Final Throes Friedman

If I never hear the phrase "we'll know how the war is going in the next several months" or "six months" again it won't be too soon.

But I know that with Bush in charge, the phrase, "We have about six months to pacify Tehran" is in our future.

Meanwhile, in the current clusterfuck (as Bush works on manufacturing the trifecta):

As violence explodes in Iraq — with 65 tortured bodies found today as well as a spate of car bombing and mortar fire that killed at least 39 people — a U.S. official warns that time is running out.

"If sectarian violence cannot be demonstrably, tangibly reduced … (then) over the next several months an Iraqi government that represents all of its people, is a partner against terror and is at peace both at home and with its neighbors, will be difficult if not impossible to achieve," David Satterfield, a senior State Department advisor for Iraq, said Wednesday on Capitol Hill, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.

"Failure means the possibility that Iraq would become a permanent haven for terrorists, a satellite of Iranian influence, or both," Satterfield said.

"Will be difficult" oooooh, you think so? Because surely the evidence so far has been it's a FUCKING PIECE OF CAKE!!!

Rest in Peace, Ann Richards

A person who did it her way!

The Other Brown People

Gee, military power scales down presence and comes to regret it in Afghanistan.

Seems like we've only heard this story about a dozen times before 2001. Naturally, Bush went for the baker's dozen so he could "kick Saddam's ass all over the middle east".

Soldiers deployed in Helmand province five years on from the US-led invasion, and six months after the deployment of a large British force, have told The Independent that the sheer ferocity of the fighting in the Sangin valley, and privations faced by the troops, are far worse than generally known.

"We are flattening places we have already flattened, but the attacks have kept coming. We have killed them by the dozens, but more keep coming, either locally or from across the border," one said. "We have used B1 bombers, Harriers, F16s and Mirage 2000s. We have dropped 500lb, 1,000lb and even 2,000lb bombs. At one point our Apaches [helicopter gunships] ran out of missiles they have fired so many. Almost any movement on the ground gets ambushed. We need an entire battle group to move things. Yet they will not give us the helicopters we have been asking for.

Meanwhile...

NATO members have failed to respond to a call from military commanders for reinforcements to try to quell the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan, an alliance spokesman said.

"No formal offers were made at the table," James Appathurai told reporters Wednesday in Brussels, where the 26-nation group was meeting.

Could be a secret CIA sting operation

Whitney Houston divorcing Bobby Brown, which I guess was her perogative:

Unlike Laura, here's a beard that George Bush won't like seeing

From CNN:

EPHRATA, Washington (AP) -- After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Gary Weddle followed the news so closely he forgot to shave. After a week he decided not to shave until Osama bin Laden was caught or killed.

Nor has Weddle, 46, who expected the al Qaeda leader to be caught within a month or so, trimmed his facial hair in the succeeding five years as he went from substitute teacher to science instructor at Ephrata Middle School.

At the start of each school year he gives students a brief explanation of his beard, which stretches more than a foot and has started turning gray.

"I still get emotional over the families who lost loved ones. I just don't feel there's any closure on this until they get that guy," Weddle told The Wenatchee World for an article published Monday. "I don't have to know anyone personally who lost family in 9/11 to understand the devastation that he's responsible for."

His wife, Donita, hates the beard, but their three daughters, who attend high school in East Wenatchee, don't mind and "mostly their boyfriends think it's cool," Weddle said.

He said he would keep the beard, untrimmed, as long as bin Laden remains at large -- "even if I get buried with it."

Holden's Nemesis

Bill from Portland Maine (I know you were thinking Little Scotty or Pony Blow) but no, for some reason, Holden has it out for the Cheers & Jeers guy. Go figure, it isn't even NTodd who I thought was everyone's nemesis. Or at least Ntodd is one of the worst things on the blogosphere after those bloggers who engage in meaningless posts about other bloggers. Those sorts of people are the biggest assholes this side of Bush-Cheney, Inc.

At least I think all of the above is true, if it isn't Holden still got a link, and that is all he really cares about. Same for Rohrschach.

Where was I?

Oh yes, so much for comedy, here comes the depression. Richard Engle is one of NBC's reporters on the ground in Iraq, along with the equally solid Mike Boettcher. Engle was on Tweety's syndicated show and Bill from Portland quotes his reaction to how things are going there now:

"I think this is getting worse, unfortunately. I think there has been a civil war that has been on the ground for about a year. There'll probably be another nine or ten years of civil war, maybe 250-thousand people dead before this is over.

I think eventually they're going to have a situation that they could have reached when the Iraqis were putting together their constitution: a loose federal state. And, unfortunately, where those federal lines are divided is going to take a lot of bloodshed. And Americans are there to just try and hold it together."

Boy, did this post end on a downer.

UPDATE: I'm linking to Thers just to let him know he cannot intimidate me by complaining about not being linked. That'll show him!

How Bush's 9/11/2006 Speech Sounded to Your Dog

Pimp Slapping

This is a pretty good MoDo I have to admit. It's crucial section not belabored by her own vanity:

W. and Vice went on TV this week to double down on their dishonest case, now contradicted by a mountain of evidence, once more milking our sorrow over 9/11 to justify their errant course in Iraq.

In a speech that Tony Snow promised would be “reflective,’’ the president used hyperventilated rhetoric about “a struggle for civilization” and cynically retraced a line he now knows is false, again linking Osama and Baghdad: “If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden, our enemies will be emboldened.’’

Bin Laden has become the Willie Horton of the midterms. After letting the C.I.A. disband the unit devoted to hunting for Osama — the Senate took a slap at the White House on Thursday when it voted to reinstate it — Mr. Bush now won’t stop talking about the bogeyman he ignored for five years while he transferred all his resources to Iraq.

“The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad,” he said.

Instead of going after Osama, we invaded Iraq. Now W. says we must stay in Iraq or it will be run by Osamas. We must kill all the terrorists we are creating. American soldiers must keep dying because American soldiers have died. If we criticize Mr. Bush, then we’re unmanning the whole country. The logic is deviously Rovian, and we are trapped in the circularity.

On “Meet the Press,’’ Mr. Cheney warned that America cannot let its adversaries “break our will’’ and show we “don’t have the stomach for the fight.’’

“It was the right thing to do,” Vice insisted of the war in Iraq, “and if we had to do it over again we would do exactly the same thing.”

After all the miscalculations and billions wasted, projects screwed up, lives and limbs lost, foreign enemies made, American stature squandered, Taliban strength regained, North Korean bombs and Iran-Iraq alliances built (visiting the American-hating, Holocaust-denying Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq called Iran “a good friend and brother’’) Dick Cheney wouldn’t do anything differently?

I guess I can understand one's desire to avoid ignimony. But at some point the die is cast and you have to think about mitigation. There are some things even FoxNews, ABC Entertainment (and Radio -- oh, and "the Note"), the Washington Times, The Weekly Standard, Rush Limbaugh and 99,000 other conservative blowhards, the National Review, can really cover up and smooth out for you. A legacy is one of them. Bush & Cheney are just determined to dig deeper for some hope of a short-term miracle (a miracle that isn't coming).

"And as a person who has lived here..."

"I can tell you, you can always push a Yale man around. And never let them give it to you up the butt."


I'm sorry, I'm going to have to go jump out of my apartment window now.





Okay, I'm back. I keep forgetting I live on the second floor, like Luka.

Anyhoo, this picture can be improved through the magic of sloppy MS-Paint use.


"Oh look, they're consulting Edgar Winter."

Scavenger Hunt Baghdad

Sponsored by the Project for the New American Century:

Find as many examples of how we are winning as possible.

A total of 60 unidentified bodies have been found in various parts of Baghdad over the past 24 hours, an Interior Ministry source said on Wednesday.

The unusually high 24-hour tally was recorded despite a month-old security crackdown in Iraq's capital by U.S. and Iraqi troops.

The source said most bodies were bound and shot in the head and many bore signs of torture -- trademarks of sectarian death squads and kidnap gangs plaguing the capital.

