If you have read my previous post: “It’s Official: U.S. Pollutes to HELP Millions of Poor,” you know that some global warming deniers (including some in the Bush Administration) are now making the ridiculous claim that efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions would keep “hundreds millions of people in poverty” in China and India.

Of course the exact opposite is true. Failure to act to reduce emissions and stabilize the Earth’s climate will have the greatest impact on poor people and the poor nations of the world. As described in the New York Times today, this is a major conclusion of the latest volume of the sixth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be released next Friday.

Henry I. Miller, a fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is quoted in the Times as saying: “Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic. A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheaper decks were lost. We’ll see the same phenomenon with global warming.” Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations climate panel said: “The inequity of this whole situation is really enormous if you look at who’s responsible and who’s suffering as a result”.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a western or developed country will have to face an interesting dilemma. It is our countries that have gained the most from extensive use of fossil fuels in the 150+ years since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Two-thirds of the atmospheric increase in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide has come in nearly equal proportions from the United States and Western European countries. The carbon dioxide that our industrialized countries released during the past 150+ years will persist in the air for more than a century. So the documented increase in global temperatures today and that which will occur in the future are and will be primarily the result of activities that have and are taking place in the developed countries. Yet, for a number of geographic and demographic reasons, it will be the developing nations who will be least prepared to deal with the consequences of a warming Earth and, for a number of geographic and technological reasons, it will be the developed reason who are most prepared to adapt to changing ecological, agricultural, and economic environments. We in the developed countries will also be the most able to help others across the world dealing with the consequences of a changing Earth through economic and technological transfers and aid.

A major question to ponder will be how we in the United States and the Western European countries will respond to to the coming great moral challenges that will emerge as global warming exacerbates the disparities between the world’s rich and poor nations.

Boy, the news for John Sununu just keeps getting worse!

The Washington Post reports, that in a January 26 Jan. videoconference, Karl Rove deputy J. Scott Jennings, directed to the chief of the GSA and as many as 40 agency officials stationed around the country listing the names of Democratic candidates considered beatable and Republican lawmakers thought to need help.

Such a blatant political presentation to government staffers and using government resources may have been illegal.

But because congress is now investigating the propriety of such behavior we now have access to thinking current thinking of George Bush’s Brain and his most influential political advisor: a one Mr. Karl Rove.

The Congressional committee investigating this monkey business has released Karl Rove’s PowerPoint slides. A map from Rove’s slideshow clearly shows Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire one of the eight Republican Senators who will be on the “defense” in their re-election bids for 2008.

It gets even worse for Senator Sununu. Yesterday, the American Research Group released a poll showing John Sununu trailing former Governor Jeanne Shaheen in a re-election match-up.

The following results are based on 551 completed telephone interviews among a statewide random sample of registered voters in New Hampshire.

Question wording and responses: “If the 2008 election for US Senate were being held today between Jeanne Shaheen, the Democrat, and John Sununu, the Republican, for whom would you vote - Shaheen or Sununu?” (names rotated)

It may just be over before it starts for Mr. Sununu.

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John Sununu

In a stunning revelation, United States Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell has now explained America’s humanitarian role in acting for many years as the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

George W. Bush and other representatives of the Administration had previously stated that a major reason why the United States was only one of two countries in the world that had refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was because it gave an unfair advantage to developing countries like China and India and because it would harm the U.S. economy.

Apparently that earlier argument for America’s inaction on curbing emissions of greenhouse gases did not clearly show America’s humanitarian basis for the policy. Mr. Sell has now set the record straight. He has enlightened us that the U.S. emission of 7,074.4 teragrams of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2004 (24 megagrams per person), both the largest per country and per person emission rates in the word, actually is a sign of America’s moral mission to help millions of starving people in developing countries.

You see, Mr. Sell said that the United States, as the world’s top energy consumer and economy, was NOT morally obliged to lead rapidly developing countries in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If the U.S. took a lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that might actually compel the leaders of developing countries to follow our lead and such measures would keep “hundreds millions of people in poverty” in China and India.

Currently those countries are not obliged to place mandatory cuts on emissions under any international agreement. By Mr. Sell’s reasoning, if America actually took a lead role in the world and applied our ingenuity and brainpower in improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, those efforts could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe for millions in developing countries worldwide by their leaders trying to emulate our silly ways.

