‘Puzzled’

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  • White House colleagues were stunned, but not lacking for the day’s response. “We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew,” said Dana Perino, the current press secretary who was first hired by McClellan as a deputy.
    Later in the day, she relayed the reaction of Bush himself: “He’s puzzled, he doesn’t recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years.”
    – Terence Hunt, Associated Press White House Correspondent, sfgate.com, (5/28/08)

All this puzzling talk from the White House yesterday was response to McClellan’s book about his time as Decider George’s mouthpiece and how the entire administration was all-the-time geared to a high-energy, crush-their-balls, full-speed-ahead political campaign.
Scottie to now dead to all those people.

Of course, all those so-called revelations from Scottie’s book is not current news.
Decider George using “propaganda” instead of facts, or maybe lying about the facts?
One has to be shitting us.

The real, current news here is why all those mainstream media outlets are just now proclaiming this information as revelations.
We are puzzled and do not recognize this media from one back in the day in which we confided and worked for so many years.

Frightfully puzzling is CNN hiring nit-wit Fran Townsend, Decider George’s former Homeland Security Advisor, to communicate propaganda on security issues.
Tony Snow, also now with CNN is not so puzzling — one has to love the gosh-darn, let-them-have-basic-desert-training-in-Iraq appeal of the guy.
Not-so-puzzling — the reality of it makes the bowels move — is Karl Rove on Fox.
Uncle Karl said Scottie’s book looks like the work of a “left-wing blogger.” (Maybe the next angle of Rovian attack as a threat to national security/sanity: left-wing bloggers.
And indirectly passed spiritual judgment on himself: “If he (Scottie) had these moral qualms,” Rove told Fox News Channel, “he should have spoken up about them.”

‘Moral qualms’ — As anyone with any kind of falling-down sense has by now come to realize, Decider George and his complete operation this past near-eight years has had absolutely no moral qualms about doing anything.

Maybe the last piece of this ugly puzzle has a last chance to fit.
Rep. Robert ‘Bullet-Bob’ Wexler, a Democrat from Florida and a long-time, sharp-as-a-prick critic of Decider George, wants Scottie to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.
In a statement released yesterday, Wexler wrote, in part:

  • “The admissions made by Scott McClellan in his new book are earth-shattering and allege facts to establish that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby – and possibly Vice President Cheney – conspired to obstruct justice by lying about their role in the Plame Wilson matter and that the Bush Administration deliberately lied to the American people in order to take us to war in Iraq,” Wexler said. “Scott McClellan must now appear before the House Judiciary Committee under oath to tell Congress and the American people how President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and White House officials deliberately orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq to the American people.”
    – rawstory.com/news, (5/28/08)

What becomes of this is a puzzle now, but not for long.
If Congress does not take action in the near future on the showing-up-and-telling-the-truth-under-oath situation now confronting at least three former members of Decider George’s inner circle, then the republic as we know it — separation/balance of powers — will have disappeared.

We have also appeared bothered by an unusually high number of hyphens used in this particular blog.
Although the vast majority of these hyphens separate long, clumsy, descriptive phrases, one wonders if it’s good writing, or just a vain attempt by the authors to be cute.
Not so much a puzzle, but an enigma inside the envelope of a mystery.

One has to be shitting us.

Frightful Future

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In the waning days of Decider George’s grip on reality, events and disclosures reveal just how bad the past nearly-eight years have been — an ugly, multi-generational inheritance.

If one is heartless and puts aside the shredding of the US Constitution, the legislative disaster for global warming and environmental issues, the political Karl Rove bullshit, and on-and-on-and-on, only two words dominate Decider George’s time as leader of the free world: Katrina and Iraq.

While Decider George and Jackboot John McCain caked-it-up on a tarmac faraway, New Orleans was slammed with the greatest calamity in US history; now getting-close-to-three-years later there’s no relief in sight:

  • “It’s just the sickness. I can’t get rid of it. It just keeps coming back,” said Bouffanie, 27, who was pregnant with her now 15-month-old daughter, Lexi, while living in the trailer. “I’m just like, `Oh God, I wish like this would stop.’ If I had known it would get her sick, I wouldn’t have stayed in the trailer for so long.”
    The girl, diagnosed with severe asthma, must inhale medicine from a breathing device.
    Doctors cannot conclusively link her asthma to the trailer. But they fear she is among tens of thousands of youngsters who may face lifelong health problems because the temporary housing supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency contained formaldehyde fumes up to five times the safe level.
    …
    Arch Carson, professor of occupational medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, said preliminary exams alone for trailer residents could cost more than the trade center bill. But he said class-action lawsuits over the formaldehyde — at least one has been filed — could be even more expensive, costing many billions of dollars.
    “It would be best for the government to get its act together now,” Carson said.
    More than 22,000 FEMA trailers and mobile homes are still being used in Mississippi and Louisiana.
    – John Moreno Gonzales, Associated Press, (5/27/08)

Katrina is a blight on recent US history. Jackboot John toured New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward earlier this year during one of his shit-for-brains tours, and couldn’t blubber-up a decent answer to a when/if/and why not question about what to do with the destroyed neighborhood.
The US government has been screwed.
The Department of Homeland Security is a cruel, ironic joke.

And Iraq:

  • WASHINGTON – The number of troops with new cases of post-traumatic stress disorder jumped by roughly 50 percent in 2007 amid the military buildup in Iraq and increased violence there and in Afghanistan.
    Records show roughly 40,000 troops have been diagnosed with the illness, also known as PTSD, since 2003. Officials believe that many more are likely keeping their illness a secret.
    …
    The Veterans Affairs Department said recently it has seen some 120,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have received at least a preliminary mental health diagnosis, with PTSD being the most common diagnosis at nearly 60,000.
    – Pauline Jelinek, AP, (5/27/08)

Since the Iraqi war started 4,084 US GIs have died with 30,329 wounded. Total cases of PTSD could top 300,00: PTSD to medical experts is considered in the same as a physical injury, such as loss of a limb.
What a military-medical horror for so many years to come.