Wow, nice job grasshopper, Rich Lowry is so proud.

Um, Nipsey Russell once looked at me all squirrely

That's all I got.

And then I once ordered a 12-piece McNuggets and they gave me a 20-piece with an extra side of beaks (which frankly seemed redundant).

Uhhhhh

What Atrios said, about what Digby said and also what Attytood said.

Meeting of No Minds

Well, there's "Must not see Tee Vee"

Kudlow [Jonah Goldberg]
I'll be on his CNBC show tonight, FYI.
Posted at 4:12 PM

No thanks I'll be watching root canals on the Discovery Health Channel.

We've paid $400 Billion and all we'll get are vacation slides

(AP Photo/ISNA)
Heckuva Job Bushie!

You da man,


REUTERS/Fars News
No, you da man!

Mussolini would be proud

When Bush is even mildly confronted the visual ticks, nonsense answers consisting of bromides ("we're protecting...") and the refrain of "let me finish" are always in evidence. How these psychologically infantile performances go over with anyone is beyond me. I guess it says a lot about how basely the "only Bush can protect me" crowd thinks. It's not just immature, it's even worse, it is banal.

Yesterday's interview with Matt Lauer has all of these quirks and shortcomings on display in spades...Lauer to his credit does something normally reserved only for foreign journalists, he did not back down from asking tough questions and engaging in follow ups to cliches and non-sequitors.

Matt Lauer: And yet you admitted that there were these CIA secret facilities. OK?

President Bush: So what? Why is that not within the law?

Matt Lauer: The head of Amnesty International says secret sites are against international law.

President Bush: Well, we just disagree with him. Plus, my job is to protect you. And most American people, if I said [to them] that we had who we think is the mastermind of the 9/11, they would say, “Why don’t you see if you can’t get information without torturing him,” which is what we did.

Matt Lauer: I don’t want to let this “within the law issue” slip though. I mean, if, in fact, there was water boarding used with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and for the viewers, that’s basically when you strap someone to a board and you make them feel as if they’re going to drown by putting them underwater, if that was legal and within the law, why couldn’t you do it at Guantanamo? Why did you have to go to a secret location around the world?

President Bush: I’m not going to talk about techniques. And, I’m not going explain to the enemy what we’re doing. All I’m telling you is that you’ve asked me whether or not we’re doing things to protect the American people, and I want the American people to know we are doing so.

No authoritarian ever born could give a more demonstrably despotic answers than that. This is an American President saying this but the words are befitting those of a tin-horn third world dictator. Senor Pinochet salutes you Dubya.

It is just non-sensical bullshit outside of the fascistic bromides. And since Bush says he is relying on lawyers, let us look at "the" lawyer that provided the legal opinions allowing torture and the depth of his understanding of the Constitution:

UC Berkeley law Professor John Yoo, who as a Justice Department lawyer was one of the Bush administration's chief legal theorists, summarized its view in his forthcoming book, "War by Other Means":

"We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch.''

I'm no Constitutional Scholar, and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I'm still calling bullshit!

We do not have two Constitutions, one for peace and one for war, no matter how constructed and perpetual our government tries to make it. We have ONE document that is the structure of our system. To manufacture a never ending war, the "War on teh Terra" Bush has ratcheted up the national security state system that has been steadily creeping into our lives since the 'Cold War'.

I don't want to sound like Billmon here, but neither party has the guts to stand up and truly inform the public on the general "ineffectiveness" and weakness of terror groups. Anyone who actually said so would have the bodies of innocent civilians thrown at their feet and the "fear" words would come in a Katrina-level deluge. Osama and his pals got incredibly lucky on September 11th, so tragic is fate. Yes, they are highly dangerous and intelligence and police work is required. Sadly, any rationality to this clear fact cannot be engaged in now without scorn being brought down upon your head. Being afraid is the mode we are supposed to have, no matter how many times a 73 year old phrase about fear being the only thing to fear is tossed out. The moldering Republic is now being pissed upon in its "last throes". You think in its last days of unique dominance, we could at least respect the ol' girl.

But I depress digress.

What is not needed, are needless wars and the inflating of the threat into one that can topple our nation and our government. That is something we can ONLY do to ourselves. Osama "may" aspire to it, but only we, ourselves, have the means. If this situation isn't confronted, as much as Bush and the GOP need to be replaced, the Democrats that follow them will only be better by degree, the bromides will just take a slightly more moderate phrasing and a more tolerable mode. But the cancer will remain -- keeping you shitting your pants will be the Republican method of politics, keeping you angst ridden and afraid you'll shit your pants will be the Democratic mode.

But both would still be false.

The fact is, they cannot metaphorically kill us, nor wipe us out -- and intelligent and rational action can in-fact nearly wipe them out. And do it all, without our liberties being wholesale sacrificed in the bargain.

Too clever to pass up

I don't normally put up Fark Photoshops, but this one from the topic of movies and television shows that are inspired by the fiction of "Path to 9/11" this, while being absolutely true, is still hilarious -- especially if you ever watched 'Arrested Development':

Wha' happened?

Richard Cohen is not writing like Joe Klein's Gilligan:

From bin Laden's standpoint, this has been a glorious victory, made possible, it has to be said, by the totally unforeseen incompetence of the Bush administration. It was so intent on going to war in Iraq that it would not finish the job in Afghanistan. So, to bin Laden's absolute amazement -- I am guessing here -- the United States took on his enemy, the secular and ungodly Saddam Hussein, whom bin Laden himself would gladly have murdered. It has to be a wonderful thing when your enemy vanquishes your enemy.

On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Dick Cheney said that if he had it to do all over again, he would still go to war in Iraq -- "we'd do exactly the same thing," he said. Why? Is the man incapable of learning from experience? We now know from umpteen reports that there was no link between bin Laden and Hussein. We now know, the Weekly Standard notwithstanding, that Mohamed Atta did not meet in Prague with someone from Iraqi intelligence. We now know that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraq war -- which has cost America more than 2,500 lives, 20,000 casualties, the respect of the world and billions of dollars -- is for naught. Talleyrand said of the Bourbons that they forgot nothing and learned nothing. It will be said of Cheney that he forgot everything and learned nothing.

How did bin Laden get so lucky? How did he get so fortunate in his choice of enemies? The Bush administration not only validated his wildest dreams -- dreams that even some of his aides thought were unrealistic -- but went even further. By using torture, by the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, by employing "extraordinary renditions" of suspects to countries where they could be tortured, by insisting on going it almost alone in Iraq, by telling the international community to shove it, by declaring a war for an idée fixe -- this fierce obsession with Hussein goes back a long way -- the United States has made itself reviled in much of the world...

...I was here on Sept. 11, 2001 -- downtown when the twin towers collapsed. My instantaneous reaction -- the thought that came to my mind as I heard the sound of the buildings coming down -- was for revenge. I would, to this day, kill Osama bin Laden with my own hands. But as much as I hate the man, I have to recognize that from his vantage point, from his mountain fastness somewhere on the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, he has won. What he had set out to do, he has done. That is more than we can say.

He forgot to add, "Heckuva Job, Bushie".

That's even...dare I say, Krugmanesque.

Well yesterday's Bush Fallatio

Was hard to, um, swallow.

*sorry need break*

(runs to bathroom to vomit)

But it could have been worse, I could be a Raiders fan. MY GOD!!!

But nonetheless, let me join my progressive brothers & sisters and thank the goddess for Keith Olbermann!

When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…

When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

Glug

Max Boot finds that the Kool-Aid may have hair in it, it may have mold at the top, and there's a dead mouse in there -- but hey it is still kool-aid.

"The power of his rhetoric is in marked decline, and that's no reflection on the quality of what he says, which is still very high," said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a neoconservative scholar who has been sympathetic to Bush's anti-terrorism policies. "There's a desire in the country for more deeds, not more words. . . . We are losing a war right now, and there is no way to get around that."

Poor Max -- good thing he gets money to write love letters to war.

