Debates fail on major issues

Imperial atrocities pile up and a major energy crisis brews while candidates jab

Oh, where to begin. As I have posted before, the big losers in the presidential debates are the people of the world on top of whose heads both major candidates are promising to conduct an unrelenting Terror War. The final edition, a domestic policy debate in Arizona Wednesday night was no exception. Here is how John Kerry laid out his promise to kill, and kill, and kill...

I can do a better job of waging a smarter, more effective war on terror and guarantee that we will go after the terrorists. I will hunt them down, and we'll kill them, we'll capture them. We'll do whatever is necessary to be safe.

I added the emphasis to the diplomatic language Kerry used, roughly "any means necessary" is okay in the Terror War. Presumably Bush agrees. Implicit in this is that America will decide on its own what means are necessary, even if large numbers of civilians happen to be in the way. The US will decide for itself if shooting first and asking questions later is what is necessary.

Cases in point: Samarra and Fallujah
While both major candidates issue these promises to prosecute the biggest, meanest Terror War that they can, the bodies in the demonstration project to show US global hegemony, otherwise known as Iraq, are piling up like cordwood. In the Iraqi town of Samarra, US forces gave the city a surprise pounding two weeks ago, killing over 100 people the US called "rebels". Tactics used by the US in Samarra included stationing snipers to shoot anything that moved. According to the BBC report cited:

Many bodies were strewn in the street. "They are buried in the gardens of their homes," Ali Abdul-Latif told the Associated Press news agency.

Witnesses in the centre of the city have spoken of American snipers shooting at anyone who appeared on the streets. One ambulance driver said medics have been unable to get to the injured.

Lately, the focus has shifted to Fallujah, where today US warplanes "have launched intense air and ground strikes", for the ostensible purpose of smoking out the almost mythic figure of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is said to operate there. Five were reported dead so far, but nobody knows the real number.

Very sadly, the politics of these brutal repressions favor Bush. As Patrick Cockburn writes, "The current US military campaign is very much geared to getting President George Bush reelected to the White House in November".

Rape rooms, Children's prisons
By all rights, George Bush is naked on these atrocities, preaching hypocrisy of an order my mind simply is unable to process. I have entries here, here, and here that Kerry should have read, clicked through the sources, and used; William Saletan published some time back Rape Rooms: A Chronology What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded -- damning indictments.

But again, sadly no. Silence from the challenger. I guess America is not ready to look at the truth about itself during an election season, if ever.

Gathering energy crisis
In the news today:

Crude oil rose to a record $54.76 a barrel in New York after an Energy Department report showed that U.S. supplies of heating oil plunged last week.

So you'd think that by last night the presidential candidates would have had something to say about energy. Almost...nada.

Kerry did manage to blurt out,

This president has taken a $5.6 trillion surplus and turned it into deficits as far as the eye can see. Health-care costs for the average American have gone up 64 percent; tuitions have gone up 35 percent; gasoline prices up 30 percent [emphasis added]; Medicare premiums went up 17 percent a few days ago; prescription drugs are up 12 percent a year.

But guess what, America? The wages of Americans have gone down. The jobs that are being created in Arizona right now are paying about $13,700 less than the jobs that we're losing.

And the president just walks on by this problem. The fact is that he's cut job-training money. $1 billion was cut. They only added a little bit back this year because it's an election year.

This in my opinion was an effective attack from Kerry -- mighty true and key to his win in the debate.

But where is the general discussion of energy policy? Again, Bush is naked here with the secret task force, the pork-laden energy bill written by Republican industry reps, and a war!

What I wrote after the veep debate remains distressingly true after this one. Even the G7 ministers saw fit to worry about oil in a public statement two weeks ago. And Bob Schieffer should be ashamed of himself for failing to get the candidates to talk about this major issue, about which both have extensive proposals.

(Read Kerry's latest quite interesting energy-related speech here.)