Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Katrina: Disaster and Relief

I found an excellent resource that lists organizations who can help out, here.

For the best essay I've read so far, go here.

This really is unfolding as a national tragedy. I'm starting to wonder if The Big Easy will ever recover from this event. I certainly hope so...

Update: I found this post over at Politcal Animal:

MAYOR: "MOST LIKELY THOUSANDS" DEAD IN NEW ORLEANS....If this turns out to be right, it's truly unbelievable:

"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and others dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. He estimated that at least hundreds had died and "most likely, thousands."

Even as they made plans to effectively empty this city, officials today began to set up a temporary morgue. Nagin said there are significant numbers of bodies floating in the water and many more are believed to be dead inside the attics of houses.

"Do the math," he said.

Good Lord. Thousands?

UPDATE: From comments:

This afternoon Blitzer had the guy from LSU on whose team has been computer modeling this disaster. So far, the guy said that their modeling has been right on. He said that the model predicts that one third of the some 250,000 people who stayed in New Orleans were killed.

This can't be true. It just can't be.

It really shakes one to the core. Also, via Josh Marshall, here's a great piece on New Orleans' history from Ari Kelman at Slate...

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Here's A Reminder

I thought this would be easy to sort out, but apprently not. The U.S. military is an apolitical organization. Everyone got that? They don't make the ultimate policy choices about where they're to go, or who they're to attack. The guys in the suits do that, and lately, really rather poorly I might add. This is really second grade elementary, but if you're in the military, you receive orders. You're not asked whether you think plan A or B is a good idea, you do what you're told.

That should be the dividing line between people that oppose this failed project in Iraq, and those who support it. Sadly, it's not.

So, we have a woman who lost her son in the Iraq War camped out in front of the President's ranch in Texas protesting the war. Need I point out she's not camped out in front of Fort Bragg yelling "baby killers" and spitting on people? No, she's camped out where the Big Suit lives. He decided to send troops to inavde Iraq, and she wants some answers to her questions. She believes, as I do, that there's no need for any more of our military personel to die in a war we've already lost. The folks who support staying want to believe that the sons and daughters they've lost weren't sent on some fool's errand, and that their service was worth giving their lives for, and rightly so. And they have every right to speak their minds and counter-protest down in Crawford, TX. (ain't America great?)

Here's where the disconnect comes in. Why would anyone go and smear this woman? Just who are these people defending? They call her a media whore, a crack-pot, a bitch, and say she's nuts. Why? The only plausible reason is that they can't bear her critisizing the president and his decision to launch this war. But let's get this straight for all time, it's okay to critisize the President of The United States.

I wonder why people like that have forgotten recent history so quickly. Vietnam wasn't long ago, but apparently there are still many lessons to be learned.

There was a protest down in Crawford today, and it was matched with a protest of its own. Supporting the president is fine by me, but you better know what the cost is likely to be. Calling for a staged withdrawal is a different viewpoint, but one I believe will save more lives.

Update: This from a person serving in Iraq:
The main thing I've learned has been about the men and women who I am proud to serve with. Although I don't always agree with their opinions and many of them can frankly be very annoying, I have also met some very interesting people who love their country very much. The men and women here all seem to have the best interests of America in their hearts. I'm of course talking about the people who aren't making policy decisions; I'm talking about the people who are told to implement those decisions...
And this from James Wolcott of Vanity Fair:

...

Moreover, perhaps Lowry was absent when they taught this in school, but the 82nd Airborne doesn't "decide" what the US does about rogue states. The guys and gals of the 82nd don't wake up in their barracks one morning and kibbitz amongst themselves. "What the hell, maybe it's time we took out Iraq. Let's get our gear together and requisition a transport plane, treat ourselves to a few kickass months in the Sunni triangle."

The 82nd Airborne goes where the Pentagon decides it should go, and that strategic decision is made by the civilian leadership. When the quality of the civilian leadership is corroded by arrogance, ignorance, and ideology, it is a formula for catastrophe.

...

Friday, August 26, 2005

Plumb The Depths

I happen across some of the Right wing blogs, and I saw an item decrying how biased AP photographers are, and how they only shoot the worst of everything. Lately it's been the worst of the Gaza relocations, but in the past it's been about how they always show the worst of the Iraq War.

There's a campaign out there trying to stop these images from reaching the public. Imagine that. Why in the world?

Why would anyone sit behind a keyboard and demand that professional photographers stop taking pictures? The only plausible answer I can think of is they have no interest in seeing what the world really looks like. For them, it's an ugliness that doesn't really exist. But the lens never lies, it only captures.

This is the undercurrent that permeates the Right: The War in Iraq will always turn out alright. There's no bad outcome to be seen. Throw Dear Leader into the mix, and it's not even mentionable in good company.

