VA Shame
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The latest yesterday in grand ‘Support the Troops’ style:
- The U.S. Army said Wednesday that 7,000 family members of soldiers killed in the Iraq or Afghan wars mistakenly were sent letters addressing them as “John Doe.”
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., was sending a personal letter to all the families who received the improperly addressed letters as the result of a printing error, the Army said.
…
Casey’s personal note to the families alluded to the fact that he lost his own father in Vietnam and it said the Army is extremely sensitive to family grief.
Such bubble-crap from Decider George’s mis-guided military.
The ‘Support the Troops’ motif blubbering from this White House the past eight years is nothing more than vapor in the air — another lying disaster.
(Illustration found here).
The shame of the official US attitude toward veterans of Decider George’s terrifying, misnomer Global War on Terror — the only good soldier is one with a rifle still fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan — the rest can go to spit.
And at tomdispatch this week is a call to just do the math — count the bodies!
- Of course, both the Pax Americana and the Pax Republicana would prove will-o’-the-wisps.As it turned out, the Bush administration, blind to the actual world it faced, disastrously miscalculated the nature of American power — especially military power — and what it was capable of doing.
And yet, had they taken a clear-eyed look at what American military power had actually achieved in action since 1945, they might have been sobered.
In the major wars (and even some minor actions) the U.S. military fought in those decades, it had been massively destructive but never victorious, nor even particularly successful.
In many ways, in the classic phrase of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, it had been a “paper tiger.”
…
Eight years of bodies, dead, broken, mutilated, abused; eight years of ruined lives down countless drains; eight years of massive destruction to places from Baghdad to New Orleans where nothing of significance was ever rebuilt: all this was brought to us by a President, now leaving office without apology, who said the following in his first inaugural address: “I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility… to call for responsibility and try to live it as well.”
He lived, however, by quite a different code.
Destruction without responsibility, that’s Bush’s legacy, but who’s counting now that the destruction mounts and the bodies begin to pile up here in the “homeland,” in our own body count nation?
The laid off, the pension-less, the homeless, the suicides — imagine what that trillion dollars might have meant to them.
Even gone, Decider George will live in infamy.
Rum-Soaked Shrapnel
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Ironic horror-humor: Not funny in the smallest bit.
In fact, the cartoon below creates a vast pissed-offed affect/effect when one ponders the lying words of damn-dumb Don Rumsfeld: “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have…not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Just micro-seconds earlier, he’d blubbered this: “It isn’t a matter of money. It isn’t a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it.”
(Illustration found here).
Rumsfeld’s nonsensical, deceptive blather came in respond from a question from a US GI about getting armor for vehicles: “Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat.”
The date — Dec. 8, 2004.
Four years ago on Monday.
And yesterday, Tuesday, a report revealed what had been known amongst thinking peoples for a long time: Rumsfeld is a lying asshole.
- Military leaders knew the dangers posed by roadside bombs before the start of the Iraq war but did little to develop vehicles that were known to better protect forces from what proved to be the conflict’s deadliest weapon, a report by the Pentagon inspector general says.
The Pentagon “was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) … and of the availability of mine resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003,” says the 72-page report, which was reviewed by USA TODAY.
…
Marine Corps leaders “stopped processing” an urgent request in February 2005 for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles from combat commanders in Iraq’s Anbar province after declaring that a more heavily armored version of existing Humvee vehicles was the “best available” option for protecting troops, the report says.
Even after horrible statistics were released in May 2005 that 70 percent of US troops killed in Iraq were due to improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the Pentagon still tried to stall on money, time and created other bullshit excuses.
Since ‘shock and awe’ until last week, 3,397 US GIs have been killed in combat (4,209 total) with official wounded at 30,852 and estimates surge upwards to 100,000 or more. (Figures from antiwar.com).
Incompetents conducting an illegal war leads to some really, really bad times.
(Illustration was found here).
IEDs (see video here), like a shitload of other shit Decider George’s boys apparently failed to take into account prior to the invasion, or even considered, IEDs paint an explosive picture of how inept the entire US military mechanism in war nowadays.
The insurgents’ deadliest weapon comes as no surprise, as it is the heart and soul of war by terror.
- “The IED is the enemy’s artillery system,” says US general Montgomery Meigs.
“They didn’t come through three-dimensional space in a parabolic trajectory. They came through a social trajectory and a social network in the community.”
