Non-Sequitur
Bad
Cam Cardow, Ottawa Citizen
Ugly
Brian Gabel, Globe and Mail
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Blog, blog against the dying of the light"
Act One - The Glorious National March to Victory!Here's how he describes Act Five, where, he says, the US is today:
Act Two - Things Go Wrong
Act Three - Turning Points that Aren't
Act Four - "Oh Shit" Moments Mushroom
Act Five - Sickening Realization that We've Already Lost. Panic. Dread. Denial.
Act Six - Call Defeat "Victory", Get the Hell Out
Act Seven - Blame, Demonize and Punish the Innocent, Reward the Guilty
Presidential poll numbers tank. "Hoo-Yah!" War Hawks begin issuing measured statements in the passive voice ("Mistakes have been made. Tough choices cloud exit scenarios. New approaches are being considered.") Members of the President's own party inch away from him, fearing collateral damage. The most deluded Hawks fall back on the ultimate piece of political boilerplate, "We must win because we can't afford to lose" (without revealing how we achieve this miracle.)And for all of you too young to remember, this is exactly what happened in Vietnam, too. Proctor finishes the article by saying
Any chance we can head off another decade of war? Another 10-20,000 deaths? Not
with War President "Never Made A Mistake, Won't Change Course, Everything's
Hunky-Dory, Get Outta My Driveway, You Peaceniks!" As Edward G. Robinson said in
"Double Indemnity," (We've) "got to ride this streetcar to the end of the line,
and it's a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery."
. . .conventional wisdom of 'liberal hawks' and 'liberal not hawks' regarding Iraq is basically about the same. We need to get out. The latter emphasize the importance of 'getting out now' while the former epmhasize 'getting out as soon as we can subject to things being better in some undefined way,' but the positions aren't really so different. The 'hawks' are just more wedded to the idea that we have to be able to 'declare victory' while the 'not hawks' think that little chest beating is not actually all that important. But, none of these people are George W. Bush. As we know, but no one talks about, we have no intention of getting out now or ever . . . .It's time for the Biden Democrats, in one of the infinite Sunday show appearances, to raise the issue of the administration's long term intentions in Iraq. If the stubborn George W. Bush intends to leave troops in that country forever, then no talk of getting out, either on a rigid or flexible timetable, is relevant.And this is why I read Kevin Drum:
. . . they [he's talking about some liberal hawks], and many people like them, keep telling us that we need to stay in Iraq even though they seemingly agree that no one has a credible plan for accomplishing our goals there. This doesn't make any sense. Either you believe that there's a way we can win in Iraq — a real way that involves the leadership of George Bush and his staff, not some fantasy scenario in which he suddenly turns into the reincarnation of FDR — or you don't. And the only reason to stay in Iraq is if you think we can win . . . no one, neither Democrat nor Republican, has presented a convincing plan for winning in Iraq under the present circumstances. The insurgency is not going to give up, the Army doesn't seem to have any kind of consistent commitment to using counterinsurgency techniques against it, we don't know for sure that they'd work anyway, and let's face it: the track record of major powers beating large-scale overseas insurgencies is close to zero in the past half century. So what's the plan? I happen to think a timed withdrawal is probably the best bet left to us, although I admit that I suspect Iraq is going to end up in chaos no matter what we do. That would be a disaster, but if we can't stop it anyway there's no point in making things worse by staying. For now, that's pretty much where I'm at, and anyone who disagrees really needs to give the chin scratching a rest and tell us clearly and concisely what they'd do differently to turn the tide in this war. Time has run out.
How completely isolated a world the German people live in. A glance at the newspapers yesterday and today reminds you of it. Whereas all the rest of the world considers that the peace is about to be broken by Germany, that it is Germany that is threatening to attack Poland over Danzig, here in Germany, in the world the local newspapers create, the very reverse is being maintained. (Not that it surprises me, but when you are away for a while, you forget.) What the Nazi papers are proclaiming is this: that it is Poland which is disturbing the peace of Europe; Poland which is threatening Germany with armed invasion, and so forth. This is the Germany of last September when the steam was turned on Czechoslavakia. For perverse perversion of the truth, this is good. You ask: But the German people can't possibly believe these lies? Then you talk to them. So many do.RI then notes that Shirer also said most Germans were opposed to the war, feared it, and didn't really expect it to come. But it came.
Enormous, mendacious, disembodied anusAnd then today he writes The Parrot Sketch :
You rectum, fifth column, objectively pro-Saddam
Half-Swedish, pro-moorish, deceptive chocolate starfish
On the internets
There are lying assholes
And they say I said all these things I never said at all
Dead body in the sand
If his mom don’t like it she’s a “media whore”
Hey don’t you dare get mad
It’s just a metaphor!
