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.

Yazidi Massacre

Count me as skeptical that the massacre of the ancient Yazidi sect West of Mosul was actually perpetrated by "Al qaeda in Iraq", as the administration is reporting. I think it far more likely that this is a regional manifestation of the civil war for the oilfields of Kirkuk, that will pit Sunni against Kurd in the violent endgame for control over the imperial construct known as Iraq. The Yazidi's are a Kurdish sect, and the lands they inhabit are squarely in the zone of contention between Kurdistan and Sunni Iraq. The notion that this was perpetrated under the auspices of some foreign influence seems far fetched. This is a territorial civil war.

Mouth Breathing Anger

In a post regarding Rudi's article in Foreign Affairs (a 6000 word essay that omits the word Pakistan, btw), Matt Yglesias points out a dilemma that candidates on the right are facing, namely a bifurcation between the slightly more moderate tone that the Bush administration has taken in the last 8 months and the ever increasing bloodlust of the "base", egged on by Rush, Sean Hannity and other minor haters like Glen Beck.

Indeed, the conservative base appears to be more committed to this vision at this point than is George W. Bush. After all, while I think the rise of moderate foreign policy in the Bush administration has often been overstated, there's no doubt that the President has softened the edges somewhat. Don Rumsfeld is gone. Rumsfeld's cookiest subordinates are gone. John Bolton is gone. Etc., etc. etc. But the Hugh Hewitt crowd, the Rush Limbaugh listeners, the Glenn Beck fans, and that whole lot still, in essence, want to see a bloody, bloody, bloody foreign policy.

I sense this strongly when I read LGF or listen to talk radio. These folks are angry. Their Captain Codpiece has turned out to be an idiot dilettante, they understand that everything Bush has done has made matters worse. They realize that they'll lose in 2008, and all of the fun that they had kicking around John Kerry and Al Gore doesn't seem to have amounted to much. Even their pet issues that they focused on once the war in Iraq wasn't fun to watch any more haven't yielded much fruit. The stock market is crashing, Rove is sneaking out the back door, and the real estate that they bought in Florida or by the beach is worth a hell of a lot less than when they bought it. For them, this is no time to go soft, no time to get tangled in diplomacy between Hamas and Fatah, no time to try to discern the various motives of minority or majority sects in Western Asia. The base wants dead brown folks, the more the better. Here's Newt:

Gingrich said that the "war here at home" against illegal immigrants is "even more deadly than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Outrage over the triple murder in Newark elides with irrational fear of the other, once it is revealed that one of the murderers was "an illegal". Albeit, an illegal that has been in this country since the age of eleven. To Hannity, immigration and terrorism are only one issue. And to the base, that means one thing. If all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Irrational fears

Glen Greenwald has an interesting point in his post today regarding the right's irrational fear of Islamic totalitarianism, or the gathering storm of Islamofacism, or whatever they are calling it these days. He highlights an essay by Roger Simon, in which the Pajamas Media editor professes his support for gay marriage, but then deftly requires all of those who are blessed by his open mind to support all out war against Muslims everywhere, because if we "lose" in Iraq, we'll be faced with societal Armageddon:

Every now and then, it is worth noting that substantial portions of the right-wing political movement in the United States -- the Pajamas Media/right-wing-blogosphere/Fox News/Michelle Malkin/Rush-Limbaugh-listener strain -- actually believe that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us. And then we will have to be Muslims and "our women" will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs. This is an actual fear that they have -- not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview.

The other strain of this, and one I've experienced first hand, is the notion that the threat we face today is somehow greater than anything we've faced in the past. This is the Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh view, that this war against Islamofacism is unprecedented, and that those on the left that do not support a pre-emptive and ill planned attack against a construct of the British empire that had nothing to do with 9/11 just "don't get it". The historical fact that we lived for 40 years with thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at our major cities, and that we were in varying degrees of hot and cold war with a superpower that rivaled ourselves is lost on these people. In their mind, box cutters and burkhas are scarier than ICBMs. This is the same mindset that allows veterans who fought in Southeast Asia to support a president who refused to fulfill his TANG service in Oklahoma, a Vice President who took five deferments, and a talk show host who avoided Vietnam because of a boil on his ass.

The Shame of the Democrats

Glen Greenwald at Salon highlights the double blow to reputation that the Dems take for rubber stamping an even more intrusive law that gives this administration basically unfettered access to email and international telephone communications. If they thought that they were in danger of looking weak for not endorsing the Bush plan, they failed. If they thought that they were within their power to defy Bush when they were in the minority, how could they possibly acquiesce now that they are in the majority?