And this:

  • A full-fledged cottage industry is already focused on those who eagerly await the end of the Bush administration, offering calendars, magnets, and T-shirts for sale, as well as counters and graphics to download onto blogs and Web sites. But when the countdown ends and George W. Bush vacates the Oval Office, he will leave a legacy to contend with. Certainly, he wills to his successor a world marred by war and battered by deprivation, but perhaps his most enduring legacy is now deeply embedded in Washington-area politics – a Pentagon metastasized almost beyond recognition.
    The Pentagon’s massive bulk-up these last seven years will not be easily unbuilt, no matter who dons the presidential mantle on January 19, 2009. “The Pentagon” is now so much more than a five-sided building across the Potomac from Washington or even the seat of the Department of Defense. In many ways, it defies description or labeling.
    …
    The Pentagon’s core budget – already a staggering $300 billion when George W. Bush took the presidency – has almost doubled while he’s been parked behind the big desk in the Oval Office. For fiscal year 2009, the regular Pentagon budget will total roughly $541 billion (including work on nuclear warheads and naval reactors at the Department of Energy).
    The Bush administration has presided over one of the largest military buildups in the history of the United States. And that’s before we even count “war spending.” If the direct costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Global War on Terror, are factored in, “defense” spending has essentially tripled.
    – Frida Berrigan, tomdispatch.com, (5/28/08)

And yesterday, it was reported one of Decider George’s former press people, Scott McClellan, has written a nasty book about the current leader of the free world, aptly-titled, we guess, ‘What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.’
McClellan claims is former boss is a liar, though, he still “like and admires’ the sonofabitch.

An excerpt from politico.com:

  • “One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”

Duh!
What else can be said?

  • WASHINGTON — At the same time the Bush administration has been pushing for deep cuts in a popular crime-fighting program for states and cities, the White House has been fighting for approval of $603 million for the Iraqi police.
    The White House earlier this year proposed slashing the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program, which helps local law enforcement officials deal with violent crime and serious offenders, to $200 million in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1 .
    In 2002, the year before the Iraq war, the program received $900 million.
    – David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers, (5/27/08)

A frightful future for US peoples.

High Road History

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Just a couple of news items that caught our eye this morning:

  • I think there is so much that is disturbing in the documents, the fact that they lied to us to begin with — and you know, when you are lied to and you see discrepancies, it just makes you more concerned and confused and outraged. And at every turn we just kept finding new pieces of information that made it seem there was huge deception and cover-up. So I feel it’s very important to find out who’s accountable for the cover-up.
    At this point I think most of the evidence is gone. It’s been four years, and these soldiers (the ones who shot Tillman) are young, they were in a stress situation. I think it’s horrific they were so negligent, but I think if there’s some kind of consequence, it should have happened early on. I think putting them through that at this point — I don’t think Pat would have wanted that. But for these men in positions of authority and power to willfully deceive the public and cover up and use a young man for propaganda is outrageous, and I think they should be held accountable.
    – alternet.com, (5/26/08)

This is just part of an interview with Mary Tillman, mother of Pat Tillman, killed in Afghanistan by “friendly fire.”
The trouble was the Pentagon lied about the whole thing — first saying Pat Tillman died in a heroic charge, then finally spilling the truth.
He might have been murdered.

And the second item (also via alternet.com):

  • The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone.
    The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war.
    – Geoffrey Lean, The Independent, (5/27/08)

A couple of examples of Decider George’s legacy.

In Memoriam: ‘Shut Up and Die!’

Filed Under Mad as Hell, War & Politics | 1 Comment

As another Memorial Day three-day weekend draws to a close, the oratories reported given across the country by anyone remotely attached to Decider George’s government makes one want to spew junks.

In a time of war, especially with the Iraqi war so widely held to be a disaster, “a debacle,” a slaughterhouse of errors, any Memorial Day observance should be aimed not only at the past, but also the right now.
Since 2003, nearly 4,100 US GIs have been killed in Iraq.
In Afghanistan, 507 have died in combat (since October 2001).

There’s a huge veteran population in the US. There are about 23.8 million living veterans, with nearly eight million from the Vietnam era.
And these guys are dying: An average of 1,800 each day.

The memorial thrust forward by Decider George’s crew for all those vets and those still in uniform: Shut Up and Die!
Just this past week, the US Senate passed the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008, sometimes called the 21st Century GI Bill, with wide bipartisan support and the first real, updated overhaul of the original GI Bill of Rights since 1944.
Although Decider George whimpered about being “humbled by those who have made the ultimate sacrifice” during a speech today at Arlington National Cemetery, he plans on vetoing the bill.

The New York Times this morning jumped his ass on the possible veto:

  • He is wrong, but at least he is consistent. Having saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war, having squandered soldiers’ lives and failed them in so many ways, the commander in chief now resists giving the troops a chance at better futures out of uniform. He does this on the ground that the bill is too generous and may discourage re-enlistment, further weakening the military he has done so much to break.
    So lavish with other people’s sacrifices, so reckless in pouring the national treasure into the sandy pit of Iraq, Mr. Bush remains as cheap as ever when it comes to helping people at home.
    …
    The Senate version was drafted by two Vietnam veterans, Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, and Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska. They argue that benefits paid under the existing G.I. Bill have fallen far behind the rising costs of college.
    Their bill would pay full tuition and other expenses at a four-year public university for veterans who served in the military for at least three years since 9/11.
    …
    By threatening to veto it, Mr. Bush is showing great consistency of misjudgment. Congress should forcefully show how wrong he is by overriding his opposition and spending the money — an estimated $52 billion over 10 years, a tiniest fraction of the ongoing cost of Mr. Bush’s Iraq misadventure.
    – NYT Editorial, ‘Mr. Bush and the G.I. Bill,’ nytimes.com/2008/05/26/opinion, (5/26/08)

And the White House got pissed:

  • “This editorial could not be farther from the truth about the president’s record of leadership on this issue,” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in a statement. She added that the newspaper’s editorial board “doesn’t let the facts get in the way of expressing its vitriolic opinions – no matter how misleading they may be.”
    Perino noted that the Pentagon has “specific concerns” about the legislation that was passed in the Senate, pointing out that the White House supports a GOP-sponsored version of the measure. In addition, she touted several steps Bush has taken to help service members and their families.
    – Klaus Marre, thehill.com/leading-the-news, (5/26/08)

Perino is some piece of work.
We especially enjoyed the word, vitriolic, which means a variety of spiteful things like hurtful, bitter, cruel, malicious, and even vicious.
One reads the Times editorial, and though the piece scores some hits, it’s far from ugly and vitriolic.
We think Perino might be a little bitter.