Is Bullshit Moose running this guy's campaign?

Howie Klein uncovers the worst campaign in the nation...I mean jiminy jeebus.

Naturally, it is being run by a Democrat.

Somebody Please Tell President "Let Me Finish"...

that he has had quite enough time to finish and that I don't want his fucking protection. Tell him that he has fucked things up enough and just go back to Crawford and take a nap, clear brush, watch some tv or whatever the fuck he does. I would rather watch a bratwurst eating competition than his address to the nation; the analysis by the commentators would be a lot more articulate.

Symbolism

A Daily Kos diary finds the not so hidden meaning of the United States since 9/11:



Well, to be completely accurate he would have wiped his ass with it.

No "where were you?" bullshit

I don't live in New York, nor Washington, and I wasn't there on the day in question. Like millions of people I was a voyeur who turned on the television just after the second attack, hearing that it happened while listening to a local sports radio station.

That's my 9/11 story. I'll leave it to the people that actually lived there to talk about it. Anything else, and we'll be inundated with it, is tragedy porn. "We're more moved and sorrowful than you are." Which is the tritest bullshit possible.

It's the aftermath that really compounds the tragedy.

The fact is, like Wilton Sezker in "Why We Fight", many Americans to one degree or another were conned by the Bush Administration into unleashing their desire for revenge irrationally upon a place that had nothing to do with 9/11 and deflect it from the place and people that did.

This country had luckily up to September 2001 been governed by people who usually rose to the occasion in time of crisis; Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower. But the odds caught up to us, and thanks to the most bizarre election in our history we ended up with a group tragically ill-suited for the crisis of 9/11.

The tragic course we would take should have been clear on that day itself. First he just stayed on vacation when warned, then he sat there for seven minutes -- doing nothing, just sitting there -- and finally, he flew around the country looking like a coward.

On September 11th, at least here in the hinterlands, all fucking day people were talking to each other saying "where the hell is Bush?" -- in fact it is one of the reasons that the cult of Giuliani was born, because there was such a gigantic vacuum from the national leadership. There was no real Bush moment until three days later when he climbed upon rubble with a bullhorn. Five years later, there is no more appropriate metaphor for this cast of fuckups than that.

As we know now, while most of the country went to bed in, to say the least, a somber mood, ol' Dubya & Lump were having a good giggle on the graves of 3,000 of their employers.

The Bush folks have political skill at manipulation, but they have no appropriate policies for this time in history at all. They did not choose to be uniters, but rather they choose to be exploiters. I'm in my early 40s and people my age will be paying for these things the rest of our lives.

Nothing by an American politician in my lifetime has ever made me angrier than betrayal of the American public and that day by these fuckers. I hope that nothing ever will.

I see that Bush's No. 2 Political Operative is at work

On cue as we continued the "Countdown to Osama" tape's release, like 2004, around Halloween, Al Zawahiri makes an appearance to buttress the codpiece.

This might be a good time for the media to take note that Pakistan has negotiated a "peace treaty" protecting this asshole and Osama.

Or perhaps, it would be a good time to report, how just yesterday it was demonstrated that we have no idea where they are because Bush diverted our resources in December 2001 to get ready for "Saddamapalooza".

But they won't, too much tragedy porn to exploit.

Meanwhile in the real world

The Dick was on Meet the Russ yesterday and proclaimed we'd be winning in Iraq if it wasn't for the meddling majority of people in this country.

Of course, objects in reality may be different than they appear to Cheney:

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents...

...Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.

Devlin offers a series of reasons for the situation, including a lack of U.S. and Iraqi troops, a problem that has dogged commanders since the fall of Baghdad more than three years ago, said people who have read it. These people said he reported that not only are military operations facing a stalemate, unable to extend and sustain security beyond the perimeters of their bases, but also local governments in the province have collapsed and the weak central government has almost no presence.

Those conclusions are striking because, even after four years of fighting an unexpectedly difficult war in Iraq, the U.S. military has tended to maintain an optimistic view: that its mission is difficult, but that progress is being made. Although CIA station chiefs in Baghdad have filed negative classified reports over the past several years, military intelligence officials have consistently been more positive, both in public statements and in internal reports.

I think the only thing that will save Anbar Province at this point is to parachute in a host of 101st Keyboarders.

Oh, I'm sorry, I guess that wouldn't solve Iraq, but it would make things a lot better over here.

Oh Mah Gawd!

A General hasn't burned anyone this badly since Sherman left Atlanta!

Jesus General, I am in awe!

Kudo's to Aaron Barnhart

Long time Blogger and TV critic for the Kansas City Star. In his short description of what is on television tonight, he sums up ABC's schedule thusly:

8 p.m.
Facts are demolished and rebuilt on "Extreme Makeover: 9/11 History Edition" (ABC; concludes Monday).

Morse is a hard-working blogger

Just go, you'll see.

Oh and, LOL!

The real "Path" to 9/11

Let's go to the actual video:

Read the Senate Intelligence Committee Report

Read them here.

Then wonder at the irony of Pat Roberts being on an "intelligence committee" (now Chairman on the Senate Select Committee on "Motor Functions" I could understand).

But more importantly, read Billmon.

As a particular suck-up, but a very warranted one, the right has NOBODY that can write as well as Billmon. He writes far better than I do.

Naturally, I have decided to hate him. ;-)

No Commercials

Last Saturday, I watched some college football on ABC, including portions of the evening game. Every other commercial break included a breathless advertisement of the following weekend's "Path to 9/11".

This weekend, I watched both the afternoon game and then the evening prime time game. Now granted I wasn't watching every minute, but I'm pretty sure in a seven hour block of time there was not a single commercial for tonight's scheduled broadcast.

I cannot recall any event so promoted one weekend and then not even mentioned in advertising the next weekend when it is still supposedly on the schedule. My recollection of "The Reagans" is that CBS did not promote it as much and that the decision to pull it was made well before it was broadcast. I could be wrong.

It's almost like ABC just wants to slink away from this without pissing anybody else off. If they pull it, the right-wing will howl about their lack of erotic fiction on network television so they can't do that.

Here it comes

With no successes, with no helpful policies, losing a needless war they started, desperately unpopular, the GOP 2006 campaign, as predicted, is to run the most negative campaign they can all with the point of driving down voter turn out. Amazing the party driven by the so-called "Christian-Right" is all about lying their ass off in order to retain power.

Who Would Jesus Defame?

Republicans are planning to spend the vast majority of their sizable financial war chest over the final 60 days of the campaign attacking Democratic House and Senate candidates over personal issues and local controversies, GOP officials said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.

We have moved on, but no one can argue that we have moved ahead.

Frank "Fookin'" Rich:

On the very next day after that convocation, Mr. Bush was asked at a press conference “how much of a sacrifice” ordinary Americans would “be expected to make in their daily lives, in their daily routines.” His answer: “Our hope, of course, is that they make no sacrifice whatsoever.” He, too, wanted to move on — to “see life return to normal in America,” as he put it — but toward partisan goals stealthily tailored to his political allies rather than the nearly 90 percent of the country that, according to polls, was rallying around him.

This selfish agenda was there from the very start. As we now know from many firsthand accounts, a cadre from Mr. Bush’s war cabinet was already busily hyping nonexistent links between Iraq and the Qaeda attacks. The presidential press secretary, Ari Fleischer, condemned Bill Maher’s irreverent comic response to 9/11 by reminding “all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” Fear itself — the fear that “paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” as F.D.R. had it — was already being wielded as a weapon against Americans by their own government.

Less than a month after 9/11, the president was making good on his promise of “no sacrifice whatsoever.” Speaking in Washington about how it was “the time to be wise” and “the time to act,” he declared, “We need for there to be more tax cuts.” Before long the G.O.P. would be selling 9/11 photos of the president on Air Force One to campaign donors and the White House would be featuring flag-draped remains of the 9/11 dead in political ads.

And so here we are five years later. Fearmongering remains unceasing. So do tax cuts. So does the war against a country that did not attack us on 9/11. We have moved on, but no one can argue that we have moved ahead.

