Coal lover Giuliani to skip climate forum  

I'm always amazed that the mainstream media gets away with dubbing Rudy Giuliani a front-runner for the Republican presidential candidate nomination.

Given that his lack of any traditional sense of morality - both personal and regarding the use of state funds for ferrying his mistress(es) around - alienates a lot of the conservative base and his antipathy towards civil liberties and personal freedom deeply angers Ron Paul's supporters, you have to wonder where his support is supposed to be coming from. Surely the authority worshipping neoconservative segment of the population who love his quasi-fascist policy pronouncements make up a limited proportion of the voter population ?

He certainly isn't going to get any votes from people with green inclinations given his disdain for doing anything about global warming - but presumably the coal company campaign contributions will help the "President of 911" with his relentless quest for self-publicity. Dave Roberts at Grist outlines the case against Rudy - "Rudy Giuliani's ties to dirty energy and efforts to kill the Senate energy bill".

You might recall that a while back there was talk of a(nother) presidential forum on climate and energy, to be convened by Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger in New Hampshire, involving all the candidates from both parties. Surely given the location, the subject, and the star power, no candidate could say no, right?

Well, turns out it's not happening. Why? Because of the Republicans, only McCain agreed to attend. Giuliani didn't even return their calls.

In other news -- you might even say related news -- it turns out that coal-heavy utilities like Southern and American Electric are lobbying furiously against the Renewable Portfolio Standard in the energy bill before the Senate. Southern alone has spent $7.26 million lobbying Congress this year.

And what's their favorite lobbying firm? Bracewell & Giuliani, home of none other than presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, who said this weekend that he will not sever financial ties to the firm if he's elected.

Here's a rundown of Giuliani's energy ties from ThinkProgress:

-- Giuliani's campaign has collected more than $400,000 from employees of companies in the oil, gas, and energy industries.

-- In August, Giuliani spoke to "representatives of the coal industry at a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser ... saying, 'We have to increase our reliance on coal' in the future."

-- Scott Segal, a Bracewell lobbyist, "is director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an industry group that focuses on air-quality issues and includes Southern Co., Progress Energy Inc. and other utilities." Southern Co. hired Bracewell to lead the lobbying campaign against the Senate bill.

See also Ari Bermans' story in The Nation a while back on "Rudy's Dirty Money."

Everyone I know in the foreign policy world is convinced that a Giuliani presidency would be an unprecedented disaster. I'm beginning to think that the same is true on climate and energy.

Of course, you could argue that Giuliani wouldn't be any worse than the current administration when it comes to climate.

The White House has systematically tried to manipulate climate change science and minimize the dangers of global warming, asserts a Democratic congressional report issued after a 16-month investigation. ...

The report relies on hundreds of internal communications and documents as well as testimony at two congressional hearings to outline a pattern where scientists and government reports were edited to emphasize the uncertainties surrounding global warming, according to Waxman.

Many of the allegations of interference dating back to 2002 have surfaced previously, although the report by the Democratic majority of the House Oversight and Reform Committee sought to show a pattern of conduct. "The Bush administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming," the report concludes.

It said the White House over the years has sought to control public access to government climate scientists, suppressed scientific views that conflicted with administration policy and extensively edited government reports "to minimize the significance of climate change."

Ross Gelbspan has an article up at Grist saying that climate change has "gone beyond the point of no return".

The Step It Up campaign inspired more than 1,500 protests in all 50 states this year, and is hoping to build on that impact by joining forces with the 1Sky climate campaign. The Campus Climate Challenge is planning a new and more energetic clean energy campaign. Focus the Nation continues to exhort colleges and universities around the country to green their campuses. Al Gore's dedication to bringing the climate crisis to public attention won him a well-deserved Nobel Prize, and he's using his newfound credibility to push even harder for action against climate change. The large Washington-based environmental groups are pressing to improve climate and energy bills that are moving through Congress -- even though the bills are clearly inadequate to the challenge before us.

But even assuming the wildest possible success of their initiatives -- that humanity decided tomorrow to replace its coal- and oil-burning energy sources with noncarbon sources -- it would still be too late to avert major climate disruptions. No national energy infrastructure can be transformed within a decade.