Thank goodness America’s leaders, like Deputy Energy Secretary Sell, have now stepped up to the plate to show the world the true meaning of “compassionate conservatism.”

Mr. Sell can be proud that America’s inaction over the past decade regarding the curbing of greenhouse gas emissions has sent the right signals to leaders of countries like China. Estimates are that China is on course to overtake the United States this year as the world’s greatest carbon emitter. Mr. Sell will be disappointed to learn that the U.S. will still retain the champion title of per-person carbon emitter (at the rate of 6.25 times the amount per person in China) and that China’s emission per-person rate is actually below the average for the world’s countries. (China only “wins” as being the top emitter on a per country basis by having so many damn people).

Mr. Sell has now “spilled the beans” behind the Administration’s true secret policy basis for America’s steadfast inaction on curbing greenhouse gases. Like for so many other ingenious policy initiatives developed by the current Bush Administration, the genius behind this one should immediately be rewarded. We should request that the current Administration identify the individuals behind the secret humanitarian plan to NOT curb greenhouse gas emissions. In keeping with this Administration’s practice, those individuals should be immediately nominated and awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom.

GOP should catch up with constituents

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You can usually tell when a politician is going into defensive mode. Yesterday Senator John Sununu attacked me in a letter to the the editor of the Nashua Telegraph.

Today, the New York Times published an article from North Conway, New Hampshire talking about how Sununu is feeling the heat.

even among the ladies and gentlemen of the Carroll County Republican Committee, more than a few of whom wore elephant neckties and broaches to celebrate the symbol of their party, the vexing issue of Iraq was the real elephant in the room. “Nobody is happy with the way the war is going,” said a loyal Republican who attended the event. “It was a Republican project, so my guess is that he’s in trouble. Senator Sununu has been such a big supporter of George W. Bush, the Democrats will take a good shot at him.”

more than a dozen Republicans in attendance said they were concerned about Mr. Sununu’s re-election prospects. New Hampshire has been trending Democratic, with both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s office out of Republican control for the first time since the 1870s.

a Republican state senator, delivered a bleak outlook for his party’s prospects in the state. He said he feared being “caught up in this anti-Iraq message,” but said voters spared him because he served a six-month stint in Iraq as a Marine Corps reservist.

“At this point,” Mr. Kenney said, “it’s going to be a challenging election for John (Sununu).”

It certainly will not help when people begin to learn that despite his call for the resignation of Alberto Gonzales last week, Sununu both supported Gonzales‘ nomination to the post of Attorney General and defended Gonzales‘ horrific stances on torture and disregard for the Geneva convention.
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In response to my Letter to the Editor of the Nashua Telegraph, John Sununu writes his own letter to the newspaper and accuses me of fabrication.

My response is below.

================================

Sununu: Letter had erroneous information

The Nashua Telegraph: Published: Saturday, Mar. 24, 2007

I write to correct a series of false statements in a letter to the editor from Mr. Stephen Nodvin that appeared in The Telegraph on March 22 regarding climate change. As Congress examines this issue, your readers deserve the most accurate, objective information available.

The letter states, falsely, that prior to my election to the U.S. Senate, I headed an organization funded by Ex­xon Mobil, Chevron, Eli Lilly and Philip Morris, and that I ran a disinformation Web site regarding global warming funded by Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris. Both points are patently untrue.

Before being elected to the Senate in 2002, the residents of New Hampshire’s First Congressional District elected me to
three consecutive terms in the U. S. House of Representatives. Prior to 1996, I held the position of chief financial officer and director of operations for the Manchester, N.H.-based Teletrol Systems Inc., a manufacturer of information systems and networks.

The letter’s author and his colleagues did meet with my staff in Washington. However, at no time did they discuss global warming with my chief of staff, to whom Mr. Nodvin inaccurately attributes a quote in his letter.

Last year, I wrote legislation adding wilderness protection to 35,000 acres in the White Mountain National Forest. I have voted against the administration’s unfair new source pollution policy and supported tougher standards for mercury emissions from power plants. In 2005, I received recognition from Taxpayers for Common Sense, a bipartisan coalition, for my work on environmental issues.

I understand that no one will agree with my vote on every issue. But it is inexcusable for critics to resort to fabrication to score partisan, political points. The voters of New Hampshire deserve better.

