Powell leaves, Rummy Stays... WTF!???

Now that Mr. Leak is leaving the white house can we look forward to an Ashcroft-Powell double CD? I hear that Colin has a sweet singing voice. I know that SONYWARNERUNIVERSALISLANDTVTRECORDS is looking forward to releasing the Big Stick Johnny Ashcroft album. Just imagine the beauty of 'Where the Eagle flies' with Ashcroft and Powell. Maybe they can even get Ozzy to make a guest vocal on the record. I hear he's slumming with the repubublicans lately.

Speaking of slumming, I wonder what Donald Kill-Kill Rumsfeld is planning? Maybe a comeback tour? I hear that you're very popular in Iraq, Rummy. Please think about making it a world tour starting in Afghanistan or maybe even Falujah.

Oh yeah, some US marines killed some unarmed people today waiting for medical evacuation. Ah, lovely. And there is video to go with it. Cue big sigh.

Rice to be Secretary of State...Ugh

Oh, this should work really well...


(This makes Dubya Bullwinkle)

Condeleeza, Condeleeza We implore you
You're unsworn my lady With the nervous smile
Is it only cause you're lonely And Clarke names you
For that vacant flighty Strangeness in your smile
Do you smile to Karl Rove, or, Condelezza
Was this your way to hide some bad email?
Many scream Are You Dense?
No sworn statement... You just lie there... While they die there...
Are you warm, Are you real, Condeleeza?
Or just a cold and lonely, Neocon work of art?

Breaking My Vacation Already: The Most Crushing Disappointment of the Bush Administration has Resigned

And you know, that is really saying something.

Colin Powell surprises nobody and resigns.

Good luck with repairing that legacy, Mr. Leak.

I'm taking an I Need a Vacation Day

Attaturk has to work on his real job, the one that compensates him. Therefore, unlike say, Andrew Sullivan, having not asked you for money and not received any, I do not feel guilty in saying I am refraining from heavy blogging for a few days (at least that is the plan).

Might I suggest that James Carville take one as well (and surely a long, long one with his lockjawed hellbeast wife is in order).


So therefore, I make the worthless proclamation that this is an OPEN THREAD (LOL).

Why Not Get the Hand-Wringing Started Early?

As pointed out here the Media is doing it again with respect to Fallujah -- in a month or two (faster than last time) they will be asking how they got suckered again (I imagine we all have a few suggestions for them):

Dozens of embedded reporters re-enlisted this week, and hundreds of newspapers breathlessly recounted the invasion of the insurgent stronghold (which turned out to be not quite as strong as expected), as if it was the turning point in the war. The embeds were far from the scene, however, when several other rebel centers exploded in death and fury.

And they are completely missing from the American tragedy unfolding this week at the military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where most of the seriously wounded U.S. troops in Iraq are taken. As of early Saturday, according to hospital officials, at least 412 U.S. military personnel had been airlifted to the facility from Iraq since Monday, forcing them to add beds and expand their operations.

And the pace is only quickening. The number of arrivals this week stood at 227 on Thursday, for four days, but has jumped to 412 in just the two days since.

To be fair to the brave men and women serving in Iraq, shouldn't the press place a few embeds at Landstuhl? While American fatalities receive major play in press accounts, you have to look deeply to find the numbers on the wounded and maimed. You don't get airlifted to Landstuhl for a nick or scratch. A hospital spokeswoman told Stars and Stripes today that most of the damage came from burns, blasts and gunshots, with spinal and brain injuries and "traumatic amputations" among them.

As bad as it is in Fallujah, imagine if most of the rebels had actually stood and fought? Having been warned for weeks of the coming attack, and knowing it would be tied to the results of the U.S. election, many melted away, perhaps to Mosul. Of course, if the assault had not been postponed until after the White House was re-secured, perhaps that mass flight could have been prevented (not that any newspapers I've seen are pressing this point).

And summing up the real tragedy of the fight taking place in Fallujah NOW, as opposed to a few months ago:

Jackie Spinner, the Washington Post embed with the Marines in Fallujah, said in an online chat from the battleground (the mind boggles) on Thursday: "No one I've talked to believes that solving the Fallujah problem will end the violence in Iraq. But, as one Marine officer told me, not solving the Fallujah problem will not end it either."