All these initiatives address only one part of the coming reality. They recall the kind of frenzied scrambling that is characteristic of trauma victims -- a frantic focus on other issues, any other issues -- that allows people to avoid the central take-home message of the trauma: in this case, the overwhelming power of inflamed nature.

Within the last two years, a number of leading scientists -- including Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), British ecologist James Lovelock, and NASA scientist James Hansen -- have all declared that humanity is about to pass or already has passed a "tipping point" in terms of global warming. The IPCC, which reflects the findings of more than 2,000 scientists from over 100 countries, recently stated that it is "very unlikely" that we will avoid the coming era of "dangerous climate change."

The truth is that we may already be witnessing the early stages of runaway climate change in the melting of the Arctic, the increase in storm intensity, the accelerating extinctions of species, and the prolonged nature of recurring droughts.

Moreover, some scientists now fear that the warming is taking on its own momentum -- driven by internal feedbacks that are independent of the human-generated carbon layer in the atmosphere.

Consider these examples:

* Despite growing public awareness of global warming, the world's carbon emissions are rising nearly three times faster than they did in the 1990s. As a result, many scientists tell us that the official, government-sanctioned forecasts of coming changes are understating the threat facing the world.

* A rise of 2 degrees C over preindustrial temperatures is now virtually inevitable, according to the IPCC, as the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is approaching the destabilizing level of 450 parts per million. That rise will bring drought, hunger, disease, and flooding to millions of people around the world.

* Scientists predict a steady rise in temperatures beginning in about two years -- with at least half of the years between 2009 and 2019 surpassing the average global temperature in 1998, to date, the hottest year on record.

* Given the unexpected speed with which Antarctica is melting, coupled with the increasing melt rates in the Arctic and Greenland, the rate of sea-level rise has doubled -- with scientists now raising their prediction of ocean rise by century's end from about three feet to about six feet.

* Scientists discovered that a recent, unexplained surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is due to more greenhouse gases escaping from trees, plants, and soils -- which have traditionally buffered the warming by absorbing the gases. In the lingo of climate scientists, carbon sinks are turning into carbon sources. Because the added warmth is making vegetation less able to absorb our carbon emissions, scientists expect the rate of warming to jump substantially in the coming years.

* The intensity of hurricanes around the world has doubled in the last decade. As Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research explained, "If you take the last 10 years, we've had twice the number of category-5 hurricanes than any other [10-year period] on record."

* In Australia, a new, permanent state of drought in the country's breadbasket has cut crop yields by over 30 percent. The 1-in-1,000-year drought exemplifies a little-noted impact of climate change. As the atmosphere warms, it tightens the vortex of the winds that swirl around the poles. One result is that the water that traditionally evaporated from the Southern Ocean and rained down over New South Wales is now being pulled back into Antarctica -- drying out the southeastern quadrant of Australia and contributing to the buildup of glaciers in the Antarctic -- the only area on the planet where glaciers are increasing.

As one prominent climate scientist said recently, "We are seeing impacts today that we did not expect to see until 2085."

The panic among climate scientists is expressing itself in geoengineering proposals that are half-baked, fantastically futuristic, and, in some cases, reckless. Put forth by otherwise sober and respected scientists, the schemes are intended to basically allow us to continue burning coal and oil.

Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, for example, is proposing to spray aerosols into the upper atmosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting earth. Tom M. L. Wigley, a highly esteemed climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), ran scenarios of stratospheric sulfate injection -- on the scale of the estimated 10 million tons of sulfur emitted when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991 -- through supercomputer models of the climate, and reported that Crutzen's idea would, indeed, seem to work. The scheme was highlighted in a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times by Ken Caldeira, a climate researcher at the Carnegie Institution.

Unfortunately, the seeding of the atmosphere with sun-reflecting particles would trigger a global drought, according to a study by other researchers. "It is a Band-Aid fix that does not work," said study co-author Kevin Trenberth of NCAR. The eruption of Pinatubo was followed by a significant drop-off of rainfall over land and a record decrease in runoff and freshwater discharge into the ocean, according to a recently published study by Trenberth and other scientists.

The noted British ecologist James Lovelock recently proposed the idea of installing deepwater pipes on the ocean floor to pump cold water to the surface to enhance the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide. Others suggest dumping iron filings into the ocean to increase the growth of algae which, in turn, would absorb more carbon dioxide.