You lying asshole
CHORUS
Ooo I really hate those lying assholes
They say I’m all talk
Because I won’t go to the recruiter
That’s cuz I’m fighting on my computer!
Lying assholes
Nine eleven, a little slice of heaven
Guantanimo Bay
Is a luxurious get-away
Eat lemon chicken in the Sun all day
They call me a wingnut
Because my party bashes faggots
I’ve got an answer for that:
Michael Moore is fat
Lying asshole
CHORUS
When the Bushies should have been putting together a national security strategy, they decided to put on an ad campaign for the war. (This is an administration, after all, that has Karl Rove crafting policy.) Fortunately for them, none of their supporters understand the ass-elbow distinction between policy and talking point, so, even though the case never got much penetration into the wider public, it was enough to get the war started. But, as time drags on, and the casualties and costs keep mounting, the ad campaign is starting to feel a bit hollow. (Why, then, was the war fought? Good question. Really, really, really good question. Go hang out with Cindy Sheehan down in Texas and maybe the President will deign to give you an honest answer. But pack your big suitcase.) The American public was sold a dead Norwegian Blue nailed to its perch. The people who sold it to them have endless excuses for why it's not really dead - and have you noted the beautiful plumage! - but they are starting to reach levels of absurdity that even the most gullible and trusting among us can recognize as bullshit. Cindy Sheehan is banging the parrot's stiff corpse against the counter, screaming in its ear, and about to reel off a very long list of synonyms for 'dead'. This war is an ex-parrot.
The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack - but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.Nice to know that so many senior military officers put their own careers ahead of hundreds of thousands of lives, isn't it?
[In November, 2004] Dr. Jerome Corsi, a leading player in the Karl Rove-inspired dirty-tricks apparatus known as Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, suddenly emerged as the new head of the Iran Freedom Foundation (IFF), promoting regime change in Tehran. Corsi was touted by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) as being the driving force behind the Iran Freedom and Support Act of 2005, which calls for $10 million in funds to be handed out to Iranian dissident groups . . . In March 2005, Corsi published another propaganda book, Atomic Iran, peddling scare stories about Iran's imminent possession of nuclear bombs. From May 15 to May 18, Dr. Corsi led an "Iran Freedom Walk" from Philadelphia to Washington, where a rally was addressed by neo-con Richard Perle, and where Corsi was congratulated, in a written statement, by Dick Cheney. In April 2005, Regnery Publishing, Inc. released another fractured-fairy-tale propaganda piece, promoting pre-emptive war on Iran, this one by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.). Sources familiar with the book report that Weldon was snookered by ex-CIA Director and leading neo-con war party operative James Woolsey, and self-proclaimed "universal fascist" Michael Ledeen, into buying fake intelligence, pushed through a former Iranian minister under the Shah, who has more recently been a business partner of discredited Iran-Contra gun dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Representative Weldon concealed the identity of his high-level "source," referring to him only as "Ali." But "Ali" was soon identified as Fereidoun Mahdavi, a former commerce minister, who fled Iran shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and never looked back. In an interview with The American Prospect's Laura Rozen, Mahdavi professed shock and outrage that his "information" had formed the basis for Weldon's shrill book. He confirmed that all of the information he passed on to the Congressman had, in fact, originated with Ghorbanifar, a notorious disinformationist, and Iran-Contra ally of the Washington neo-cons. Weldon's saga with "Ali," as recounted in his book, Countdown to Terror-The Top-Secret Information That Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America ... And How the CIA Has Ignored It, began in March 2003, at the very moment that the Bush-Cheney regime was about to launch its Iraq invasion. In late June of this year, Kenneth Timmerman, a propagandist for the neo-cons and for right-wing Israeli circles around former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, published another book, Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown With Iran, which makes a string of preposterous claims, all based on information provided by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, an Iranian exile group on the U.S. State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Timmerman asserted that: Iran was behind the 9/11 attacks; Iran is safehousing Osama bin Laden inside the country; and Iran has all of the elements to produce nuclear weapons, and possibly provide them to terrorist cells already infiltrated into American cities.Horrifying, isn't it. And what would the world do? Is there any way to stop this madness?
When the Timmerman book was published, the Washington Times ran three days of excerpts, along with an editorial touting the book and calling for action against Iran. If all of this sounds remarkably similar to the propaganda run-up to the Iraq invasion of March 2003, that's because it is. The same Michael Ledeen/Richard Perle/Dick Cheney circles that brought you Operation Iraqi Freedom, are aggressively pushing war against Iran. But this time, with 170,000 American troops bogged down in Iraq, Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, et al. are now pushing their decade-old plan to conduct pre-emptive nuclear strikes.
What lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves . . . Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there . . .
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say . . . Washington now does not expect to fully defeat the insurgency before departing, but instead to diminish it, officials and analysts said. There is also growing talk of turning over security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces even if they are not fully up to original U.S. expectations, in part because they have local legitimacy that U.S. troops often do not. "We've said we won't leave a day before it's necessary. But necessary is the key word -- necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us," a U.S. official said. Pressed by the cost of fighting an escalating insurgency, U.S. expectations for rebuilding Iraq -- and its $20 billion investment -- have fallen the farthest, current and former officials say.
"Let's take the military option off the table. We have seen it doesn't work," Mr Schroeder told Social Democrats at the rally in Hanover, to rapturous applause from the crowd. Mr Schroeder said it remained important that Iran did not gain atomic weapons, and a strong negotiating position was important. "The Europeans and the Americans are united in this goal," he said. "Up to now we were also united in the way to pursue this." Mr Schroeder reiterates his views in an interview to be published Sunday in the German weekly Bild am Sonntag, labelling military action "extremely dangerous". "This is why I can with certainty exclude any participation by the German government under my direction," Mr Schroeder tells the paper.
The Foreign Office reacted swiftly. “Our position is clear and has been made very, very clear by the foreign secretary,” a spokesman said. “We do not think there are any circumstances where military action would be justified against Iran. It does not form part of British foreign policy.” So soon after the invasion of Iraq, which has led to so much political turmoil for Tony Blair’s administration, [British foreign secretary Jack Straw] is anxious not to be seen trying to talk up any future forays.
Cindy Sheehan's trip to Crawford to talk to President Bush started out as just a small idea Wednesday evening. None of us thought for even a minute that it would snowball into the media and historic event that it has now become. Cindy, Dede and I thought the journey would be made by the three of us and maybe some veterans from the Veterans for Peace convention we were attending. Saturday morning we boarded the VFP Impeach Bush bus, along with a platoon of vets sent by VFP to go with us. A caravan of cars followed behind, filled with vets and others who had come to support us. The vets on that bus are some of the most inspiring, honorable and heroic men I have ever met. They inspired me and helped to heal my broken heart. These are people I had to explain nothing to because they know how I feel. They've been there. They've buried their buddies and seen the worst of humanity. I will forever have a warm spot in my heart for them . . . The local Sheriff of Crawford escorted us to the location for our demonstration . . . They made us walk in the bar ditch in knee high weeds full of bugs, fire ants (really nasty little things) and possibly snakes. The walking was hard. The sun beat down on us in the 100 degree Texas heat in the middle of the day. Conditions were miserable. But we pushed on. Cindy, Dede and I were in the front, leading our supporters. I don't know for sure how far we walked, and I've heard various reports from a half a mile to a mile. I couldn't help but feel we were the peasants going to the castle to ask for an audience with King George, only to be stopped and told the King wouldn't see us. So, we protested. We shouted. I met a mother who had come to support us whose son is in Iraq. We hugged and I told her I hope he comes home safe and whole. We cried together . . . Saturday night [Aug 6] we camped out in our cars, in tents, in chairs, on the ground. Wherever we could fall asleep, we slept. I think that when I went to bed there were about 5-6 people with us. We watched as Secret Service vehicles drove by going 50 mph all night long. Some other traffic came by, locals probably. We always knew the locals from the Secret Service because the locals slowed down when they went past us. We heard, via our cell phones, reports of bloggers keeping the pressure on the media and politicians. They blogged for us and about us all night long. We heard reports of candle light vigils, people lighting candles in their windows and on their front porches across the country. We felt the love, the energy and the prayers sent our way. It was comforting out there under the big star-filled Texas night, in the middle of nowhere, knowing that people around the world cared about us, watched us the best they could. None of us felt alone . . .Liveblogging is also being done by William Rivers Pitt at Truthout where these photos are posted:
In the last 24 hours over 600 people have arrived at #43’s vacation retreat. The Crawford Peace House is a buzz with volunteers, organizers, veterans, republicans, democrats, greens and everyone in between. During the night, exhausted activists crowd the floor as the tiny air conditioner pumps out what little cool air it can. During the day signs are perpetually being made, banners painted and buttons and schedules passed around. The sign in sheet at the front door resembles a rough draft of a thesis paper as pages are tacked together for new arrivals. And there is a line forming behind it. People are pouring in from San Diego to Boston, Portland to Miami and everywhere in between. A guy just rolled in from Argentina ready to give us the shirt off his back. Its hot. Its humid. But the enthusasim and energy are rampant.