Well, that just about covers it.

Yes, it does. Hundreds of badly wounded, dozens of Americans killed and for little other than to allow the Bush Administration to "feed the beast" of proclaiming pyrrhic victory. Richard Meyers is becoming a small-scale Westmoreland or Douglas Haig, meaningless butchery.

We destroyed Fallujah, and managed not to save a damn thing.

A few months ago, American Newspapers asked themselves about how they cheerleaded this war to begin with? Yet they continue to spout the Administration line that clearing Fallujah NOW, after months of warnings, will change things for the better. All the "mercury" that is the resistance did is move on to other locations, like Mosul, and not a thing will change.

Thanks to the incompetence of the Bush Administration we are now in an unwinnable situation in Iraq. The only question is when and if we will finally recognize it and whether the blame will be placed squarely upon where it should.

Iraq Update

1,182, 1,183,1,184, 1,185, 1,186, 1,187, 1,188, 1,189

Been a busy weekend

Very tired at the moment.

Had to go to Star Jones's wedding and such.

I hope she and her new husband enjoy that Coffee-Maker I picked up at K-Mart.

Just to Catch up on Where we were Yesterday

1,174, 1,175, 1,176, 1,177, 1,178, 1,179, 1,180, 1,181, 1,182

But I'm sure we are turning the corner (of course it is the corner of a maze).

Any Doubt that he is a Hack having the White House Write His Column?

Allow me to once again explore the depths of my loathing of Bobo.

Yesterday, I commented in a post that Brooks gets his hack column from the White House.

This was following a column from the Washington Post.

Now from Newsday via Atrios (still not blogrolled...still not...still waiting...not bitter...still not bitter...ok, just a little bitter...not really...but then again if not really bitter why am I going on about it? Head splitting...):

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

Look at Bobo's column again and let your anger vent.

They WILL overdo it

I've posted before that the GOP will undoubtedly overreach and overstep the nature of the so-called mandate they received from the voters. Further, I've argued it is time to get back to the reasons so many of us are Democrats or progressives in the first place, economic progressivism. Fighting for economic fairness is not, as some Democrats seem to think, unpopular. Rather, they are not being fought for hard enough.

A recent poll (focusing on Catholics) supports these arguments.

The first area is in the so-called "moral issues" vote. A new Zogby poll backs this up.

"A new poll released today by Zogby International on the results of last Tuesday’s election shows that American voters think the urgent moral issues facing our country are peace, poverty and greed – and that Catholic voters overwhelmingly think that issues of economic justice are the greatest moral crisis in the United States today. "

...

". . . Asked the question of the greatest moral crisis facing our country, 31% of Catholics chose poverty and 31% chose greed, compared to only 20% who chose abortion, and 11% that chose same-sex marriage. Further, more Catholic voters were turned off by messages from conservative leaders trumpeting ‘non-negotiable’ issues, as opposed to Catholic groups who held up a broad range of moral issues. According to Zogby, 25% of voters said that conservative Catholic messages touting ‘non-negotiable’ issues made them more likely to vote for Sen. John Kerry, whereas only 20% said these messages made them more likely to vote for President George W. Bush. Fifty-six percent said these messages had no effect on them at all."

I'm no professional analyst, or pundit (so maybe my credibility is higher?) but it seems pretty obvious to me that it is time to take this GOP class warfare garbage and stick it right back in their eye.

The Man Never Fails to Disappoint

I should have known when I wrote a post discussing the readily apparent dangers of trashing the CIA, that David Brooks and I would be on an ironic wavelength.

And he came through again.

I don't claim to be the brightest blogger on the "internets", but I'm capable of, on occasion, putting together the logic of history and the nature of society to understand what is a good idea and a disastrous one.

The highly compensated "Bobo the Lazy", is not.

These, as usual by the way, are White House talking points that Brooks is spouting (hence "the lazy").

Frightened enough yet?

Feel Down about the Coverage of Fallujah

Feel like the Networks are not giving enough attention to the consequences of Operation Clusterfuck II: Electric Boogaloo?