If there is a story that will get you angrier than this

...you obviously have been following politics during the Bush Administration!

Remember John Kerry saying Bush had "outsourced" capturing Bin Laden at Tora Bora, well somebody really should be President instead of the current "occupier".

On the videotape obtained by the CIA, bin Laden is seen confidently instructing his party how to dig holes in the ground to lie in undetected at night. A bomb dropped by a U.S. aircraft can be seen exploding in the distance. "We were there last night," bin Laden says without much concern in his voice. He was in or headed toward Pakistan, counterterrorism officials think.

That was December 2001. Only two months later, Bush decided to pull out most of the special operations troops and their CIA counterparts in the paramilitary division that were leading the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for war in Iraq, said Flynt L. Leverett, then an expert on the Middle East at the National Security Council.

"I was appalled when I learned about it," said Leverett, who has become an outspoken critic of the administration's counterterrorism policy. "I don't know of anyone who thought it was a good idea. It's very likely that bin Laden would be dead or in American custody if we hadn't done that."

Several officers confirmed that the number of special operations troops was reduced in March 2001.

There is more, so much, much more ... of the story of how Bush's "need" to invade Iraq has led to the escape of the man who is most responsible for 9/11.

Oh, and reason No. 1,534,032 that Donald Rumsfeld should be fired:

Bureaucratic battles slowed down the hunt for bin Laden for the first two or three years, according to officials in several agencies, with both the Pentagon and the CIA accusing each other of withholding information. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's sense of territoriality has become legendary, according to these officials.

In early November 2002, for example, a CIA drone armed with a Hellfire missile killed a top al-Qaeda leader traveling through the Yemeni desert. About a week later, Rumsfeld expressed anger that it was the CIA, not the Defense Department, that had carried out the successful strike.

"How did they get the intel?" he demanded of the intelligence and other military personnel in a high-level meeting, recalled one person knowledgeable about the meeting.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then director of the National Security Agency and technically part of the Defense Department, said he had given it to them.

"Why aren't you giving it to us?" Rumsfeld wanted to know.

Hayden, according to this source, told Rumsfeld that the information-sharing mechanism with the CIA was working well. Rumsfeld said it would have to stop

.

Disney remakes Another Pivotal Date in History

aka "Terra Terra Terra"

Oh bother

Watertiger has forwarded this to me.

What five questions would you ask the world?

1. C'mon Secret Service Man, won't you take Dick Cheney for a vigorous jog?

2. Mr. President, wanna eat a pretzel while riding your segway?

3. Ms. Rice, down this fiery volcano is an incredible shoe store with 50% off on Manolos, wanna take a look?

4. When is Jim Inhofe going to evolve into just an ordinary asshole?

5. Would all of you fuckers that love war so goddamned much, bother to actually take part in it for a couple months?

You know

It's hard for me to judge the quality of gay erotic fiction, seeing as I don't read a lot of it (just enough to keep my options open I guess). But I will say, the prose in this one kind of drags. I guess it's because the two characters are venal, dishonest and not particularly interesting.

I see he's starting to maintain a look out for Karma

"Ah'm more of a straight chocolate guy."

REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

There's still a window for lying and Cheney will try to drive through it like a bulldozer...a mumbling, sneering, bulldozer

While the Senate released a portion of what was called "Phase II" it is not the end of the reporting. The activities of Cheney in particular are still under investigation.

Although the Senate report raises questions about the reliability of the information provided by Iraqi exiles, it notes that the information had little direct impact on the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq produced in October 2002. Many of the Iraqi National Congress claims, however, were passed on to the White House and the office of Vice President Cheney through reports by a separate intelligence analysis group established by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith.

The Senate committee's inquiry into the Feith group's activities, another part of the prewar intelligence study, has been delayed by committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who is awaiting the completion of a Pentagon inspector general inquiry into the same matter.

There is going to be a ton of scare-mongering by Cheney as well, alluding to what Ron Suskind discussed in "The One Percent Doctrine", however from "they will greet us as Liberators" to "Last Throes" to the latest claim that Democrats are in league with Al Qaeda there is plenty to call Cheney out on.

Hell, get a video of his last speech out on the hustings to some Republican group, that will undoubtedly contain fifteen-minutes of diatribes and lies contradicted by the Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Everytime the get caught lying

The Bush Administration always says it's "old news".

You know, I think in less than two months we can safely say the same about the GOP Congress.

Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda's overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. Tariq Aziz, the detained former deputy prime minister, has told the FBI that Hussein "only expressed negative sentiments about [Osama] bin Laden."

The report also said exiles from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) tried to influence U.S. policy by providing, through defectors, false information on Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities. After skeptical analysts warned that the group had been penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including Iran's, a 2002 White House directive ordered that U.S. funding for the INC be continued.

The newly declassified intelligence report provided administration critics with fresh ammunition, less than two months before midterm elections and in the middle of President Bush's campaign to refocus the public's attention away from Iraq and toward the threat of terrorism. Senior Senate Democrats immediately seized on the findings, using some of their strongest language yet to say the president continues to willfully and falsely connect Hussein to al-Qaeda.

As recently as Aug. 21, Bush suggested a link between Hussein and Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed by U.S. forces this summer. But a CIA assessment in October 2005 concluded that Hussein's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates," according to the report.

"The president is still distorting. He's still making statements which are false," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an intelligence committee member.

Accountability is what it is all about. The GOP refuses to hold a President that lies as he breathes about the "big" things like national security to any form of account.

On NBC yesterday it was revealed that Crashcart Cheney, the Administrations most profane liar, will be on Russert on Sunday. If Little Russ cannot manage to rake Cheney over the coals regarding this report he should be driven out of town in shame. Every word out of Cheney's mouth, including the "and" and the "the" have been lies. He's not a statesman, as this report conclusively demonstrates, he's a war criminal guilty of starting a war of aggression under all existing tenets of international law by manufacturing evidence to get himself (and the rest of the Administration) the war he wanted.

A war, he has managed to top off by not winning and causing the deaths of innocent thousands.

If Timmah can't handle that, any number of us will gladly volunteer for the assignment.

And while we are at it, this article comes from a reporter at the Washington Post, perhaps Fred Hiatt will want to fucking read it and then crawl off to his hole in shame.

The next (and last) Atlas Juggs Video will probably be from a Tower

This makes it quite possible that Pam will go "Charles Whitman":

Several well-placed sources close to the Bolton nomination process have reported to me that the Bolton confirmation process is now dead.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is "highly unlikely" to reconsider Bolton's confirmation again as things now stand.

One insider reported, as far as the Committee is concerned, "we consider the confirmation over. It's dead."

"Gibme mah primetime"

Continuing their desperate move to get media exposure the White House is asking for 20 minutes of air time on 9/11 at 9 p.m. est (right smack in the middle of ABC's "The Path to 9/11" hilariously enough).

Now myself, I will be watching the 3rd Quarter of the Vikings-Redskins game. But I think it's appropriate that Bush reenact, in 20 minute form, his actions on 9/11.

1. He should sit there blankly for 7 minutes.

2. He should then run around the Oval Office, as far away from his desk as possible, for about 10 minutes.

3. He then brings in Laura and together they have themselves a good laugh for 3 minutes.

File under Damn.

Robert Christgau, the influential rock critic who coined the term "semipopular music," was terminated last Thursday from his job at The Village Voice, where he served as a longtime reviewer, writer and editor, but which has come under new ownership which is seeking to "re-adjust" the attitude of the once meaningful Voice.

So, I call out to you, dear friends to avoid The Village Voice. To ignore its increasing right tilting. There is a slow campaign here, you may disagree with me over what the Voice appears to be today, but I am increasingly finding a corporate mealy mouthed pathetic tilt towards the hegemonic Christo-corporate-republican agenda that is increasingly finding space in the Voice.