This is the groundwork for their entire caste. The biggest problem is their whole worldview is resting upon one man and a slew of lies. So you either get off the ship to nowhere, or you're only argument, through and through til the end, is to support him like a God. The trouble is, once his lies come due, you're left holding the bag, because he sure won't.

The longer you stick with his bullshit, the farther you're own fall becomes. But no matter to many on the right, this cliff is worth going over. It really boggles the mind.

The next step in this weird transcendence is to lash out, and I mean guns blazing. So, along comes this type of statement: " the savages have declared war, and it's far preferable to fight them in the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York (where the residents would immediately surrender)." If she means all the residents, that would include many members of the NYPD and FDNY (thanks Ann). A friend of mine pointed out the other day that everyone knows she's a kook, but then I wondered, why do her books reach the top of the New York Times Bestseller List?

I'm not sure what happens after lashing out. Cranial Implosion? Monk-like silence? If I had to parlay it, I'd go with lots more bile and hatred. I mean really, why not keep it simple?

Oh, and another thing about those AP shutterbugs. They're in the middle of the shitstorm over in Iraq. They're covering a war that people like Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter actively cheered for, and not only that, told people who opposed it they were pussies and anti-American. Now, when the pictures come back showing that things aren't all pennywhistles and bubblegum, they're to be banned. Ann and Michelle should be forced to look at the blood and violence. Come on ladies, isn't this what you wanted? You excrete on people for saying things went wrong. Not that either of them would know, but wars are prehaps the truest form of ugly. They break people in innumerable ways. War creates physical, emotional, and spiritual wreckage. Don't take my word for it, ask Chris Hedges for Christ's sake.

I don't like to talk about personal issues here, but my Uncle died because of the injuries he suffered in Vietnam. The one thing I'm sure of is that if he lived and rose to become a U.S Senator, as Chuck Hagel and John Kerry have, Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter would choose to urinate on his legacy rather than honor it. For me, that makes them both the most despicable form of trash on the planet.

Sorry for the rambling, and getting a bit pissy, but Fuck You Michelle, and Fuck You too Ann. And a big Friday Night Fuck You to all you Media Whores! (that means you too, Peggy I'm-a-Priest-Philator-Too Noonan)

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Staged Withdrawal or Stay The Course?

So where do we go from here?

First, we need to look at some lawyer-like parsing from our Yale-Alumni President:
"An immediate withdrawal of our troops in Iraq, or the broader Middle East, as some have called for, would only embolden the terrorists and create a staging ground to launch more attacks against America and free nations," Bush said.
Pay attention to the word "immediate". Any one with any brain would never call for that, but that always leaves plenty of wiggle room for withdrawing in stages. You can bet they stuck that in to say, "See? We were against immediate buh buh buh, we were for declaring victory and bringing our soldiers home with honor".

We also have this from Dam Froomkin at the Washington Post:

"I think immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake," Bush said. "I think those who advocate immediate withdrawal from not only Iraq but the Middle East would be -- are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States. So I appreciate her right to protest. I understand her anguish. I met with a lot of families. She doesn't represent the view of a lot of the families I have met with. And I'll continue to meet with families."

But as several media reports pointed out this morning, critics of the Iraq war are not advocating an immediate withdrawal from the greater Middle East. And many are not even calling for an immediate pullout from Iraq. Rather, they are asking for a specific plan to bring the troops home, and maybe an acknowledgement of error.

Hmm. There it is again. "Immediate". The troubling thing is that no one on the Democrat side of the issue is saying much of anything. Ah, politics.

Let's get on to the more important thing, and the original question posed.

The Crux:
For the last two years-plus, the dilemma of our presence in Iraq has been that we're both the glue holding the place together and the solvent tearing it apart. That painful paradox is the root of the paralysis and denial across most of the political landscape -- certainly in Washington.
A Solution:

ARMY GENERAL SUPPORTS WITHDRAWAL....My argument in favor of a public withdrawal plan for Iraq has been based on three points: (1) it will motivate the Iraqis to take training of their own security forces more seriously, (2) it will reduce local support for the insurgency, much of which is based on a belief that we plan to occupy Iraq forever, and (3) we're going to have trouble keeping 135,000 troops in Iraq much past 2006 anyway. Today, the top operations commander for Iraq backed me up:

The US is expected to pull significant numbers of troops out of Iraq in the next 12 months in spite of the continuing violence, according to the general responsible for near-term planning in the country.

Maj Gen Douglas Lute, director of operations at US Central Command, yesterday said the reductions were part of a push by Gen John Abizaid, commander of all US troops in the region, to put the burden of defending Iraq on Iraqi forces.