While the premise of this behavior is that Democrats must avoid appearing "soft" and "weak," one article after the next describes their behavior as "surrendering," "capitulating," "bowing to pressure," "caving in" and "suffering defeat" -- all at the hands of a weakened, isolated and pervasively despised lame duck President whose political party is in shambles. The worst thing one can be in American politics and American culture generally is a loser, and Democrats perpetually turn themselves into losers and convince themselves when doing so that they are appearing "strong" and "tough."

Look, this administration has proven time and again that they are not to be trusted with the benefit of the doubt when it comes to respect for individual liberties or the rule of law. In fact, they have ignored or violated laws with impunity when they feel that those laws inconvenience their radical interpretation of executive power. Further, their motives for this impunity have far exceeded the narrow notion of anti-terror and bled consistently into the scope of anti-republicanism or anti-bushism. There is a convincing body of evidence that proves that these people should not be trusted. Further, a convincing majority of the American people feel that this administration is not only incompetent, but actually corrosive to our international standing, our constitutional legacy, and our historical mission. Why in the world the Democrats gave them this gift beggars my understanding.

UPDATE: Here's Glen Greenwald laying out the broad powers of the new act in very clear and disturbing detail.

An unhappy anniversary

Rush, Hannity, and Glen Beck can't get enough of the NYT op ed that surge supporters and long time war cheerleaders Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon wrote in last weeks paper. Leaving aside the fact that the authors are already backpedaling from the rosy assessment of what they saw in Iraq, and the fact that they completely ignored the fact that there basically is no legitimate government in Baghdad, the talking heads have anointed these two as exhibit number one of left wing crazies who have seen the error of their ways and come to the conclusion that the surge, the Petreaus magic and the Bush 'strategy' are destined for success. The claim that these two were in any way critics of this administration was eviscerated here.

Even through this year, they have remained loyal Bush supporters. They were not only advocates of the war, but cheerleaders for the Surge. They were, and continue to be, on the fringe of pro-war sentiment in this country. And yet all day yesterday, this country's media loudly hailed them as being exactly the opposite of what they really are. It was 24 hours of unadulterated, amazingly coordinated war propaganda that could not have been any further removed from the truth.

But the echo chamber is powerful, and the right wing talk radio gang knows that. So they repeat the deceit over and over, until it becomes conventional wisdom that these two administration "critics" have seen the light. It would be funny if kids weren't dying due to this deceit. They aren't reporting O'Hanlon's fairly serious caveat here:

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. O’Hanlon said the article was intended to point out that the security situation was currently far better than it was in 2006. What the American military cannot solve, he said, are problems caused by the inability of Iraqis to forge political solutions. “Ultimately, politics trumps all else,” Mr. O’Hanlon said. “If the political stalemate goes on, even if the military progress continued, I don’t see how I could write another Op-Ed saying the same thing.”

And right at the center of it is the President himself, who hosts the echo chamber in an exclusive chat in the oval office. Glen Beck, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt....

Beck took the bait, and swallowed the whole hook:

And Bush wasn't even being subtle:

Beck also added that Bush specifically mentioned the work of Brookings Institution analyst Michael O’Hanlon to support his policies.

This is pathetic in so many ways. Our President, wrapping himself in the cocoon of the blowhards who play to the 28% of our public who still support his foolishness. He refuses to face up to the fiasco he has created and the hypocrisy that he now embodies. For it was seven years ago today that he accepted the Republican nomination and said:

We will give our military the means to keep the peace, and we will give it one thing more: a commander-in-chief who respects our men and women in uniform and a commander-in-chief who earns their respect.

A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming....

I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect....

And our nation's leaders are responsible to confront problems, not pass them onto others.

And to lead this nation to a responsibility era, that president himself must be responsible.

So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.

No takers

Josh Marshall has a great wrap up of the Sunday talk shows reaction to the Gonzales testimony here.

Defining Gonzo Down

My reaction to the storm surrounding Gonzales is that it is amazing how far we've 'defined deviancy down' at this point. Pundits are speculating that if it wasn't the wiretap program that Gonzales was referring to, he must be hiding an even more nefarious spying program. I don't know. To me, the telling point is that the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the country has shown time and again that he has no respect for the laws that pertain to him. The position that Gonzales has taken is so disdainful of the rule of law that we risk missing the entire point of the executive branch's audacity.

