Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Note from Brad: Holy cow...

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG
*** by D.C. Correspondent Margie Burns

Today I sat in on the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “Department of Justice Oversight,” part of which Brad posted about, earlier. The solo witness was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, covering some by-now familiar ground in the matter of those questionable firings of US Attorneys in seven of 93 districts. In spite of some repetitive questioning, primarily by Charles Schumer (D-NY), the day was actually enlightening.

First, the hearing further indicated the direct White House connection suggested earlier by Brad. Gonzales is still in a position where he cannot speak freely about Bush, even if he wanted to do so. But even Gonzales’ measured and cautious answers to questions were revealing. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of Judiciary, led off by asking whether Gonzales had had any conversations about the US Attorneys with White House senior advisor Karl Rove. Answer: yes, in fall 2006 Gonzales had a conversation with Rove about USAs, regarding “voter fraud” in three districts – New Mexico, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia....

Look, I hate to keep banging this same drum, but someone needs to.

While the American media continue their infatuation with the horrible shootings at VTech on Monday where 33 students were killed, the carnage continues, several times over, every single day in Iraq. Never mind all that "signs say that the surge is working" bullshit you've been hearing from wingnuts and repeated in the Mainstream Media. It doesn't seem to be doing anything of the kind.

233 were killed or found dead across Iraq today (Wednesday) in a country of 27.5 million.

183 of them were killed in a single car combing incident in the exact same marketplace where 137 were killed at once in a February bombing the month before last.

That follows 85 killed or found dead on Tuesday, 51 killed on Monday, and 65 killed on Sunday (when 20 police officers were also taken captive).

None of that takes away from the tragedy of the 33 killed on Monday at Virginia Tech. But in the United States, a country of more than 300 million, where such mass killings are exceedingly rare --- versus horrifically daily occurrences, year after year after bloody year on end in a country less than one-tenth the size of the U.S. --- one might think the American Mainstream Media would finally pause to take a serious review of the way in which they cover news events.

In case you feel, as one emailer suggested to me, that Americans seem to view the lives of non-American citizens as somewhat less valuable than those of American citizens, I'll also remind you that the killings in Iraq --- though you wouldn't necessarily know it based on American news coverage --- also result in dead Americans.

Some 3,312 American troops have now been killed in Iraq.

3,312.

To date, George W. Bush has failed to attend even one funeral, or ordered flags lowered to half-staff for a single one of them.

Leading me to ask again...At what point does the entire debacle become a criminal action? I suspect that point occurs just as soon as the Mainstream Media realizes that it is, and begins to regard the murders of U.S. Troops and Iraqi Civilians in the same light they view the VTech murders.

Perhaps Nancy Grace can make an honorable woman of herself yet. But I seriously doubt she will.

Uh, oh...Anybody seen Dick Cheney lately?

Apropos of our earlier post today...

Not sure why everyone is so upset about the VTech shootings. After all, many parts of America are stable now. But, of course, what we see on television is this one shooting and everybody gets discouraged.

We're not alone in this school of thought, of course...

Laura Bush, Feb. 26, 2007:

BTW, Laura's numbers may be somewhat off. Brookings Institute's latest data, as of Nov. 2006, puts the number of insurgent and militia attacks at 185 a day, instead of just one...

...Still, turn that frown upside-down, Negative Nellies!

(Hat-tip Think Progress.)

UPDATE: 85 killed or found dead in Iraq on Tuesday...
UPDATE 4/18/07: 233 killed of found dead in Iraq on Wednesday...

From a blogger at Washington Post:

UPDATE 4/18/07: Kucinich's planned filing was postponed due to the VTech shootings, a reliable source tells us the Articles of Impeachment against Cheney will be filed in Congress next Wednesday.

Larry Johnson put the whole thing in perspective rather quickly and to the point yesterday when the body count in the VTech shooting was still at 22.

Even with the latest numbers of those murdered in Monday's shooting now at 33, it's dwarfed by Sunday's numbers in Iraq, where 65 lives were lost and 20 policemen were taken hostage.

And yet, that has been happening virtually every day for years now in Iraq, where jerks like Cheney and McCain and Bush continue to tell us that "things are getting better" and it's the media who are failing to report the "good news."

Take a look at the wall-to-wall media coverage ever since the 33 tragic fatalities on Monday in America, and imagine what would be going on here if a VTech-sized tragedy or two or three happened every single day in this country for years on end. Imagine if it happened just two or three days in a row! (Not to mention the population of Iraq is less than 10% the size of the United States.)

Would we blame the media for not reporting the "good news" each day? Or would we demand that something be done --- now --- to stop the carnage?

As usual, Johnson's take, documented with AP's reports on killings in Iraq on Sunday, is worth reading and noting.