....He said: "We believe at some point, in order to break this dependence on the...coalition, you simply have to back off and let the Iraqis step forward.

"You have to undercut the perception of occupation in Iraq. It's very difficult to do that when you have 150,000-plus, largely western, foreign troops occupying the country."

That's some pretty high level support for points #1 and #2, and although Lute can't publicly acknowledge point #3, all you have to do is look at the latest year-to-date recruiting figures to see that the Army's manpower problems are becoming very real.

It's worth noting that Lute is providing grounds not just for a withdrawal plan, but for a public withdrawal plan. After all, point #1 is common sense: anyone who's ever been in charge of anything knows that things don't get done unless people have firm goals and firm deadlines. Iraq's leaders simply aren't going to take troop training seriously until they figure out that America won't be around forever — at which point they're going to need security forces of their own in order to keep their government intact. And the only way to make that warning credible is to make it public.

Point #2 is similar. Insurgencies depend on support from the surrounding population, and public support for the Iraqi insurgency is partly motivated by hatred of the U.S. occupation. The only way to "undercut the perception of occupation" is to convince them that we aren't going to be around forever — and the only way to do that credibly is to do it publicly.

We simply don't get any benefit from points #1 and #2 unless people believe we're serious about meeting our goals in Iraq and then leaving, and the only way to do that is to make our intentions public. It's true that things might end badly in Iraq anyway, but at least we will have done everything we possibly could to make it work. Considering how disastrous a failed Iraqi state would be, we can't afford to do any less.

Not that the Bush administration would choose to do what Mr. Drum might suggest, but it's a plan, and that's a lot more than what Bush has been offering lately. "Stay the course", what does that mean? Even Jon Stewart (who runs a fake news program) asked that question. There's no definition to winning in "stay the course".

This war was a bad idea to start with. If we lump the lack of any plan for the aftermath on top of extremely poor execution, and toss in gross incompetence, it doesn't paint a pretty picture.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Ledeen In Clear View

I can't let this one pass, it's way too good. James Wolcott, a writer for Vanity Fair, lays into Michael Ledeen but good. Ledeen has been pushing for war with Iran ever since I can remember (we're talking back in the Reagan years).:
Me Tarzan, You Hagel
Posted by James Wolcott

Being the astute Machiavelli fan that he is, Michael Ledeen would seem too intellectually sophisticated to drag in Hitler's name as a rhetorical silencer--I mean, that's just so bush league. But responding to unseen hordes regarding his dis of Chuck Hagel, Ledeen pipes up from NRO's The Corner at those pipequeaks who believe those "with military experience have special authority on the subject of war and peace" thusly:

"I usually write back and ask them if they think that Hitler--who was wounded in the First World War--has special standing for them."

Well, that'll shut them hecklers up! He's a regular Don Rickles. Hagel, Hitler, what's the dif really? Point is, when Ledeen flings around the word "appeaser" as he's done more than once at Hagel and countless times at others, he isn't disparaging Hagel's military or geopolitical acumen, he's impugning the man's guts. He's saying, I'm willing to stand up to the enemy (or, in Ledeen's case, slouch in front of him), whereas the Senator from Nebraska is "a man who has rarely met or even thought [my italics] about a tyrant he did not want to appease." So now Ledeen's a mind-reader too?

Ledeen also encourages his emailers "to read The War Against the Terror Masters, in which I said it was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, and predicted the current situation."

I have no intention of reading The War Against the Terror Masters, limiting my pornography intake whenever possible, but I will concede that Ledeen's bloodshot focus has been obsessively on Iran, not Iraq. However, I will also note that when George Bush made his famous speech on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln with the "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him, Ledeen's joy was unbounded. He could barely contain himself, and didn't. Here is what he wrote in the afterglow the following day. Prepare to flinch.

"Wow! Great scene, great speech, who could ask for anything more? He has it exactly right. We won a battle, we made military history, and we've changed the nature of warfare (the guilty are at greater risk than the innocent), the better to fulfill our national mission of spreading freedom. The tide has turned in the war against the terror masters, but there are many battles ahead. And the war remains what he said it was from the beginning: a war for freedom against tyranny.

"May I brag? Is this not what The War Against the Terror Masters says?

"It was time for this speech, because the contemporary attention span is so short. The world has largely forgotten September 11, and many of the chatterers have forgotten what this war is about, and it was good that he reminded them all. It was also good that he drew the lessons from the battle of Iraq so that the tyrants in Damascus, Tehran, Tripoli, Pyongyang, and Riyadh could understand them clearly. Now they know, if any of them doubted, that they are all on the list. And I particularly enjoyed his appeal to the Arab street — for that is what it was — when he said that anyone who fought for freedom would have a friend in America.

