George learns another lesson.

The right wing talking heads are turning themselves in circles over the Bhutto assassination. Unfortunately for Fox News and Laura Ingraham, who I attempted to watch last night, the events in Pakistan don't fit neatly into their talking points. Therefore, they jam the principal characters into their own black and white world views. The murderer has to be Al Qaeda, and the motive is somehow darkly related to Iraq, Afghanistan and nuclear weapons. The WSJ today lazily lumps the assassin into the new catch all bucket of the "jihadists". Musharraf's role as a bulwark against the terrorists is accepted as fact.

The fact that Bhutto's enemies may have had much more to do with ethnicity than politics, and the fact that the construct of Pakistan is revealed to be a loosely held confederation of warring tribes, is beyond the comprehension of the mouth breathing right. Bhutto and the Sindhi's from Southern Pakistan represent a challenge to the majority Punjabis, and many of the urbane upper class Punjabis are no doubt happy to see her go. The one institution that matters in Pakistan, the military, is dominated by the Punjabi majority, and their leader is Bhutto's rival, Musharraf. Along with the breakaway rebellions in Baluchistan, Bhutto's ascension was a threat to the power center in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. This assassination has the hallmarks of a mob hit, rather than an Al Qaeda operation.

The clearest casualty of the events is the Bush foreign policy. Bhutto, as it is becoming increasingly clear, was encouraged by the Bush administration to return to Pakistan to help shore up the Musharraf regime, which had lost it's legitimacy at home. From Firedoglake:

The WaPo's Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler report on the steps the Administration took to convince Bhutto to return to Pakistan, with the design of rescuing General Musharraf's discredited military regime by cloaking it with the quasi-legitimacy of a partnership with Benazir Bhutto.

For Benazir Bhutto, the decision to return to Pakistan was sealed during a telephone call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just a week before Bhutto flew home in October. The call culminated more than a year of secret diplomacy -- and came only when it became clear that the heir to Pakistan's most powerful political dynasty was the only one who could bail out Washington's key ally in the battle against terrorism. . . .

As President Pervez Musharraf's political future began to unravel this year, Bhutto became the only politician who might help keep him in power.

"The U.S. came to understand that Bhutto was not a threat to stability but was instead the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact," said Mark Siegel, who lobbied for Bhutto in Washington and witnessed much of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy. . . .

"U.S. policy is in tatters. The administration was relying on Benazir Bhutto's participation in elections to legitimate Musharraf's continued power as president," said Barnett R. Rubin of New York University. "Now Musharraf is finished."

The Bush Administration did not kill Benazir Bhutto; someone else did that. But it appears the Administration convinced her to go back to Pakistan to save a risky policy foolishly built on a despised, repressive military dictator to fight the US "war on terror." Now a courageous woman is dead, another nation is in chaos, the US is further discredited, it can't account for billions in military aid, and we still have an administration that remains a menace to everyone's security as long as they remain in office. But the Administration wants us to believe that only al Qaeda is responsible.

This is going to be painful to watch

James Wolcott wonderfully explains the corner that the GOP has painted themselves into with regard to the religious fanatics that they've pandered to for years. The backlash against this fanaticism by the likes of Peggy Noonan and Charlie Krauthamer is rich in irony for sure. Wolcott doesn't say it, but I think that one of the things that will really hurt the GOP in this election is the amount of time that will be wasted by their candidates debating the relative merits and wattage of their individual faiths. Certainly Romney's Mormonism, Huckabee's fundamentalism and Rudy's train wreck of a personal life will continue to be a distraction to the Republican nomination for some time to come, and this distraction can't do anything but divide and confuse the base. There's more in it than that, though. I don't think you can underestimate the harm that is done to the GOP when these guys discuss whether Darwinism is true, whether atheists are citizens, or whether homosexuals are deviants who need to be reprogrammed. Outside of a few pockets of toothless Southern fundamentalism, this sort of discourse is beyond the pale, and certainly, for Americans of the generation born after 1980, these sentiments must seem deranged, rather than quaint or old fashioned.

The single issue that will drive Republicans away from their party in droves will be the continued pandering to the fundamentalist Christian base that is holding the party hostage. When you had an old dry drunk like Bush in the White House, the Christian right can be played like a fiddle, with a wink and a nod and a dog whistle of good old southern fried homo hatred. But Rudy and Mitt pose a different problem altogether, and these bible humpers who smiled through the Bush years won't stand by for this. They'll turn up the volume, demand more and more public fealty, and in doing so drive any semblance of moderation away from the party.

Why?

Glen Greenwald has a post up today documenting the absurd lengths Harry Reid is going to in order to ensure that the Senate passes a bill that gives blanket immunity to the telecom companies for warrantless wiretapping of your conversations. Basically, Chris Dodd is throwing away his entire presidential campaign in order to filibuster the telecom immunity bill, a position he has been forced into taking because his "hold" on the legislation has been overruled by Reid.

The interesting thing to note is that Reid has over and over again provided coverage for other senators holds, which essentially kill whatever bill is being debated. The question is: why? Is there some deal? Can it really be the case that Reid and Pelosi fear that the Dems will be considered soft on terrorism if they deign to challenge the anti-consitutional excesses of this discredited and famously unpopular administration?

As Greenwald says:

Isn't it just amazing? Reid is using every power he has, including some which run directly contrary to how the Senate has traditionally operated (and how it still operates when it comes to GOP prerogatives), to ensure that one of the most glaring scandals involving Bush lawbreaking -- warrantless surveillance on U.S. citizens -- is never investigated and there is never any accountability for it. And the methods he is using to accomplish that are as corrupt as the results themselves.

Revision

This really is getting unseemly. Doug Feith, described by Tommy Franks as "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth", blames the entire fiasco in Iraq on Paul Bremer:

Feith, in a speech last night at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, provided his most extensive public remarks on the war and reconstruction efforts in Iraq. When he briefed President Bush on U.S. plans for post-invasion Iraq, he recalled, "The original concept was not that the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] would be around for many, many months." But, he said, L. Paul Bremer, who ran the U.S. occupation authority in 2003 and 2004, decided that Feith's plan "was not implementable" and instead embarked on a course that antagonized Iraqis and spurred an insurgency.

The history of this administration's excellent Iraq adventure is being written right before our eyes. The decision to invade Iraq was and is unassailably sound, but the fact that it turned so awful for so long was and is unassailably Paul Bremer's fault. They've got their fall guy. Just this weekend, with absolutely no evidence to support himself, Bill Kristol stated that the decision to invade Iraq was the reason that Libya and Iran abandoned their nuclear weapons programs, and therefore the idea of a preemptive invasion of a neighboring country is a "pretty good thing".

Time is healing all wounds for Feith, Perle and the lot. The mayhem of the last four and a half years means nothing to them, the cost to this country in dollars and lives, the cost to the Iraqi people, the destruction and chaotic dispersion of the refugees, the ethnic cleansing and the simmering religious hatreds that have been unleashed. All of this fades in their memories as they justify their decisions in hindsight. These men all sleep soundly, I'm sure.

MEK and the Neoconservatives

Let's see how quickly the mouth breathing right, including Podhoretz, Perle, Feith, Cheney and the rest of the neocons embrace the "Iranian opposition group's" assertion that Iran restarted their nuclear weapon program in 2004.

The group is that National Council for Resistance in Iran, and you can read about their history here. An Islamic socialist organization, they are more commonly known as MEK, and we designated them a terrorist organization as far back as 1997. They certainly don't sound like just the sort of group conservatives would naturally align themselves with. However....

In May 2005, Human Rights Watch claimed the PMOI were running prison camps within Iraq and were committing severe human rights violations.[50] The report described the PMOI as a cult held under the tight control of Maryam Rajavi. The report prompted a response by the PMOI and friendly MEPs (European MPs), who published a counter-report in September 2005.[51] They noted that HRW had "relied only on 12 hours interviews with 12 suspicious individuals", and stated that "a delegation of MEPs visited Camp Ashraf in Iraq" and "conducted impromptu inspections of the sites of alleged abuses." Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca (PP), one of the Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament, alleged that Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) was the source of the evidence against the PMOI.[51]

Prompted by the FOFI document, Human Rights Watch re-interviewed all 12 of the original witnesses, conducting private and personal interviews lasting several hours with each of them in Germany and the Netherlands, where the witnesses now live. All of the witnesses restated their claims about the PMOI camps from the 1991-2003 period, saying PMOI officials subjected them to various forms of physical and psychological abuses once they made known their wishes to leave the organization.[52]

Friday afternoon Regina Spektor goodness

The NIE and the Neocons

Predictably, Norman Podhoretz and Jon Bolton find fault with the NIE report which flatly states that Iran halted their nuclear weapons program three years ago. Bolton sees a conspiracy in the CIA to undermine the Bush administration, and Podhoretz just thinks that we're all stupid. Democracy Arsenal explains:

In recent days conservative like Berman, Norman Podhoretz, Danielle Pletka and Jon Bolton, have been trying to cast doubt on the conclusions of the intelligence community. Now the Washington Post is picking up on it and lending the arguments more credibility. When reading these arguments it's worthwhile to remember a few basic facts that should absolutely discredit this entire crowd.