Christgau reports on his website:

"The mass layoff was characterized as a 'restructuring', but I was fired 'for taste'. Because our union long ago anticipated the possibility of this kind of drastic overhaul, a contractually mandated severance arrangement will give me some time to get my economic future in order. But the specifics of that future probably won't be clear for a while.

"The Voice changed a lot over the 37 years I wrote there and 32 years I was employed there. I haven't approved of all those changes, especially over the past decade. But for most of that time, with our unionization when Rupert Murdoch purchased the paper in 1977 a turning point, the Voice paid me to write well. My old bosses always understood that constructing a well-informed essay takes time, and that sorting, grading, and saying something honest and original about an incomprehensible plethora of records takes forever. I am grateful for the support my editors gave me, although I certainly believe I gave them surplus value back. But how my worklife is to proceed remains to be seen. I'll be letting you know in this space when I know myself."

I may not have always agreed with Christgau, but his ideas and reviews were always well thoughtout and strongly worded. No, hemming his opinions to meet the fad of the moment (sorry, Panic at the Disco but you have a limited future) or hawking the latest music industry eye candy (too many to mention), like we are increasingly seeing in places like Rolling Stone -- which stopped being vital to the music industry many moons ago -- or E! or Entertainment Tonight or oh so many worthless no-opinion until the corporate boss gives it to them writers. Writers like Christgau in music are a vanishing breed.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

I'm guessing never

David Corn obviously is not reading David Broder or he would know the thing he is supposed to do as a reporter is apologize (genuflect, and perhaps a reacharound) to Karl Rove:

Which brings me to a rather simple question: [since Armitage apologized] When will Karl Rove do the same?

He is no longer under investigation. But he did play a critical role in the leak case by confirming Armitage's information for Novak and then (before the Novak column appeared) leaking the same classified information to Matt Cooper of Time, as part of a campaign to discredit Joseph Wilson. (Hubris--which chronicles the behind-the-scenes battles in the CIA, the White House and Congress in the run-up to the war--has new details on Rove and Scooter Libby's efforts to undermine Wilson.) So will Rove now explain precisely what he did and why he did it, as Armitage has? Is he willing to admit he mishandled state secrets? Is he also sorry? Will he apologize to anyone?

Once upon a time, President Bush said he wanted the truth about the leak to come out. Libby, who is facing indictment for having allegedly lied to FBI agents and a grand jury about his involvement in the leak episode, may feel he is in no position to emulate Armitage. But Rove is not so encumbered.

What reason might Rove have for not following Armitage's lead?

How dare Mr. Corn use things like facts considering the importances of Mr. Broder's beloved version of the "iron triangle" (Government, Punditry, Cocktail Shrimp).

Blame Canada

I hope Bush never sees this, it'll mean war.

I know you're happy about the Pope coming back to Germany fellas

But could you have, perhaps, thought a bit more about the pose you'd use?

(Reuters)

Unfortunate (well maybe not) Photo Accompanying Headline of the Day

Senate to issue Iraq intelligence report

I'm guessing it will be only a little better than the Terry Schiavo Intelligence Report.

(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Such Competence

If ever somebody deserved to get fired, it's Rummy.

Naturally, it will never happen.

Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan.

Having read this story, David Broder has demanded I apologize to Karl Rove.

Many are rightly focusing on one part

That is blatantly incorrect in Alessandra Stanley's review of the "Republican Fantasy Path to 9/11":

The Sept. 11 commission concluded that the sex scandal distracted the Clinton administration from the terrorist threat.

That, of course, is the opposite of what happened, as stated by the actual 9/11 Commission:

Everyone involved in the decision had, of course, been aware of President Clinton's problems. He told them to ignore them. Berger recalled the President saying to him "that they are going to get crap either way, so they should do the right thing." All his aides testified to us that they based their advice solely on national security considerations. We have found no reason to question their statements.

But it is the next sentence from Stanley that I want to discuss:

But in hindsight, surely the right-wing groups who drove for impeachment must look back at their partisan obsession with shame, like widows sickened by the memory of spats about dirty dishes and gambling debts.

Alessandra Stanley apparently has managed never to read a conservative blog, let alone listen to Ann Coulter who managed to directly refute both of Staley's subjects in that sentence with her usual excrementitious diatribes in black skank dress. Next to invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and completely fucking up, the impeachment proceedings against the Clenis is one of the greatest things some of these folks think they've ever done. Coulter herself, owes her entire, Julius Streicher-like existence to the matter. You think she is capable of shame?

Reason No. 2,783,931 the GOP must lose

Somebody besides progressive bloggers and the occasional reporter needs to monitor this depraved bastard:

Zubaida was Bush's primary example of why tougher interrogation tactics were needed.

Said Bush: "We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures. These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution, and our treaty obligations."

The result, Bush said, was that "soon he began to provide information on key al Qaeda operatives, including information that helped us find and capture more of those responsible for the attacks on September the 11th."

But as Barton Gellman noted in his Washington Post review of Suskind's book:

"Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. . . . Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, 'This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.'"

Nevertheless, "Bush 'was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,' Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, 'Do some of these harsh methods really work?' Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, 'thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target.' And so, Suskind writes, 'the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.'"

And Spencer Ackerman blogs for the New Republic that "the idea that Abu Zubaydah's interrogation tipped off the U.S. to the existence of Ramzi bin Al Shibh is just an outright lie. A Nexis search for 'Ramzi Binalshibh' between September 11, 2001 and March 1, 2002 -- the U.S. captured Abu Zubaydah in March 2002 -- turns up 26 hits for The Washington Post alone. Everyone involved in counterterrorism knew who bin Al Shibh was. Now-retired FBI Al Qaeda hunter Dennis Lormel told Congress who Ramzi bin Al Shibh was in February 2002. Abu Zubaydah getting waterboarded and spouting bin Al Shibh's name did not tell us anything we did not already know."

Failure

The Administration lied to it's employers -- about war -- again.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Updated figures from Iraq's Health Ministry show there was no significant decline in violent deaths in Baghdad last month, but the U.S. military insisted Thursday the murder rate in the capital had fallen by 52 percent.

Baghdad recorded more than 1,500 violent deaths in August, according to final figures released this week by the Health Ministry. The final count was roughly the same as the figure the ministry released for July, before the U.S.-led security crackdown began in the Baghdad area.

The final figure also was nearly three times the preliminary count released by the same ministry last week.

If accurate, the final figures cast doubt on U.S. and Iraqi claims of a significant reduction in the level of violence here since the crackdown was launched Aug. 7.

Asked about the latest Iraqi figures Thursday, U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson refused to provide an explanation, merely referring The Associated Press to a statement on a U.S. military Web site that said the murder rate in Baghdad dropped 52 percent from the daily rate for July.

Unfortunate Headline of the Day

'Idol' singer Clay Aiken may serve Bush

Um, from what I know of Clay Aiken, I kind of doubt it.



Oh, they're talking about Dear Leader!

Clay Aiken is in line to be named to the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, the White House said Wednesday.

Really?!

Which Cabinet post is he getting?

Can't be any worse than Rummy!

Now, Gentlemen

I don't advise you to just indiscriminately share your seed with anything that comes along. Nor do I advise a general lack of inattentiveness in sexual matters. If nothing else we progressives should be affectionate lovers.

Nonetheless, there are people here and there that demand, YES, DEMAND, you not only have to get drunk off your ass to tolerate, but also, at all costs, require you avoid any foreplay.


Because this is one O-face you definitely want not to induce.

By the way, the Rude One is right, this is a gift that keeps on giving

Via Think Progress.

Enabler without a Clue

David Broder:

These and other publications owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts.

Jiminy fookin' Jeebus!

I'm waiting for Broder's demand that all of journalism apologize for allowing Rove Inc. to orchestrate a fucking goddamn, fraudulent war!!!

How about it Davey?

Anybody else you want to apologize?

-- The Lindbergh Baby says "sorry" to Bruno Hauptmann?
-- Nanking begs forgiveness of the Japanese?
-- Roman Polanski apologizing to Charles Manson?
-- Send off an email to Eli Weisel telling him to apologize to Mel Gibson?
-- Chakka apologizing to Ghengis Khan?