"George W. is the most amazing president. How could anyone have imagined that such a man, who lacks all the credentials to conduct foreign policy (he hasn't traveled, he hasn't studied foreign cultures, he doesn't speak foreign languages, his knowledge of world history is skimpy, and he hasn't memorized the last decade of the New York Times) would turn out to have the best foreign-policy instincts imaginable? He reminds me more and more of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. He has the most important quality of a great leader: He instinctively finds the words to express what the American people believe. And his are simple words, not fancy ones.

"What a pleasure.

Now let's get on with the war. Faster, please."

I don't quite understand The War Against the Terror Masters could give Ledeen bragging rights two years ago when he was feeling giddy ("The tide has turned") and two years later serve as an Unheeded Warning now that he's feeling glum. I guess he's trying to claim Amazing Kreskin powers of clairvoyance no matter how well or badly the war goes. He is a student of Machiavelli, after all.

This one came from Ledeen pissing himself over Senator Chuck Hagel's comments over the weekend:
The Squawk of a Chickenhawk
Posted by James Wolcott

Senator Chuck Hagel has never been high on NRO's The Corner's Hit Parade of favorite Republicans. While it's true that he lacks the stature and intellectual rigor of a Rick Santorum or WFB's hunky heart-throb Bill Simon, it does seem a trace unfair to call him the Senator from France, as some Cornerites have done in the past, and hint that his loyalities lie other than in the land we all love.

His patriotic steadfastness was questioned yet again after his Sunday appearance on Meet the Press, where he made the dread comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, and brought Michael Ledeen out of his badger hole.

"RE: HAGEL [Michael Ledeen]
Senator Hagel has certainly earned the Jimmy Carter Appeasement Award for 2005. As I've noted before, the man has never met a tyrant he didn't want to negotiate with. Maybe he should run for president with Jesse Jackson as his mate.
Posted at 11:31 PM"

Let's review, shall we?

Chuck Hagel, two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for his Vietnam War service.

Jimmy Carter, seven years in the Navy, including serving under Admiral Rickover in the development of the nuclear submarine program.

Michael Ledeen? Let's just say he won't be regaling them at the VFW lodge anytime soon. Indeed, the closest he's come to combat has been listening to Roger L. Simon's Hollywood war stories from his heroic screenwriting days.

Memo to Ledeen: There's a stature gap between you and Hagel/Carter that puts you in the pygmy shade.

Moreover, accusing anyone at this point of "appeasement" is just so dated, so played-out, so 2002. And dragging the puffy, irrelevant Jesse Jackson into your insult train--truly, truly stale.

The appeasement slur won't work anymore, nor will invocations of Neville Chamberlain and quislings. Give it up, pack it in, put it away.

Two years ago, Ledeen sneered about Hagel's "wimpery" about Iraq (a sneer I'd wager Ledeen wouldn't dare be man enough to repeat to Hagel's face), but it's Hagel who's been vindicated. The fact is that Ledeen and his neocons got the war they wanted, it was waged according to their blueprints, and it's their fuck-up, their moral responsibility, their historical bloodstain, their arrogant, ignorant, blundering, inexcusable mess. It says something about Ledeen's depraved indifference toward the consequences of his own lobbying efforts that he still thinks at this late date that he can get away with being droll.

One man's sheer eloquence, armed with all the facts, can expose a perenial American huckster in short order. Sweetnesss does live....

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Dude, You're Frothing, you might wanna...

...I don't know, wipe up a bit...

Harold Meyerson dug up some great quotes from the Marketing Dept., here: (These are from, ahem, before the war)

Oh William, what will the history books say?
“There’s a fair amount of evidence that Iraq had very close associations with Osama bin Laden in the past.”
Given that Osama thought Saddam was an infidel, (don't mix them up, that would be a big mistake!!!) this is a complete fabrication. One might think Bill Kristol had an agenda, or something. And we all know this came to pass:
“We know that over the last three or four weeks, he has moved many of his chemical and biological weapons programs in preparation for possible U.S. attacks.”
Who is we? I guess Bill was so hard-wired into the military planning complex, and the Vice-President's office that he felt he needed to spout this cock and bull.

Harold hits it...

Biding Their Time?