First, none of these people have access to the actual intelligence. They are sitting at think tanks outside of the intelligence community and simply haven't seen the data. This was a report that shows the basic consensus of the nation's 16 intelligence and it was produced on the Bush Administration's watch and ultimately approved by the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, who is a Bush Administration appointee.

The neocons have a long history of overhyping the threats that exist to the country, but Iraq was their first real success, inasmuch as they got real US soldiers shot and killed for their fanciful agenda. The post continues:

Second, and this is even more important. This conservative and neo-conservative crowd has a long history of disregarding and manipulating intelligence when it doesn't fall conveniently into their world view. The Team B exercises in the late 1970s found that Soviet intentions and capabilities were much more dangerous than previously estimated by the intelligence community. It became part of the justification for a major military buildup against the Soviets. The Rumsfeld Commission in the 1990s was specifically set up to dispute the Intelligence Community's conclusions that the ballistic missile defense threat from developing countries to the American mainland was not an immediate danger. It became the basis for greater investment in a National Missile Defense. The Office of Special Plans that was set up in the Pentagon in the run up to the Iraq War, was specifically charged with trying to find connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq. It was used to support arguments for War.

In all of these cases conservatives played with and disregarded intelligence to help make their cases for a particular policy. And in all of these cases the conservatives were wrong.

If there was ever a case study for why it is important to study history, this is it. Considered in a correct frame of reference, nobody would listen to these bloodthirsty fools. Without a mainstream press that glosses over their failures, enables their nonsense and features them prominently on news shows as experts, these folks would be laughed out of the room. The very fact that Rudy has hired Norman Podhoretz as his foreign policy guru would disqualify him from consideration in a sane wold.

By the way, Paul Wolfowitz has already been resurrected:

In early December, Wolfowitz's time for public service came round again. Now, the former deputy defense secretary who was one of the chief architects of the Iraq war, will apparently be serving under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

According to several media reports, Wolfowitz has been offered a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board -- formerly known as the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board -- a prestigious State Department panel.

There's a happy thought.

Rudy and Mitt

It really is amazing that Rudy still dominates the conversation on the conservative side, considering this.

Kerik and Giuliani have previously insisted that there was no security detail or valet service prior to December 2000.

But now it turns out that that's not true. Yesterday Giuliani aides conceded that in fact Nathan had been received the valet service and security detail "sporadically" from early 2000 in response to yet more undisclosed, undetailed and unconfirmed "threats".

"Sporadically" is Team Rudy's word. Witnesses and a law enforcement source now say she got a full-time NYPD valet service for months before the affair went public.

Bear in mind, this is now well before anyone knew anyone knew the two were having an affair and thus before anyone knew who Judi Nathan was. So why would she be receiving 'threats' at all?

Revelations about the use of taxpayer money to fund limo rides for his mistress would torpedo just about anyone else's candidacy. This guy makes the Teflon Don look like a piker.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, who is running fifth nationally, gave a big speech on religion yesterday.

What a swell idea....

The NYT editorial board beggars belief in calling for the Bush administration to call in the big guns in order to implement Bush's "carrot and stick" approach with Iran. Ignoring the fact that the NIE report actually flies in the face of the rhetoric that has emanated from the oval office for months, and ignoring the fact that Bush undoubtedly knew that Iran had shuttered their nuclear weapons program at the time he hinted at WWIII, they encourage the administration to send in the big hitters in the rush towards actual diplomacy. And who do they nominate for this delicate and important task? Wait for it.... Condi Rice.

It's hard to understate the extent to which this Secretary of State has bungled one assignment after another. As national security adviser, she ignored George Tenant's briefings on OBL, and ignored the memo which warned of an imminent attack on our soil. She has become a born again neo-con, turning her back on the legacy of Brent Scowcroft, who was her boss in the first Bush administration, and who has become a vocal critic of the shit show that we have had to sit through for the past eight years. Perhaps only Junior bears more responsibility for this pointless war and the undeniable fact that is has worked at a diametric pole to our actual national interest. Cheney is a bloodthirsty old ghoul, his support for this war and any other war he could sink his teeth into should be no surprise. But Condi.....she has unquestionably supported a war that has squandered our treasury, killed thousands of our best and brightest, and created many more terrorists than we could ever imagine. Everything that she has touched has turned to shit.

The Times' editorial is a nice bookend to Hillary's suggestion that she would turn to Colin Powell in order to engender bipartisan support for a new international diplomacy. Please, can we not do better than a man who's legacy has to be defined by his performance at the UN? He sold his soul to the devil that day, and it should be a stain upon his visage all the days of his life. If the Democratic candidates feel that it is necessary to rehabilitate the reputations of this group, I'm afraid I won't be able to watch.

They be hatin'

I'm feeling pretty good about myself today, I actually sat through about 20 minutes of the Republican debate last night. I feel like I did my level best to get my head fair and balanced.

God, what an awful group of human beings.

They wasted no time in getting the red meat out on the floor, with the first few questions about immigration reform. Rudy and Mitt jumped right on it, each trying to out hate the other one, accusing one another of gross improprieties: (You were the mayor of a sanctuary city! You hired illegals to clean your mansion!). Poor John McCain tried to back down some of the demagoguing, and Fred Thompson rolled over and barked a little bit of bile into the conversation now and again. Ten minutes into the debate, it was a battle to see who could prove that they were the number one hater of brown folks, and not surprisingly, Tom Tancredo flashed his bona fides and won that match. Sheesh.

The YouTube crowd was a comforting cross section of Republican America. From the Weekly Standard:

So, a good night for for the lowest denominator, a bad night for the GOP. America got to see a vaguely threatening parade of gun fetishists, flat worlders, Mars Explorers, Confederate flag lovers and zombie-eyed-Bible-wavers as well as various one issue activists hammering their pet causes.

I actually started to understand why Huckabee is polling so well. He speaks clearly and slow, uses small words and bromides, and makes a point of telling everybody that he's the holiest one of the bunch. With Rudy and Fred up there, that aint sayin' much, but I hear it's playing well in Des Moines.

Needless to say, after 20 minutes, I finished up my nightcap and headed up to bed. If the Dems actually find a way to lose this election, they don't deserve a party.

UPDATE: Here's a classic.

So easy to make fun.

James Wolcott linked to this screech of anguish from a blog called "view from the right". . It gives you a good sense of what keeps these folks up at night:

How our culture portrays relations between the sexes

Late last night I turned on the tv (which I do for five minutes once every month or so--literally), and this is what I saw. I saw 60 seconds of some show, in which a young man in a hospital room is embarrassedly complaining that he doesn't want to shave a male patient's "curly," his pubic hair (one imagines in preparation for surgery), and a very young, very pretty blond woman standing on the other side of the patient's bed tells the young man in a bossy, down-putting, drill-sergeant tone that he'd better do it or he will get a bad report from her, and that he should count his lucky stars that she's only telling him to shave the man's groin. He is abashed by this lecture, and in a defeated manner accepts the razor from her as she walks out of the room.

Some readers will feel that my proposal to limit the franchise is extreme, pointless, and a distraction from more pressing issues. But the tv scene I've just recounted demonstrates the ultimate end of a thoroughgoing sexual equality--not equality between the sexes, but a perverted female supremacism over the male.

For some reason, I'm not quite as threatened when I watch reruns of Scrubs.

Joe Klein is a hack

Certainly, Joe Klein, Time's political columnist and glorified talking head is a hack, but his hackitude points to a larger issue about the power of blogs, the internet and distributed networks. Glen Greenwald takes apart Klein's embarrassingly lazy and dangerous work on the latest FISA legislation here.

The part that really grabbed my attention is where Klein, after being called on his factually incorrect and intellectually slovenly work, admits:

I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right

But of course, many others, including Greenwald do have that background and the time to figure out the factual substance of the bill and do have the wherewithal to offer a reasoned opinion on the merits of said bill. The question, then, becomes why Time offers a platform to a man who admittedly cannot and will not do the work to understand the issue about which he writes. The dangerous part is that Time represents a far larger megaphone than the internet (right now) and that many many voters receive their information from that source. So when Klein smears House Democrats for supporting a bill that

"would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court" and thus "give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans"

many many voters take that as a fact, rather than an easily disproved falsehood.

UPDATE: The Chicago Tribune reprinted a large part of Klein's original article, even though he has distanced himself from the clear falsehoods in the article. Behold the power of the traditional media.

Fear the Clintons!