Feel like the fact that fighting the "mercury" that constitutes an insurgency by taking land over fighting the root cause is not getting enough coverage?

Well, watching the news makes it appear that the major broadcast media cares about some things more than others.

How can we remedy the situation?

Why by finding a way to make the media whores combine the things they like to cover, with the things it is important to cover.

I think we need to inform the media of the little known fact that Fallujah is just full of pregnant, white, women. Actually, pregnant, white, women, contemplating abortions.

That will get their attention.

Just so we know how the Next Attack Succeeded

This would be a good place to start looking:

The deputy director of the CIA resigned yesterday after a series of confrontations over the past week between senior operations officials and CIA Director Porter J. Goss's new chief of staff that have left the agency in turmoil, according to several current and former CIA officials.

John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year CIA veteran who was acting director for two months this summer until Goss took over, resigned after warning Goss that his top aide, former Capitol Hill staff member Patrick Murray, was treating senior officials disrespectfully and risked widespread resignations, the officials said.

Yesterday, the agency official who oversees foreign operations, Deputy Director of Operations Stephen R. Kappes, tendered his resignation after a confrontation with Murray. Goss and the White House pleaded with Kappes to reconsider and he agreed to delay his decision until Monday, the officials said.

Several other senior clandestine service officers are threatening to leave, current and former agency officials said.

The disruption comes as the CIA is trying to stay abreast of a worldwide terrorist threat from al Qaeda, a growing insurgency in Iraq, the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan and congressional proposals to reorganize the intelligence agencies. The agency also has been criticized for not preventing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and not accurately assessing Saddam Hussein's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction.

"It's the worst roiling I've ever heard of," said one former senior official with knowledge of the events. "There's confusion throughout the ranks and an extraordinary loss of morale and incentive."

Current and retired senior managers have criticized Goss, former chairman of the House intelligence committee, for not interacting with senior managers and for giving Murray too much authority over day-to-day operations. Murray was Goss's chief of staff on the intelligence committee.

Transitions between CIA directors are often unsettling for career officers. Goss's arrival has been especially tense because he brought with him four former members of the intelligence committee known widely on the Hill for their abrasive management style.

Three are former mid-level CIA officials who left the agency disgruntled, according to former colleagues. The fourth, Murray, who also worked at the Justice Department, has a reputation for being highly partisan. When senior managers have gone to Goss to complain about his staff actions, one CIA officer said, Goss has told them" "Talk to my chief of staff. I don't do personnel."

The overall effect, said one former senior CIA official, who has kept up his contacts in the Directorate of Operations, "is that Goss doesn't seem engaged at all."

If other senior clandestine officers leave, said one former officer who maintains contacts within the Langley headquarters, "the middle-level people who move up may eventually work out, but meanwhile the level of experience and competence will go down."

It is getting damned ridiculous. THAT'S what we need running the CIA, a goddamned partisan.

It's bad enough, well actually, it is damned disgraceful that this bunch brings about the eventual bankruptcy of social security, deficit disaster, those nasty reproductive rights, privacy, not just prayer but creationism as "science", but they are uprooting the CIA at the time we are trying to prevent a terrorist attack, and not just as a sensible, well-thought out change, but a radical change.

So when the inevitable successful attack, that we somehow missed -- again -- comes, we know where to start when we wonder what happened systemically to make it possible.

Lovely

1,162, 1,163, 1,164, 1,165, 1,166, 1,167, 1,168, 1,169, 1,170, 1,171, 1,172, 1,173

Who knows how many Iraqi's perhaps 100,000 (free registration required).

Many people wish to express their condolences over this and other Bushopian Errors and Tragedies, feel free to ad yours, Attaturk may have, but the pictures below are not him:

The Sight of a Desperate People

Always nice to hear the chuckleheads on Imus denegrate large groups of people.

Nevertheless, the sight in Ramallah was fascinating television.

Ah, Incredulity

Attaturk is getting tired, and busy, so here are some half-hearted captions.


Mutt & Jeff get together to swap war stories...oh wait.


Andrea Mitchell, without makeup.


Somebody's Album Jacket of the future.