These proposals fail to seriously acknowledge the possibility of unanticipated impacts on ocean dynamics or marine ecosystems or atmospheric conditions. We have no idea what would result from efforts to geoengineer our way around nature's roadblock.

At a recent conference, Lisa Speer of the Natural Resources Defense Council noted, "These types of proposals are multiplying around the world, and there is no structure in place to evaluate if any of them work. People are going after these gigantic projects without any thoughtful, rational process."

What these scientists are offering us are technological expressions of their own supercharged sense of desperation. ...

Fortuitously, the timing of the climate crisis does coincide with other worldwide trends. Like it or not, the economy is becoming globalized. The globalization of communications now makes it possible for anyone to communicate with anyone else anywhere else in the world. And, since it is no respecter of national boundaries, the global climate makes us one.

At the same time, the coming changes clearly suggest that, to the extent possible, we should be eating locally and regionally grown food -- to minimize the CO2 generated by factory farming and long-distance food transport. We should also be preparing to take our energy from a decentralized system using whichever noncarbon energy technologies are best suited to their natural surroundings -- solar in sunny areas, offshore wave and tidal power in coastal areas, wind farms in the world's wind corridors, and geothermal almost everywhere. (It may even be feasible to maintain a low-level coal-fired grid, of about 15 percent of current capacity, as a back-up for days the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine.) But it's critical to stop thinking in terms of centralized energy systems and to begin thinking in terms of localized, decentralized technologies.

At the level of social organization, the coming changes imply the need to conduct something like 80 percent of our governance at the local grassroots level through some sort of consensual democratic process -- with the remaining 20 percent conducted by representatives at the global level.

For some years, I have been promoting a policy bundle of three specific strategies as one model for jump-starting a global transition to clean energy. Those policies, which are spelled out in my book Boiling Point and on my website, include:

* Redirecting more than $250 billion in subsidies in industrial countries away from coal and oil and putting them behind carbon-free technologies;

* Creating a fund of about $300 billion a year for a decade, to transfer clean energy to poor countries; and

* Adopting within the Kyoto framework a mandatory progressive fossil-fuel efficiency standard that would go up by 5 percent a year until the 80 percent global reduction is attained.

The initial impulse behind these strategies was to craft a policy bundle to stabilize the climate -- and at the same time create millions of jobs, especially in developing countries. Initially, I, along with the other people who helped formulate them, envisioned these solutions as a way to undermine the economic desperation that gives rise to so much anti-U.S. sentiment. They would, we hoped, turn impoverished and dependent countries into trading partners. They would raise living standards abroad without compromising ours. They would jump the renewable energy industry into a central driving engine of growth for the global economy and, ultimately, yield a far more equitable, more secure, and more prosperous world.

Unfortunately, given all the apathy, indifference, and antagonism to taking real action, nature has now relegated that earlier vision to the rear-view mirror.

But this kind of global public-works plan, if initiated in the near term, could still provide a platform to bring the people of the world together around a common global project that transcends traditional alliances and national antagonisms -- even in today's profoundly fractured, degraded, and combative world. Along the way, it could also provide decentralized stand-alone energy sources for disconnected social communities in a post-crash world.

The key to our survival as a civil species during an era of profound natural upheaval lies in an enhanced sense of community. If we maintain the fiction that we can thrive as isolated individuals, we will find ourselves at the same emotional dead end as the current crop of survivalists: an existence marked by defensiveness, mistrust, suspicion, and fear.

As nature washes away our resources, overwhelms our infrastructures, and splinters our political alignments, our survival will depend increasingly on our willingness to join together as a global community. As the former Argentine climate negotiator, Raul Estrada-Oyuela, said, "We are all adrift in the same boat -- and there's no way half the boat is going to sink."

George Monbiot's latest article notes the bleedin obvious - "The real answer to climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground". Its amazing how few people seem to get this simple concept.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart, I offer it to you for free. No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses. Already this technology, a radical new kind of carbon capture and storage, is causing a stir among scientists. It is cheap, it is efficient and it can be deployed straight away. It is called ... leaving fossil fuels in the ground. ...

Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate our lofts, turn our televisions off at the wall. In other words, they have a demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine, not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the supply of fossil fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every barrel of oil and tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burned.