Decider George and his boys are scared shitless GIs will leave the service and there won’t be enough soldiers for the ongoing wars.
On Saturday, two of Decider George’s biggest assholes acted the part.
According to vetvoice.com, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Veterans Administration Secretary James Peake displayed “their opposition to — and lack of respect for — today’s newest veterans” at the Disabled American Veterans’ 19th Annual Department Convention in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Stevens let it be known the real opposition to the Webb/Hagel bill was warm bodies.
He cried about a possible “mass exodus” from the military, blubbering, “There are worries that people who are already in for two years will serve one more and leave, and there’s really no incentive to stay.”
When you face horror in Iraq over and over again — does one call that ‘incentive’?

Secretary Peake, however, revealed he’s fairly heartless. The VA is is a big, blundering machine, which like the US military itself, is coming apart at the seams.
The big clincher is the immeasurable combat stress of Iraq.
A Rand Corp. report last month revealed repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan caused an insane high number of psychological injuries — about 300,000 U.S. military personnel are suffering from PTSD or major depression.
Peake don’t want to hear about no PTSD, saying, “I worry about labeling all these kids coming back. Just because someone might need a little counseling when they get back, doesn’t mean they need the PTSD label their whole lives.”

Hey! Peake!
Tell that shit to the family and friends of US Marine Chad Oligschlaeger, 21, of Corpus Christi, Texas. He committed suicide this weekend at the Twenty Nine Palms base in California.

  • Byron Smith, Oligschlaeger’s uncle, told a local TV outlet, “the first tour he came back and he asked for help, and they sent him back over there. I guess that was their idea of help. He did what a marine does — he went over there.”
    His father, Eric, said, “The second tour … I don’t think he was ready to go back. I think he was fighting it. I think he was afraid to go back.”
    “We sent these kids over there, we’re putting them through things that we’ll never see in our lifetimes. Things we see in the movies that are not real, it’s real to them,” said Christine Judan, a family friend of the Oligschlaegers.
    – Greg Mitchell, huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell, (5/25/08)

And to top off that ugly bit of news, the top US military guy literally told GIs to shut up and die:

  • WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written an unusual open letter to all those in uniform, warning them to stay out of politics as the nation approaches a presidential election in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a central, and certainly divisive, issue.
    “The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways,” wrote the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation’s highest-ranking officer. “It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway.”
    Admiral Mullen’s essay appears in the coming issue of Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal that is distributed widely among the officer corps.
    …
    “As the nation prepares to elect a new president,” Admiral Mullen wrote, “we would all do well to remember the promises we made: to obey civilian authority, to support and defend the Constitution and to do our duty at all times.”
    “Keeping our politics private is a good first step,” he added. “The only things we should be wearing on our sleeves are our military insignia.”
    – Thom Shanker, www.nytimes.com/2008, (5/26/08)

No matter the lie.

Cash Flow

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Irony can sometimes be just the black residue of a lie.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, Decider George has spent US peoples’ money like there was literally no tomorrow.
And most of this cash flowed to the Middle East in pursuit of the perfect war.
Now the out-stretched hand comes beckoning.
This would be absolutely hilarious if people weren’t being killed every hour of every day:

  • A Tuesday fund-raiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center.
    Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fund-raiser inside.
    – Mike Sunnucks, Phoenix Business Journal, bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories, (5/23/08)

Jackboot John McCain’s campaign for president appears to be coming apart at the financial seams.
In this past week, he knocked two knuckle-headed preachers off his endorsement list, he’s got all kinds of problems with lobbyists, and now a sitting president can’t bring in the crowds or the money.

Of course, Jackboot John should know Decider George has an incredibly incompetent bunch of people working for him (and supposedly for US!).
This just yesterday:

  • WASHINGTON — The Pentagon cannot account for nearly 15 billion dollars in payments for goods and services in Iraq, according to an internal audit which members of Congress blasted Friday as a “shocking” accountability failure.
    Of 8.2 billion dollars in US taxpayer-funded defense contracts reviewed by the defense department’s inspector general, the Pentagon could not properly account for more than 7.7 billion dollars.
    The lack of accountability of the funds, intended for purchases of weapons, vehicles, construction equipment and security services, amounted to a 95 percent failure rate in basic accounting standards, according to the report.
    …
    The Pentagon also was found to have given away another 1.8 billion in Iraqi assets “with absolutely no accountability,” said Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
    “Investigators examined 53 payment vouchers and couldn’t find even one that adequately explained where the money went.”
    – Agence France-Presse, (5/23/08)

The above is really not a ‘new’ news story:

  • Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades are just a sampling of more than $1 billion in unaccounted for military equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces, according to a new report issued today by the Pentagon Inspector General and obtained exclusively by the CBS News investigative unit. Auditors for the Inspector General reviewed equipment contracts totaling $643 million but could only find an audit trail for $83 million.
    –cbsnews.com, (12/6/07)

And the big dust-off cash-flow:

  • The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.
    The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.
    …
    “One CPA official described an environment awash in $100 bills,” the memorandum says. “One contractor received a $2m payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.
    “They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division’s vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75m in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds.”
    …
    Bremer’s financial adviser, retired Admiral David Oliver, is even more direct. The memorandum quotes an interview with the BBC World Service. Asked what had happened to the $8.8bn he replied: “I have no idea. I can’t tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn’t – nor do I actually think it’s important.”
    Q: “But the fact is billions of dollars have disappeared without trace.”
    Oliver: “Of their money. Billions of dollars of their money, yeah I understand. I’m saying what difference does it make?”
    – guardian.co.uk/world, (2/8/07)

Out of the mouth: Admiral Oliver displayed the very sense and soul of Decider George’s entire time in office and its moral philosophy — Who gives a shit?

According to icasualties.org, 4,080 US GIs have been killed in Iraq.
And yesterday, one soldier was killed southwest of Baghdad, and in another form of bitter irony, another soldier died yesterday in Chicago from injuries in a hit-and-run auto accident while on leave from Iraq.
In tune with several reporting sources, anywhere from 80,000 to 1.4 million Iraqi civilians have died since Decider George instigated the killings in 2003.

And the horror continues. Air strikes by the US in the tightly-packed Shiite slum of Sadr City the last few weeks has started to take its toll.
On Wednesday, at least eight people, including two children were killed. The US reportedly has bombed that section of south Baghdad into rubble.
CNN reported the increasing number of civilians dying from US gunfire does nothing to win hearts and minds, but the exact opposite as “anger against the Americans is only increasing.”

More than a cash flow problem? Huh, Jackboot John.