U.S. Sen. John Sununu
R-New Hampshire

My response is below:

In a letter published in the Nashua Telegraph on March 24, 2007, Senator John Sununu accused me of "fabrication to score partisan, political points."  His statements were in response to my Letter to the Editor, published on March 22 in which I questioned the Senator’s motivation for being the first Republican Senator to call for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Every citizen has the right to question the motivations of her or his elected officials in Washington, whether they be congresspersons, senators, or the president.  That is one of the things that makes America such a great country.  However, I think it is another thing when a Senator accuses one of his constituents of purposely spreading partisan-based falsehoods.  I would like to take this opportunity to respond.

In his letter Mr. Sununu said that my "letter states, falsely, that prior to my election to the U.S. Senate, I headed an organization funded by Ex­xon Mobil, Chevron, Eli Lilly and Philip Morris, and that I ran a disinformation Web site regarding global warming funded by Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris. Both points are patently untrue."   

My training as a scientist compels me to not make any statements without having a basis either by direct observation or reference source. I my letter to the editor I sourced several published articles and the book Washington Babylon (page 13) which stated "John Sununu" headed Consumer Alert, the industry funded front group that had fought against improved automobile safety standards and had helped the establish and maintain the disinformation web-site: http://www.globalwarming.org .  I have now spoken with Ken Silverstein, one of the authors of the book Washington Babylon, who has informed me that the "John Sununu" referred to was actually the Senator’s father and former Chief of Staff in the first George Bush Whitehouse. 

I apologize to Senator Sununu for the incorrect attribution.  Both the father and the son go by the same first and last names and one of the sources that I used incorrectly attributed the association with Consumer Alert to the younger Sununu.

However, my observation that the Senator is a long-time climate change denier remains unchanged.  In a letter the senator sent to me on January 26, 2005, the Senator stated "scientists have been unable to agree that there is a direct increase between … temperature increase (during the second half of the 20^th century) and human activity."  This statement is, and was at the time, untrue or misleading at best.  While there are a handful of vociferous dissenters with scientific credentials, the overwhelming majority of scientists worldwide have reached the conclusion that human activity has been the primary cause of global warming during the past 40-50 years.  

In the Senator’s letter to the paper he states: "The letter’s author and his colleagues did meet with my staff in Washington. However, at no time did they discuss global warming with my chief of staff, to whom Mr. Nodvin inaccurately attributes a quote in his letter".  Mr. Sununu’s statement implies that we did not discuss global warming with his staff during our meeting.  The Senator’s statement is misleading because we did indeed discuss that issue. In my letter I did err in stating that I and two other scientists from New Hampshire met with Mr. Sununu’s "chief of staff."   I should have used the title "Legislative Assistant."

The staff person that we met with in the Senator’s office in Washington at 3:30 pm on September 20, 2005 to explicitly discuss global warming was Peter Phipps, the Senator’s Legislative Assistant for Environment, Energy, Elections, Telecom, and Agriculture.  It was Mr. Phipps who told the three New Hampshire scientists sitting in front of him that day that there was no scientific consensus on the cause of global warming.  It was astounding to us to hear such a statement from our Senator’s Legislative Assistant for Environment when we had explicitly traveled to Washington to inform our representatives that exactly the opposite was true.

The Senator’s implication that my questioning of his motives and actions were "partisan" and "political" follows a popular refrain among elected officials to cry "partisanship" when a citizen questions her or his representative’s actions.  My visit to the Hill on September 20, 2005 included meetings with staff members of all four of New Hampshire’s representatives in the House and the Senate.  It was only in Senator Sununu’s office that we scientists received a lecture on what scientists believe about global warming.  In fact, during our visit to Senator Gregg’s office, I was particularly impressed with the depth and awareness of Mr. Gregg’s Legislative Assistant for the Environment, with whom we spoke, about the problem of global warming. 

There were some unintentional errors in my letter to the Telegraph.  However, in his letter to the paper, Mr. Sununu never addressed the main issue of my concern which was why Mr. Sununu is now calling for the resignation of the Attorney General when he had formerly provided strong support for Gonzalez and his policies. 

The Senator’s current stance on the Attorney General contradicts the support Mr. Sununu provided to Mr. Gonzales in a letter the Senator sent to me on February 28, 2005.  In that letter, Senator Sununu not only supported Mr. Gonzales appointment to the post of Attorney General but, to my amazement, the Senator also defended Mr. Gonzalez’s and President Bush’s justifications of their circumvention of Geneva Convention protections.