I always like to keep an eye on what's going on in Congress. One thing I've learned is that if you have a fat elephant next to your party ID, especially if you're in the party leadership, you are someone's whore. And, there's almost always a corporate hand in the till. On that note:

Should Democrats wait a little while to start hammering Congressional Republicans over the head about the massive corruption taking place in Washington? Sam and Franklin address that here:
GET SHRILL. Franklin Foer is spot-on in his analysis of congressional Republicans’ Jack Abramoff problem and in his call for Democrats to take the gloves off at last in their ethics campaign against the majority. Right as well is this subscription-only New Republic editorial:
But, while it's easy to see why high-ranking Democrats like Pelosi and Menendez would hold their fire, it's not clear why rank-and-file Democrats would go along. House rules give the minority party virtually no power--except over ethics matters. Which means that pretty much the only way for Democrats to regain the majority is through the kind of ruthless assault on corruption that invariably endangers congressmen on both sides of the aisle. As THE NEW REPUBLIC's Michael Crowley has noted ("Learning from Newt," January 24), Newt Gingrich grasped this logic intuitively when he fanned the flames of the House banking scandal in the early '90s. Gingrich believed that, while seizing on ethics presented real risks--Gingrich himself was implicated, albeit on a relatively small scale--a scandal that touched almost everyone in Congress would invariably hurt Democrats more, since they controlled the House. Conversely, a refusal to risk collateral damage might have saved some longtime GOP incumbents but done nothing to return the party to power.
I don’t, in fact, believe the desire to protect corrupt Democrats is all that is keeping the minority party from a full-bore ethics assault, though that is certainly one factor. A deep-seated and crippling over-cautiousness still colors the strategic approach of much of the congressional Democratic leadership -- an aversion to going overboard on negative attacks and an instinctive desire to wait for scandals to unfold of their own accord, thus leaving no partisan fingerprints. It’s an instinct Democrats will want to overcome, quickly. Now is a time for relentless procedural and symbolic pressure to be brought to bear on Republican malfeasance. (That criminal investigations will likely impede for the time being the progress of ethics committee inquiries into Tom DeLay or Bob Ney, for instance, should not excuse the Democrats from filing ethics complaints against them and hammering away in the press.)

“Get tough” admonitions to the Dems come cheap, and are often wrong; there’s no doubt, moreover, that the minority leadership understands the importance of ethics in next year’s elections. But more really could be done, right away.

--Sam Rosenfeld

I agree with Sam here, but it's a political point for me more than anything. File the ethics complaints now, and who knows, they might just gestate into something really substantive by the time mid-terms roll around. To put it another way, there's that old saying that if you throw enough mud, eventually something will stick. I'll modify that by saying this: make no mistake, this isn't mud getting flinged around, it's excrement, and that stuff always sticks. And once voters really get a good whiff of it, they might just change their minds when they cast their next vote. Markos of the Daily Kos adds some more:
Corruption isn't a partisan issue by kos Sun Aug 14th, 2005 at 22:11:58 PDT

Some day, once the current GOP dominance collapses under the weight of their corruption, we'll have Dems playing the same dirty game. Republicans rally around their sleaziest bad-government practicioners, as we know the elephant flies above the Stars and Stripes to the typical Bush/DeLay apologist.

The moral imperative behind a "clean government" crusade is self-evident. But there's also a practical reason to oppose corruption even amongst Democrats -- it's a sure-fire way to lose elections. Rampant Democratic corruption cost us Congress in 1994, and we've yet to recover. And continued Democratic corruption has made House Dems wary of charging ahead with the "corruption" theme to hard, lest some of the current members get snared in the web.

Good. Let those who sit in Congress enriching themselves go down. They are supposed to be doing the people's business, not their own. Unlike the GOP apologists, I consider corruption a non-partisan issue. I'd like to see them all thrown out with the Capitol trash.

If anyone wonders why I'm such a Schweitzer fan, here's another reason:

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has asked Democrat Bob Rowe, the former chairman of state Public Service Commission, not to work on the governor's upcoming energy conference because Rowe is associated with a lobbying firm that represents several energy companies.

The governor's office had previously hired Rowe to help organize the conference. Rowe has been released from that job.

"It's simply policy," Schweitzer said. "I believe passionately that you can only serve one master. When we have chosen people to work for us, we have chosen people who will commit themselves to working for all the people of Montana, not a special interest." [...]

Schweitzer said he found out late last week that Rowe was listed as a Gallatin Group lawyer. He said he felt removing Rowe from his position with the symposium was in keeping with his policy of not involving lobbyists to be involved in state government projects.

That's clean government in action.

(Oh, and Kerry is trying to capture a bit of the Schweitzer magic. Man, if two politicians were ever polar opposites...)

Call me an unrealistic idealist, but Kos has it right here. If there's filthy Dems that get caught up in the dragnet, so be it. They should "retire" as well. But right now, the ground is furtile, and the criminal activity is occurring over there on the Right. It's something that Democrats need to bring to the fore. What do they have to lose anyway?

Update: I almost forgot, if you're looking for more on this stuff, go check out the Auction House at the TPM Cafe...