Memorial Day ‘Companion’

Filed Under Mad as Hell, War & Politics | 1 Comment

Here it is Friday before the famous Memorial Day weekend — once the party-igniting start to a summer of beer and chicks in halter tops — but now it’s on to $4 a gallon gas and a world shattered by shit-heads in power.
One of the most pointed writers/performers is Garrison Keillor, of “A Prairie Home Companion” fame, who crafted a real look at Memorial Day, very-aptly titled, “Mutterings Over The Graves of Soldiers.”
From salon.com:

  • The Current Occupant tossed Nazis into a speech last week, something he rarely does since it only reminds people of Dick Cheney. He likened those who would negotiate with terrorists to those who tried to appease the Nazis, an awkward comparison, since Nazis were self-defined and wore the swastika proudly, and terrorists are anybody we nominate to be terrorists, who may include terrorists, people who know terrorists, people named Terry, or people with wrists. One reason Guantánamo is kept top-secret is so you and I won’t know how many innocent people have been locked up there and how little the bureaucracy cares about innocence, which might remind people of the Nazis.
    …
    The war on terror, to most people, is a lame joke, and Republicans who’ve been embedded in Washington too long are now finding that the word “terrorism” has lost its tread. This multitrillion-dollar war is going to wind down, one way or another. The Occupant will hand it off to the next president, who can then negotiate with people who know people who know terrorists and work out a way to extricate our people from the desert.
    If a Democrat does it, it will be appeasement, and if a Republican does it, it will go down as a courageous act of statesmanship, but one way or another, it will be done.
    …
    Meanwhile it’s almost Memorial Day and here is a vet on television talking hopefully about his dream of making a good life who has been horribly burned and grafted back together, his head looks like a candle stub with a mouth and blinking eyes. Your heart goes out to the brave young man. And what choice does he have other than to be brave? It’s either that or the life of a potato. But who did this to him?
    On Memorial Day we’ll hear about men who gave their lives for their country, but many lives were not given, they were taken, and taken stupidly and carelessly. And there has been great public piety about those men and their “sacrifice” on the part of politicians who blithely sacrificed them.
    – Garrison Keillor, salon.com/opinion/Keillor, (5/21/08)

Read Keillor’s entire piece, either at salon (which can be troublesome to log onto) or at antiwar.com, where we found it.

Memorial Day will never feel the same even after the last eight years have ended.

A General Cluster of ‘Malign Influence’

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As chin-strap, ramrod-retro, surge-happy US Army Gen. David Petraeus slips through his Senate confirmation hearings this morning, Iraq is slipping further into the surreal.
Last month, Decider George picked Petraeus out of a crowd, a total stranger, (ironic sarcasm, we have you know!) and then nominated him to replace Navy Adm. William J. Fallon as chief of U.S. Central Command.
Although this so-called Central Command covers a lot of bad-ass, screwed-up Middle Eastern areas like Iraq and Afghanistan, company headquarters is in Tamp, Fla.
Fallon quit earlier this year because Decider George’s Iran policy was “becoming a distraction.”
One wonders at Petraeus’ eyes — brown, has to be the color brown — because the man is so-filled up to the eyeballs with shit!
A bit of his testimony:

  • “The withdrawal of over one-quarter of our combat power from Iraq will significantly reshape the battlefield. Our goal is to thin out our presence, not simply withdraw from areas, to ensure we help the ISF hold the security gains we have achieved together and set the conditions for additional progress,” Petraeus said.
    “A period of 45 days will enable us to reposture our forces, if needed, evaluate the effect of required adjustments, and avoid premature judgments about the impact of these changes. After this period of consolidation and evaluation, we can then complete an informed assessment and make appropriate recommendations.”
    – CNN, cnn.com/2008/politics, (5/22/08)

What the heck?
And what is reposture?

In all the babble, the procrastination continues. Last fall, US troops strength crested at about 165.000, that was during the incredibly successful “surge,” and someGIs have since left (a bunch, 3,000 and more, to Afghanistan) and now that level might be cut.

The big question is when…
Forty-five days starting from what date?
And how long is this period when Petraeus and his good shadow, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, have “complete an informed assessment and make appropriate recommendations”?
The putting-off of the putting off.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of a 46-question-and-answer document submitted before Petraeus testified.
And that old Iran policy thing came up — Iran is the black-heart ingredient against peace in the whole, entire Middle East.

  • When asked by the Senate panel whether a lengthy deployment in Iraq only strengthens Iran’s influence in the region, Petraeus responded that the opposite was true. It “has the potential to counter malign Iranian influence against the government of Iraq, build common cause in the region and expose the extent of malign Iranian activities to the world,” he wrote.

The “extent of malign activities…”
Then what about this:

  • WASHINGTON — The U.S. military, in a shift, has postponed the release of a report detailing allegations of Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents, according to people familiar with the matter.The military had initially planned to publicize the report several weeks ago but instead turned the dossier over to the Iraqi government, these people said. The Iraqis are using the information to pressure Tehran to curb the flow of Iranian weaponry and explosives into Iraq, these people said.
    …
    “The timing of the brief…on Iranian interference has yet to be nailed down, but we anticipate briefing sometime in the future,” said Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll. Adm. Driscoll said there were “lots of reasons” for the delay but declined further comment.
    Another military official said in an interview that the report could be delayed significantly, noting that it was “in the hands of the [Iraqi central government].”
    – Yochi J. Dreazen, online.wsj.com/article, (5/21/08)

Was the good general questioned about all this civilian-killing/Quran-targeting shit?
Early news stories on Petraeus’ hearing indicated none of this was discussed:

  • BAIJI, Iraq — A U.S. helicopter airstrike on Wednesday night killed eight civilians, including two children, north of Baghdad, police officials said on Thursday.
    Colonel Mudhher al-Qaisi, police chief in the town of Baiji, said the attack was on a group of shepherds in a vehicle in a farming area.
    Relatives said some of those killed were fleeing on foot after the U.S. military arrived in the area.
    “This is a criminal act. It will make the relations between Iraqi citizens and the U.S. forces tense. This will negatively affect security improvements,” Qaisi told Reuters.
    – Sabah al-Bazee, Reuters, (5/22/08)

Even as US military commanders continued to dampen red-hot reaction to a US sniper using a copy of the Koran for target practice, Iraqi police are full of questions about another US operation earlier Wednesday in which 11 people were killed.
The US military reported 11 militants died, but police and several residents said at least some of the dead were civilians killed by U.S. snipers.
Including a journalist:

  • BAGHDAD — An Iraqi television station accused U.S. troops on Thursday of shooting dead one of its cameramen as he walked to his Baghdad home.
    Colleagues of Wisam Ali Ouda at the Afaq television channel said he was among 11 people killed by U.S. soldiers in eastern Baghdad’s Obaidi district on Wednesday morning.
    The U.S. military has said its troops shot dead 11 militants, but police and several residents said at least some of the dead were civilians killed by U.S. snipers.
    “Wisam was one of our most prominent cameramen. His killers have no values or humanity,” the station’s director, Mohammed Thiab al-Baidhani, said. “We will loudly condemn those who kill journalists.”
    A spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Stover, denied any civilians were killed during Wednesday’s military operation in Obaidi.
    “All extremists were positively identified as committing a violent act or posed a threat to commit a violent act before each engagement,” he told Reuters.
    There have been conflicting accounts of Wednesday’s shootings in different parts of the Obaidi district. It lies close to Sadr City, the main stronghold of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, where Iraqi troops backed by tanks have launched an operation to take control of the streets.
    Police said the dead included an elderly man and three street cleaners, but also at least three Sadr militants.
    Colleagues of Ouda, 32, who was buried in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday, said they had made pendants bearing his image to commemorate him.
    “He was a close friend, we filmed a lot together. It’s a tragedy,” cameraman Ali Adnan said.
    – Reuters, (5/22/08)

The Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, says Iraq is the most dangerous place on earth to work.
Since the 2003 US-led invasion, 130 journalists, both local and foreign, have been killed.

And this isn’t very-good US PR:

  • GENEVA — The United States on Wednesday defended its detention of around 500 minors in Iraq, saying it had developed an “extensively robust” programme to meet the special needs of child combatants.
    “The US does detain juveniles that are encountered on the battlefield,” said Sandra Hodgkinson, deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Defense.
    “We go to great lengths when we do detain juveniles to recognise the special needs of the juvenile population and to provide them with a safe environment away from hostilities,” she told journalists.
    The Pentagon confirmed last week a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that the US army is currently holding around 500 minors in detention in Iraq, as well as nearly a dozen juveniles in Afghanistan.
    The ACLU has also said US forces had detained 800 minors in Iraq as recently as last September.
    “The United States has not recognised these child detainees’ right to rehabilitation and reintegration, nor has the US recognised their juvenile status, in contravention of international juvenile justice standards,” the ACLU said.
    …
    Hodgkinson was speaking ahead of a review of the US implementation of its commitments under optional protocols to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. The review was to take place at UN offices in Geneva.
    The United States has not ratified the main convention, the only state not to do so apart from Somalia.
    – Agence France-Presse, (5/21/08)

AND THIS SUCKS!

  • Vice President Dick Cheney told newly minted Coast Guard officers Wednesday that the war on terror would be won on their watch and dismissed fears that fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan would drag on indefinitely.
    Cheney, sporting a 10-gallon hat, said the troop surge in Iraq “has succeeded brilliantly.”
    “The war on terror is a lengthy enterprise, but it does not have to go on forever,” he told more than 200 graduating cadets during the 127th commencement at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
    …
    “The only way to lose this fight is to quit. That would be irresponsible,” Cheney said. “More than that, quitting would be an act of betrayal and dishonor. And it’s not going to happen on our watch.”
    – Associated Press, rawstory.com/news/2008, (5/21/08)

Clusters of brain cells merge together and form an image.
The picture of a cowboy buffoon, looking like Lyndon Johnson with a skin disease

War is apparently the only real rush Dufus Dick gets out of his miserable, little life.
Despite never, ever serving in the military, despite not giving a shit about sending others off to die or get maimed, Dufus Dick must have his shit-slick fingers all over this horror:

  • The United States on Wednesday opposed a worldwide ban on cluster bombs, calling instead for “technological fixes” that would make them safer.
    State Department expert Stephen Mull told reporters the United States is “deeply concerned” about the danger of such munitions, but said a ban like one proposed at a major conference in Dublin would be impractical.
    “We think that it will be impossible to ban cluster munitions as many in the Oslo process would like to do, because these are weapons that have a certain military utility,” Mull said.
    “So rather than ban them, we think that a much more effective way to go about this is through technological fixes that will make sure that these weapons are no longer viable once the conflict is over,” Mull said.
    He did not explain how such a technological solution might work.
    …
    Dropped from warplanes or fired from artillery guns, cluster bombs explode in mid-air, randomly scattering bomblets — ramping up the risk of civilians being killed or maimed by their indiscriminate, wide-area effect.
    – AFP, (5/21/08)

Obvious in being absent from these weapons’ talks in Dublin, Ireland, this week are representatives from the US along with China, India, Israel, Pakistan and Russia.
One hundred other nations like France, Germany and Japan have been working since last year to develop some kind of agreement to halt the use of cluster bombs.
This character Mull from the above story is, of course, another one of those cluster heads from Decider George’s government.
The world cannot ban these type weapons because they “have a certain military utility,” Mull blubbered — One can actually hear Dufus Dick blubbering the word “utility” in everyday speech like it was a kitchen toaster instead of a terrible weapon of mass destruction for small spaces.
Also in the AFP story, Mull said the US does participate in the high-sounding-Orwellian-KGB-Peter Sellers-playing the president like Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in Geneva.
This gathering for just certain weapons is a gun-runner’s lovefest, Mulled continued, because the “principal producers and users of these munitions vote and participate and work together.”

War is such a sweet business — just ask Dufus Dick, smiling Dave Petraeus and of course, Decider George!

Apology ‘In the sense’

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Christians in the land of Islam.
Not only did the holier-than-thou armies of the West invade Iraq, but the religion’s hypocrisy was sucked along with it.
Trapped in an inferno, US GIs perform like the false, twisted logic that put them there.

  • An American sniper has been sent home from Iraq for using a copy of the Koran for target practice at a shooting range near Baghdad, the US military says.
    The Muslim holy book was found riddled with bullet holes last week by Iraqi police, who also discovered offensive graffiti inside its cover.
    A US military spokesman said the soldier had been removed from his unit, sent home, and would be disciplined.
    He was unnamed, but was reportedly a staff sergeant in a sniper section.
    – news.bbc.co.uk, (5/18/08)

When is an apology not an apology?

