I'm moving my blog (well, at least considering it).  I recreated The Progressive Zone on BlogSpot.  After all, they're a Google property, so maybe my posts will get indexed for searches.  Plus, they host a number of other notable bloggers (I write as if I'm notable  ), and they're reputed to have reliable hosting.  So, if this entry is still at the top, it means all of my posts since this one have been to the new location of The Progressive Zone and I've decided to retire this location for now.  Please go check it out -- I hope you like the new location.  Don't forget to bookmark it (or add it to your Favorties, depending on your choice of browsers).  It's at:

http://progressivezone.blogspot.com/

No one has ever overdosed on marijuana.  You never hear of someone burgling a home or robbing someone to get some money to buy a bag of weed.  People don't get lung cancer from smoking pot or cirrhosis of the liver from munching on bud brownies.  Even when used illicitly, cannabis is a relatively benign way to get intoxicated.

However, there are also valid medical applications for cannabis.  It can relieve chronic pain.  It can eliminate spasticity in people with spinal cord injuries.  It can stimulate an appetite in people wasting away from AIDS.  It can reduce nausea caused by some ailments.  Cannabis can have many beneficial effects for those suffering from a wide variety of health problems.  Furthermore, it can do it at a much lower cost than pharmaceutical medications, and with much fewer and less damaging side-effects.

Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court decided that the U.S. government can enforce Federal laws against the use of marijuana and prosecute people treating themselves with cannabis for medical purposes, even in states that have legalized the medical use of it.  This strikes a blow to thousands of ailing people in ten states that have been legally using cannabis with the ratification of their medical doctors.  How could the Court be so heartless?  Justice John Paul Stevens said that even patients who grow small amounts of marijuana for themselves could have a "substantial impact" on the market for the "extraordinarily popular" drug.  Frankly, the Court (or at least the majority that reached this decision) is simply ignorant.

It's uncertain how far-reaching the impact of this decision will be.  After all, the Supreme Court's jurisdiction is Federal, so many state and local law enforcement officers may be reticent to bust a chronically ill local resident in states where the medical use of cannabis is permitted.  Nonetheless, we've already seen the Drug Enforment Agency raiding "pot clubs" in California.  Early indications are that people treating themselves with cannabis better be prepared to get arrested -- even if they're very ill or nearing death.

Although the Court left it open for the Federal legislature to change the laws to allow for the medical use of cannabis, don't hold your breath.  The "compassionate conservatives" that have taken control of Congress are sure to prefer to let those ailing people suffer than to allow them to use cannabis to treat their ailments.

Vice President Dick Cheney has good news about the Iraq War: regarding the agression American forces are facing, he says that "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."  He went on to add that he expected the war would end during President Bush's second term.

That's good news, right?  Well, let's see how good the Dick is at predicting the progress of the war before we decide.  Dateline: March 16, 2003 -- that's before we invaded Iraq -- the Dick said to the American people that the Iraq War would last "Weeks rather than months."  Hmmm ... that was 27 months ago.

Perhaps only the Dick sux at predicting the progress of the war.  Certainly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has a much better grasp on the scope of the war, right?  At a TownHall Meeting before the war, one of our troops asked him how long Guard and Reserve forces would be deployed for the Iraq War.  The Donald responded, "It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."

Well, I guess it's clear that the people in charge of the Iraq War either have no clue about its scope or progress, or they're simply lying to Americans.  That explains why the administration is back-tracking on the Dick's latest prediction.  When President Bush was asked if he agreed with the Dick's assessment that the insurgency was in its "last throes," he dodged the question and did not answer it.  Since the President wouldn't answer, reporters asked his press secretary, Scott McClellan, to answer the same question.  Of course, it's no surprise that he refused to answer it either.

Certainly the administration must be much better at estimating the cost of the Iraq War than predicting its length, then.  Let's check.  When Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was trying to convince Congress to support the war, he told them that, "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."  Oops, missed again!

Let's ask White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels instead.  He said that the $200-billion figure is "likely very, very high."  He told reporters that the cost would more likely be between $50-billion and $60-billion.

That's it -- I  give up.  I'm going to stop looking to the Bush administration for prognostications on the Iraq War.  It was silly of me to think this Commander in Chief would know anything about war.  I'm going to start listening instead to Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who said:

"Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality.  It's like they're just making it up as they go along.  The reality is, we're losing in Iraq."

It turns out there wasn't just one "Downing Street memo."  The memo originally leaked through the Times is just now beginning to get some play in the press on this side of the pond.  However, the Times is now reporting that there was another memo regarding the same topic written a couple of days before the one first reported on.  In fact, it turns out there were eight memos, all labeled "secret" or "confidential," documenting the fact that President George W. Bush was determined to go to war with Iraq long before asking Congress for permission or taking his case to the U.N.  It seems Downing Street was quite the publisher on the topic.  Too bad their memos didn't get wide circulation.

Had they done so, we would've found that Blair's administration felt that "even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW (chemical or biological weapons) fronts: the programs are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up."  Bush repeatedly claims that the whole world thought, before the invasion, that Iraq had WMDs.  If that really was the case, why would the British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts openly state that the "U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing"?  In one of the memos, Ricketts goes on to say: "For Iraq, 'regime change' does not stack up.  It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."

The eight memos not only demonstrate that the British leadership did not think that Iraq was a danger to America or Britain, they make it clear Bush was already determined to attack Iraq regardless.  A review of excerpts from the memos shows Blair was also concerned that Bush did not have a plan for occupation of Iraq.  Furthermore, the British legal experts did not think legal justification could be made for the invasion.  The memos from July of 2002 brought up many of the problems associated with waging war on Iraq that, unfortunately, most Americans and Brits are only now beginning to discover.