Gonzo says that there was no dissension with regard to the illegal wiretapping program. Further, that even though they knew it was illegal, they feel that the laws do not pertain to them in this instance. Granted, at the time that he was attempting to persuade the incapacitated Ashcroft that this illegal program should be extended, he was serving as Bush's Tom Hagen, but now, as the AG, he continues to see no problem with the concept of flaunting the law of the land in defense of Bush's warped sense of executive rule.

He refuses to answer direct questions from the Senate Judiciary committee, and gives no reason. He told Schumer last week that he was not going to answer a direct question regarding who sent him to Ashcroft's sick bed, and did not cite any privelege, or any reason. That is contempt of Congress, plain and simple. It beggars belief that the attorney general would take such a position, but we've defined his deviancy down to the ground. As Josh Marshall says today:

The most telling part of the Sunday Show reaction to Alberto Gonzales yesterday was that it was treated as a given by pretty much everyone that Gonzales should resign or be fired. The only point really being debated now is whether he's guilty of perjury, a pretty proud standard for the top law enforcement official in the country.

That's really the point. The damage that this administration is doing to our republic goes far beyond the details of the latest outrage. It can only be likened to the nefarious effects on broader society that these same right-wingers blame rap music and the rap culture for. They claim that by listening to rap music, a generation of black youth is being systematically degraded, and that society will never be the same. How is this different than this administration's effect on our republic? We concede that Gonzo is being intentionally evasive of the committee, we concede that he is hiding behind slick legalistic distinctions, and we allow that he has decided to simply ignore or claim amnesia when it comes to direct questions from Senators. And then we attempt to parse his obfuscation for evidence of perjury. Whether he perjured himself or not is not the issue, because a conviction for Libby or for Gonzo is a temporary salve, the wounds that they've caused our country will take much longer to heal.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald takes apart the NYT for their lead story on the "other" intelligence program here.

PA District 27 Champs

Like father, like son...

Splendid Splinters win again

The mighty Splints win their seventh Villanova Softball championship.

Gonzo Grilled

This is my favorite moment from the grilling that Gonzo took at the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee today. I love Specter's tone when he asks, "do you expect us to believe that?".

This is an amazing moment in our constitutional history, and a depressing one. As opposed to a bold defense of the administration's disdain for the system of checks and balances that our republic was built upon, we get Gonzo's incredibly weak-kneed responses to very personal attacks by the likes of Schumer, Leahy and ultimately even Specter. The senior senator from Pennsylvania has been a disappointment over the past year, particularly in his unwillingness to go all the way and demand the resignation of demonstrably the worst attorney general, and perhaps one of the least competent public servants in the history of our federal government. But each cut adds up, and at some point, even Specter will have enough.

The fact is, all of this was clearly illegal. The FISA law spelled out exactly how the government could go about gathering information, and the executive branch chose to ignore it completely. Gonzales allowed that to happen.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald takes apart John Yoo and his WSJ editorial here.

Airman's Shooting in New Jersey

I'm not quite sure what the functional equivalent of this is on the left. I hesitate from generalizing on the insanity of the mouth breathing right, because I'm sure that the left has examples of extremist blogging that compare unfavorably to this sort of thinking.

Michelle Malkin and Little Green Footballs jumped all over this story from the moment it was reported, and I have to say that I suspected immediately that this was being used to validate their blind hatred of all things brown and Muslim. The truth, of course, had nothing to do with their spin, as the authorities now report:

Yesterday, Smith, the spokesman for the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office, described Marren's final words as "rambling. There was no mention of the military, the war in Iraq or the victim being a soldier.

" . . . This has taken on a life of its own."

LGF and Malkin had a bit to do with creating the "life of its own".

Blaming the Generals.

Bush took time in his latest presser to blame Tommy Franks for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq since 2003. He says:

Q Thank you, sir. You have spoken passionately about the consequences of failure in Iraq. Your critics say you failed to send enough troops there at the start, failed to keep al Qaeda from stepping into the void created by the collapse of Saddam's army, failed to put enough pressure on Iraq's government to make the political reconciliation necessary to keep the sectarian violence the country is suffering from now from occurring. So why should the American people feel you have the vision for victory in Iraq, sir?