Stephen C. Nodvin, Ph.D.

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If you have not heard of Lyndon Larouche, you will soon.

Lyndon Larouche is:

• a convicted criminal who spent 6 years in prison for conspiracy and mail fraud
• a political extremist
• a conspiracy theorist
• a cult leader
• someone who has been accused to be an anti-Semite

Even the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation has said that Larouche “leads what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history.”

But, above all, Larouche is an opportunist.

His tactics are well known:

1. Find high profile targets to attack
2. Develop a series of conspiracy theories that paint the targets as a cabal of Judas and the anti-Christ
3. Recruit young impressionable people to become “followers” of your “movement”

The most recent high profile targets that Larouche has chosen for his newest crusade are Al Gore and climate science.

Larouche’s cult-like minions have begun showing up at public forums on global warming and have been vacuuming e-mail addresses off the web to spam people with their new “expert” knowledge of all things science.

If you want to see some of the vitriol Larouche and his minions can spew, read Larouche’s attack on Gore called:

Blood and Gore.

Greetings to contacts of the LaRouche Youth Movement in Boston!

Our organization is mobilized to destroy the reputation of mALthusian GORE, the buffoon most avidly promoting a neofeudal form of oligarchy and population reduction converging on genocide under the banner of ‘man-made Global Warming’. This, when the Democratic party must be MOVING in coordination with LaRouche to reorganize an utterly bankrupt world monetary-financial system and rebuild the physical economy. Al Gore’s popularity stunt is the latest plot by the Anglo-Dutch financial establishment to foster hysteria in the population and lure the global economy into a planet-wide Dark Age. We must ruin big, fat, loser Al Gore by exposing his vile past and blatant lies in order to establish Lyndon LaRouche’s undisputed leadership in the Democratic Party. Civilization is on the line…

Do Your Part!? Master this material and become a beacon of truth. Pass this e-mail on to your close contacts. This information is your survival kit for the present political period.

Recent Findings by 21st Century Science and Technology refute the scientific method of Al Gore’s IPCC.
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/press_releases_files/2007/0223_inconvenient_gore.shtml
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/press_releases_files/2007/0223_inconvenient_gore.shtml

The Great Global Warming Swindle: an excellent British documentary with leading scientists debunking the global warming fraud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU

LaRouche’s March 7 Webcast: “Implications of the Gore Hoax for International Policy”
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/audio_video_files/2007/070307_webcast.shtml

An Article by an EIR Intelligence Team on Gore’s Connections to the British
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/otherartic_files/2007/0312_blood_gore.shtml

A Thorough Annihilation of the Global Warming Fraud by a leading glaciologist
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007-11/pdf/38_711_science.pdf

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007-11/pdf/38_711_science.pdf

The email talks about: “LaRouche’s undisputed leadership in the Democratic Party. Civilization is on the line…”

If that sounds just a bit egomaniacal to you, you are beginning to get the point of where these people are coming from.

This film is a fraud and a sham. It uses every trick in the book to deceive its viewers and it has been debunked:

• Desmoblog debunking the film
• A PowerPoint dissecting the falsehoods in the film
• A full page video version of the above PowerPoint Presentation
• Google video of the PowerPoint
• A dissection by Monbiot
• Another Monbiot analysis
• A Rebuttal (pdf) to the film put together by Colin Chase
• British Antarctic Survey response to the film
• An analysis of the errors in the film by The Independent

Most of the people who appear in the film are NOT respected climate scientists but long-time climate deniers: many of who have received significant funding from companies like ExxonMobil and Philip Morris. The arguments used are the same warmed-over arguments that have been thoroughly and carefully considered by the majority of climate scientists… and rejected.

According to George Monbiot, “this is not the first time that the director, Martin Durkin, produced a film full of fraud attempting to make the same points. In 1997, Durkin, produced very similar film series called “Against Nature”, which also maintained that global warming was a scam dreamt up by environmentalists. It was riddled with hilarious scientific howlers. More damagingly, the only way in which Durkin could sustain his thesis was to deceive the people he interviewed and to edit their answers to change their meaning. Following complaints by his interviewees, the Independent Television Commission found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing” and that they had been “misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.” Channel 4 was obliged to broadcast one of the most humiliating primetime apologies it has ever made. Are institutional memories really so short?”

