Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Don't Show Your Hand, You Jerk...

Funny what you can hear if you actually listen. From the AP, here's the President today:
"People don't want me making decisions based on politics," Bush said.
Now I've heard some good Doublespeak from Bush and his handlers, but this one should go down as a classic. In this deliberate attempt to obfuscate and kick up lots of dust, the President is actually explaining exactly what he's up to: making decisions based on which way the political winds blow. What a silly.

Add some lying, and you have a nice Pasta Primivera of rhetorical English language horseshit (shrimp or veggies optional):
"They want me making decisions based on the recommendations of our generals on the ground. And that's exactly who I'll be listening to."
No you won't. You're a fucking liar. And, who is They anyway? These guys make Joseph Goebbels look like he was playing with Lincoln Logs.

(Note to Self) Hey Tree, the Forrest is Over There --->

The natural human condition to become so immersed in something that you lose sight of the larger picture hit me today. Being a political junkie, and following the Iraq War so closely, I missed something that a friend of mine pointed out to me at lunch today. He said the following about the war:
Who has this helped? How has this war helped the American or the Iraqi people?
With so many people dead, and such gross folly on display, these questions really boil it down. We know the answer: Nobody. No one. The mess Richard Cheney and his ilk have made will take decades to reconcile and make right. I'm an atheist, but if the rest of the world ever forgives us for this tragedy, and the shame it has brought on our country, that would surely be a blessing.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Who, Me?

Something that has stuck in my craw for a long time is how a number of Bush administration officials, including Bush himself, have said, "we'll give the commanders on the ground in Iraq all the troops they think they need." I'm paraphrasing here, but they've said that or something like it numerous times since the insurgency has kicked into full gear. The big problem is that's not how it's supposed to work. Campaigns are supposed to be executed by the military, but they're supposed to be run by the civilian leadership, starting with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and ultimately by George Bush. Surely, civilian leaders consult with the military about these matters, but the big decisions are supposed to be made by the suits. (How little these particular suits listened to their advisors in uniform is a different story, but the evidence strongly suggests they repeatedly rejected their advice.)

Here's what may be a crude example. Let's say the North Koreans launch an unprovoked conventional missile strike on South Korea. Having their hands full at the present time, to say the least, are the commanders on the ground in Iraq supposed to start making decisions about what to do next? About what would mostly be a naval response? I think you get the point. It's not up to them. It's up to Donald Rumsfeld, and of course, your Commander In Chief. You know him, he told Tim Russert of NBC News, "I'm a war president".

Here's a little more from Matt Yglesias over at the American Prospect:
At the end of the day, the view expounded by the president that officers on the ground were responsible for force-size decisions was an absurd abdication of responsibility on his part. The question of how many resources should be devoted to one military undertaking is properly seen as a very big-picture strategic issue. You need to take in mind not only the mission at hand, but all of the military's other missions as well as missions they may need to undertake in the near future. You need to consider the long-term impact on military readiness and recruiting. You need to consider the economic consequences at home and the diplomatic consequences around the world.
Absurd abdication indeed. By the way, this provides the administration with a neat little sleight of hand; they're not to blame for any wrongdoings in Iraq. It's the Generals' fault that they don't have enough troops, body armor, up-armored HUMVEES, you name it. They'll never say that, but that's part of the ploy. Move along, nothing to see here.

Now we learn, via Matt's post, and from Time magazine, that they've been lying to us about it all along. In a closed meeting with the Chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, frontline battalion commanders shared this:
According to two sources with knowledge of the meeting, the Army and Marine officers were blunt. In contrast to the Pentagon's stock answer that there are enough troops on the ground in Iraq, the commanders said that they not only needed more manpower but also had repeatedly asked for it. Indeed, military sources told TIME that as recently as August 2005, a senior military official requested more troops but got turned down flat.
In total, what they've been telling us is, "we never bothered listening to the military experts in the first place, and, really, why should we start now. But if things go to shit, we sure know where to point the finger." If this isn't criminal use of our military, then it sure as hell comes close to bordering on it.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Your Weekly Wanker

The Editors at The Poor Man deliver the goods, and so much more. Here's a tease...
For example, suppose you ask me the question: “what is the volume of an average human being?” This is a very stupid and pointless question, exactly the sort of question I would expect someone like you would ask. Why do you care? If I refuse to answer your question, you may become violent, so I will attempt to do so, quickly, by making a few simplifying approximations. First, in order to make the math simpler, I will assume that the average person is a uniform sphere, 3 feet in diameter. Why, when I look at the problem that way, it turns out that I’m really quite extraordinarily tall and svelte! Indeed, I’m far too attractive a physical specimen to have to answer your damn fool questions, so I roll you out the door like a beachball full of cottage cheese and have the chicks from “Coyote Ugly” over for a week-long orgy. All thanks to SCIENCE!
Go check it out...