Digby raises two very interesting points in this excellent post on Bush/Cheney and Clinton/Clinton today. First and most obviously, the idea that the Clinton's would represent some sort of threat to our Constitution because a President would be at risk of sharing power with a powerful alter ego is absurd in the face of the Cheney reign as the most powerful Vice in our nation's history. Every time that I come close to dismissing the tin foil hat notion that Cheney is really pulling the strings behind the administration's bald grab for executive power, and is responsible for the almost shockingly radical assault on the liberties and rights that we've fought for since the establishment of the republic, the facts get in the way and the tin foil conspiracy theories are found to be substantiated. The Frontline expose was about as shocking and disturbing a thing as you'll ever see on television, and it proves that the audacity and hubris of Cheney truly knows no bounds. He is a bloodthirsty old man, unconcerned with the niggling restrictions that we refer to as the balance of power. To wit:

I think it really meant that no one knew whether the national security adviser was playing her traditional role as the coordinator of all the different agencies involved in the national security process, or whether the vice president's office had slipped into that role. Remember, there were a lot of questions about who was going to be chairing the meetings, if the vice president was going to be regularly attending principals committee meetings? And there were a lot of uncertainties as to who was really running the show.

But the other notion that Digby alludes to is the conscious "disappearing" of Bush. Clearly the strategists on the right are working to grind into the electorate's mind that a Hillary presidency would be a continuation of the Clinton dynasty, as if the last eight years had never occurred. Not only does this ignore the reality of the true dynastic nature of the Bush family and its various extensions, but it ignores the pervasive damage that has been done to our nation since 2000. But it works very clearly to ignore the fact that Bush's approval ratings are roughly equivalent to John Wayne Gacy's, and that the real fear that we all face is the continuation of the nightmare epoch of that power mad harpie and her lecherous husband. It's clever stuff.

Grover Norquist got the ball rolling last week when he said:

“It will be ridiculous to have Mr President and Madam President in the White House,” he said. “We’re the United States of America. How can we say to President Mubarak [of Egypt], ‘You can’t hand off the presidency to your son, it’s got to be your wife’ or, ‘Hey Syria and North Korea, you’ve got to knock this stuff off and be like us’.”

Bush Hatred

There is an emerging meme on the right that basically boils down to the notion that there is an irrational hatred of Bush that is so far over the line that the left is actually crumbling in incoherence because the hatred is dominating all discerning reason. Underlying this thought is the idea that Bush's failures are ones that any man could have made, and that this administration, while not perfect, has done its level best to keep America safe and secure. Bill O'Reilly launched a tirade against Mark Cuban for funding Brian DePalma's new movie, "Redacted", which deals with the true story of the rape and murder of a fourteen year old Iraqi teen at the hands of American soldiers. In his tirade, he pins Cuban's treasonous behavior on an irrational hatred of Bush. You can see the entire clip of BillO in all his unhinged glory here.

In the Wall Street Journal today, Peter Berkowitz, a fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, has an almost incoherent piece entitled "The Insanity of Bush Hatred", which I suppose is trying to make the case that Bush hatred is irrational because it reduces arguments to black and white, and that the traditional hallmarks of progressivism and liberalism are therefore betrayed.

I actually think that the era of real Bush hatred has ebbed, and that in his twilight months, progressive and liberal opinions have morphed into a resigned ambivalence towards the man. I think liberals have moved on from the train wreck of this Presidency towards a harrowing acknowledgment that this man was elected twice. The Bush loathing has become a kind of self-loathing, or at least doubt, wondering how our electorate could have gone so wrong, not to immediately recognize what is now so patently obvious.

If anyone wants to seriously discuss irrational hatred and destructive and insane venom, look no further than the continuing jihad against all things Clinton. Even after eight years of a true assault on our Constitution, an approach to governing that can only be called dangerously radical, one that threatens the fabric of our rights and liberties, the far right continues to view Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretions as a sin so grievous that the very mention of his wife's name sends them into paroxysms of horror. Tbogg takes them all to pieces here.

But what Kathryn Jean is actually talking about is the looming threat of a Hillary Clinton presidency that will somehow bring to the surface all of those deeply repressed memories of a period in American life when people (and by people I mean people like Kathryn Jean Lopez) were consumed with that slab of hillbilly ham hock that nestles snugly, but restlessly, in Clinton Crotch Holler. If you were expecting a detailed analysis of The Darkness 1993-2001 (the forced abortions, the all-gay military, the Other Great Depression, Jerry Maguire) , you will be sorely disappointed since it appears that all of woes somehow flowed from the massive manmeat of Cockmaster Bill:

I’ve lived through the blue dress and all the other details. We all lived through that. And while the impeachment was about important public issues — perjury and abuse of power — it all stemmed from, and fed into, that drama that is the Clintons.

Now that's irrational.

The mind of the right

Here's Deroy Murdock, fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Scripps Howard news correspondent, explaining why George Bush ought to embrace waterboarding, as he says, proudly:

Meanwhile, President Bush is deeply deluded if he thinks opposing waterboarding will buy him any goodwill among the domestic and international Left, who hate him immeasurably. More quickly than the average Capitol Hill flip flop, Democrats who scream against waterboarding today will skin Bush alive if, God forbid, there is another major terror attack here on his watch.

“He didn’t keep us safe,” they will moan. “Why didn’t he stop this?” they will bellow. Instantly forgotten will be Bush’s very dangerous concessions to his domestic critics. His approval of the CIA’s 2006 request to ban waterboarding will give Bush absolutely zero protection if today’s soft-on-terror Democrats become tomorrow’s post-terror hawks. They will pick him apart like a hummingbird.

This is all the more reason for President Bush to reinstate waterboarding, proudly and publicly, so America can get the information we need to prevent Muslim-fanatic mass murder and win the Global War on Terror.

Some articles speak for themselves.

Look back in bewilderment..

In these dark hours, it really helps to go back to a much more horrible time, when Bill Clinton rocked the nation to its very core because he, ummm....got a blow job. This article, from Washington doyenne Sally Quinn, really captures the essence of that time, when our constitution hung in the balance. Even though a large majority of the country thought the whole idea of censure or impeachment was an absurd over-reaction to a personal matter, and that the panty-sniffing of ideologues like Ken Starr and Newt Gingrich were way beyond the pale, the real aggrieved parties were the insiders in the Beltway, who were so offended by the crass outsider who had, after all, spoiled their party:

Muffie Cabot, who as Muffie Brandon served as social secretary to President and Nancy Reagan, regards the scene with despair. "This is a demoralized little village," she says. "People have come from all over the country to serve a higher calling and look what happened. They're so disillusioned. The emperor has no clothes. Watergate was pretty scary, but it wasn't quite as sordid as this."

and of course, Saint Joe needs to weigh in:

"This is our town," says Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Democrat to forcefully condemn the president's behavior. "We spend our lives involved in talking about, dealing with, working in government. It has reminded everybody what matters to them. You are embarrassed about what Bill Clinton's behavior says about the White House, the presidency, the government in general."

and the most famous quote of them all, from the biggest 'villager' of them all:

"He came in here and he trashed the place," says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "and it's not his place."

It's all kind of quaint, in a way. But these were also Bush's enablers, the same pundits and politicians who were wowed by the bullhorn, the flight suit, and the faux machismo. These are the same people who bought the fact that a cheerleader from Yale could pretend to be a cowboy from Crawford, and rallied behind his lies and looked past his incompetence. Now, the country has turned against the man and his disastrous war, and the pundits are ready to move on, because the war was only fun when we were winning, wasn't it?

Torture and Its Aftermath...

Here is the smoking gun CIA memo that ties Colin Powell's testimony linking Al Queda and Saddam to a confession made by a captured terrorist that was basically buried alive for 17 hours.

But now, hearing how the information was obtained, the CIA was soon to retract all this intelligence. A Feb. 5 cable records that al Libi was told by a "foreign government service" (Egypt) that: "the next topic was al-Qa'ida's connections with Iraq...This was a subject about which he said he knew nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story."

Al Libi indicated that his interrogators did not like his responses and then "placed him in a small box approximately 50cm X 50cm [20 inches x 20 inches]." He claimed he was held in the box for approximately 17 hours. When he was let out of the box, al Libi claims that he was given a last opportunity to "tell the truth." When al Libi did not satisfy the interrogator, al Libi claimed that "he was knocked over with an arm thrust across his chest and he fell on his back." Al Libi told CIA debriefers that he then "was punched for 15 minutes." (Sourced to CIA cable, Feb. 5, 2004).

Here was a cable then that informed Washington that one of the key pieces of evidence for the Iraq war -- the al Qaeda/Iraq link -- was not only false but extracted by effectively burying a prisoner alive.