Or perhaps I should say that they do have a supply-side policy: to extract as much as they can. Since 2000, the UK government has given coal firms £220m to help them open new mines or to keep existing mines working. According to the energy white paper, the government intends to "maximise economic recovery ... from remaining coal reserves". ...

The British government also has a policy of "maximising the UK's existing oil and gas reserves". To promote new production, it has granted companies a 90% discount on the licence fees they pay for prospecting the continental shelf. It hopes the prospecting companies will open a new frontier in the seas to the west of the Shetland Isles. The government also has two schemes for "forcing unworked blocks back into play". If oil companies don't use their licences to the full, it revokes them and hands them to someone else. In other words, it is prepared to be ruthlessly interventionist when promoting climate change, but not when preventing it: no minister talks of "forcing" companies to reduce their emissions. Ministers hope the industry will extract up to 28bn barrels of oil and gas from the continental shelf.

Last week the government announced a new tax break for companies working in the North Sea. The Treasury minister, Angela Eagle, explained that its purpose is "to make sure we are not leaving any oil in the ground that could be recovered". The government's climate change policy works like this: extract every last drop of fossil fuel then pray to God that no one uses it.

The same wishful thinking is applied worldwide. The International Energy Agency's new outlook report warns that "urgent action is needed" to cut carbon emissions. The action it recommends is investing $22 trillion in new energy infrastructure, most of which will be spent on extracting, transporting and burning fossil fuels.

Moving on to the subject of Iraq, the Iraqi government has given US forces one more year in the country, after which it will take over its own security. I wonder if they will still be debating whther or not to pass the US drafted oil law then ?

Iraqi Premier Nouri al-Maliki has formally asked the UN Security Council to extend one last time the one-year mandate of US-led forces in his country, according to a letter released on Tuesday. In his letter to the Security Council, Maliki requested the one-year extension from December 31, provided the council commits to end the UN mandate at an earlier date if so asked by Baghdad. US-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein and hunt for weapons of mass destruction that were never found. ...

"The government of Iraq considers this to be its final request to the Security Council for the extension of the mandate ... and expects, in future, that the Council will be able to deal with the situation in Iraq without the need for action under Chapter Seven" of the UN Charter, the letter said. ...

Maliki stressed the need henceforth to treat Iraq "as an independent and fully sovereign state" that will assume responsibility for command and control of all Iraq forces, with support from MNF. In November, the Iraqi leader said negotiations on a new pact to govern the US presence would be held in 2008 and that any deal would then be "taken back to the Iraqi parliament, which will have the final word".

Geoffrey Styles at Energy Outlook has a good post looking at the rapidly growing consumption of oil in the dwindling band of exporting nations - once again, a rehash of Jeffrey Brown's "export land model" theory without any attribution (probably because he was looking at the New York Times' article on the subject, who are the real culprit here).

In order to function, a market must have both buyers and sellers. That point seems trivial, but in the context of an article in Sunday's New York Times, it has great significance for the global trade in oil. The Times picked up on a quiet trend that could dramatically alter the oil market, and with it, the global economy: the rate at which the economies of oil-exporting countries are soaking up their oil surpluses, due to a combination of subsidized consumption and the growth stimulated by high oil revenues. Even if this trend does not dry up the exports that currently satisfy the world's many oil importers--with the US topping the list--it will alter the competitive forces affecting both energy prices and the contractual terms for new production. It should also lend urgency to the national debate on energy policy.

Since participating in Texaco's first global energy scenario project ten years ago, I've been following the evolution of the industry's access to resources, one of three big energy trends identified by our scenario team. Increasingly, the international oil companies have been frozen out of the big reserve plays around the world, or forced to take secondary roles involving much less control. But within the last year, I've grown much more concerned about the potential impact of a factor that compounds the problem of access. As oil-rich developing countries grow, they consume more of their own oil, leaving less to export. And as often as not, much of that incremental consumption is driven by internal petroleum product prices that are well below international market prices, leading to inefficiency.