In a follow-up today, Johnson notes the failures of the cable news channels, in their continuous, wall-to-wall coverage, to point out the following:

Lest we be criticized for not taking the VTech shootings seriously, make no mistake, they are an indescribable tragedy. But so are the number of human beings killed every single day in Iraq, day after day after nightmarish day, since the United States needlessly invaded their country.

And yet, the number one story reported by the media last week was Don Imus, followed by Anna Nicole, followed by the number one under-reported story: the death of our national conscience...

UPDATE 9:21pm PT: 85 killed or found dead in Iraq on Tuesday...
UPDATE 4/18/07: 233 killed of found dead in Iraq on Wednesday...

Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, equates the GOP/Bush "Voter Fraud" scam/coverup at the heart of the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal with Watergate. Writing at AlterNet she concludes...

Blogged by Brad on the road...

Jesus...does this nightmare ever end?!...

(Hat-tip BRAD BLOG commenter "Ancient")

Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is doing some good digging into the Milwaukee connection to the phony "voter fraud" claims used to help push U.S. Attorneys out of their job in the Bush Administration's political purge/disassembly of the now-ironically named Department of Justice.

As well, a recent, and unusual, overturned case in Wisconsin's Seventh Court of Appeals is similarly adding fresh fuel to the insidious GOP "voter fraud" scam at the heart of the outrageous abuse of power by the current Executive Branch. And today, Senators on the hill are asking new questions about it to Alberto Gonzales.

We've covered various elements of the invidious and baseless GOP "voter fraud" scheme in New Mexico (see here, here, here and here, for just a few examples) and touched on Washington State as well. But Bice jumps in with new details on the same scam in Milwaukee, which has now led to an official Congressional letter of inquiry on the matter sent today to Gonzales from Senators Leahy, Schumer, Kohl, Feingold, Feinstein, and Whitehouse.

As Bice reported yesterday...

Read on for more and see the letter from Leahy for more details on the heels of a surprise Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision that issued an order immediately overturning a case brought by Biskupic against Georgia Thompson, an aide to Wisconsin's Democratic governor, Jim Doyle. Just in time for the '06 election we might add. (It didn't help; Doyle won anyway.)

The basis for the unusual appellate court decision was that the evidence used to convict Thompson on charges related to voting irregularities was virtually non-existent --- leading the senators to question what sort of pressure was brought on Biskupic to bring the charges in the first place.

This is your government. On steroids. In the form of the Bush Administration Gone Wild. And it's got to not only be stopped, it needs to be: Pushed. Back. Down.

If serious accountability is not brought (and we mean more than simply pushing out a pawn like Gonzales) the bar will have been forever lowered as far as what sort of outrageous, un-American Executive Branch overreach is tolerable in this country.

I hope to hell that somewhere in the bowels of Congress someone is preparing Articles of Impeachment.

(Hat-tip to BRAD BLOG Commenter "Dredd" for the Leahy letter.)

Following up Arlen Parsa's BRAD BLOG article from yesterday detailing how the size of Bush's troop surge continues to balloon --- in both troop and budget size --- above and beyond what American's were told originally, today Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO), the House Armed Service Committee chairman, sends a letter to DefSec Gates asking "Where does this end?" on the heels of yesterday's news that yet another 17,000 troops will be added to the "surged" forces.

RAW STORY has the full letter...

Guest Blogged by Arlen Parsa

When George W. Bush announced he would execute a "troop surge" to send more American soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan in January 2007, it was billed as an increase of slightly over 20,000 soldiers that would cost less than six billion dollars.

"America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad," Bush announced in a prime-time televised address. "This will require increasing American force levels. So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq."

The "surge," recognized as an escalation by many, was immediately controversial for several reasons --- not the least of which was a concern that the increase of 20,000 American soldiers might turn into a much larger US presence in Iraq, and a much more expensive one, than promised.

Three months after Bush's announcement, those fears have come to fruition.

Let's take a look at the numbers, in both troops and dollars...

*** Blogged by BRAD BLOG D.C. Correspondent Margie Burns

On Tuesday, April 3, 2007 the Washington Post finally got around to publishing a front-page article, “How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War,” on the bogus Niger/uranium/Iraq story underlying those infamous “16 words” in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech.

The Post subtitle is “Intelligence Failures Surrounded Inquiry on Iraq-Niger Uranium Claim.” A more accurate subtitle would have read, “Intelligence Community Caved to Bush-Cheney Pressure.”

{Ed Note: We might suggest "Mainstream Media Failure to do Job, Scrutinize Admin's Iraq-Niger Claim, Led to Endless War" - BF}

I, among others, am familiar with the chronology because I wrote about it almost a full three years ago...