This really cuts to the core of where we've gone off the tracks. The amazing thing is that this news has been out in the public domain for over a year, and that more has not been made of it. I guess we've been a bit too preoccupied with Brittany and Lindsay to focus on the fact that our government caused the torture of a captive and acted upon coerced information that they knew was wrong. The use of the confession has unequivocally harmed our national interest. The use of the confession has led to the death of our soldiers and thousands of innocent civilians, exposed the limits of our military strength, and inflamed the entire Islamic world. It has led us to cede the moral high ground that we occupied for the better part of our history and established us as a pariah. We have squandered our treasure and our blood upon these lies.

And the Democrats, facing a nation in which 50% of the population strongly disapprove of the job that the President is doing refuse to stand up to this administration for fear of appearing 'weak' on terrorism. How can they not see the results of eight years of an administration that is 'strong' on terror?

Pictures say more than words?

Picture gallery of Iran.

Mukasey and the Cheney Cabal

Sidney Blumenthal at Salon distills the essence of the Mukasey evasions and points out what is evident to any sentient being at this point, that Mukasey has destroyed his reputation and integrity at the hands of a White House that continues to disregard the rule of law. At the heart of the matter stands one of the most loathsome of the Bush loyalists, David Addington.

In his confirmation hearings, Mukasey has proved he will dance as the strings are pulled. His positions on waterboarding express precisely the relationship between the Bush White House and its Justice Department. Mukasey's testimony telegraphs that the White House will continue to call the shots. He has already ceded the essence of his power even before assuming it. His vaunted integrity and independence have been crushed, short work for Addington.

Blumenthal then ties Addington's work back to Iran contra and the cabal that surrounded the ghoulish director of the CIA, William Casey and the ranking member of the subcommittee that investigated Iran contra, Dick Cheney. Their work at the time should seem familiar to us today:

"These guys don't like the mainstream CIA. In fact, they hate it," the CIA official explained. "They don't like information unless it fits what they want to hear. They hate the CIA because the CIA tells them what they don't want to hear. They want assessments that prove ideological points. They are looking for simplistic answers to complicated issues. They inhabit a make-believe world of moving up into perceived areas of expertise. It's the same guys; they all resurface when Republicans are back in power. It's the same group. It's a system. The similarities are amazing in all these wars we've been dragged into.

and it all comes around to destroy Mukasey:

Cheney's defense of Casey's actions as written by Addington in the minority report became the core of the Bush doctrine: The president as commander in chief can do whatever he wants regardless of Congress. There must be no checks and balances, no accountability. There must be no disclosure to other branches of government, whether legislative or judicial. Oral findings, or, if necessary, secret memos, make the illegal legal merely by saying they are legal in the name of presidential authority. The operational need to know determines who knows.

Now Mukasey, who was supposed to restore credibility to the Justice Department, has been transformed overnight into a cog in the machine, another servant to his masters, Addington's apologist. His brief tragedy is just one small outcome of a long history. The almost instantaneous tainting of his reputation should have been understood from the start as inevitable.

It's pretty clear to me that nobody of any character would ever accept an appointment in this administration, and Chuck Schumer's character reference notwithstanding, Mukasey and anyone who does so should be looked at with a jaundiced eye. In the last months of a lame duck presidency, where the executive is despised by a higher number of citizens than any man who has sat in the oval office, a decision to board this listing vessel should be cause for more than a head scratch.

What we missed

John Judis has about as straightforward an analysis of the Bush administration's imperial folly as you'll find. The entire article is really worth reading.

Sometimes the name calling and aspersions cast make terms like "imperialism" and "neo con" almost meaningless. It is vitally important, however, to understand the meaning of those terms in a historical sense. To ignore the history, is of course, the height of folly. Barbara Tuchman made that clear. Judis' article clearly delineates the differences between the liberal interventionism of Wilson, FDR, GHWBush and Clinton and the more radical and original imperialist approach that Bush has adopted, with a great deal of help from the neo-conservative cabal that surrounds him.

When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, however, his foreign policy echoed not only that of neo-isolationist Republicans like former Majority Leader Dick Armey, but also that of America's foreign policy before we decided in 1898 that we had to get involved in the struggle for empire. That was an America that not only scorned empire but was oblivious to much of the outside world. Bush disdained international organizations. He withdrew the United States from the Kyoto climate treaty and whatever other international agreements had yet to be ratified. He was a unilateralist, but he was reluctant to use America's singular power to affect the governments of other countries. His highest defense priority was the erection of an anti-missile system, the purpose of which was not only to make the United States impregnable from foreign attack, but also to reduce the reliance of the U.S. on other countries for its security......After September 11, they spoke openly of creating a new American empire. "People are now coming out of the closet on the word ‘empire,'" Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer exulted.

Indeed, this brand of imperialism, as practiced by the Bush administration, is remarkably similar to the older European variety. Its outward veneer is optimistic and even triumphalist, when articulated by a neo-conservative like Max Boot or William Kristol, and is usually accompanied by a vision of global moral-religious-social transformation. The British boasted of bringing Christianity and civilization to the heathens; America's neo-conservatives trumpet the virtues of free-market capitalism and democracy. And like the older imperialism, Bush's policy toward Iraq and the Middle East has been driven by a fear of losing out on scarce natural resources. Ultimately, his policy is as much a product of the relative decline of American power brought about by the increasingly fierce international competition for resources and markets as it is of America's "unipolar moment."

The Middle East, where Muslims still blanch at the Crusades and later British and French attempts to divide and rule, is particularly sensitive to outside attempts at domination. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda didn't spring from Mecca but from the battlefield in Afghanistan, from resentment of American support for Israel and of American bases on Arab soil. Bush's policy in the region has reflected a profound ignorance of this history. Wrote former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in January 2007, "America is acting like a colonial power in Iraq. But the age of colonialism is over. Waging a colonial war in the post-colonial age is self-defeating."

It is this "profound ignorance", this proud anti-intellectual and ahistorical posture that rankles me the most. At that end of the day, none of it should have been a surprise. He had laid it all out there on the campaign trail, and for some reason we ignored the danger. We elected a Yale cheerleader because we convinced ourselves he was a rugged cowboy. We elected a lifelong failure because we convinced ourselves that he radiated strength. We chose an alcoholic religious fanatic because he seemed like the kind of guy you could have a beer with. The fault, dear Brutus....

There were many pundits that were shouted down in the run up to the invasion of Iraq who warned that this outcome was likely. We failed to distinguish between what we achieved (and how we achieved it) in Bosnia from what we were undertaking in Baghdad. Shame on us for that.

This is going well, isn't it?

According to Indian news reports, the Turkish government pressed their actions into Northern Iraq this morning:

Cobra attack helicopters blasted suspected Kurdish rebel targets on Tuesday near the southeastern border with Iraq in a second day of fighting in the Mount Cudi area, which has reportedly claimed the lives of three Turkish soldiers and six guerrillas.

As the military pressure continued, the government called a Cabinet meeting for Wednesday to discuss a National Security Council recommendation on possible economic measures against groups supporting the Kurdish rebels, private CNN-Turk and NTV television reported.

Meanwhile, the leader of the northern Iraq regional Kurdish government had this to say:

Barzani implied in his words this weekend that Ankara might have other reasons behind its stance on the PKK, noting that PKK terror was not a new factor for Turkey. He said "I am about ready to believe that the PKK is just an excuse. Turkey's stance towards the Kurdish region, and its direct and indirect threats towards the region, make me think this. The real target is the Kurdistan region, otherwise why would we even want to get involved in a struggle between Turkey and the PKK?"

Glad we elected a Preznit who doesn't do nuance.

Seriously, there were lots of folks who warned that a preemptive strike against Baghdad was fraught with risk, due to the inherently complicated and unstable nature of Iraq and Western Asia generally. Regional and tribal hatreds, barely understood outside of a small group of Western analysts were a wild card that brought the risk of a larger regional conflagration into the equation. We now are reaping what we sowed, of course, and we hope against hope that the kids that have been placed in harm's way can survive until this group of adolescents leave the White House. The risk that we face, however, is that they won't leave without broadening the war into Iran, a country of which we know even less, and one with which we have not had consular relations or diplomatic dialogue with in three decades.

I have an eleven year old son, and my fear is that the George W Bush is writing a ticket that my son will have to pay for.

That didn't take long...

Don Surber adroitly points out that the California wildfires may indeed have been masterminded by Al Queda operatives

The stupid, it burns!

Rudy and the Monsignor....

The Washington Monthly picks up on the fact that Rudy is truly the heir apparent and true torch carrier for the radical expansion of executive power that the Bush administration has grabbed. As Digby says, "this is the guy the unitary executive was designed for".