The 15 countries on the Department of Energy's list of the biggest oil exporters accounted for 90% of total global oil exports of 43.2 million barrels per day (MBD) in 2004, out of total consumption of 82.3 MBD. As the figure in the Times article shows, consumption in the largest of these exporters is growing at a multiple of the global rate, at a time when it has slowed or stalled in developed countries. (The decline shown for the US between 2005-2006 is somewhat anomalous, because it appears to be attributable not to products like gasoline or diesel fuel, which are still growing, but to the disposition of the bottom of the barrel, perhaps into additional coking capacity or exports.) In fact, the growth of consumption in oil-exporting countries may matter as much to the future of the oil market as the growth of China and India, which has received a lot more attention in the last several years.

This trend has a number of important implications. At the highest level, as the Times notes, a reduction of exports will put more pressure on prices, and thus on consumption in importing countries, effectively hastening the effects of Peak Oil. At the same time, a reduction in the number of net exporters, as countries with historic surpluses move into balance or deficit, will alter the dynamics of the market, as will shifts within the top rank of exporters. The resulting fewer major exporters will have more market power, and that will affect not only the market for their output, but also the competition for access to new oil fields. Meanwhile, the incentives for current oil importers to reduce consumption and develop more domestic production will grow, encompassing biofuels and hydrocarbons from conventional and alternative sources. In this light, the present high US reliance on oil imports looks even less sustainable, and a comprehensive energy plan addressing both supply and demand even more essential.

It isn't for us to tell oil-producing nations what to do with their own resources. We have no inalienable right to consume other countries' oil, unless they sell it to us willingly. Nor are we in a strong position to advise them about inefficiency, at least until we put our own house in order in this regard. That suggests the need for us to plan for a world, not necessarily with less oil, but with less of it available for us to import. Considering the scale of those imports and the present modest contribution of alternatives, the definition of energy independence we should all be able to agree on would focus on achieving sustained year-on-year reductions in our oil imports and creating enough new options to provide real leverage with our remaining suppliers. That's a very different notion from self-sufficiency.

It looks like the Chinese are going to get to develop Iran's huge Yadavaran oil and gas field - one more huge foreign policy success for the bush administration. Maybe they should take Ron Paul's advice and start talking to other countries instead of threatening them...

The United States on Monday said it was disappointed that a Chinese energy company signed an agreement to develop a huge Iranian oil field and that the project would undermine international efforts to pressure Tehran to give up its nuclear program.

Sinopec, China's biggest oil refiner and petrochemicals producer and its second largest crude oil producer, signed a deal over over the weekend to invest $2 billion in Iran's Yadavaran oil field. "We're deeply disappointed and disturbed at the reports (of the deal), and we'll be making this clear to the Chinese authorities," said U.S. State Department spokesman Jessica Simon.

Iran is OPEC's second largest oil producer and the fourth biggest crude oil exporter in the world. Iran estimates the Yadavaran field holds 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil and 2.7 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.

The Huffington Post reports that ABC has exiled a Ron Paul interview to the internet - wouldn't want the red state masses having someone else in mind in the Republican primaries when they are supposed to vote for Rudy or Mitt.

Congressman Ron Paul and 20/20 host John Stossel have more than a few things in common. Specifically, they both think a lot of libertarian thoughts, and unlike a lot of libertarians, they've both learned to communicate these thoughts so effectively that they have earned the respect of their peers.

Paul, in his tenth Congressional term, is known as "Dr. No" for his refusal to vote for bills that cater to special interests, raise taxes, or violate his literal interpretation of the Constitution. Stossel, the Emmy-winning consumer reporter who discovered free-market theory via Reason magazine, has been permitted to air provocative specials such as "Stupid in America," which criticized the government's monopoly in education.

So what happens when the champion of freedom and free markets from the U.S. Congress sits down for a chat with his counterpart from the mainstream media? That's when we learn that freedom is simply too hot for TV, or at least, too hot for ABC.

That's right, they are only airing this interview on the internet, in pieces. And the justification is a laugh, at best. ...

This really provides a nice illustration of how the controlled media operates, because it really isn't all about the ratings. This interview, in which Paul articulates his controversial views on drugs, prostitution, gay marriage, health care, foreign policy, and the proper role of government in society, would have received terrific ratings. What's more, it would have served the public interest by giving viewers a clearer view of this once-unknown candidate's proposals. And whether his ideas are good or bad, shouldn't they at least be understood prior to dismissal?