Rumsfeld and the entire bunch, including those political-barbed assholes in uniform, should be held accountable for at least lying, and being so full of shit :
- Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
Oh, but you knew the known, it couldn’t have been an unknown that US troops weren’t properly equipped when dropped into a meat-grinder.
An unknown known before it was unknown.
Forewarned!
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Nearly two years ago, the current lame-duck White House bunch were put on notice the financial system was ready to collapse, ready to fold-up more like a chair sitting a fat-ass banker than a house of cards.
Instead of creating a stop-gap, Decider George opened the flood gates even further.
From CNN this morning:
- The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed.
It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.
(Illustration found here).
Other warnings:
- They say no one saw it coming, but readers of the ICIS Chemicals & the Economy Blog were well forewarned about the full-blown global financial crisis.
“A year ago, world stock markets were close to their all-time highs and had seemingly shrugged off earlier US subprime mortgage problems,” said Paul Hodges, chairman of International eChem and author of the ICIS Chemicals & the Economy Blog.
“But we saw things differently. In October 2007, we highlighted the growing weakness in new housing starts and US housing prices because these were the key drivers for chemical demand,” he added.
The ICIS Chemicals & the Economy Blog also warned that rising oil prices and the continuing problems in the banking sector could hit consumer demand and impact corporate lending.
“We advised our readers to put in place contingency plans for just such an outcome,” said Hodges.
A slow motion train wreck from more than a year ago:
- Amidst all the commentary and sorting out of market Sturm und Drang these days, some financial world figures stand head and shoulders above the rest for their wisdom, level-headednessness and believability.
One in particular is Jeremy Grantham, called by some the philosopher king of Wall Street even though he’s based to the northeast in Boston. In 1977, he co-founded Grantham, Mayo and Van Otterloo, now known as GMO. In his Quarterly Letters to clients, he assesses current market conditions and usually takes a longer view as well. His commentaries are detailed, scholarly, sober and clear.
…
It’s become self-reinforcing and the results are “predictable and consistent.” The three major asset classes – real estate, stocks and bonds – are “expensive compared with (their) replacement cost where it can be calculated.” Equally worrisome, risk premiums “reached a historic low everywhere” until just weeks ago.
Grantham’s conclusion is these are all warning signs spelling eventual trouble because as noted above “Every bubble has always burst (with no exceptions, ever).”
When the 2000 bubble deflation resumes, “it will be across all countries and all assets, with the probable exception of high grade bonds.” In addition, risk premiums will widen (and now are) forcing companies to pay higher financing costs for borrowed funds that will depress investor confidence and reduce economic activity.
No one knows how deep or protracted a decline will be, but Grantham stresses it’s coming because the current global bubble is unprecedented.
“No similar global event (of this magnitude ever) occurred before.” Now that’s pretty scary stuff to chew on because economic troubles bite everyone and most of all those most vulnerable and least able to weather the storm.
That includes ordinary working people with little or nothing invested.
And six years ago, warnings from Robert Scheer:
- Has the war on terrorism become the modern equivalent of the Roman Circus, drawing the people’s attention away from the failures of those who rule them?
Corporate America is a shambles because deregulation, the mantra of our president and his party, has proved to be a license to steal. Yet to question our leaders’ stewardship of the economy has been made to seem unpatriotic.
Although combating terrorism is of compelling importance — and should have been before Sept. 11 — one is likely to be branded a nut for daring to suggest that the administration might be using current security threats as a smoke screen to obscure our floundering economy.
…
Enron provides a startling illustration of a company jumping through loopholes that its D.C. lobbyists have created.
In fact, the Enron scams made possible by deregulation in the first Bush administration are still being revealed, such as last week’s reports that the company hid billions in income during the California energy crisis while publicly denying it was profiting excessively.
Yet former Enron officials continue to play an important role under Bush the younger.
The Bush family, in fact, has never been seriously confronted by the media or Congress as to its questionable ties to former Enron Chief Executive Kenneth Lay, a close family friend and top contributor to Bush family presidential campaigns.
This looks bad for Decider George as he gets ready to float back to Texas — as if that’s the only thing — and as he throws his feet up on the front porch, the entire planet spirals out of control, both in conflict financial and military.
Is there no justice for such an asshole?
‘Unlucky’ My Ass!
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Talk about some history-freaked whiners.
CNN reported this evening a bunch of straight-faced historians said Decider George has just been “unlucky” with a lot of bad shit happening on his watch, and future people might deal with the sonofabitch in a much better light than right now, a Harry Truman kind of character.