Today, Giuliani is a front-runner for the presidency of the United States. Since 9/11 the office he seeks has been radically remade. Led by Dick Cheney, the Bush administration has expanded White House powers to levels unseen since the Nixon years. Claiming an inherent authority to act outside the law, it has unilaterally set aside treaties, intercepted telephone calls between citizens without court warrants, detained individuals indefinitely without judicial review, ordered "enhanced interrogations," or torture, prohibited by law, and claimed the ability to disregard more than 1,000 parts of legislation that it has deemed to improperly restrict its authority. To thwart oversight and checks on its power, all spheres of executive branch operations have been fortified by heightened secrecy.

This expansion has warped policy decisions, undermined the country's authority abroad, and damaged the framework of laws, institutions, and processes that secure citizens against abuse by the state. It also prompts two of the most crucial, if as yet unasked, questions of the 2008 presidential race: Which contenders are most likely to relinquish some of these powers, or, at the very least, decline to fully use them? And, alternatively, which candidate is most likely to not only embrace the powers that Bush has claimed, but to seize more? The reply to the first question is complicated, but to the second it's simple: Rudy Giuliani.

Read the whole thing. We really miss Steve Gilliard, who was so deft at pointing out how much New Yorkers despised Rudy by the end of his second term.

Such hubris, pettiness, and blind stubbornness would probably manifest itself in day to day decisions that Rudy makes on the campaign trail, wouldn't it? Hmmmm......

Meet Monsignor Alan Placa

The statute of limitations is a wonderful thing.....

Nuts

Uh oh. Don't tell Rudy and William the Bloody Kristol, but the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff thinks that they are raging lunatics.

He rejected the counsel of those who might urge immediate attacks inside Iran to destroy nuclear installations or to stop the flow of explosives that end up as powerful roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan, killing American troops.

With America at war in two Muslim countries, he said, attacking a third Islamic nation in the region “has extraordinary challenges and risks associated with it.” The military option, he said, should be a last resort.

And just in case all of the saber rattling from Michael Leeden and Bill Kristol wasn't clear, Cheney laid out his philosophy quite baldly this weekend. From his speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

They've chosen this method because they believe it works, and they believe the history of the late 20th century proves the point. During the 1980s and '90s, as terror networks began to wage attacks against Americans, we usually responded, if at all, with subpoenas, indictments, and the occasional cruise missile. As time passed, the terrorists believed they'd exposed a certain weakness and lack of confidence in the West, particularly in America.

Dr. Bernard Lewis explained the terrorists' reasoning this way: "During the Cold War," Dr. Lewis wrote, "two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: 'What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?'" End quote.

Get it? The Commie haters, the guys that we're so obsessed with Communism as a threat to our shores for three decades actually were envious of the Reds. Cheney and these authoritarian wannabes gazed longingly at the totalitarian regime that used unchecked brutality to vanquish opposition domestically and internationally. This is where warrantless wiretapping and rendition and Abu Ghraib all begin, with a man crush on authoritarianism and the lattitude of an unchecked executive power. And just like the Communists, the background has to be fear. In order for these guys to succeed, it is imperative that we all be kept in a state of high anxiety. World War III, duct tape, orange alerts, the like. Again, we see that Reagan and GHWBush, for their flaws, were pikers compared to these nuts.

UPDATE: That would be this Bernard Lewis, mentioned by Cheney above

Last year, the Princeton scholar, Bernard Lewis, a close adviser to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal predicting that on Aug. 22, 2006, President Ahmadinejad was going to end the world. The date, he explained, "is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the Prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque,' usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back. This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world" (my emphasis). This would all be funny if it weren't so dangerous.

What do these guys have for 90 year old ghouls like Podhoretz and Lewis?

Here's a thought...

By the way, if these lunatics are hell bent on declaring war on Iran, they better abide by the Regan rule, namely, no more happy adventures in Western Asia unless they re-institute the draft. If Rudy, Deadeye Dick and Little Lord Fauntleroy don't have the guts to face the American people and explain why it is completely necessary to draft my son and thousands of others in order to bomb the cradle of civilization into oblivion, then they don't get to do it. If the threat of Islamofascism, or whatever the hell Sean Hannity calls it these days isn't scary and threatening enough to get these guys out in front of the people to convince us that we ought to send our best and brightest into the breach, then they're just going to have to wait.

And by the way, we lived through an era when there were 10,000 nuclear warheads pointed at our major cities and a senile president in the white house, snacking on porridge while a bunch of zealous and criminal lunatics like John Negroponte, Elliot Abrams and Ollie North cut secret deals with dictators and death squads all over the world in a high stakes game of poker. For some reason, I find that a little more threatening than World War IV, which apparently is already underway. Unfortunately, in his train wreck of a presser yesterday, Bushie made it clear that he's not up to speed on the neocon war counting game, because he's still trying to scare the shit out of us by warning us of World War III. Olberman took that all apart here

These guys really ought to get their stories straight.

Is Rudy Insane or just stupid?

Josh Marshall runs down the four horsemen of Rudy's brain trust for foreign policy.



If you wanted to pick a candidate that actually represents a far stupider approach than the current White House's to the challenges that face the United States in 2008, you couldn't do much better than Giuliani. He is truly the heir to the anti-intellectual legacy of the current administration, and like Bush, stands for symbol over substance. He has been repudiated on his signal achievement, his actions in the aftermath of 9/11, and has been called out as a grandstander who actually failed in his efforts to prepare the first responders who he uses as props for his claim to legitimacy. He has surrounded himself with hacks like Bernie Kerick, and displays a shocking inappropriateness in his personal life and on the campaign trail. His choice of a bloodthirsty old ghoul like Norman Podhoretz as a foreign policy adviser displays a stunning example that he is either dangerously militaristic or profoundly ignorant.

It really boggles the mind that the Republican party can't come up with anyone less batshit insane to carry their flag in the next election, but unfortunately, that is another legacy of the failed Presidency of the Idiot Prince.

UPDATE: The Washington Monthly has an article by Rachel Morris that really spells the whole thing out.

UPDATE: Question Answered:

Subprime Mess

Here's the best explanation of the subprime mortgage meltdown that I've seen. Very easy to understand, very straightforward. I certainly wouldn't want to own shares in Moody's right now.

It truly is amazing that Goldman makes money at the end of the day, but I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Think there's a message in the fact that Goldman isn't interested in participating in the $100B bailout fund that Citi and B of A are putting together to bail out their own exposure to crappy subprime products?

Bill Kristol's World

....oh, and by the way, Little Bill Kristol was huffing the keyboard cleaner again:

That's partly because the GOP nominee will be stronger than Gerald Ford (with all due respect to the memory of that decent man, who would have been a better president than Carter). While a half-term senator and a one-term senator fight it out for the Democratic nomination, the GOP candidates include an experienced senator who's a war hero, the most successful political chief executive in recent times, an impressive businessman/governor, and a canny lawyer/senator/actor with Washington experience and a nice, middle-American background and manner.

Here's what's likely to happen: When the nominees are selected next year, the Republican will be behind--just as the GOP nominee trailed, at various times, in the 1980, 1988, 2000, and 2004 campaigns. Then the Republican will rally and probably win. Look to 1988 for a model: a tired, two-term presidency, a newly invigorated Democratic Congress causing all
kinds of problems for the administration, an intelligent, allegedly centrist Democratic nominee, and a bruising Republican primary with lots of unhappiness about the field of candidates. This resulted in a 17-point early lead for Michael Dukakis over George H.W. Bush, but an eventual Republican victory. True, the current Republican incumbent, George W. Bush, isn't Ronald Reagan. And the 2008 Republican nominee is going to have to chart his own path to victory. It will be a challenge. But it's a healthy one. Let McCain, Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney have at it. The competition will be good for them and good for the party, ensuring that the winner will be up to the task both of winning the presidency and leading the country.
No doubt he totally bogarted the whole can.

Liberals Kill Soldiers!!!!

Just so we can get out in front of the next breathless Fox News/Rush/Dennis Praeger/Glenn Beck news cycle, in which we will be told in no uncertain terms that Congress' delay in giving the Bush Administration blanket permission to sniff your underwear drawer led to the death of US soldiers in Iraq, Glenn Greenwald is nice enough to point out that it's all baloney.

As always, the Bush administration and their allies intend to play games with and nakedly exploit national security issues in order to obtain more unchecked power. Specifically, Roll Call reports today (sub. rq'd) that "Republicans are planning to use the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three U.S. soldiers in Iraq earlier this year to put a 'human face' on the [FISA] issue" -- referring to prior claims by Mike McConnell that delays in completing the forms for a FISA warrant prevented timely eavesdropping on Iraqi insurgents who had kidnapped those soldiers.

Like clockwork, the standard roster of GOP hacks -- The New York Post and Instapundit -- have their talking-point marching orders and are today promoting this dramatic tale. The Post article goes so far as to show a picture of one of the kidnapped soliders with his wife and repeatedly insinuates that the need to comply with FISA prevented the U.S. military from eavesdropping on insurgent calls and thereby prevented the military from saving this soldier.