• The article is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific article. It is mocked up pretty professionally to to look like one to get unsuspecting people to think it is one.
• If you look at the “article”, you will see n the bottom left hand corner the word “Science.” This is an obvious attempt to confuse the unsuspecting readier into thinking that this was printed in the journal Science
  which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). I am a member of AAAS and I can assure you that the journal Science would never publish this.
  • Here is a link to the real journal Science:
    http://www.sciencemag.org/
  • And here is a link to a statement on climate change approved and
    released by the board of AAAS.
    
    http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0218am_statement.shtml
• EIR (Executive Intelligence Review) is NOT a scientific journal but nothing more than a publication and press service produced by the Larouche organizaion.
• The article lists as its author Zbigniew Jaworowski: a known long-term climate-change denier. His arguments are not new, have been considered and dismissed by the scientific community.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Jaworowski
  
  http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Zbigniew_Jaworowski

• Prepare slick-looking polemical presentations including films and documents that “appear” to have an air of credibility.
• Incorporate many half-truths - people who are “already in your court” are ready and willing to believe: just give them something that sounds that it could be truthful (Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”)
• Provide false dichotomies: most people are easily fooled by the use of the false dichotomy
• Use selective or even distorted data
• Use Ad hominen attacks. Forget reality: attack the messenger. Attack those money-grubbing climate scientists and that liberal Al Gore. People will believe you more if you get them first angry at the other side. (If you are going use this technique, you might as well lie when smearing the messenger: people who buy this approach are already NOT thinking about the content of your arguments).
• Appeal to authority: Make sure to find at least a few people with advanced degrees to support your arguments. It won’t matter to the “true believers” in your audience or those easily persuaded that your “experts” represent only a tiny fraction of the population of scientist and experts who might be working in this field. Your audience won’t know that hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and thousands of other scientists disagree with “your experts.”
• Finally, quote out of context. Al Gore NEVER said that he “invented the Internet”. Doesn’t matter. That did not stop people from taking his words out of context and from endlessly repeating that and other misquotes to paint Gore in a bad light when he was running for President in 2000.

Is Senator Sununu Running scared?

Published in The Nashua Telegraph: Thursday, Mar. 22, 2007

Sununu has some serious problems. He has received a “D” rating by a veterans group on his congressional voting record on issues that affect U.S. troops, Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, and military families.

Sununu is a long-time climate change denier. He boasts about having an engineering degree from MIT. Yet, two years ago I sat in Mr. Sununu’s office on Capitol Hill as his chief of staff told me and two other New Hampshire scientists to our faces that there was “no scientific consensus on climate change.”

The reason that we traveled to Washington from New Hampshire was to make sure that our congressional leaders were, in fact, aware that there was and is indeed scientific consensus on recent climate change and its causes.

Before being elected to the Senate, Sununu was in charge of an organization that was funded by organizations such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Eli Lilly and Phillip Morris, and ran a disinformation Web site on global warming funded by Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris. (Funny how after the November 2006 election, Exxon Mobil stopped funding such groups and Sununu’s site, globalwarming.org, was removed from the Internet but has since been reactivated.)

What is worse, in March 2005, I received a letter from Sen. Sununu in which he condoned the use of torture in his support for Alberto Gonzales being appointed as Attorney General of the United States: blog.nodvin.net/wp-content/Sununu2.jpg .

So now Sununu is calling for the ouster of Gonzales as attorney general when two years ago he wrote me a letter supporting Mr. Gonzales’ appointment to the same position and defending Gonzales’ horrific stands on torture and the Geneva Convention? What has changed? My only guess is that the results of the 2004 and 2006 elections have got John Sununu running scared.

Stephen Nodvin, Nashua, New Hampshire
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Frank Rich writes in the New York Times today:

…a revisionist history of the White House’s rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same “bad intelligence” before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion’s aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. “If only I had known then what I know now …” has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration’s case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.

Shortly after the war broke out in 2003, I e-mailed some observations to friends and later posted those comments to this blog once it was created.

March 18, 2003: Bush at War: Part Two

I just completed the book “Bush at War” by Bob Woodward. After having the book on request from the local library for several months, it finally became available with the foreboding due date of March 17.