I have the feeling that if David Broder's daughter was involved in an abusive relationship, where her boyfriend/husband hit her, Broder would immediately think she must have done something to deserve it, so she better zip her lip and go and beg forgiveness. Because that's how he rolls!

This, of course, comes the day after these revelations are reported

* At the time of her outing, Valerie Wilson was an undercover officer in the CIA whose mission had been to gather intelligence about WMDs in Iraq. She was the operations manager of the Joint Task Force on Iraq, a unit in the clandestine service of the CIA. This unit desperately tried to obtain evidence to back up the Bush administration's assertions about Saddam's WMDs, yet it found no such evidence.

* Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, was the original leaker in the CIA leak case. But as he was disclosing information to columnist Robert Novak, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and other top White House aides were engaged in a fierce campaign to discredit Joseph Wilson. Rove even told MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews that the Wilsons "were trying to screw the White House so the White House was going to screw them back."

Like the Post editorial last Sunday, this Broder column is the ultimate demonstration of the contempt the media/political clique of the Beltway have for you, the American citizen.

A contempt that Karl Rove makes his living exploiting.

Fishing for Idiots

Ironically, also the title of one of Bush's 60 books.





Modified from AFP/Jim Watson

Should something happen to K-Lo

When she goes critical mass, I believe we've found someone who can pick up right where she left off at 'The Corner'. Probably can even wear the same quad-x housecoat:

Still, some Southern women remain stalwart supporters of the president and the Republican Party. At a watermelon festival in Chickamauga, in the mountains of northwest Georgia, substitute teacher Clydeen Tomanio said she remains committed to the party she's called home for 43 years.

"There are some people, and I'm one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord," Tomanio said. "I don't care how he governs, I will support him. I'm a Republican through and through."

If there is an advertisement for WHY the GOP has to go down, that's it!

Otherwise the link shows the GOP in big, big...big trouble.

Bobo's World Update

Those "wacky" Katherine Harris supporter-types:

MIAMI - Angry over a homeless man's catcall, four friends went on a "feeding frenzy," police said, beating the elderly man to death with a metal chair, a steel rebar, a rock and a wooden stick.

Two men accused in Saturday's attack are the sons of Christian clergymen. All four have been charged with second degree murder.

"This was pure bloodlust," said Miami police spokesman Lt. Bill Schwartz. "There was no reason for this."

According to a police report, the attack was sparked when Janice Guillen, 18, went to her car to get cigarettes. Guillen told police she heard Jose Perez, 67, who was in the building across the street, toss out a pickup line "she felt was nasty," the report said. She told police she confronted Perez and punched him in the face.

Perez allegedly hit her back, prompting Magdiel Wingfield, 28, Kevin Stone, 27, and Jason Cardenas, 19, to run downstairs from Guillen's Little Havana apartment. The four of them allegedly jumped Perez, punching and kicking him and hitting him with the chair, the rebar and the other objects. At one point they pushed Perez through a glass door, shattering it, the police report said.

Perez was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Wingfield and Cardenas' fathers are clergymen with the Soldiers of the Cross church based in Little Havana. Neither could be reached for comment on Wednesday.

On the other hand, I'm sure at least one of these four was probably against stem-cell research, so you have to give 'em that.

This is also, in microcosm symbolic of the "social darwinism" too many people have in this country of finding the lives of "some people" worthless -- while simultaneously demanding that frozen blastocysts be considered sacred.

Don't eat Indian Food before bed (not valid in India)

You have realistic and disturbing dreams.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

Models the Bush Administration's coming "Dr. Evil" line of outfits for the Republican Party in 2007.

There festive!

Still no gay marriage though.

(AFP/Dinh Nam Hoang)

Um, yeah

(AP Photo / Pier Paolo Cito)

More LIES meeting reality

It seems there wasn't just a spike in violence after a sharp dip in deaths in Iraq.

Altogether now,

THERE NEVER WAS A DIP!

What Dropoff? August Death Total in Baghdad Morgue Triples
We took an interesting phone call today from an official at the Baghdad morgue. We get these calls every day – a daily tally of the violence. But this one was particularly sobering.

It turns out the official toll of violent deaths in August was just revised upwards to 1535 from 550, tripling the total. Now, we’re depressingly used to hearing about deaths here, so much so that the numbers can be numbing. But this means that a much-publicized drop-off in violence in August – heralded by both the Iraqi government and the US military as a sign that a new security effort in Baghdad was working -- apparently didn’t exist.

Operation Together Forward, the main thrust of the new strategy, involves establishing pockets of security in select neighborhoods and then slowly adding more. These latest numbers add substance to fears Together Forward creates a whack-a-mole effect: that is, secure one area and the violence will pop up somewhere else. Violent deaths now appear roughly in line with the earlier trend: 1855 in July and 1595 in June. Officials at the Baghdad morgue have no good explanation for the dramatically revised number. We’ll see what the U.S. military has to say.

I'm guessing they will say, "hummana, hummana, hummana"

So Bin Laden gets a free pass...we're still winning right?

...s'all right.

The best part of his new adviser is the occasional hand job.


Modified from (AFP/File/Jim Watson)

Irony is livin' large

Somewhere in her precious war-on-terror moments laden apartment, while fighting off a dachshung like a desperate badger for the last Chicken-in-a-Biskit, K-Lo brushed the crumbs off her Lane Bryant casual mumu and typed:

White After Labor Day [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Even the AP gets into the Couric fashion notes: "Couric, who wore a white jacket over a black shirt and dress, quickly introduced a story about the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan."
Posted at 7:00 PM

How is this NOT the lead story on every media outlet?

It's news that's several hours old now, but it cannot be repeated enough. Our Pakistani "allies" -- the country we've dumped billions into, including military technology -- the country we allowed to get away with a "house arrest" for a nuclear proliferator -- the country that was a democracy but now isn't -- has capitulated to the Taliban and Bin Laden.

Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan, press secretary to the president of Pakistan, tells ABC News that -- if found -- Osama bin Laden won't be arrested, as long as he promises to behave like a "peaceful citizen."

"If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden 'would not be taken into custody,' Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, 'as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen," report Brian Ross and Gretchen Peters at ABC's blog, The Blotter.

"No, as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen, one would not be taken into custody," said Khan. "One has to stay like a peaceful citizen and not allowed to participate in any kind of terrorist activity."

"The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a 'peace deal' with the Taliban," reports ABC.

So on the very day Bush was proclaiming the victories against Al Qaeda, Osama was getting away with it all. This seems a good reason to "celebrate" at the three locations the man who was "Determined to Strike the United States" did so.

On Georgie's Watch!

Meanwhile, ABC, who employs those who broke this story is planning on broadcasting a slanted piece of GOP-inspired propoganda talking about Bill Clinton not being mindful of Bin Laden before 9/11.

...while in the present day, George Bush presides over both the attack of 9/11 and the capitulation of his allies to Osama.

Explain that one Bush enablers?

Let me see how Neil Cavuto would put it...

"Osama Wins, Good News for Bush?"

One thing is pretty damn sure, Osama's Holloween Video postcard for the GOP is going to be the best studio production yet!

I bow

Before Scout Prime's awesome takedown of the Pantload.

All of Scout's New Orleans stuff is fantastic of course.

Give David Horowitz a Members Only Jacket

He's done found himself a kindred spirit:

What do Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and David Horowitz have in common? Hint: It's not their views on Israel. Give up? They both want to fire liberal, secularist professors perverting the fragile minds of college students. According to AP:

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Tuesday for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from the country's universities, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported in another step back to 1980s-style radicalism.

Well, at least Iran is finally catching up to us in something besides nuclear technology.

That's Stategery

Well they sure bragged last week about the downturn in violence since their newest "Plan B" -- as usual in Iraq, so much for that shit:

The number of killings in Iraq's capital soared last week despite an American-led crackdown, with morgue workers receiving as many bodies as they had during the first three weeks of the month combined.