As Spencer Ackerman previously reported, McConnell's claims in this regard are completely false, since their failure to eavesdrop right away was their own fault for failing to invoke FISA's emergency eavesdropping provision, whereby they are free to eavesdrop for 72 hours without a warrant. Just as importantly, the eavesdropping here involved foreign-to-foreign communications (i.e., Iraq-to-Iraq), which nobody in Congress believes ought to require a warrant.

This incident, then, has absolutely nothing to do with the pending FISA debate. But the administration and its standard, mindless followers nonetheless exploit -- as usual -- the U.S. troops who were killed by insurgents in Iraq for their own domestic political agenda.

I hadn't even heard the caterwauling from the Limbaugh crowd on this one before I read the article, but I'm sure that is only because I took a few days off from my usual self flagellation routine of tuning into the Big Talker, 1210 AM in order to do my oppo research. The truth of the matter is that FISA gives the administration broad and reasonable latitude with regard to policing international terrorism, and that at the heart of the "illegal wiretapping" debate is the brazen disregard for existing law that this administration embraced. FISA is the law of the land, and has been since 1978. If a republican administration and a republican congress, alongside a republican supreme court wanted to change this law after 9/11, they had every right to do so. They chose to break the law instead. At the end of the day, they do not believe that this is a country built on the rule of law and nothing proves that more clearly than this particular decision.

Chicago

Off to City of the Big Shoulders for a few days. Here's Freddie King:



How bout them shirt collars?

Bush and History

One of the persistent themes that the defenders of this administration, in particular the Decider in Chief return to again and again is the notion that when the history of this presidency is finally written, it will exonerate the wisdom of W's bold decisiveness and stubborn insistence on staying the course. There is a fatalistic belief that in the long long run, the books will note that while he was persecuted and reviled in his time in office, the ultimate wisdom and foresight of his actions will win the day.

This seems to me to be a complete load of crap.

What is it that would make such a scenario play out? Very concrete objectives were laid out when we pre-emptively invaded a sovereign constitutional government in Iraq, namely the defeat of radical Islamic terrorists who were being supported by Saddam Hussein, as well as the dismantling of his stockpiles of WMDs, which he was hiding from the United Nations Weapons Inspectors. Even giving Bush a mulligan for the WMD lies, it seems objectively clear that we have created many more radical Islamic terrorists than we've defeated, and we've spread chaos and destruction throughout Western Asia. We've become a pariah on the international stage, and strengthened and emboldened Iran, a true hegemon in the region, and invigorated their aspirations for a Shiite ascendancy across Persia and Mesopotamia. We've inflamed dormant and suppressed ancient tribal hatreds and unleashed misery and death that we in the United States may never truly appreciate.

At the end of the day, Iraq may heal, Iran may lurch towards modernity and open society, and the United States may regain the moral high ground that it has occupied as long as I have been around. But that will have nothing at all to do with the actions undertaken by this administration. If we end up with a thriving multi ethnic democracy in Iraq and a cosmopolitan Persian republic, there is no way that it will have anything to do with what we've unleashed. It will be in spite of that. The march towards openness and modernity will be led by the people of those countries, not imposed by a hypocritical invading force, nor "unleashed" by Operation Desert Whatever.

The hubris of this administration's belief that history will exonerate their decisions beggars belief. It is based upon the completely misguided belief that this war is somehow noble and emancipating. War is a failure of diplomacy and of human progress. The history of this Presidency can be written now, a failed policy, a failed war, a failed presidency.

Alaska Double Dip..

I did the double-dip of "guys lost in Alaska" movies yesterday. Started out with Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" at the theater in the afternoon, and finished with Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man" on Netflix in the evening. I was a little disappointed in the Penn movie, I found it very long and more than a little sappy. The story is compelling, though, and there are some great cameos by Hal Holbrooke and Vince Vaughn. The soundtrack is really powerful, Eddie Vedder on every track.

The Herzog movie, on the other hand, was incredible. Like in many of his other films, most notably the treatment of Bruno S. in "Stroszek", he observes people outside of society uncritically. Timothy Treadwell is a perfect muse for Herzog, and he is treated with in a way that accepts his enormous flaws but at the same time respects his misplaced motivations. Treadwell thought that he was protecting the Grizzlys and that he had created a unique relationship with the bears. He of course had done neither. The bears were located in an enormous preserve, the Katamai National Park and Preserve, and his unique relationship ended rather disturbingly. Herzog, however, shows a certain admiration for his subject, both for his courage, which cannot be denied, and also for his art.

For the other interesting thing about Treadwell, particularly for Herzog, is that he was a filmmaker. "Grizzly Man" is based on the over 100 hours of film that Treadwell himself shot over a five year period. Herzog analyzes Treadwell's style, his insistence on a number of takes for a particular scene, etc. He also scrutinizes the clues that exist in Treadwell's film, in particular the rare and cryptic appearances of his girlfriend, Arnie Huguenard.

Richard Thompson does the soundtrack on "Grizzly Man", which is also excellent.

Declan

No dancing for you....

Bob Gates and Iran

Apparently, Bob Gates is the only person in the inner circle of the executive branch of this administration who thinks that bombing Iran and its 70 million inhabitants back to the stone age in another pre-emptive strike is a bad idea. As the Daily Telegraph notes,

Pentagon sources say Mr Gates is waging a subtle campaign to undermine the Cheney camp by encouraging the army's senior officers to speak frankly about the overstretch of forces, and the difficulty of fighting another war.

Bruce Reidel, a former CIA Middle East officer, said: "Cheney's people know they can beat Condi. They have been doing it for six years. Bob Gates is a different kettle of fish. He doesn't owe the President anything. He is urging his officers to be completely honest, knowing what that means."

The reason that Gates is a different kettle of fish is because he is Poppy's boy, sent in to try to clean up the mess that the idiot prince and his pals dragged us into. He's got a lot on his plate, though, because Cheney is surely aware that Poppy wants Gates to counterbalance his own influence. Poppy has had a very mixed record in trying to corral his son, as evidenced by Junior's treatment of the Baker Hamilton report.

Cheney is a sick and twisted old man, in decrepit physical condition who has no fear of anything, because he knows that he will be dead soon. Like many men who have faced death, he is a changed man, and in this case he has become an unhinged, murderous swine. Like Norman Podhoretz, he lusts for a war with Persia and sees it as his legacy. The obvious thing to watch here, is whether Gates will be steamrolled by David Addington and Dick Cheney, because if he is, we may be facing even more horror in Western Asia. How's this make you feel?

One CIA insider said: "Bush understands that any increase in real military hostilities in Iran right now could have a negative effect. Bob Gates is the only one opposed to it. He's the single person in the US government who has any standing with the White House fighting it."

Now, consider that the person Gates is trying to influence began his speech this week in Lancaster, PA with the following:

I really appreciate the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce for giving me an opportunity to explain why I have made some of the decisions I have made. My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions.

Feel even better?

Round up the Usual Suspects....

In an article in today's Inquirer, Arlen Specter comments on the just disclosed 2005 legal opinions on interrogations that clearly show that Bush and his idiot minion, Abu Gonzo made conscious and clear efforts to institutionalize torture as a policy, whether Congress made it explicitly illegal or not. Aside from the fact that it is simply pathetic that we as a nation are even having a discussion on whether thumbscrews and waterboarding are appropriate behaviors, Specter's indignation is really mind numbing.

"I think they're shocking," he said.
He said Congress voted to ban "cruel, inhumand and degrading treatment in December 2005 without knowing that the Justice Department had already decided that the CIA's methods did not violate that standard.
"I think the administration has a duty to inform Congress about these opinions," Specter said.

Oh, come on, Arlen. Nobody that hasn't been huffing spray paint for the past eight years could be shocked by this. It fits the pattern of utter disdain that this administration has shown for the rule of law and the Constitutional balance of power that this country was founded upon. Bush has made it clear, whether it be through signing statements, recess appointments, cronyism, fired prosecutors, or the general politicization of the Justice Department that he has no time for our Constitutional Democracy and that in his own words, a dictatorship would be much easier, if he were the dictator.

How can you be shocked Arlen? In making another empty threat to use the power of the purse to hold this administration accountable for their disdain for the Congress, you said:

Institutionally, the presidency is walking all over Congress at the moment. If we are to maintain our institutional prerogative, that may be the only way we can do it.…

It is true that we have no assurance that the president would follow any statute that we enact.

That was in May of 2006.