Name That Idiot

Wow, there's some great stuff posted over at the American Prospect's website today. This was one of my favorites, so I'm stealing the whole damn thing: (as I'm a subscriber to the print edition, I'm not sure I'm stealing, but, whatever)
CLOWNING WITH IMPUNITY. It has been demonstrated that Republican congressmen can advocate dropping nuclear bombs on Syria without catching too much grief, and that the Senate majority leader can feel fairly free to use his medical credentials to peddle the possibility of AIDS transmission through tears or to offer off-the-cuff diagnoses via edited videotape. It is also apparent that the same Majority Leader probably won’t be troubled by questions concerning allegations of election fraud carried out by officials under his employ. Another Republican congressman has demonstrated that it is possible to offer an explanation for a pivotal abstention on an important vote that vastly strains credulity without needing to withstand much in the way of follow-up scrutiny. And of course, we know of one prominent Republican lawmaker who has direct ties to a disgraced lobbyist and a casino scheme that is now the subject of a criminal indictment and another, even more prominent Republican, who has clearly lied about the extent and duration of his dealings with said disgraced lobbyist; at the moment, the re-election prospects of both members remain, if not secure, still quite bright.

This all provides some context for understanding how congressman Curt Weldon can possibly get away with hurling about what now appear to be egregiously embellished and embroidered allegations regarding Mohammed Atta and the Able Danger program. Just prior to the emergence of the Able Danger story and the swift implosion of Weldon’s claims, Laura Rozen and collaborators had done a sterling job documenting the dangerous antics and crackpot intelligence theorizing in which the Pennsylvania congressman has been engaging of late. Now we have the likes of shrill Republican-basher John Podhoretz declaring that “[i]f Time's account is accurate, Weldon has done something very, very bad with this whole story -- something either knowingly dishonest, unknowingly crazy, or foolishly naive -- and he should be held accountable for it.”

Podhoretz can rest assured that no such accountability will be enforced. The Able Danger kerfluffle will do little to diminish Weldon’s standing as a prominent House Republican spokesman on military and international matters -- nor will it likely alter the virtual inevitability that he will become chairman either of the House Homeland Security Committee in September or of the Armed Services Committee in two years. It’s all part of the fun immunity granted to congressional Republicans to be complete chuckleheads. It’s quite a deal.

--Sam Rosenfeld

As I've noted here before (yes, even me), when congressman Curt Weldon looks at his butt cheeks, he thinks his ass will make a fine fit for a hat. Again, the good people of Pennsylvania would be better served if Curt was tending to things back home instead of running around playing intelligence operative. Try Leaving that to the grown-ups, Curt.

Monday, August 15, 2005

O'Reilly's Chuck Wagon

I just watched Bill O'Reilly grill Joe Trippi about this whole affair unfolding down in Texas. As Bill is known to do, he grilled Trippi about Cindy Sheehan, her motives, who she's thrown in with, and the media circus surrounding it.

What drove me nuts is that Trippi sat there and took this onslaught from a man clearly out to save President's Bush's reputation. Yes, Bill loves to hear himself talk, and in Joe's defense it can be hard to get a word in anywhere, but how about pointing out that Bill O'Reilly IS PART OF THE STORY. He's the one taking this woman to task. How about asking Bill, "why do you care so much about this story?", or, "can you explain to your audience why we are in Iraq?".

Bill O'Reilly is bent on making sure everyone knows Cindy Sheehan is a fraud. She might as well have a blue-stained dress on, and Trippi sits there and throws nothing back in his face? Weak. Really Fucking Weak.

How about we try this on for size, "Bill, you asked me on here to defend this woman, and I'm just trying to figure what you want to know about her. You're as much a part of this story, especially with Fox News viewers, as the whole story itself. Why don't you go down and interview her yourself, you're the [fucking brain dead chowder monkee] journalist who keeps bringing the story up? What do you have to lose?"

It's not that hard folks, he's really not that bright...

Jesus, when will talking heads realize it's not their show, IT"S YOURS. All you have is speak up.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Tasty Rhetoric

Oh Jeebus, we've been waiting for this:

In a stern warning to Iran, President Bush said "all options are on the table" if the Iranians refuse to comply with international demands to halt their nuclear program, pointedly noting he has already used force to protect U.S. security.

Bush's statement during an interview on Israeli TV late Friday was unusually harsh. He previously said diplomacy should be used to persuade Iran to suspend its nuclear program and if that failed then the U.N. Security Council should impose sanctions.

The U.S. government and others fear Iran's nuclear work is secretly designed to produce nuclear weapons. Iran's leaders deny that, saying it is only for the generation of electricity.

In the interview, Bush said the United States and Israel "are united in our objective to make sure that Iran does not have a weapon."

But, he said, if diplomacy fails "all options are on the table."

