is tighter than ever:

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In 2002, Andrew Card, then Bush’s Chief of Staff, told the New York Times why the drumbeat for war against Iraq started in September: “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

It’s September again, this year’s product is war against Iran and the sales pitches have started.

“Iran’s pursuit of…nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,” President Bush told war veterans last week. Promising to apply diplomatic pressures first (sound familiar?), he nonetheless vowed, “We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

In the U.K. Telegraph, a story is planted about war-gaming a blockade of Iran: “”The results were impressive. The policy recommendations eliminated virtually all of the negative outcomes.”

Ever-faithful John Bolton, our unconfirmable former ambassador to the U.N. is telling Israelis via video hookup that President Bush “has made clear that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable.”

Even Gen. Petraeus is not too busy surging in Iraq to observe the “malign involvement of the Iranian Quds force with the militia extremists that have been supported by them, trained, equipped, armed, funded and even in some cases directed.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, pointing out that the “Fox propaganda machine” is at work again on the Iran campaign, urges “the mass media not to play the same craven role that they played in Iraq, where they essentially collapsed and became a megaphone for Bush’s policies.”

In five years, it is clear the Bush-Cheney Administration has learned nothing. Have the American people and their media?

Cross-posted from my blog

Everybody’s beating up on him for suing the Yale Club after falling off their dais. What they don’t know is that the injury may make him miss the National Review’s Alaska cruise this summer, for which he is scheduled to be a speaker, and you can imagine how much it hurts to think of missing a reunion with his old Neo-Con buddies. All the golden oldies will be there–Bill Buckley, Arthur Laffer, even John Bolton. Not even a $1 million could ease the pain of that:

Neo-Con Love Boat: Back to the Future

Liberals might call it the “Ship of Fools,” but this summer’s National Review luxury cruise sounds charming. Conservative golden oldies will be aboard, and ports of call will include Glacier Bay, “a world still emerging from the Ice Age.”

Ah, memories! Passengers who pay up to $9849 will take high tea at the Empress Hotel, view the “holy paintings of the Czarist days,” pan for gold and kayak along the waterfront of a native American red light district.

Such past glories will be the setting for shipboard seminars and talk with the founding fathers of NR, Bills Buckley and Rusher, as well as the Supreme Court martyr, Robert Bork; Arthur Laffer, whose curve inspired Reagan’s trickle-down tax cuts; Ed Gillespie, George W’s party chairman who loyally fell on his sword after the ’06 election; and the magazine’s Washington editor, Kate O’Beirne, sporting the most expensive hairdo west of John Edwards.

A bipartisan note will be struck by Dick Morris to regale with tales of his hooker listening in on White House calls to Bill Clinton

As if that weren’t retro excitement enough, a last-minute rusher up the gangplank (backwards, no doubt) will be John Bolton, fresh from his tour of revolting the “superior Brits.”

Next year’s plans call for a cruise off the waters of a liberated Iran.

Cross posted from my blog http://ajliebling.blogspot.com