At least 334 people, including 23 women, were killed in Baghdad from Aug. 27 through Saturday, according to morgue figures provided by Health Ministry officials. Most of the victims had been kidnapped, tortured, hog-tied and shot.

At least 394 other people were killed around Iraq last week in other violence, including bombings, mortar attacks and gunfights, Iraqi authorities said.

The rise in violence followed an announcement by U.S. and Iraqi officials at the beginning of the week that the number of killings in the capital had fallen drastically during August, from more than 1,800 in July. Although August as a whole was less violent than the month before, last week's killings suggested that death squads are still able to roam around Baghdad despite checkpoints and curfews.

Ugh!

Excerpts from the forthcoming Dick Cheney bio, Part II

Chapter 5: The College Years

1960: Dick attends Yale, having won a scholarship for his High School Senior thesis in late 1958 "Castro's 26th of July Movement, an insurgency in its Last Throes". However, Dick has to leave school early after participating in the 'Kill a Commie for Nixon' program. Neverthless, it is determined by a council of Skull & Bones that Cheney will not be prosecuted because, after all, his victim was a liberal and from a mere middle class family. Dick drinks from Geronimo's skull and departs for Wyoming in 1962.

Dick takes time off from school, working for an electrical company as a lineman. However, in reality, Dick is listening in on phone conversations involving the Kennedy Administration. Later that Year, Dick visits Hollywood and gets a job as Marilyn Monroe's housekeeper going by the name "Eunice".

Dick and his High School Sweetheart Lynne begin sending each other letters and gifts. Lynne sends Dick the heart of a local farmhand, Dick sends Lynne the pelvic bone of a vagrant whose flesh he had boiled away. Their co-dependency grows stronger. On Valentine's Day 1963 Dick sends Lynne a letter that reveals the poet in Dick Cheney's soul:

Miss Vincent,

My regards to you on this February 14, 1963. Without you, my will to power would have stopped when I assumed hall monitor duties in junior high after Tim Wilson's 'little accident'. You have given me the drive to attain the highest levels of executive authority as well as introduced me to the consumption of human flesh. I look forward to maintaining a respectful distance from you for years to come.

Sincerely,

Richard B. Cheney

Dick returns to college this time at the University of Wyoming, to be closer to Lynne and available for late night sessions of passionless dry humping and random euthanizing of the pets of Wyoming Democrats. In the Fall of 1963, Dick who is double majoring in Unethical Behavior and Embezzlement, proposes to Lynne, saying the only thing he wants to do more than get in her pants is get the United States into a War it cannot win. Lynne chuckles, accepts and tells Dick he'll have at least two opportunities to do each. But first, she asks for a blood sacrifice to prove his devotion. Dick is puzzled as to what to do, but then just before Thanksgiving, he hops a train to Dallas.

"I'm Ready for my close-up Mr. Moon-ves"

Not Good

History Repeats Itself:

Sept. 4 -- U.S. jets mistakenly strafed Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan on Monday, killing one and bringing to five the number of Canadian troops killed during a major push against the Taliban this weekend.

The deaths come as domestic support for the war is sliding and political opposition is growing, and the fatalities are certain to fuel the controversy in Canada over this country's role in supporting NATO and the United States in the five-year-old Afghan war.

Four of the battlefield deaths occurred Sunday as the Canadians attempted to sweep Taliban guerrillas from Panjwai, an area of farms and poppy fields in the southeastern province of Kandahar that has been a staging area for attacks against Canadian troops. The operation, code-named Medusa, met what commanders acknowledged was surprising resistance...

...In a similar incident earlier in the Afghan war, four Canadians soldiers were killed in 2002 when a U.S. plane mistakenly dropped a bomb on Canadian forces as they trained. That incident caused bitter feelings for many in Canada and has lingered as a rhetorical touchstone for those who oppose the alliance of Canada with the United States in the war in Afghanistan.

Actung! Pat Buchanan's SECRET SANTA

I know you were leaning towards getting Pat a "My Little Gardener" for the holidays this year, but I think we've found him a better present.

Hitler' Desk, Chair Up for Auction

Jeebus, give it a rest

There are obviously many things more offensive than constantly comparing whatever regime we don't like to the Nazi's, but that does not make it inoffensive.

And the benchwarmers of the intersection of "I Wanna Be Churchill Street" & "Ain't too Proud to Not Serve Avenue" are definitely ratcheting up the disgust-o-meter, with a period of gratuitous and stupid (do they have a different mode?) Michael Moore bashing tossed in:

IRAN AND 1930s Europe [Mario Loyola]
The difference between Iran and Nazi Germany is one of degree but not of kind — strategically speaking. Let's remember that nobody knew in 1938 (not even most Nazis) that the Holocaust was coming. And yet all that was horrifying about the Nazis was plainly visible during their opposition period in the late 1920s and early 1930s, during which time their propaganda message was not much more objectionable than that of Michael Moore — and not really all that different (By the way, I firmly believe that all the similarities between Farenheit 9/11 and Nazi propaganda of the opposition period are purely accidental — I can't believe he would have plagiarized the Nazis intentionally)...

Churchill understood, as so many pseudo-pacifists did not, that allowing Germany to alter the status quo in a way that gave it a huge offensive advantage guaranteed that the Nazis would attack when they were ready. He understood that the last moment for effective self-defense was Munich in 1938—when there was no imminent attack. The choice was preemption or appeasement.

And likewise the choice Bush faces now. Waiting until an attack might be imminent is suicide. If Iran wants nuclear technology, they need to go about getting it in a way that the international community will consider safe. Otherwise, we must understand Iran's current violations of applicable Security Council resolutions as acts of aggression, which is what Germany's diplomacy was during the 1930s. And we should responsd accordingly.

The MOST dangerous group of people in the world right now, because they have both the aspirations and the means of acting are people who might get Bush's accustically resonant ear, like the bomb Iran crowd.

If there is a more imbecilic comparison between the Nazi's and Iran, I don't know what the hell it is -- at least when Bush I made the almost as imbecilic comparison of Saddam = Hitler you had a dictatorship in place.

If you thought

That "death by stingray" could not possibly be made into a story about the so-called "War on Terror" well then you just misunderestimated the one-track mind of ClifFORD May:

But I do wonder if Irwin, having taken risks so oftten in the past, having cheated death on so many occasions, may not have gradually become over-confident in the face of danger.

Nations, as much as individuals are susceptible to such thinking. Kissinger said – I wish I could find the exact quote – that past victories can lead to defeat because those past victories can appear to have been inevitable.

I worry that because Americans proved equal to the task of defeating the Axis is the 1940s, and because the Communists lost the Cold War, too many of us have come to think we will of course defeat the Militant Islamists or the Islamo-Fascists or Radical Jihadis or whatever term you prefer. But the outcome of those other pastwars was not inevitable. Nor is the outcome of this one. Every stingray is a very real and present danger.

That's the "well-respected" ClifFORD May according to Lesley Blitzer.

Don't mind me...

Labor Day's my last chance to get a good ball tan.

(AP Photo/Mainichi Shimbun)

Speaking of which, evolution can be a cruel mistress...

REUTERS/Tim Chong

They're NOT looking to prosecute

They are just looking for headlines:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The federal government has fallen back to prosecuting international terrorists at about the same rate it did before Sept. 11, according to a study based on Justice Department data.

The surprising decline followed a sharp increase in such criminal prosecutions in the year after the attacks, according to a study released Sunday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research group at Syracuse University.

The analysis of data from Justice's Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys also found:

_In the eight months ending last May, Justice attorneys declined to prosecute more than nine out of every 10 terrorism cases sent to them by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies. Nearly 4 in 10 of the rejected cases were scrapped because prosecutors found weak or insufficient evidence, no evidence of criminal intent or no evident federal crime.

_Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, only 14 people have been sentenced to 20 years or more in prison in terrorism cases. Of the 1,329 convicted defendants, only 625 received any prison sentence. More than half got no prison time or no more than they had already served awaiting their verdict.

The important thing isn't to actually find and prosecute terrorists. The goal is to scare the shit out of people and grab more power while you do so. While making loud noises about HOW you are prosecuting. It's how you are able to set-up otherwise incompetent and harmless wackjobs in Florida and create a supposed al-Qaeda cell.
Meanwhile, all those things that you say help you monitor terrorists, really let you monitor political opponents and intimidate them. Creating a "soft-shoe" kind of police state. Folks like FoxNews are the ultimate enabler because, while they don't send anyone to jail (the self-proclaimed "Fox Security" notwithstanding) they create a location where anyone with ideas different than Sean Hannity's gets excorioriated as a traitor, a coward, a freak, an enabler, a terror-sympathizer.

It's all quite slick and sickening.

It won't just end in November either.

Sistani Washes his Hands

Well, the great bearded-hope has given his proverbial finger to the Bush Administration's "grand mal" plans:

The most influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war.

Aides say Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani "I will not be a political leader any more," he told aides. "I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."

It is a devastating blow to the remaining hopes for a peaceful solution in Iraq and spells trouble for British forces, who are based in and around the Shia stronghold of Basra.

Good luck saying it isn't civil war yet.

Meanwhile, at the "Big Brother All-Stars" House

Photos from CBS, AP & AFP

American Democracy & Freedom

Open Government:

The White House said that Mr. Rove would consider an interview for this article if it were conducted off the record, with the provision that quotations could be put on the record with White House approval, a condition it said was set for other interviews with Mr. Rove. The New York Times declined.

Meanwhile, Rove sent out his press release to the Washington Times.

Family Traits

Oh, THIS is rich, little Jebbie, the allegedly "Smart" brother is every bit as bad as the one who got the card-board box for a brain -- why he even has a mini-Rove:

(Florida State Senator, and Republican) Alex Argenziano: "The governor has a history reflecting accommodation of special interests as evidenced by the agencies' contracts, and his flexible Republicanism is at odds with both America and actual Republican principles. In his heart of hearts, the governor prefers dictatorship to democracy."

Carole Jean Jordan, Florida Republican Party chairwoman: "Personal attacks on the sitting governor of Florida questioning his character are far beyond the bounds of responsible dialogue. I sincerely hope that Senator Argenziano will reconsider her comments, especially in light of all that Governor Bush has done for the people of Florida and for the Republican Party."

Argenziano: "Carole Jean Jordan can kiss my ass."

For all I know Argenziano may be Attila the fucking Hun politically, but nonetheless at this moment, I couldn't like her more.

Like the Buzzards returning to Hinckley

Al Qaeda's honchos always return with video during election season.

After all, what better follow up to declaring those who disagree with them as appeasers, could BushCo ask for than more implicit endorsements from Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri?

And what's this, they've added a new "Darren"?

A new videotape by al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has surfaced on the Web with an appearance by a Californian-turned-al Qaeda member wanted by the FBI, according to a counterterrorism expert...

...Al-Zawahiri says the message is directed at Americans. Californian Adam Gadahn, whom the FBI wants in connection with possible terrorist threats against the United States, introduces the message.

Gadahn, also known as "Azzam the American," has previously been featured in al Qaeda tapes and is listed as armed and dangerous by the FBI on its Web site.

And Cue Wankery!!!

Within minutes, Fox News brought on right-wing author Richard Miniter to provide expert analysis of the video. Miniter said that “what’s striking” about Zawahiri “is that he’s using a lot of the same rhetoric as the antiwar crowd. He refers to President Bush as a liar and a defeated president…They call him a failure, an incompetent.”

Also in the tape, Zawahiri says “Bush was foolish to turn down the truce offered by Osama bin Laden as an honorable way out.” Miniter said this claim and others is what “Michael Moore and John Kerry were saying a year ago,” and now al Qaeda is “turning them back against us.”

But this is but the appetizer, for Osama himself on video will be this year's special Halloween treat -- count on it!

What is not terrorism?

Oh, that week earlier this year when the cable news networks had "the vapahs" over the Florida "Al Qaeda Cell" that was going to attack Chicago. After all one of them had once been there, and they had...OMG a map! Engage Drudge-o-Matic 3000:

WEEZ ALL COULDA DIED!!!

...developing

Well after a solid week of over-emoting, and a slight bump in the ol' Chimp's approval ratings, the whole thing started to smell. And you could tell right, because after devoting 55 minutes out of every hour to this "dastardly plot" for a week, the cable talking heads gave the inconsistencies 15 seconds at the bottom of ever other hour in week two of the now non-crisis.

And it gets all better now, months later.

But court records released since then suggest that what Gonzales described as a "deadly plot" was virtually the pipe dream of a few disgruntled men with almost no ability to pull it off on their own. The suspects have raised questions in court about the FBI informants' role in keeping the plan alive...

...lawyers for the defendants have raised questions about where a government sting ends and entrapment begins. Not only did government informants provide money and a meeting place for Batiste and his followers, but they also gave them video cameras to conduct surveillance, as well as cellphones, and suggested that their first target be a Miami FBI office, court records show.

At the hearing, Batiste's attorney, John Wylie, showed that the FBI's investigation found no evidence that his client had ever met with any real terrorist, received e-mails or wire transfers from the Middle East, possessed any al-Qaeda literature, or had even a picture of bin Laden.

So basically, the Bush Administration is, SURPRISE, following the convenience plan of fighting the war on terror. Select and gather a group of psychologically impaired folks (maybe scan our nation's parole listings or social security disability rolls), provide them with some cash, and lead them into some sort of bizarre-ass scheme. Then, when you need 'em, you bust 'em. HOW CONVENIENT! The heads will eat it up.

Hooray for us, we are winning the manufactured war on rationality!

Dear Dr. Atta J. Turk, September 2, 2006

Letter No. 1:

Dear Doctor;

Let me say just how much I enjoy your blog. You sir, are awesome. From your powerful brain to your beautiful prose, every one of your utterances possesses the golden light of truth, all set to the funniest riffs ever scribed by mortal man.

And you have a really big penis and emit an odor reminding one of cookies fresh from the oven.

Keep up your truly ground breaking work.

Sincerely,

Sprezzatura

Sound familiar?

What country is this Bush Administration hack talking about now?

"It's bad news and we need to improve it," said Thomas Schweich, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for international narcotics. "But we don't feel it's a hopeless situation, and we don't think the overall strategy is the wrong strategy."

Why it is that other "freeanced" placed we've neglected into disaster, Afghanistan!

Cliche du Jour

Politicians on the Gengis Khan side of the spectrum are trotting out their favorite sound bites and well-worn aphorisms they hold like a talisman warding off evil spirits. My favorite is "cut and run". As in, if we leave now, while the body count is only a 10 or 20 a day, while the shambles of a democratic government we have bequeathed them still breathes, as if $300 billion dollars, nearly 3000 souls, tens of thousands maimed, and tens upon tens of thousands of families directly impacted is not enough to prove our courage as a nation. Yeah, I guess the one way to describe those that advocate getting out now is: coward.

After "cut and run" (and "not until it is finished", "stay the course", blah, blah, blah), what's next?

You're all nuthin' but yeller-bellies!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Direct your eyes to the tarmac and enjoy...

The Amazing Wanker

"And now, ah'm a gonna perform a trick ah invented called meta-met-mor-met-aaaa-morph-a-sis-a-sis"


"And a one."


"And a two, ah summon the power of the Jeebus"


"And transformerer!"

See more of his "prestidigitationatin'" at his website, www.theamazingwanker.com

(Modified from AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Finally, a real plan for winning the "War on Terror"

Distracting Bush, instead of Bush distracting you!


Modified from REUTERS/Jim Young

Well what can you say?

Conrad "Foot-Talker" Burns:

Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, whose recent comments have stirred controversy, says the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who ''drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night.''

And all this time I just thought he was lovably eccentric.