  • BAGHDAD – President Bush has apologized to Iraq’s prime minister for an American sniper’s shooting of a Quran, and the Iraqi government called on U.S. military commanders to educate their soldiers to respect local religious beliefs.
    Bush’s spokeswoman said Tuesday that the president apologized during a video conference Monday with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who told the president that the shooting of Islam’s holy book had disappointed and angered both the Iraqi people and their leaders.
    “He apologized for that in the sense that he said that we take it very seriously,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said. “We are concerned about the reaction. We wanted them to know that the president knew that this was wrong.”
    …
    On Tuesday, Khalaf al-Elyan, a senior Sunni Arab lawmaker, said the sniper must stand trial, preferably in Baghdad.
    “It is a dangerous case. We had been silent and accepted the killing of our sons, the destruction of our homes and the theft of our money, but we do not accept insults to the holy Quran,” he said at a news conference.
    …
    Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, met with tribal leaders in Radwaniyah on Sunday to apologize while another American officer kissed a copy of the Quran before presenting it to the chiefs.
    On Monday, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, paid visits to al-Maliki as well as Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, both of whom are Sunni Arabs.
    – Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Associated Press Writer, (5/20/08)

Perino gives Decider George such great head.
She has turned into the extreme-best mouthpiece.
Even better than Mouthpiece-Through-The-Asshole Ari Fleischer!

The Iraqis are serious-as-shit about the incident, but the US president, under whose orders that staff sergeant sniper labored, is only sorry “…in the sense…” of how serious the affair could have become, and might still.
One of the worse things that could happen (out of a long, indexed list of worse things) is chaos comes like in Europe last year over that cartoon.
Or the Quran down the toilet routine at Gitmo.

Instead of an apology, a US general kissed Islam’s most holy book.

What pisses, however, as there will never be a Decider George apology to the US peoples:

  • Here’s how the figures add up, just for Americans. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have thus far produced 300,000 psychological casualties, 320,000 brain injury casualties, plus 35,000 (probably understated) officially reported “normal” casualties. This adds up to 655,000 US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, an average of just under 101,000 Americans killed or wounded every year since the wars began. If the idea of 101,000 casualties for every extra year in Iraq and Afghanistan gets out and infects the voting public, imagine the effect on the currently torpid national debate over leaving in five years versus fifteen years!
    – Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch Diary, counterpunch.org/Cockburn, (5/10-11/08)

Saying ‘I’m sorry’ and then doing something about the injustice, a normal procedure.
Instead, Decider George decides to give up golf.

Sad and Shameful

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Decider George shames all US peoples.
He couldn’t grasp his ass with both hands.
And his hypocrisy makes one suffer enough to shit a brick:

  • SHARM EL SHEIK, Egypt — President Bush said Saturday that “it breaks my heart” that the Palestinian people have been unable to establish an independent homeland and he vowed anew to try to forge an Israeli-Palestinian agreement by year’s end.
    Bush’s remarks from the sidelines of a regional conference here appeared aimed at Palestinians and other Arabs who consider the U.S. administration so staunch a supporter of Israel that it turns a blind eye to the human rights concerns of the Palestinians. Many also doubt Bush’s commitment to the tough negotiations ahead if he’s to succeed in helping to craft a deal in just seven months.
    “It breaks my heart to see the vast potential of the Palestinian people, really, wasted,” Bush said, appearing alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “They’re good, smart, capable people that when given a chance will build a thriving homeland.” Bush said he is “absolutely committed” to achieving agreement.
    “It would be an opportunity to end the suffering that takes place in the Palestinian territories,” Bush added.
    Egypt is one of Bush’s most reliable Arab allies, yet even here state-backed media mocked Bush’s peace efforts, especially after his cozy visit to Israel on Thursday to celebrate the Jewish state’s 60th anniversary – a date the Palestinians call the “day of catastrophe.”
    In his speech Thursday to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, Bush mentioned only vaguely “the hard choices necessary” for Israelis to do their part for peace, but offered no concrete steps. In those remarks, Bush lavished praise on Israel and reiterated its right to defend itself. He did not visit Palestinian territories, and the only time he mentioned them was to say that Israel at 120 years old – in 2068 – would border an independent Palestinian state.
    – Hannah Allam, mcclatchydc.com/world/story, (5/17/08)

The president of the US peoples has now gone off his rocker.

Eerily, and however, Decider George’s trip to the Middle East also conjures up rather repugnantly Dick Nixon’s visit to the region just weeks before he was overly-unceremoniously run out of town (via helicopter) in the summer of 1974.
The last graph from yesterday’s McClathy news story above:

  • Bush’s agenda for the conference is grueling, with one-on-one time built in for several of his most crucial Middle Eastern allies. On Saturday, Bush met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Karzai and Abbas. On Sunday, he’s expected to sit down with leaders of Pakistan, Jordan and Iraq before giving a speech to the general conference audience.

Nixon’s ‘74 trip was also a gut cruncher and kind of grueling. He had been suffering from phlebitis, blood problems in his extrementies, even once being hospitalized – his physicians really didn’t want the president traveling, there was a chance of blood clots — but because of the heat off “Watergate,” Dick needed to take a hike out of town. His hectic 10-day schedule included visits not only to Israel, but to Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt.
The scandal-pot, however, was way-more-than-boiling over back in DC.
Wikipedia explains late spring, early summer 1974:

  • The House Judiciary Committee controlled by Democrats opened formal and public impeachment hearings against Nixon on May 9, 1974. Despite his efforts, one of the secret recordings, known as the “smoking gun” tape, was released on August 5, 1974, and revealed that Nixon authorized hush money to Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt, and also revealed that Nixon ordered the CIA to tell the FBI to stop investigating certain topics because of “the Bay of Pigs thing.” In light of his loss of political support and the near certainty of both his impeachment by the House of Representatives and his probable conviction by the Senate, he resigned on August 9, 1974, after addressing the nation on television the previous evening. He never admitted to criminal wrongdoing, although he later conceded errors of judgment.

During Nixon’s visit to Eygpt in June 1974, he and President Anwar El Sadat once travelled by train from Cario to Alexandria.
In a scene not unlike Lawrence of Arabia, huge crowds lined the train track, waving and screaming. Unlike our current leader, Nixon was well-liked in the Middle East (in fact, he was more popular abroad than at home).
He and Sadat at one point even stood on at open platform between railroad cars waving to the waving throngs as the train slowly swept pass, through towns and villages, churning through the Egyptian countryside.
According to The Final Days, written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (which told of Nixon’s last months in office), this particular trip was harrowing for medical people, the Secret Service, and probably Nixon’s whole staff.
Blood clots be damned! Assassination come forth!
Woodward and Bernstein cite sources traveling with Nixon which implied that maybe, just maybe, Dick wanted to be plucked from the crowd, wanted to be gunned down, maybe wanted somebody to shoot him: A tactical death wish, Nixon political right up to the razor wire.
The all-consuming meltdown caused by a simple burglary had caused ‘Tricky Dick’ to maybe go beyond more than just tricky.
A better way out: Get blown away in a far land and go down as a hero instead of having to return home and get your ass shamefully kicked.