Shit happens, but how you handle that shit, that’s the bottom line.
All bets are off, however, if you start, or create shit — bad shit, too — and then through complete arrogant-incompetence, pour jet fuel on kindled-coals of disaster after disaster in attempts to rectify.
In this age of instant history, where technology has warped time, clutched events into mere seconds apart, heritage is of the now.
- “Right now there is not a lot of good will among historians.
Most see him as a combination of many negative factors,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.
“He is seen as incompetent in terms of how he handled domestic and foreign policy.
He is seen as pushing for an agenda to the right of the nation and doing so through executive power that ignored the popular will,” he added.
Aside Decider George’s inability to function properly, according to political history scholar Barbara Kellerman, it might just be the luck of the draw.
- “He [Bush] has been a quite unlucky president.
Certain things happened on his watch that most people don’t have to deal with — a 9/11, a [Hurricane] Katrina, the financial crisis, being three obvious examples,” she said.
“And yet they happened on his watch.
He is being blamed,” she said.
No, lady historian, he’s not being blamed for 9/11, or Katrina — he’s just being blamed for completely squandering and bungling the reaction to those events.
And the horrible shit he created — Iraq, the DOJ meltdown, the mishandling of Afghanistan and terror.
An ignorant cowboy.
And Decider George’s legacy was formed May 1, 2003, when he show-boated onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln — the horribly, nasty-ironic “Mission Accomplished” episode. (Illustration found here).
All the events to come later, all the bungled enterprises, botched operations and illegal activities, this act provided a window to the insidious heart of Decider George’s White House.
- The exterior of the four-seat Navy S-3B Viking was marked with “Navy 1″ in the back and “George W. Bush Commander-in-Chief” just below the cockpit window.
On the plane’s tail was the insignia of the squadron, the “Blue Wolves.”
…
The landing came just hours before Bush is to tell the nation that major combat operations in Iraq have ended. The speech will be delivered from the carrier’s flight deck at 9 p.m. EDT.
Although it was first reported Decider George took the jet because the Lincoln was too far off the coast to helicopter there, the White House later backpedaled on the story.
As noted then in the New York Times:
- The White House said today that President Bush traveled to the carrier Abraham Lincoln last week on a small plane because he wanted to experience a landing the way carrier pilots do, not because the ship would be too far out to sea for Mr. Bush to arrive by helicopter, as his spokesman had originally maintained.
…
The president and his top aides had made no secret of Mr. Bush’s excitement at landing on a carrier on a plane designated Navy One and being brought to a halt by an arresting cable.
”He was really looking forward to it,” Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech last Thursday, hours before Mr. Bush landed.
Play acting with events without any regard for anything or anybody.
According to a piece in Esquire last September by Ron Suskind, Decider George demonstrated his ability to be an arrogant asshole.
In 2001, a major economic advisor met with the president:
- As the man took his seat in the wing chair next to the president’s desk, he began to explain his problem with the president’s decision.
The fact of the matter was that in this area of policy, this adviser was one of the experts, really top-drawer, and had been instrumental in devising some of the very language now used to discuss these concepts.
He was convinced, he told Bush, that the president’s position would soon enough be seen as “bad policy.”
This, it seems, was the wrong thing to say to the president.
According to senior administration officials who learned of the encounter soon after it happened, President Bush looked at the man. “I don’t ever want to hear you use those words in my presence again,” he said.
“What words, Mr. President?”
“Bad policy,” President Bush said. “If I decide to do it, by definition it’s good policy. I thought you got that.”
The adviser was dismissed. The meeting was over.
Read Suskind’s complete article here.
Decider George’s legacy has nothing to do with luck — he’s a self-made man.
White House Tip To The Unemployed: Get A Job!
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As the country heads for the financial bottom, up pops Decider George’s White House, a cesspool of such collective villainy it staggers the brain, with a suggestion for any US peoples who are currently unemployed: Just Go Out And Get A Job, You Lazy, Worthless Sonofabitches!
Sweet Miss Dana Perino (left) said during a press conference today that Decider George will most likely oppose any extension of unemployment benefits, apparently posturing a position that despite the shitfaced economy, jobless people should just get another job.
Hardcore, pure meanness.
Miss Dana should have been the mouthpiece for Marie Antoinette.