"The use of force is the last option for any president. You know, we've used force in the recent past to secure our country," he said.

Does anyone care to rewind the tape from the last two and a half years?

Once again, we need to start asking whose security interests are at stake here? Does Iran pose a grave threat to the security of the United States? Will they in five years?

Hopefully that's all this is: rhetoric. Otherwise, good luck selling this one George...

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Why Did We Invade Iraq?

That's a question I heard asked a while ago from sources on the Left, and I've never really heard a good answer to it from anyone who supports this war. That may because there really is no good answer. The one thing you learn about lying when you're young, that is if your parents didn't teach you, is that once you tell a lie, you need fifty other lies to cover up all of your previous tales. And then you need lies to cover for that crap too. If logic has any sway over you, you quickly realize what an excersize in futility at all becomes, and then you modify your behavior.

That's why, for the Bush administration anyway, once your "claims" get tested, by launching a pre-emptive war of course, there's no way to stuff the genie back into the bottle. So you go from the lies that we were told to "freedom is on the march", and the Flypaper Argument "we're fighting the terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here". That's some heavy lifting, and trust me, bullshit weighs a ton.

Here's the weird thing: I knew they were all lying to the American public. Before this whole fiasco started, I knew their claims about Iraq's nuclear programs were lies, and that Hussein's biological and chemical weapons efforts were completely moot. I had to dig a little bit, but the effort was really minimal. So, as I watched the cavalcade of administration officials and think-tanks wags make the rounds on all of the news shows, I thought to myself, there's no way they can pull this off. There's no way they can goad Congress into handing over the power to declare war.

For me, there was a stench in the air. I sat back and watched as the propaganda took over the airwaves. Shit, I even wrote my Senators, telling them I thought the whole thing was a fraud, from start to finish. And I'm talking about before the war started. They were congenial when they responded, but they had their minds made up. Militant fervor had taken over, and the facts as I knew them had nothing to do with the issue. Fear was in the air, and fear has more pull over a shaken population than I ever thought it could.

As I look back, I've always had one reason to oppose this war: it had nothing to do with PROTECTING THE SECURITY of our country. Hussein was a tin-pot fake, and Dick Cheney knew that from the start, no air force, no navy, old Russian-made tanks, a frail and fleeting infantry, no unconventional weapons, and two no-fly zones.

Some day, many years from now, someone will write a book explaining exactly why the Bush adminstration decided to invade Iraq. Maybe we'll get an answer then.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

"Home."

Major Bob Bateman sends in dispatches from the field in Iraq to Eric Alterman over at MSNBC. This one's from August 3rd:

Name: Major Bob Bateman
Dateline: Baghdad, Iraq

News from the Home Front

“Bob, when you come back, tell me what you think.” I am about to come back to the States for a few weeks. My mid-tour leave approaches.

“‘Bout what Tom?”

“Home.”

Tom and I got here at roughly the same time, we work together day in and day out. In fact, at this point it is even odds as to whose face is more familiar to me, Tom’s, or those of my children and my love. Spend fourteen to sixteen hours a day with a guy, seven days a week, and his face gets somewhat familiar. You also get to know the man, and Tom is worth knowing. A graduate of West Point, and an infantryman like myself, he attended grad school at the Budapest University of Economics (after having learned his third language, Hungarian, during a year at the State Department’s language program in Arlington, Virginia.) I learn a lot from Tom, and I’ve learned that even his questions can be fascinating.

“What do you mean?” I asked, not quite following where he was going.

“Well,” he said, with his characteristic pause as he chose the right words, “I mean tell me what you think about what they’re thinking about back there.” Tom often leaves open-ended questions. He is very good at not telegraphing his own thoughts on an issue.

Tom’s daughter had an emergency surgery a few months back, so he’s already been home once. His question was leading to something, but I was not sure quite what it was yet. I filed it away.

Then a few hours later I had an e-mail from a friend, an e-mail that goes to a small circle of like-minded individuals, the rest of whom are currently Stateside. The rather long e-mail went into some fascinating speculation about issues of national security, and then (strangely to me) ended with, “But enough of that, what I want to know is what’s at the bottom of that pond, and what will happen to the three hooligans.” This last completely lost me, so I sent out an open query asking, effectively, “What the hell are you talking about?”

The e-mails from the Loop came flooding back, but all of them were privately to me instead of posted to the Loop. It was as though everyone was embarrassed to admit they knew the answer.

That’s when I learned about Natalee Holloway, and the amount of air-time which our national news services have devoted to her story these past few weeks…weeks during which our Supreme Court is in transition, a UN nomination is in stasis, there is death in the Sudan, death in London, a game of nuclear chicken in Korea, and the Armed Forces of the Nation are involved in a life-and-death struggle on a daily basis here in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then I understood the unstated part of Tom’s question.