The State of The Right's Discourse

From the comments at Think Progress, during a discussion of Rush Limbaugh's statement that soldiers that spoke out against the mission in Iraq after returning are "phony soldiers":

How many of you left-wing liberal morons have heard what Rush actually said? Have you heard of Jesse MacBeth? Ms- I’m not a lesbian Cackle Fruit- Clinton is having her way with the media. The media has lost so much credibility! ABC in particular is the mouthpeice of the anti-Bush, anti U.S. Democrats! Hillary, aka Joseph Goebbels are like the pitbulls of Michael Vick and the Nazis of WWII rolled into one.. Isn’t ironic that the real voices of descent-Rush and Bill O’Reilly are being attacked in “the Media”. Well, Ms- I’m not a lesbian Cackle Fruit- Clinton couldn’t destroy the country if anyone disagreed. The liberal Democrat party should be renamed The National Socialist Party-Nazi. Remember Hitler promised the Germans everything and gave them hell on earth!! Do we want the same?

Comment by mikey309 — October 1, 2007 @ 9:01 pm

Joe Dirt.

The Mustache of Understanding

Shorter Tom Friedman

This whole war in Iraq thing has turned into such a bummer. It was way more fun to write about this when W had the bullhorn and the flight suit, but now it just sucks. When can we start talking about cool things like 'the world is flat' again?

Dude, WTF?

Bill Kristol takes a monstrous hit of the elder bud and proclaims:

Before last night, I thought it was 50-50 that the Republican nominee would win in November 2008.

Now I think it's 2 to 1. And if the Democrat is anyone but Hillary, it's 4 to 1.

Nothing to Fear

Digby explains how the Democrats get it completely backward in acquiescing to the absurd condemnation of MoveOn's ad in the NYT. Rather than supporting this private organization's right to voice their opinion, David Obey and the Dems accuse the group of McCarthyism. This is really 'through the looking glass' sort of stuff. As Digby says:

Now, Obey is a confused sort who apparently thinks that because a civilian group criticized a general in a newspaper ad they are the equivalent of McCarthy using the coercive constitutional power of the US Senate to smear the Army as being riddled with communists. That's ridiculous, of course. The principle right minded Americans hold against McCarthyism is the use of government power to suppress dissent.

Time and again, we fundamentally misread our own history, and misuse analogy in order to end up at an absurd juncture. Digby quotes Edward R. Murrow, who famously stood up to the junior senator from Wisconsin:

His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

Consider that quote in light of the flap regarding Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia. It takes a Global War on Terra to get us to the point where we are afraid of ideas. Rick Perlstein wrote a tremendous piece in Common Sense titled "Bed-wetter Nation" in which he very effectively contrasts the nation that faced a true global menace in 1959 with the nation that we've become under this fear mongering administration. You should really read the entire piece, it shows just how far we've come from our senses.

Interestingly, though, the fear seems to have reached even the highest levels:




UPDATE: Uh-Oh. The Big Dog is pissed about the feigned outrage of the right.

Tuesday morning warmongering....

I realize that from time to time, the absurdity of the Bush administration borders on the comic, but we need to keep in mind that the stakes are incredibly high, and that young men and women are dying for no good reason. Further, these folks are not only committed to keeping this madness going until school is out and they can replenish the old coffers, but they are committed to extending their discredited neo con agenda into Iran.

There is a special place in hell for bloodthirsty old men like Norman Podhoretz. As Atrios says:

I know it's impossible for any of our elite press to actually consider news events from an alternative perspective, but it'd be nice to think for a few minutes about how Iranians - and their leaders - react when "is the US about to bomb the shit out of Iran" is a fairly regular topic of conversation in our media.

and those nuclear warheads that were mistakenly flown across the United States last month, landing at the take off point for B52 missions to the middle east? Larry Johnson calls bullshit on the notion that this could have been a simple screw up.

War Weary

It will be interesting to see how the Senate moves towards the country with regard to the lifetime engagement that we've blundered into in Iraq. Senator McCain and Warner are now putting forth a milquetoast version of a "support the troops" amendment that merely ensures that we doom more young men and women to the meat grinder indefinitely. The fact that the Republicans in the Senate have threatened successfully to filibuster any legislation that legitimately attempts to curb the administrations stubborn war-without-end policy has been successfully been spun in the mainstream media as a Democratic failure. That certainly enables Bush as he kicks the can down the road, waiting patiently until 2009, when he can party like mad, cause school is out.

But eventually, even the diehards will fold. I see more and more bumper stickers against the war each day. Cocktail party chatter (at least as far as I could describe my neighborhood parties as "cocktail parties") has changed dramatically over the past months. The topic of Iraq, which was off the table, is now not only on the table, but the "conventional wisdom", to misuse that phrase, has moved towards a broad realization that we are in the singular historical position of living during the most inept administration in the history of the republic. We'll all be telling our grandkids about W one day....

So, the Senate will come around, and the Jim Webbs and Russ Feingolds will be vindicated. But that won't matter, because by the time they come around, the Dems will be in the White House, and the dangerous question of just how we extricate ourselves from this Mess-o-potamia will be hers. And at that point, you can cue the band, and the outraged opposition will begin the familiar whine....it's all Clinton's fault.

UPDATE: Glen Greenwald eviscerates David Brook's column in the NYT. Brooks is one of the beltway pundits that deceitfully equates his own opinion with the mainstream, while clearly ignoring all factual data to the contrary. Like Congress, beltway pundits like Brooks and Broder will eventually realize that the American people are far ahead of them in their disdain for this tragic foreign policy.

General Petraeus and Bush's War

Digby quite correctly comments on the absurd hagiography that has surrounded General Petraeus' ascension of the Hill this week:

This fabulous intellectual has opened his mouth many times over the past few years, and in doing so has proved himself each time to be a hack for the Bush administration....I grew up in a military family and I'm not hostile to the services. But this phony reverence for The Man Called Petreaus is enough to make me sick. He may be a smart guy but he's as political as they come. In fact he's been pimping the white house marketing scheme almost non-stop for months, culminating in spending virtually the entire month of August glad-handing easily impressed congressmen like Brian Baird.

All this hand-wringing sanctimony about Petraeus today as if he's some sort of godlike figure who is beyond criticism is ridiculous. He's selling his war and that's his right. But when he spins and obfuscates and lies like a politician, he should expect to be treated like one.

At the same time, however, it seems as though Petreaus may have pissed off one fairly important constituency, namely, the Pentagon:

NEWSWEEK has learned that a separate internal report being prepared by a Pentagon working group will “differ substantially” from Petraeus’s recommendations, according to an official who is privy to the ongoing discussions but would speak about them only on condition of anonymity. An early version of the report, which is currently being drafted and is expected to be completed by the beginning of next year, will “recommend a very rapid reduction in American forces: as much as two-thirds of the existing force very quickly, while keeping the remainder there.”

As John Aravosis points out, somebody at the Pentagon is leaking this information to Newsweek, and they are doing it to make David Petaeus look bad. Bush set this guy up, as I pointed out in July, and it's a no win situation for Petraeus. He's being forced to own Bush's war, to a large extent. It is a war that the American public hates, and a President that the American public hates. There are undoubtedly folks at the Pentagon that will see his act as grandstanding and politicized, and that won't go unchallenged.

And count me down as skeptical that putting that monkey on the teevee on Thursday night to mangle some more English in defense of his failed strategy is going to sway anyone's opinion at this point. I agree with Atrios that the power of the "big megaphone" is lost at this point.

Friday Afternoon Luciano Goodness...

Una furtiva Lagrima - From Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore




RIP Maestro...

Reading from the wrong playbook..

Apparently, the Maliki government didn't get the memo. Commenting on the military report that found that the Iraqi forces are nowhere near ready to assume any role in Iraq, and that the police force is so badly compromised by insurgents that it should be disbanded, a government spokesmen reacted thusly:

"This is an Iraqi affair and we will not accept interference by anyone in such work, whether the Congress or others," Majid told The Associated Press by telephone. "The report is inaccurate and not official and we consider it interference in our internal affairs."

Woops. Somebody forgot to mention that W has a different opinion. Bush on Maliki:

"He's learning to be a leader," Bush said a few weeks later. "And one of my jobs as the president and his ally is to help him be that leader without being patronizing. At some point in time, if I come to the conclusion that he can't be the leader—he's unwilling to lead or he's deceptive—then we'll change course.

John Kerry was right. Not that it matters

I realize that there are alot of bad folks out there in the world, and I realize that our relative prosperity, our enviable position as the world's only true superpower, and the unfortunate foreign policy that we've adopted since 2001 (which has turned us into a global pariah) clearly puts us at risk for desperate acts by desperate people.

That said, each and every one of these "massive plots" that have been discovered quickly turns out to be a keystone cop caper that unravels upon the slightest investigation. Arthur Silber writes about "the latest Threat to Destroy All the Universes Forever and Ever":

Among the numerous futile and profoundly counterproductive effects of the manner in which the Forces of Good and Light have chosen to conduct the Global Battle against Evil and All Bad and Nasty Thingies, perhaps the most offensive are what we might categorize as the assaults on minimally decent aesthetics. Every time another of these all too predictable events occurs, I feel as if I'm watching a movie from five or six decades ago, a film that was crudely imitative, fourth-hand trash the first time and that only gets worse and cruder with each repetition.