Nixon is relative, however. Compared to Decider George, he was damn-near not bad.

 

 

 

‘Support the troops!’

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Is Decider George’s government heartless and cruel at every level?
Apparently, the whole shebang is not worth a shit:

  • WASHINGTON (AP) — An internal e-mail message written by a Veteran’s Affairs Department employee suggested that the agency avoid giving a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder for veterans and instead consider a diagnosis that might result in a lower disability payment.
    The message, dated March 20 and titled “Suggestion,” said: “Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest that we refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out. Consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder, R/O PTSD.” R/O stands for “rule out.”
    “Additionally,” it said, “we really don’t or have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD.”
    …
    In a statement, Dr.James B. Peake, the secretary of veterans affairs, called the suggestions “inappropriate.” The employee’s name was not released.
    – Associated Press, (5/16/08)

Despite all the evidence, despite all the bullshit about supporting the troops, Bootjack John McCain keeping US GIs in Iraq a 100 years (now it’s just until 2013, according to a fairy-tale speech he gave yesterday), despite all the lofty tones for US fighting men and women:

  • An estimated 300,000 veterans among the nearly 1.7 million who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are battling depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. More than half of these people, according to the study conducted by the Rand Corp., are slipping through the cracks in the bureaucratic system, going without necessary treatment.
    The Rand study underscores one of the lessons of modern counterinsurgency conflicts: Such wars may kill fewer troops than traditional fighting but can leave deeper psychological scars.
    – Julian E. Barnes, latimes.com/news/science, (4/18/08)

And on the other side of the fence, which is actually the same side:

  • A poorly run Pentagon program for providing civilian employees in Iraq and Afghanistan with workman’s compensation has allowed defense contractors and insurance companies to gouge American taxpayers, a House oversight committee said Thursday.
    Insurance companies alone have pocketed $600 million in excessive profits over the past five years, says a staff report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, but the Defense Department refuses to adjust its approach for managing the program.
    According to the committee, the Pentagon allows its contractors to negotiate their own insurance contracts. By contrast, the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development and the Army Corps of Engineers have all selected a single insurance carrier to provide the insurance at fixed rates.
    “What makes the situation even worse is the people this program is supposed to benefit — the injured employees working for contractors — have to fight the insurance companies to get their benefits,” committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said at a hearing Thursday. “Delays and denials in paying claims are the rule.”
    KBR Inc., one of the largest defense contractors in Iraq, paid the insurance giant AIG $284 million for medical and disability coverage under the Defense Base Act, a reference to the federal law mandating the insurance. Due to the way KBR’s contract is structured, this premium, along with an $8 million markup for KBR, gets billed to the taxpayer.
    “Out of this amount, just $73 million actually goes to injured contractors, and AIG and KBR pocket over $100 million as profit,” Waxman said.
    – Richard Lardner, AP, (5/15/08)

Decider George has got to be the most openly deceitful leader in the whole, wide world.
‘Support the troops’ my ass!
Maybe along with uncle Karl Rove, the US Congress should have Decider George arrested and ass-stomped into the basement.

And the public:

In the nothingness on the public airwaves about the Pentagon propaganda machine — no not that one — but where all these half-looped retired military officers lied about Decider George’s foreign policy on every news network in the US, comes another nail in the coffin of truth.
Joe Galloway, a long-time war correspondent and author of the book, We Were Soldiers Once…And Young, was cited this week as one of the critics “reached out” for by big Don Rumsfeld during the operation lie-to-the-Americans exercise performed by those lying, greedy retired military assholes on TV.
Galloway also says Rumsfeld is a liar.
In a story posted on Thursday at editorandpublisher.com, Galloway writes

  • This is why alarm bells should be ringing all over Washington about The New York Times’ disclosure that then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld encouraged a secret Pentagon program to care for and spoon-feed more than 50 retired senior military officers whom the administration deemed reliable friends who could be counted on “to carry our water” on the television and cable networks.
    Feeding the military analysts “key and valuable information” in secret briefings by Pentagon and White House officials, the idea went, would make them the go-to guys for the networks and encourage the networks to “weed out the less reliably friendly analysts . . . .”
    …
    Let the record show that Rumsfelds’ folks reached out to me on these few occasions:
    –In early summer of 2003, half a dozen of us were invited to an off-the-record lunch with Rumsfeld in the Pentagon. The defense secretary seemed to have a poor grasp of the reality on the ground in Iraq and was still declaring that we’d do no nation-building there. He saw no insurgency, only a handful of “dead-enders”.
    – In November 2005, DiRita invited me to a “one-on-one” lunch with Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. This one I accepted. I arrived to find across the table Rumsfeld, the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace; Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dick Cody; Joint Staff Director Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp and (then Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Larry) DiRita.
    We went at it hammer and tongs for an hour and a half over their conduct of the war and the errors that were costing the lives of American soldiers. As I left, I told Rumsfeld that I’d continue to point out those mistakes every week in my column.
    –In April 2006, DiRita sent me an e-mail telling me that my most recent column was “silly”. That column had discussed an expensive war game the Pentagon conducted about a U.S. attack on a thinly disguised country that obviously was Iran. His complaint sparked an escalating e-mail war that most reckon DiRita lost .
    So much for the Rumsfeld/DiRita outreach to their critics. They were much too busy hand-feeding horse manure to their TV generals, who in turn were feeding the same product to the American public by the cubic yard.
    There’s little doubt that this program violated the laws against covert propaganda operations mounted against the American public by their own government. But in this administration, there’s no one left to enforce that law or any of the other laws the Bush operatives have been busy violating.
    The real crime is that the scheme worked. The television network bosses swallowed the bait, the hook, the line and the sinker, and they have yet to answer for it.

So far no one in Decider George’s government has answered for any thing.
Common folk answer.

 

The ‘Long’ High-Speed End

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Since early Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, the US has reportedly been at war.
According to Decider George and his bunch of continually-wrong minons, this war is being waged against those who practice terror.
Aside from the fact this actual war has been ongoing for decades, maybe since Iran in 1953, or even maybe back to the days of T.E. Lawrence, the current segment of this conflict is a complete, horrifying failure.