Friday Miscellaneous Life-Form Blogging

Well, it's back to normal here at miscellaneous life-form blogging. You know one of the surprisingly difficult things about this weekly ritual is that there are literally millions of different life-forms out there, and if push came to shove, I could, like most people probably name tens of thousands of them. Yet, when it comes time to actually pick one, it becomes a struggle.

Wierd.

So today, for no reason whatsoever, I have had one pop into my mind (which is actually the usual way in which I do it). Perhaps someone can explain the psychological significance of thinking of this one.

For all you fresh-water anglers (I am not one) I give you:


The Yellow Perch.

I feel like the blog has temporarily turned into "Field & Stream".

She is not White & Pregnant so naturally Bushopia Doesn't Give a Shit

Good luck poor, sick, black girl,

Signed,

Alabama.

Life as they know it is on the verge of turning upside-down for a local family. Alabama Medicaid is threatening to eliminate the nursing care for a Mobile middle school student who had previously qualified for a special program. The girl's doctor says the changes are happening because of a state policy that doesn't make any sense.

13-year-old Lauren Rainey is full of life. She's smart, outgoing, and always smiling. Her nurse describes her as a drama queen. At school she is the class clown.

"She's a happy child," her mother, Laura, tells NBC 15 News. Her size is more like that of a 3 year old. But that's the least of her medical concerns.

"She's got the trache, she's deaf, she's got asthma, got an enlarged heart, all types of bone problems, scoliosis," said her mother.

To help her breathe, Lauren is hooked up to an oxygen machine and a humidifing mist machine. Lauren's doctor said her airway is restricted to the size of the end of an ink pen.

"That's why she is constantly suctioned. She is always getting plugged up," added Laura. Lauren's airway is suctioned several times an hour to prevent her from suffocating.

Due to her medical condition, Lauren requires 24-hour a day supervision. Medicaid currently provides her a trained nurse for 10 hours a day. But a recent letter from Alabama Medicaid says a decision has been made to eliminate Lauren's care.

There's more, naturally.

Minutes before our interview with Dr. McIntyre, Mildwurf was told we would only speak in general terms... that we were not to mention Lauren by name... "Because of regulations, that is not something as an individual or as an agency... that's not something we can discuss." We were told that even though Lauren's mother filled out the necessary paperwork giving Medicaid permission to speak specifically about her case.

When Lauren's name was mentioned by us, just to ask what information we had access to, the interview abruptly ended. "Turn the camera off. We're done with the interview at this point," we were told.

Before walking away, Dr. McIntyre did admit she makes her final decision to deny care without ever seeing the patients. "There is no ability to go out for every single one and see every single patient."

But with only 28 patients statewide receiving similar care, Lauren's mother believes the recipients should be seen by someone with the state agency before their nursing care is cut-off. "They need to come in and see these people and see that they need care."

Dr. Sindel tells us: "Most physicians would not agree with just letting somebody who is still functioning and has a real life and a personality just not be cared for." But then again, Dr. Sindel sees Lauren as a human being, not as just a medical chart.

"It's just sad. It's sad that our government can, you know... it's like throwing kids away." said Carolyn Yates, Lauren's 10-hour-a-day nurse. And it's because of the rules in the State of Alabama, this young girl will possibly be denied the care her doctors say is necessary for her to just live and breathe. Lauren's family has appealed Medicaid's decision. Meanwhile, Medicaid will continue to maintain Lauren's care through the appeals process.

And so it is, in Bush's America.

As for the Consequences of Our Long Term Future this Veterans Day

I agree with every word of James Wolcott's latest:

The rest of the world has wised up. Todd points out that Germany, Russia, France, and even Turkey declined to join our great adventure in Iraq, and guess what?--nothing happened! Apart from sappy boycotts and juvenile gestures ("freedom fries"), they went unpunished. "True power is economic power, and that is what America lacks today." (Because of our indebtedness and deficits--we're a superpower depending on the kindness of creditors.) Moreover, the smaller countries that did lend minor support in Iraq have nearly all withdrawn from the fray, or about to do so, having unheeded the warning Todd lays down in his concluding chapter:

"We should not follow America's military leaders for whom the term 'theater of operations' has ceased being a metaphor. Fighting alongside the Americans in Iraq would only amount to playing a small role in a bloody vaudeville show."