No real ammunition. No real targets. But be afraid, be very afraid.

Remember this?:

At a nationally televised debate on January 29, Massachusetts senator John F. Kerry delivered the jaw-dropping assessment that the threat of terrorism had been "exaggerated" by the Bush administration. Terrorism, he asserted, was "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world — the very thing this [Bush] administration is worst at."

Greenwald, a bit too optimistically pointed this out, after the London bombings were thwarted:

If George Will can come out and say that John Kerry was right about how best to approach terrorism and the Bush approach does nothing but increases it, then perhaps we can soon reach the point where national journalists will understand that there is nothing "strong" about wanting more and more wars, and nothing "weak" about opposing warmongering and advocating more substantive, rational and responsible methods for combating terrorism.

I think, for once, Glen Greenwald put too much faith in the press and the administration. Take it away, David Lindorff:

While there is nothing to be done about the disaster in Iraq, which will go down in military history as one of the great defeats of all time-the most powerful military the world has ever known beaten by a disorganized assortment of ill-trained and ill-equipped guerrilla fighters-this is nonetheless a dangerous moment.

Wounded animals are dangerous animals, and President Bush and his gang of Neocon wackoes, badly wounded by defeat in Iraq, are not anxious to slither off the political stage as losers. Hence the plans in the works to go double or nothing with an all-out aerial assault on Iran.

Numerous reports, including most credibly one in The Times in London (owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.), suggest that a plan has already been laid out for a three-day massive bombardment on over 1200 targets in Iran, which would attempt to destroy not just that country's nascent nuclear processing capability, but also its government, communications, and military facilities, essentially leaving the country of 70 million a smoking ruin.

Bring on the crazy....

Godawmighty, this is scary.



Look, we're being ruled by a child. A delusional child who is trapped a dangerous phase of petulant dementia. This is what he says to the last of the "coalition of the willing":

"We're kicking ass," he told Mark Vaile on the tarmac after the Deputy Prime Minister inquired politely of the President's stopover in Iraq en route to Sydney.

Friday afternoon Joe Strummer goodness

Dig the Clash from 1983.

Iran after the long weekend?

If you really want to get worried, read Professor Cole's post today on the Cheney administration's plan to roll out a PR offensive on an impending attack of Iran after the Labor Day weekend:

there has been some recent similar reporting. For instance, just on Tuesday Raw Story covered a paper by two British academics arguing that the US has the capability and perhaps the intention of launching an aerial assault on Iran's enrichment facilities.

Earlier, McClatchy reported on Aug. 9 that Cheney has been urging bombing of Iranian trails to Iraq. This position struck me as eerily reminiscent of Nixon-Kissinger's treatment of Cambodia (which is what really caused the Khmer Rouge horrors, not, as Bush said the other day, US withdrawal from Vietnam; we dropped enormous amounts of ordnance on that country and severely disrupted it).

You'd think this was all hyperbole, but clearly Bush has ratcheted up the rhetoric lately. Glen Greenwald has a post on the insane speech that Bush gave this week, in which he said:

Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late

...among other threats.

Obviously, the idea here is to attack from the air, as the idea of a groundwar is even to fantastic for these lunatics to dream about. Cheney, Podhoretz, Giuliani, Kristol, etc are hell bent on bombing Persia back into the middle ages. Imagine the consequences of that. Really, someone needs to get a hold on this white house, before it's too late. Or perhaps, as Greenwald points out, it already is:

The Iraq debate is over, at least from the perspective of actual results. It has been over for some time. The Congress is never going to force Bush to withdraw from Iraq. We are going to remain in Iraq in more or less the same posture through the end of the Bush presidency. That is just a fait accompli. The real issue of grave importance that remains unresolved is Iran, and it is hard to find causes for optimism there either.

The selective memory of the right

Tbogg has a great post on the relativism of the right, with particular regard to the Clinton blind spot. Undoubtedly, the nomination of Gonzales' replacement will be a very politically charged debate, but as so many have pointed out, this is no time for the Democrats to back down. The bald grab for power that the Bush white house has undertaken over the past seven years is a dangerous threat to the constitutional basis of our republic. They have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted to act in any reasonable or accommodating fashion, and they simply should not be given any benefit of the doubt in this case.

We should not be surprised if Cheney gets his way and Laurence Silberman gets nominated. The resurrection of a partisan hack from the Nixon white house would fit perfectly for the remaining months of this catastrophic presidency.

UPDATE: From TPM, David Kurtz describes the inevitability of Bush's petulant reaction to the Gonzo resignation:

There is a persistent meme in press coverage that Bush--like Reagan--remains a figure aloof and removed not just from the partisan fray but from the words and deeds of his appointees and underlings. He stands apart, or so goes the thinking, undoubtedly encouraged by spin from the White House and Bushies.

Nearly seven years into his Presidency, don't we have a pretty good idea of the character and abilities of this man? There is a long track record now of truly unparalleled incompetence, corruption, and politicization. What more do we need to know? Bush's legacy is firmly entrenched, and barring any seismic historical events between now and January 2009, any changes to that sorry legacy will be at the margins.

Sunday Pogues

Up to me arse in soccer tournaments, Shane'll have to do for now..

Lots of Rudy material...

Two artilces, one about Rudy, and one by Rudy bring into high relief just how dangerous his candidacy can be. I'm actually shocked that he has remained as high as he has in the polls, because I assumed the fraud of his personal life and his long-standing opposition to many of the key planks of the modern conservative platform would have doomed him by now. It's early though.

Digby does a better job than I could ever do in pointing out the inherent dangerousness of Giuliani's simplistic thoughts in his Foreign Policy piece. Suffice it to say that anyone who even listens to Norman Podhoretz at this point, let alone appoints him as a senior foreign policy adviser to his campaign should be ignored and ostracized. Podhoretz is a war mongering octogenarian who lusts for Muslim blood and fantasizes about the mass murder of a nation of 70 million souls, one of the oldest civilizations on the planet, and one of the most modern and cosmopolitan republics in Western Asia.

Another telling flaw in Rudy's thinking is his reliance on the "competence" argument for his criticisms of the war in Iraq. This is a common theme that we'll hear more and more as the Republicans and Democrats who are vying for the presidency attempt to explain their support for the invasion of Iraq by qualifying the decision with the caveat that if only Bush had done a more competent job/sent enough troops/planned better, we'd be on easy street now. Matthew Yglesias wrote an excellent piece on that brand of thinking in the American Prospect back in October of 2005. He was criticizing this line of thinking among liberal hawks, but it is equally true of Rudy's argument, and will be heard by every candidate on the Republican side as they run as fast as they can away from the pariah in the white house.

The incompetence critique is, in short, a dodge -- a way for liberal hawks to acknowledge the obviously grim reality of the war without rethinking any of the premises that led them to support it in the first place. In part, the dodge helps protect its exponents from personal embarrassment. But it also serves a more important, and dangerous, function: Liberal hawks see themselves as defenders of the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention -- such as the Clinton-era military campaigns in Haiti and the Balkans -- and as advocates for the role of idealism and values in foreign policy. The dodgers believe that to reject the idea of the Iraq War is, necessarily, to embrace either isolationism or, even worse in their worldview, realism -- the notion, introduced to America by Hans Morgenthau and epitomized (not for the better) by the statecraft of Henry Kissinger, that U.S. foreign policy should concern itself exclusively with the national interest and exclude consideration of human rights and liberal values. Liberal hawk John Lloyd of the Financial Times has gone so far as to equate attacks on his support for the war with doing damage to “the idea, and ideal, of freedom itself.”

It sounds alluring. But it's backward: An honest reckoning with this war's failure does not threaten the future of liberal interventionism. Instead, it is liberal interventionism's only hope. By erecting a false dichotomy between support for the current bad war and a Kissingerian amoralism, the dodgers run the risk of merely driving ever-larger numbers of liberals into the realist camp. Left-of-center opinion neither will nor should follow a group of people who continue to insist that the march to Baghdad was, in principle, the height of moral policy thinking. If interventionism is to be saved, it must first be saved from the interventionists.

The entire thing is really worth reading.

At the end of the day, the two articles on Rudy illustrate the fundamental problem with his candidacy. Sure he is a hypocrite who has staunchly defended gay marriage, the right to choose and gun control. He'll turn against those positions and the expedient right will continue to support him if they think he can keep that she-devil out of the white house. Sure he's a twice married adulterer who's kids can't even stand him. The fundamentalists will see their way through that as well. But the one thing that worries me most isn't the hypocrisy or the pettiness, it's that he may just be the only man in America who could be elected president that may be as simple and clueless as the current one.