Off a question on the US House unemployment extension bill, which was passed last summer and would extend unemployment for all states for seven weeks, and for those that have high unemployment, above six percent, for an additional 13, Miss Dana blubbered, stalled and couldn’t come up with an answer.
She even contradicted the reporter asking the question, claiming Congress isn’t even in session.
- Well, Paula, I don’t even think — Congress is not even in session, so there’s no legislation moving through Congress.
We have supported unemployment benefit extensions in the past, although we wanted a shorter period of time than many had wanted.
I don’t know if there’s some people recommending a 26-week extension.
We cut that back to 13 weeks back in June.
One of the reasons that we did that is because we want people to be able to return to the workplace as soon as possible.
Oh my gosh! It’s just so freakin’ easy!
Hey, Miss Dana, the US Senate reconvenes next month.
- Well, let’s take it up then, Paula. I mean, it’s October 8th; there’s a long way to go between now and then.
Yeah, but what about…
- Well, my point is, Paula, that one of the things that we want is we want people to be able to return to work.
We understand that there are people that are hurting, but we’ve already extended the unemployment benefits.
But if legislation isn’t moving between now and November 17th, if then, there’s not a lot that we can do in terms of getting a law passed.
(Paula, the reporter?) So you assume that in states that have high unemployment that those people will be able to find jobs between October and –
MS. PERINO: I hope that everybody who wants to find a job is able to find a job.
I can only imagine the anxiety for people who are looking for a job and can’t find one.
And it’s hard to put myself in their shoes because I haven’t been in that situation.
But obviously states — and there are many of them — that have high unemployment rates have a lot of people who are suffering.
But getting back to work would be the best way to help all of us, collectively, them individually, and then us as a country.
Miss Dana hasn’t “been in that situation” so she can truly understand how easy it is nowadays going out and “getting back to work.”
A heartless, arrogant position — why are we not surprised?
War and politics on the home front.
A few items listed on the staggering workplace from the Center for American Progress (hat tip to Think Progress):
- The United States lost a total of 605,000 jobs in the first eight months of 2008, including 84,000 in August 2008.
- For the past 12 months, the United States lost on average 23,600 jobs each month after gaining an average of 116,100 in the 12 months before that and 184,000 in the 12 months before then.
- In August 2008, the unemployment rate was 6.1%—the highest level since September 2003. The African-American unemployment rate stood at 10.6%, the Hispanic unemployment rate at 8.0%, and the unemployment rate for whites at 5.4% in August 2008.
- All prices rose by 24.5% from March 2001 to July 2008, food prices rose by 25.5%, fuels and utilities by 52.9%, medical care by 35.1%, transportation by 35.8%, and college tuition by 67.9%.
And that’s just the highlights.
Decider George and his cronies have ruined the US — indeed only eight years, but it will take decades and generations to un-do his doo-doo.
Maybe Miss Dana will be allowed to experience US life, be able to feel what it’s like in real shoes and be forced to hit the sidewalk looking for a damn job — Just let her eat cheesecake.
(Really, really pisser-of-an) UPDATE
Or an added insult.
From today’s Washington Post:
- Only one day after it was revealed that AIG had sprung for a $440,000 spa vacation shortly after getting an $84 billion government-loan bailout comes this report: The government is loaning AIG another $38 billion.
…
During a hearing before the House Oversight committee on Tuesday, it was revealed that just last week, about 70 of the company’s top performers were rewarded with a week-long stay at the luxury St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif., where they ran up a tab of $440,000, The Post’s Peter Whoriskey reported today.
Oversight committee Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) showed a photograph of the resort, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean, and reported expenses for AIG personnel including $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for the spa, Whoriskey wrote.
Today, AIG chief executive Edward Liddy defended the vacation by pouring gasoline on the fire.
Such trips “are standard practice in our industry,” Liddy said, no doubt thrilling every other major insurance company.
And the Post story also cited a letter, this asshole, Liddy, wrote to Treasury Whiz Hank Paulson and obtained by ABC News — it summed up all the corrupt, ugly shit that’s been piped out of the White House and down the deep-throats of Wall Street.
- “Let me assure you that we are re-evaluating the costs of all aspects of our operations in light of the new circumstances in which we are all operating,” Liddy wrote. “We understand that our company is now facing very different challenges — and that we owe our employees and the American public new standards and approaches.”
A lot of other US peoples are also “facing very different challenges” right now, but I betcha it don’t include no $400,000 spa visit.