In 2005, after the infamous “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) phrase appeared a bit over zealous due to the bloody fact Iraq (and Afghanistan) were becoming messy affairs, big Don Rumsfeld and his Pentagon boys cooked up a military-history sounding slogan, “The Long War.”
Although the term had been credited the year before to Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, former head of US Central Command, Decider George snatched it up pretty quick.
He retched up the phrase during his State of the Union address Jan. 31, 2006.
The next day, Rumsfeld, during a press briefing, answered a reporter’s question this way about whether the “Long War” meant US GIs overseas in war zones a long, long time:

  • “No. The — quite the contrary. I think what we’re trying to do is to just simply tell the truth…”
    …
    (A question later in the briefing): One clarification on “the long war.” Is Iraq going to be a long war?
    SEC. RUMSFELD: “No, I don’t believe it is. We’re training up these folks and passing over responsibility every day…”
    – defenselink.mil/transcripts, (2/1/06)

So Iraq and hopefully other small parts of the whole of the “Long War” won’t be long?

  • Still, I suspect “the Long War” will soon join the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism” in the dust bin of history. In fact, on naming its terror war, the Bush administration could probably use a little help. How about the Scare-You-to-Death-Struggle-for-Global-Ethanol-Independence-and-Republican-Electoral-Victories War (or SYTDSFGEIAREVW)?
    – Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram: Bushwhacked in Bushworld, (2/7/06)

The problem with the “Long War” is that it isn’t overseas.

In the Los Angeles Times yesterday, Andrew J. Bacevich, a teacher at Boston University, brought forth a concise and abrupt clarity to this whole ‘Long War’ bullshit.

  • Back in September 2001, Rumsfeld put it this way: “We have a choice — either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way that they live; and we chose the latter.” In this context, “they” represent the billion or so Muslims inhabiting the greater Middle East.
    …
    The truth is that the United States, with rare exceptions, has demonstrated little talent for changing the way others live. We have enjoyed far greater success in making necessary adjustments to our own way of life, preserving and renewing what we value most. Early in the 20th century, Progressives rounded off the rough edges of the Industrial Revolution, deflecting looming threats to social harmony. During the Depression, FDR’s New Deal reformed capitalism and thereby saved it. Here lies the real genius of American politics.
    Rumsfeld got it exactly backward. Although we do face a choice, it’s not the one that he described. The actual choice is this one: We can either persist in our efforts to change the way they live — in which case the war of no exits will surely lead to bankruptcy and exhaustion. Or we can recognize the folly of generational war and choose instead to put our own house in order: curbing our appetites, paying our bills and ending our self-destructive dependency on foreign oil and foreign credit.
    — Andrew Bacevich, The ‘Long War’ Fallacy, latimes.com, (5/13/08)

If a national course isn’t adjusted within a short space, the end of the so-called ‘Long War’ will come to a hard-crash end.
Oil and its refined products, food and the modern system of transporting it, an infrastructure so weak roads and bridges are decades behind in upkeep — once a breakdown occurs, the horror of what’s happening in the Third World right now will come home to roost in the US.
Despite the glory and wealth, the US is in extremely poor condition — no real, overall maintenance since the 1950s, a shame of a rail system — and a population literally bloated and fattened on the finest things the world can produce.

Even at $10 a gallon, US consumers will continue to fill their vehicles with fuel.
Even at $5 a loaf, US peoples will continue to prepare sloppy peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

What happens then, when all this isn’t available in mass quantity?

Riots, death and destruction — no more peanut butter, no more jelly. 

‘…not judge this kindly’

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Can anyone really take Decider George seriously? He seems to have absolutlely no shame.

Does one think Jenna Bush considers/thinks/reflects/ponders or even wonders about her daddy being a blundering, atrocious villian?
Of course not!

Jenna on Sunday married that baby-necked, dumb-ass-looking Hank Hager in a pastoral, Hollywood-old-West wedding while the world burned.
After a sweet, booze-drenched honeymoon in Europe, Hager’s reportedly going to work for Constellation Energy, the 33rd-worse air polluter in the US.
And with a possible nuclear power plant project in the works — Constellation has an application pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Agency to built a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs, 50 miles from Washington, D.C. with construction by the Bechtel Company, another Halliburton-like corporation sucking up billions of dollars in Iraq no-bid contracts — Hager can very well afford to keep Jenna on the level of which she’s accustomed.

While her daddy continues an embarrassment to the US and its peoples:

  • For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.
    “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”
    – Jonathan Martin, politico.com/blogs, (5/13/08)

Although Decider George was also quoted as saying he quit the links in 2003 after the UN building in Baghdad was car bombed, the remark displayed a heartless, elitist arrogance.
The real focal point here, though, is why would anyone even mention such a stupid-ass thing?
Nothing to do with golf, or tennis, or swimming, or shooting hoops — if Decider George wasn’t such an arrogant asshole who’s completely shredded the US Constitution, bankrupted the military and caused rampant death and destruction in the Middle East — who would give a shit?
 
Does Jenna feel any shame herself — her daddy to go down, way down, as the very worse president in the history of the republic?

  • Eighty-two percent of Americans now say the country’s seriously off on the wrong track, up 10 points in the last year to a point from its record high in polls since 1973. And 31 percent approve of Bush’s job performance overall, while 66 percent disapprove.
    …
    Beyond the president’s overall rating, intensity of sentiment is heavily against Bush. Fifty-two percent of Americans not only disapprove of his work but do so strongly, matching the high in ABC News/Washington Post polls set in July. Just 15 percent strongly approve.
    …
    These views directly relate to the president’s ratings. Among people who say the country’s headed in the right direction, 83 percent approve of Bush’s work. His problem is that they constitute just 16 percent of the population. Among the 82 percent who say the country’s off on the wrong track, Bush’s approval rating is a dismal 21 percent.
    — Gary Langer, ABC News, abcnews.go.com/print, (5/12/08)

Decider George might become infamous in his own presidential lifetime.

Last month,  ABC News reported nearly all of Decider George’s entire adminstration’s top dogs had been engaged in White House torture discussions — Condi Rice, Big Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, John Ashcroft, George Tenet, even Dufus Dick Cheney — and worked out details on how much pain could be inflicted, when and how, including the greatly-discussed waterboarding technique, on certain subjects captured during this huge, all-encompassing War on Terror.
Moral and legalities be damned!
Then-Attorney General Ashcroft supposedly had some second thoughts about all this torture-shit talk being bantered about the White House.

  • Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.
    According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”
    – abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics, (4/9/08)

Of course, big John was blubbering about torture and covering his own ruptured ass.
In reality, he was describing Decider George’s entire tenure in office.

 

 

 

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