From his lips to Tony Blair's ears.

...

"As for George W. Bush and his neoconservative helpers, they will go down in history as the grave diggers of the American empire."

Too many People don't realize it now, but we are becoming a meddlesome pain in the ass, a bully in the eyes of our traditional allies.

Meanwhile, we become more and more indebted to nations, like China, that are likely hoping (with some justification) for the moment they can pull the string to our economic unraveling and we complete the process of becoming a Potemkin Superpower only slightly better off than the Russians.

Bush will likely be out of office when that happens, but like Calvin Coolidge, his watch would have become the primary cause for the result. The only question remaining is who will be Hoover?

Flander's Fields

Well, somewhere it will soon be the 11th hour of the 11th Day and the day arranged to commemorate the end of "The War (that failed) to end all War" will be commemorated.

Jingoism is nothing new in America, nor many other spots of the world. It took the utter devistation of the Second World War for it to finally dissipate in most of Europe (only took 1,000 years).

But the death knell of jingoism started with the slaughter of the First World War. A bloody bitter nightmare that lasted over five years and killed millions, often tens of thousands in a single day, and only finally, in reality ended in 1945.

The bloody, useless, slaughter was the primary reason that neither France nor Britain was able to stand up to Germany a generation later. Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele, Verdun, all were too fresh on the minds of both countries. The battle death totals are staggering:

On the first day of the Somme in 1916, the British lost 58,000 men. That is the equivalent of U.S. Battle Deaths in the Vietnam Conflict, and half the total of American deaths in the First World War, 116,000 in about one year of involvement.

In one battle, Caparetto, the Italian Army had 275,000 soldiers captured.

At the Battle of Verdun, 32,000,000 artillery shells were launched by the Germans and French. Verdun which lasted from February through the end of 1916, led to 1,000,000 French and German casualties.

In the course of the war, 8,300,000 Combatants were killed; another 7,000,000 were maimed for life of the 20,000,000 or so that were wounded in some fashion. 8,000,000 civilians died from non-disease related causes.

The national totals are staggering:

325,000 . . . . . . . . .Turkish military killed
460,000 . . . . . . . . .Italian military killed
1,000,000 plus . . . . . British and Commonwealth military killed
1,200,000 . . . . . . . .Austro-Hungarian military killed
1,385,000 . . . . . . . .French military killed
1,700,000 . . . . . . . .Russian military killed
1,808,000 . . . . . . . .German military killed

The war and its tragedy, especially its constant misery and evident criminal foolishness amongst those in the trenches gave birth, as does most prolonged human suffering to great prose. Especially poetry. Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen were among the English poets. The most famous poem of the war came from a Canadian, John McCrae:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Those who tend to glorify war, as many of those now leading our country, have rarely fought in them. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, almost the whole lot of them (except for the ostracized Powell) never experienced the tragedy of futile death, the way it not only snuffs out the promise of young life, but permanently stains the soul of those who live through it. Powell's involvement in the aftermath of My Lai (and not a glorious involvement), if nothing else, showed him the way in which murderous futility can make men deprived, unthinking, murderers.

No, war is all "strategy" and the "high arching" goal to them. The soldier is the "noble" faceless tool of the end. No one considers for a moment that so many nations, including criminally wrong nations thought the same way. Look at German art in the late 1930s and note the glorification of the faceless soldier of the Wehrmacht.

Somewhere in Iraq now, is a future Wilfred Owen. One probably speaks english and another speaks arabic. Meanwhile, Bush can barely put a limerick together.

The purpose of Veteran's Day is not to celebrate the victory of the soldier, their accomplishment of a policy end. But to remember those who sacrificed, and risked their lives. Often, in our nation's history, these losses have been for nefarious or useless ends (Mexican-American War and Vietnam respectively), as well as for noble ones.

War creates heros, but mostly it creates victims. The former is usually what politicians like Bush want to celebrate, but it is the latter that is the reality we do not like to dwell upon.