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Here's Some Fun

From Sam Rosenfeld over at the American Prospect:
HOWDY DOODIER. Late last week saw some truly startling outbreaks of acrimony in the House of Representatives, the most notable being brand-new Ohio rep Jean Schmidt's floor statement, quoting from a Marine veteran constituent and addressed to John Murtha, that "cowards cut and run." Max Blumenthal performs the service of telling us just who this Marine constituent of Schmidt's is: surprise, surprise, a seasoned right-wing activist and operative. Meanwhile, Schmidt's explanation that she wasn't aware of Murtha's military history ("'The poor lady didn't know Jack Murtha was a Marine -- she really just ran into a hornet's nest,' said Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia.") strains some credulity given the amount of attention and the number of statements dedicated to Murtha during the second half of last week. But if it's true it just goes to show you that members could really stand to spend more of their time on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, another highlight of last week's House antics came during the fight over the reconciliation bill, when Arkansas Democrat Marion Berry railed at some young Republican turks who had been taunting his Blue Dog coalition and made reference to "that other Howdy Doody-lookin' nimrod." As subscription-only Roll Call confirms today, reports that Florida Republican Adam Putnam was the nimrod in question are mistaken -- Berry meant to attach the Howdy Doody moniker to Jeb Hensarling of Texas, something he has apparently done in the past. This is sort of a shame, and a real puzzle, because if you compare Hensarling


to Putnam,


I think it's clear who wins the Doody lookalike contest.

By the way, that's not Putnam in the middle. Either way, it's pretty clear the nimrod quality shines through in both of them...

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Idiots and Malcontents

[This is from an e-mail I sent, and I was referring to Judith Miller, Bob Woodward, and Richard Cohen]

One underlying current that we need to keep our eye on is the amount of dust being thrown up in service to the administration by the involvement of all these different reporters in this Plame case. Whether intentional or not, there is far too much tombstone space and ether being devoted to just how receivers of this leak are behaving. If it was intentional, it’s absolutely brilliant on a political level. Maybe we can dig some nice quotes out of the history books when the time is right. However, the effect of all the noise, including today’s revelations about Woodward’s involvement, can only aid the administrations efforts to add smoke and muddy the waters.

I always find it instructive to reflect on the administration’s mood between the time the Novak story ran, and when Ashcroft was urged to recuse himself from the case. Clearly, they never thought they would get caught, and they certainly never dreamed a pit bull like Fitzgerald would convince a judge that he needed to haul a bunch of reporters in front of a grand jury to get to the bottom of all this. It reminds me of a fencing operation: nothing to worry about, these ninnies will take the heat.

What boggles the mind is these rubes still don’t get it. They got used, played for suckers, and while they are still more than happy to carry lots of water, can’t they even look to next year when they realize their careers are over? Far too charmed next to power. Unreal.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Egregious

Looking back, after the Watergate hearings, I never thought we'd have a presidency or an administration as bad as Nixon's. I was wrong. As Jimmy Carter said the other day, what we're witnessing is the Bush administration vs. every other one that came before them. From Billmon:
Vice President Dick Cheney's office was responsible for directives that led to U.S. soldiers' abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, a former top State Department official said Thursday.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, told National Public Radio he had traced a trail of memos and directives authorizing questionable detention practices up through Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office directly to Cheney's staff.

"There was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of defense, down to the commanders in the field," authorizing practices that led to the abuse of detainees, Wilkerson said . . . (emphasis added)

Wilkerson also told National Public Radio that Cheney's office ran an "alternate national security staff" that spied on and undermined the president's formal National Security Council.

He said National Security Council staff stopped sending e-mails when they found out Cheney's staff members were reading their messages. (emphasis added)

He said he believed that Cheney's staff prevented Bush from seeing a National Security Council memo arguing strongly that the United States needed many more troops for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

From Josh Marshall:

Yesterday morning we noted that Ahmad Chalabi is being feted next week at the American Enterprise Institute. Set aside the fact that little more than a year ago he was implicated in sharing US intelligence with Iran. What we know pretty much conclusively now is that Chalabi connived at gaming the US into war by cooking up all manner of bogus intelligence and unsubstantiated claims about WMD and terrorism. It is almost a cliche at this point -- Chalabi, the Iraqi emigre behind most of the outlandish bogus intel.

One extreme view would have it that Chalabi is an Iraqi patriot and, as such, any lying and cheating and stealing in America is just a means to the end of getting the previous regime overthrown. As it happens, I think the guy is more just a gamer and an opportunist. But be that as it may, what sort of American organization would be hosting and celebrating such a man after all we know today, after all the bad acts we know he has committed against this country.

The organization is, of course, AEI. And how can it be that their feting of him, as they are to do next week, does not amount to a big 'who cares' or 'ends justify the means' or 'we knew what he was up to all along anyway' about all the phoney baloney he pulled in the lead up to the war?

Will any politician, Republican or Democrat, stand up and speak out against this outrage? Does anyone plan to protest?

This is not the country that I grew up in.