"THE PRESIDENT: Those are all legitimate questions that I'm sure historians will analyze. I mean, one of the questions is, should we have sent more in the beginning? Well, I asked that question, do you need more, to General Tommy Franks. In the first phase of this operation, General Franks was obviously in charge, and during our discussions in the run up to the decision to remove Saddam Hussein after he ignored the Security Council resolutions. My primary question to General Franks was, do you have what it takes to succeed? And do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein? And his answer was, yes.

"Now, history is going to look back to determine whether or not there might have been a different decision made. But at the time, the only thing I can tell you, Wendell, is that I relied upon our military commander to make the proper decision about troop strength.

That of course, would be the same Tommy Franks who was awarded the Medal of Freedom along with George Tenant and Paul Bremer. Bush has subsequently turned on each of them, blaming them for mistakes for which only he can be ultimately responsible.

Which brings us to Petraeus. I've had the sneaking suspicion all along that Bush is setting him up, which Dan Froomkin at the Post describes right here. He quotes Tom Ricks who says:

Yet Ricks continues: "Some of Petraeus's military comrades worry that the general is being set up by the Bush administration as a scapegoat if conditions in Iraq fail to improve," he writes. "'The danger is that Petraeus will now be painted as failing to live up to expectations and become the fall guy for the administration,' one retired four-star officer said. . . .

I think that often we ascribe higher level thinking to this administration than it really deserves. This is schoolyard crap, the kind of politics that you'd find in a low level office setting. Bush is creating the way out of his own decisions, in the probable case that they will fail. He's had a lifetime of failures from which to learn this tactic, but it is really no different that the manager of the mail room who is reluctant to take responsibility for his own screw up, choosing instead to push the clerk under the bus. Petraeus found his way to the top by painting a rosy picture of the Iraq situation in an op ed in the Post just before the 2004 election. Bush was happy to choose him, but Petraeus should have known that any failure would be his, while any success would be Bush's.

Bill Kristol's Ahistorical Crap

The thing that makes this video of Kristol so shocking is the obvious question that it leaves. He says:

“I think Gen. David Petraeus could go down in American history with an amazing performance. … This could be a Ulysses S. Grant situation where Bush finally found the right general.”

Think about that. Exactly what would winning look like in Iraq? There are 155,000 Turkish troops poised along the northern border in Iraq. Millions have fled the country, seeking asylum throughout western asia and Europe. We've even been nice enough to accept around 7,000 in the past year. (Read this heartbreaking post from Major Bob Batemen for that disgrace). Sunnis and Shia are no closer to reconciliation today then they were in the ninth century. Iran hovers. The Saudi empire wobbles.

In the Civil War, victory was easily defined as the cessation of hostilities and the surrender of the Confederate Army. Even the political "victory" was easily definable as the reconstitution of the broader union and the reconstruction of the South. In Iraq, there is no parallel to these clean definitions of victory, either militarily or politically. Kristol is a dangerous fool to suggest that.

Just making stuff up..

Man, these guys aren't even trying any more....from Josh Marshall:

Just out from the Times ...

The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in carrying out the new American strategy in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress, according to several administration officials.

But it will qualify some verdicts by saying that even when the political performance of the Iraqi government has been unsatisfactory, it is too early to make final judgments, the officials said.

The administration’s decision to qualify many of the political benchmarks will enable it to present a more optimistic assessment than if it had provided the pass-fail judgment sought by Congress when it approved funding for the war this spring.

Woops. An honest mistake.

From the Cunning Realist, the story of the latest high value Al Queda hit in Iraq:

Aired June 13, 2007

BLITZER: Finally, general, I understand there was a major hit against an Al Qaeda figure up in the north, in Mosul, earlier today.

I wonder if you could share some of the specific details with us.

BERGNER: Wolf, the coalition forces learned of a Kamal Jalil Bakr 'Uthman, who was referred to in some circles as the military emir of Mosul. He's the man who had -- who was involved in bringing some 100 foreign fighters in Iraq and involved in facilitating and conducting suicide attacks, both against the Iraqi people and the coalition.

Our forces went to detain him in Mosul. And as he resisted -- in fact, was going for a suicide vest, as our forces tried to capture him. And in the process they engaged him. And so an important action in Mosul, specifically, to reduce the Al Qaeda threat there, keep the pressure on these cells that are terrorizing the Iraqi people and conducting operations against the coalition.

So the picture I'm painting for you is there's a great deal of pressure on these extremist cells around -- all across Iraq.

BLITZER: And when you say they engaged him, you mean they killed him?

BERGNER: They did kill him in the attempt to capture him when he went for his suicide vest.