When a long-ignored philosophy begins gaining currency in in the marketplace of ideas, it's the role of free media to explore those ideas, explain them, and evaluate them on their merits. Unfortunately, the authors of the First Amendment did not anticipate the media conglomerates of today and the control they would exert over discourse. They also failed to anticipate that millions of federal dollars a year would someday be spent on propagandistic advertising in major media, and (for example) they did not anticipate that the federal government would strong-arm the television industry into including politicized drug messages in their shows (as in the CSI episode where the well-liked Dr. Robbins makes some absurd statements against medical marijuana). But for whatever reason, the polls clearly show that citizens are fed up with government in general, and it's easy to see why Paul gets his support from disaffected voters from across the political and apolitical spectra. The one thing most have in common is that they looked to the internet for answers.

Everybody knows that Paul's popularity is strongly linked to the Internet, but why is that the case? Could it be that for the first time since before William Randolph Hearst, who used his newspaper empire to whip America into a frenzy over marijuana, a free medium has emerged in which ideas can compete on a much more level playing field? And could at least some of those ideas be winning?

Meanwhile the Reno Gazette Journal reports that Dennis Kucinich is "putting the finishing touches to Articles of Impeachment against Bush"

Touching on issues ranging from Yucca Mountain to the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq, presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich spoke to a crowd of several hundred people in Reno Saturday.

Despite a steady snowfall outside, a standing-room-only crowd packed into two meeting rooms at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center to hear what the Ohio Congressman and Democrat had to say about issues he's most closely associated with: the environment and opposition to the war and the Bush administration in general. Those expecting Kucinich to deliver harsh words about the president weren't disappointed, as the half-hour campaign speech soon turned to talk of impeachment.

"On the way over here, I was reading a 50-page document that relates to Articles of Impeachment for the President of the United States," Kucinich said to a standing ovation. "And I want you to know that I'm actually preparing this document for submission to the House."
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Kucinich said under the current administration, citizen's rights to due process and fair trial are in jeopardy. "This is a moment when we're called upon to reclaim our country," he said. "You give me your vote, I'll give you back your country."

Every now and then Reddit pops something interesting up on the front page and I get all excited thinking it is new, as opposed to several years old, like this Boing Boing post on Seymour Hersh's report that "children raped at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has videos". Alas, that particular story seems to have died completely. Billmon used to call this footage the "Abu Ghraib Film Festival of the Damned". I've been waiting patiently for it to finally reappear for a couple of years now, since it was plunged firmly into the Memory Hole back in 2005. From Billmon's "Film Noir" post (how I wish he would come back out from retirement - surely he won't be able to resist the 2008 election cycle):

It may be that the Cheney administration intended all along to swoop in at the last minute and block the release of the Abu Ghraib snuff flicks by filing some kind of double super secret national security mumbo jumbo with Judge Hellerstein.

But it may also show just how worried the White House is about the looming legislative showdown in the Senate, which -- unless John McCain and Lindsey Graham both have simultaneous brain aneurysms -- is likely to adopt at least some restrictions on the divine right of the president of the United States to torture anybody he likes.

The Cheneyites, of course, are reacting to this whiff of accountability like vampires confronted with the odor of garlic : hissing, snarling, baring fangs -- the full monty. They've even threatened to tell Shrub to veto the Pentagon spending bill rather than bear such insolence. (I can't wait to hear Little Boots explain why he was against paying the troops before he was for it.)

You can imagine how the Veep might have reacted when told that video clips of screaming, pre-pubescent Iraqi boys being anally raped -- while a bunch of leering degenerates in uniform stood around and watched -- might well reach the CBS Evening News before the critical amendments reached the Senate floor.

I doubt "go fuck yourself" even begins to cover it.

That's the only reason I can think of why the administration would sabotage what otherwise looked like the least worst timing for release of the Abu Ghraib footage -- on a Saturday in the dead of summer. If, as seems likely, the Pentagon doesn't have a legal prayer of permanently keeping the Marquis de Sade's private stash under wraps, why not get it out of the way then, when the PR damage could at least be minimized?

...

Which I guess means we're going to have to wait at least a few more days (weeks? months?) for the opening of the Abu Ghraib Film Festival of the Damned.

Would you believe years ?