BAGHDAD WITHIN EARSHOT:

Nothing Significant To Report

(In militarese that is “NSTR,” a common acronym on a daily update slide here in-theater.) Now you know something you didn’t know before.

Tonight, Fox News, the channel that pushed for this war the most, gives us this:



Also, via Atrios, Fox News surely would have a vested interest in making sure their website viewers have updated casualty counts, no? Maybe not...

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Ugly Spills Over

I've been waiting for a long time for a news story like this one to come down the pike, not with any glee, but this nagging sense that this kind of thing was inevitable. Take an inherently violent, gun-loving society, an increasingly unpopular war, and add the politics-as-porn media, and you get one really nasty cocktail. Via Atrios, we get this report from the WireCan (who plucked this one from kentucky.com):
"A quarrel between two firearms vendors at a Floyd County flea market on Thursday allegedly led both men -- described as "good friends" -- to draw guns. Douglas Moore, 65, of Martin, who supports the [Iraq] war, shot and killed Harold Wayne Smith, 56, of Manchester, who opposed it, investigators said."
After the 2004 presidential election a web site popped up called Sorry Everybody, and the links and photos spread like wildfire around the political side of the internet. I was pretty amazed at the number of people that sent in photos and notes. To counter that effort, people who voted for Bush started at site called We're Not Sorry, which has since gone defunct. I recall perusing through it and trust me, it was not pretty. Even though people who voted for Kerry were sorry, the people who took the time to send content into the counter site were angry. Funny too, their candidate had won.

When what passes for "heroes" on the Right these days write entire books accusing 20% of the nation's population of Treason, or the need to deliver the country from the Evil of Liberalism, the message is pretty clear: these people need to be eradicated from the population. It's come to the point where conservatives can accuse liberals of nearly anything, and no one even bats an eye anymore. Liberals are traitors, liars, slanderous, anti-American, anti-family, anti-flag moonbats who worship a Culture of Hate. You name it, hell they probably don't even like Key Lime Pie (Oh the Humanity). As luck would have it, Bruce Miller and friends have compiled a whole book of their own documenting the filth that flies from the mouths of Republicans and their ilk. How handy. Just the other day, Rush Limbuagh saw fit to claim that a Democrat running for Congress served in the Iraq war just to "pad his resume". Rush vomits up bile like that for four hours a day. The examples are too numerous to cite here, but you can go a Googling all day digging this stuff up if you had the time.

I'm not sure exactly what happened between the two men in the story above, but I'll bet this will not be the last time we hear about violence like this. When folks on the Right repeat this stuff day in and day out for years, it has to have an effect. It creeps in; how can it not? They've declared war on Liberals, the left, the media, and anyone who doesn't agree with them. They declared war the word liberal twenty years ago for Christ's sake. Eventually there's going to be a cost, and the people that spew this stuff don't care, because so far, no one's going to make them pay for it. I doubt anyone ever will.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Iran: Ten Years From The Bomb

The Washington Post ran this headline on page one yesterday:

Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb

Two things struck me right away after reading through this article:

Eins: The editors wanted to make damn sure that their newspaper wouldn't repeat the same mistakes they made leading up to the current war. On August 12th, 2004, they apologized for those misgivings, sending their hack media reporter Howard Kurtz out to get his slippers dirty, but the damage, and the casualty reports, were already coming in. This time it's, "see, we told you so, Iran's a long way from getting the bomb, no war needed here!". This wreaks of the paper doing cover-your-ass reporting. If I had to guess, someone who has intimate knowledge of the freshly minted National Intelligence Estimate leaked the goodies about Iran's nuclear program to tamp down any fears of another war, and the Post decided, "run it, Page One", to make sure they were way out in front of all the saber-rattling statements coming from the adminstration. Funny how all those statements are foot-stamping puffery.

Zwei: This article will really piss off neo-conservative operatives like Michael Ledeen, who, dating back to when he helped arrange shady arms-for-hostages deals in the Reagan administration, has made invading Iran his soiled little hobby horse for years. (Hey Jonah! Grab a rag and clean this shit up, and slap another quarter in this fucker, it's not keeping up! (bad joke, sorry, tbogg will get it))

Apparently, Kevin Drum noted the same thing:
Expect the Michael Ledeen crowd to be furious over this. The CIA's report concedes that "left to its own devices, Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons," but that won't be enough to save them from the wrath of the mega-hawk crowd, which is still desperately trying to salvage its reputation after being proved wrong in virtually all particulars about Iraq. Expect a coordinated nuclear attack directed toward the softies at the CIA soon.
Go read the article, as much as I bash, it's good.