Unfortunately for Wolf, and for Bergner, former Special Assistant to President Bush, the Cunning Realist has to point out:

Uthman was indeed a big kill, and the military featured his death last year in a report titled "Tearing Down al Qaeda."

When The Examiner pointed out that Uthman's death had been announced twice, a command spokesman said in an e-mail, "You are correct that we did previously announce that we killed him.

And you thought that this administration was awful for completely politicizing the DOJ.

Profile in Courage

A 25 year veteran of the Justice Department speaks in an Op-Ed in the Denver Post today.

The public trust has been flagrantly violated, and meaningful accountability is long overdue. Officials who have brought into disrepute both the Department of Justice and the administration of justice as a whole should finally have to answer for it - and the misdeeds at issue involve not merely garden-variety misconduct, but multiple "high crimes and misdemeanors," including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I realize that this constitutionally protected statement subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawful reprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken such action in the past. But I am confident that I am speaking on behalf of countless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice and elsewhere, who take their responsibilities seriously and share these views. And some things must be said, whatever the risk.

Sadly, I give him a week.

Liberal Media?

The administration's creeping use of "Al Queda" to designate just about any and all opposition to US forces in Iraq was noted this weekend by the Public Editor of the NY Times, a practice that was originally pointed to by a number of blogs, including this one. The right's need for one diabolical enemy to focus their energies on belies the incredible complexity of the war in Iraq, as well as the larger issues surrounding Western Asia in general. Glenn Greenwald has a post today illuminating just how scandalous the NYT's parroting of the administration's propaganda really is:

Three years after Judy Miller's departure from that paper, the newspapers's own Public Editor has scathingly pointed out what is glaringly obvious in plain sight -- the defining practices of Judy Miller (blind, uncritical trust in the government's and military's sources) continue to shape and dominate much of the paper's coverage about Iraq and issues related to Iran.

Eric Alterman wrote "What Liberal Media?" back in 2003,(here's a condensed version) but the dichotomy of reality and perception continues unabated. Even though the public editor of the NYT is calling out the news page for lazy coverage that carries water for an administration that has lied brazenly time and again, the conventional wisdom has it that the press is without exception, tilted towards unfounded criticism of this administration. Stranger than fiction.

Bush and History

David Halberstam's final piece for Vanity Fair picks up the fascinating and frustrating examination of Bush's belief that he is somehow an historical figure along the lines of Harry Truman. Even more, it looks at the history of post WW2 America and casts a cold eye on the triumphalism of Cheney, Rumsfeld and the entire Bush administration. Bush clearly sees himself as a student of history, a designation of which Halberstam is rightly suspect. I recently mentioned Bush's bizarre question to the visiting historian Andrew Roberts, when he asked "what can I learn from history"? And to Halberstam, the question is actually, "how can I cherry pick elementary historical interpretations to fit my black and white worldview"?

For example, Bush cites Yalta as a great sellout by FDR, just as the far right did in the 50s to bludgeon the left as commie symps, and Halberstam calls bullshit on their facts:

President Bush lives in a world where in effect it is always the summer of 1945, the Allies have just defeated the Axis, and a world filled with darkness for some six years has been rescued by a new and optimistic democracy, on its way to becoming a superpower. His is a world where other nations admire America or damned well ought to, and America is always right, always on the side of good, in a world of evil, and it's just a matter of getting the rest of the world to understand this. One of Bush's favorite conceits, used repeatedly in his speeches, is that democracies are peaceful and don't go to war against one another. Most citizens of the West tend to accept this view without question, but that is not how most of Africa, Asia, South America, and the Middle East, having felt the burden of the white man's colonial rule for much of the past two centuries, see it. The non-Western world does not think of the West as a citadel of pacifism and generosity, and many people in the U.S. State Department and the different intelligence agencies (and even the military) understand the resentments and suspicions of our intentions that exist in those regions. We are, you might say, fighting the forces of history in Iraq—religious, cultural, social, and inevitably political—created over centuries of conflict and oppressive rule.