The book, which was completed by Woodward last fall, details how the die was cast on September 12, 2001 for the current attack on Iraq and removal of Saddam.

Immediately after 9-11, some in the “war cabinet” were in favor of going after Iraq first, even before pursuing al Queda. However, it was determined that this sequence of events would result in the loss of the extensive coalition that stood with the U.S. immediately after the Towers fell. Therefore it was determined that Iraq would be dealt with later, with the early acknowledgement that when the US did pursue this course that it would likely be with only one major ally: Britain.

March 26, 2003: War Background

Although we are constantly bombarded by information, real understanding of the issues which we face requires a further look below the surface….

Since the first Gulf War, we have learned a lot about Saddam Hussein and his regime, Saddam’s brutal methods used in coming to power in Iraq, making war on his neighbors, and suppressing and attacking his own people. But I have started to become curious about the history of “modern” Iraq, pre-Saddam. Supposedly the Iraqi people are more technologically advanced and better educated than the citizens in other Arab countries. But what about the capability of the Iraqis to develop a peaceful and democratic government after the current tyrant is gone?

I have found one site on the history of Iraq that seems to be relatively unbiased and up-to-date.

Of particular interest to me are events which have occurred beginning with the the fall of the Ottoman Empire during WWI. British forces were involved in fighting the German-allied Turks in Mesopotamia” and wound up occupying Baghdad in 1917. In 1920 the League of Nations placed Mesopotamia under British rule. The British Mandate eventually resulted in the borders that currently define Iraq, Kuwait, Jordon, etc.

Since 1920, there doesn’t seem to have been many significant periods in Iraqi history that we could describe as peaceful. Rather the country’s modern history seems to be defined through a series of coups, wars, and instability. Saddams participated in several of these coups but there were many others, particularly during the 60’s and 70’s.

In 1920, the League of Nations provided Britain with a Mandate to establish a “responsible” Arab government in the territory which is now Iraq according to a league-approved timetable. Clearly that effort failed.

Iraq’s turbulent history suggests that the current US/UK goal of fostering a democratic and peaceful post-Saddams Iraq may not be an easy nor readily-achievable task.

March 29, 2003: Iraq deja vu?

“Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.
Your wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men… The people of Baghdad shall flourish under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws.”

British Lieutenant-general Stanley Maude, March 1917, in his “Proclamation to the People of the Wilayat of Baghdad” after entering Basra with his Anglo-Indian Army of the Tigres.

I am neither an historian nor a war expert but it only took a little digging in March of 2003 for me to find sobering information that the war that we were being compelled to enter was neither needed nor would it be a cakewalk.

I repeat again what Frank Rich said in his NYT article today:

the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration’s case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look

After years of inaction, the U.S. Congress has finally taken a step forward on the global warming issue: they formed a committee! Politicians love to form committees rather than take action. And to make sure this committee cannot take actions, it is explicitly forbidden in the legislation “to have have any legislative jurisdiction and nor any authority to take legislative action on any bill or resolution”. But, hey, at least the legislation does give the committee authority to “to investigate, study, make findings, and develop recommendations on policies, strategies, technologies and other innovations, intended to reduce the dependence of the United States on foreign sources of energy and achieve substantial and permanent reductions in emissions and other activities that contribute to climate change and global warming.”

The name of the committee being formed is the “Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.” The legislation allows that 6 of the 15 committeemembers “be appointed on the recommendation of the Minority Leader”. Not missing a beat, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) made sure to pack the Republican side with long-term climate-change deniers:

Congressman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, Ranking Member
Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona
Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon
Congressman John Sullivan of Oklahoma
Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee
Congresswoman Candice Miller of Michigan

“Selecting a panel that is comprised almost exclusively of people that still question the basic science behind global warming is not a good indicator that this committee is going to be able to move forward,” said Ben Dunham, a staff attorney at U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Hello?! Sensenbrenner made sure to highlight the potential lack of progress by attempting to redefine the committees role in an announcement on his website:

“Recent fluctuations in the Earth’s climates and temperatures have led to numerous sensational headlines describing an eminent doomsday scenario. It will be this panel’s responsibility to examine the big questions as to why, and to what extent are humans contributing to these periods of fluctuation, and how can we take steps to eliminate that impact”.

Of course it is not the panel’s responsibility to examine these questions as described in the legislation nor are these questions an ongoing matter of debate in the scientific community.