The entire piece is worth reading, because it brings into clear focus the fact that Bush's anti-intellectual persona is worrisome enough, but when he strays into actual historical analogy, his simplistic interpretation of historical events shows that he is only using history to support decisions that were made with no regard at all to actual events. As Halberstam cautions:

Those who know history best tend to be tempered by it. They rarely refer to it so sweepingly and with such complete confidence. They know that it is the most mischievous of mistresses and that it touts sure things about as regularly as the tip sheets at the local track. Its most important lessons sometimes come cloaked in bitter irony. By no means does it march in a straight line toward the desired result, and the good guys do not always win. Occasionally it is like a sport with upsets, in which the weak and small defeat the great and mighty—take, for instance, the American revolutionaries vanquishing the British Army, or the Vietnamese Communists, with their limited hardware, stalemating the mighty American Army.

Bush Alone

Perspective is funny sometimes. Atrios linked to this article on Bush, and assumed everyone would read it the way that I did, which is that Bush is a deranged child, in denial, alone and profoundly unpopular. In the Post's words:

The reality has been daunting by any account. No modern president has experienced such a sustained rejection by the American public. Bush's approval rating slipped below 50 percent in Washington Post-ABC News polls in January 2005 and has not topped that level in the 30 months since.

But I was just listening to Hannity, and the right takes the article much differently, actually as a balance piece to the merciless hatchet job that Cheney took in the same paper last week. Hannity sees the article as illustrative of the man's steely resolve in the face of enormous odds. He reads strength into the isolation and unpopularity. Another take comes from Tbogg, who thinks that the Post is lost again, affixing a wisdom to this idiot prince that belies the sorry truth:

I think it is quite adorable that, six years into his term, the White House is still trying to sell the American public on the idea that George W. Bush is a DEEP thinker.

For me, the most telling part of the story is from the British historian, Andrew Roberts, whom Bush invited to the White House after he read his "History of the English Speaking Peoples". Bush's question to Roberts:

"What can I learn from history?"

Think about that. What sentient adult would ask such a question of a history professor? Would you ask a math professor what you could learn from math? It boggles the mind. It's a question a fourth grader would ask, if he was trying to look smart.

And then there is Charlie Rangel's recollection of a recent plane trip with Bush:

When he flew to New York to visit a Harlem school and promote his education program, he brought along New York congressmen on Air Force One, including Democrat Charles B. Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. The White House was in the midst of tough negotiations with Rangel over trade pacts. But Bush did not try to cut a deal with Rangel, chatting instead about baseball. "He talked a lot about the Rangers," Rangel said. "I didn't know what the hell he was talking about."

That might just be an epitaph for the era.

Rhymin Simon

I caught some of the Paul Simon special the other night on PBS. He won the first Library of Congress Gershwin prize for popular song, which of course was well deserved. His canon is extraordinary, and as a popular songwriter, he is distinctive and unique. The most illuminating comment came from his longtime friend and neighbor, Lorne Michaels, who spoke about just how hard Simon works to create his songs.

I found the concert absolutely awful, though, and it wasn't just Marc Anthony, who looks more and more like Steve Buscemi in Trees Lounge. James Taylor hacked his songs to pieces, in particular "Slip Sliding Away", which for some reason became Slipping Sliding Away for James. Lyle Lovett and Buckwheat Zydeco did a spirited version of "That Was Your Mother". Allison Kraus was great, and Ladysmith hasn't gotten any less fun since I saw them on tour a decade ago. The rest of what I saw passed rather blandly.

Simon, alas, doesn't seem to have changed much at all either. He was at pains to give Art Garfunkel a smidgen of respect, and after a quick: "here's my partner in argument" introduction, they worked through "Bridge Over Troubled Water" as if they were in different studios. Simon was much warmer with Joseph Shabalala then he was with Art, and they marched off stage coldly. Can it really be that bad, after 40 years? Does Simon still feel that Art got credit that he was due, for some strange reason? He came across as a petulant brat, to me.

The most revealing moment, I thought, was when Stevie Wonder took the stage. Simon's deference to Stevie is well documented, of course. When he accepted the Record of the Year honor for One Trick Pony, Simon thanked Stevie for not releasing an album that year. And it was no different at the Gershwin. Simon was even smaller than usual, stood towards the back and kept his eyes on Stevie the whole time. And it probably goes back to Lorne Michael's point. For Stevie, with the perfect pitch, and no real controlling influences, the music comes easy. Stevie is a well known perfectionist, and his refusal to release his albums without innumerable revisions is legend, but I bet that his muse comes easily. He riffs in everything he does, and sings like a true jazz singer, improvising each and every note. For Simon, it seems more like hard work, and although he is a perfect choice for the Gershwin award, and a formidable popular song writer, none of it comes naturally, and that eats away at him, just like the long forgotten Garfunkel feud does.