The conundrum of memory

Sometimes I get to wondering, sometimes I get confused about what our conservative brethren are trying to tell us.  I was reminded recently that my former Republican congressman Tom Rooney (R-FL) amongst others,  vociferously  threatened to impeach the president for having provided air traffic control for the UN incursions into Libya; for having exceeded his constitutional authority by arming Syrian rebels.  Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) back in June of 2013 threatened to impeach President Obama if any U.S. troops are killed in Syria.  Is there a relationship between rhetorical amplitude and political passion and the shortness of it's half-life? 


I ask because currently the same party is chastising him for not having gone into Syria thus allowing ISIS a breeding ground. We need those airstrikes -- why didn't he make those airstrikes?  We need airstrikes, says John McCain, in his time-worn tradition of  damning Obama if he does or if he doesn't.  Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wants to commit ground troops. This is all

 "due to our total inaction. And it's going to be one of the more shameful chapters in American history," says John McCain

Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire said the President's limited foreign policy is no longer acceptable. I have no idea whether that refers to the hundred airstrikes the Obama administration has unilaterally launched into Northern Iraq to help the hopelessly rickety and incompetent government Republicans bragged about setting up not long ago, but we can be assured of at least one thing: Republicans will damn him for doing it and damn him for not stepping in earlier back when they were trying to impeach him for it.
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Victory at last?

Newsweek insists that the mission is accomplished and democracy has succeeded in Iraq -- just like Bush predicted. It good to know that Democracy consists of holding an election in an ethnically cleansed country where only a few dozen people are killed and while occupied by a foreign invader. How much more democratic must Venezuela be then, or Cuba or Iran? Bush predicted that? He also predicted mobile chemical weapons factories, Qaeda training camps, stores of WMD's and a nuclear weapons facility -- that it would all be on the cheap and take only a few weeks. I do hope there's a tongue deeply embedded in some editor's cheek.

And now Maliki is suggesting that election returns have been tampered with and there have been hundreds of accusations of fraud. But never mind, it's mission accomplished and Nixon wasn't a crook.

A strange kind of honor

Is David Frum having his "mission accomplished" moment?

" Israel may have to retire its title as the only democracy in the Middle East. With Sunday's free and fair national election, Iraq joins the honor roll as one of the very few Islamic democracies,"

wrote Frum on CNN.com today. If so it would be a strange kind of honor indeed, a ravaged, broken country with millions exiled, tens of thousands -- perhaps over a hundred thousand dead; a country cleansed of Christianity, where an election required massive military support and during which, dozens of people were killed.

Sure, it was an election that may actually reflect the will of the voters, but an election that could only be held because of the military might of an occupying invader; an election to pick a government that does not have the strength to run the country or to rebuilt it. Isn't it a bit premature to be portraying this as a "vindication" of George Bush's attempt to find al Qaeda training camps and Chemical weapons factories capable of attacking the United States within weeks? Is this somehow the conclusion of one of the longest and most costly wars in American history; a war which continues and the end of which is not yet in sight?

Certainly there is some hope for an eventual state of stability, but no assurance whatever as to what course a stable, self governing Iraq would take if not held at gunpoint. Certainly it's not time to have the Frum orchestra playing rhapsodies to a dishonest promise of the coming comity of nations and holding up Iraq as a model of enlightened and liberal democracy capable of spreading a Western model of government all over the Middle East. Can it be any more than dishonest when that still distant prospect is, at this point, the product of the wish to believe and more likely to be a fatuous dream than an accomplished mission?

David Frum is telling us that a distant shimmering mirage that never seems to get any closer as we move toward it is really a garden of Democratic Eden only steps away and that the unsubstantiated vision justifies having wandered in the desert wilderness for nearly a decade seeking one elusive promise after another. I wonder if, like the Moses he seems to think he is, he'll have to settle for seeing it from afar for the rest of his life.

Stupid Liberals

It's only been a few years since my prediction that we would find ourselves in recession if Bush's economic blundering continued, but the difference in how Americans see things has changed a bit. I get called an anti-American commiepinkoliberaltraitor far less today although the "stupid Liberal" trope still turns up now and then. Only a while back, people on Fox and elsewhere were insisting that we were on the verge of another boom based on the voodoo of lower taxes and that all negativity about unlimited deficit spending and massive waste was the work of satanic Liberals seeking to undermine the economy. The media is promoting nothing but negative economic news was the headline. It's a conspiracy and we have a study to prove it, said the Fox. The real indicators are all up - way up. One of the most angry exchanges on this blog was about the liklihood of a downturn. I haven't heard from that guy for a long time.

It's not too surprising that such optimism is as difficult to maintain today as was the optimism the Republicans were being so militant about in the first year after the Iraq invasion. Even though opponents have been vindicated, the vindictiveness remains. They're still burning straw liberals.

Those who remain optimistic that we can borrow and taxcut our way to the promised land have dwindled to a few percent, but they still think they are a majority and they're still looking to fix the blame on others. Gone, or at least quiet now are the people who viciously condemned the "liberal media" for telling us only the bad parts 7 years ago; the people who said the schools were back open, the streets were safer than in Washington and the elections proved the mission was accomplished and peace was just around the corner. Waiting for a retraction or an apology won't be productive, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, back in the present, Inflation, that infected camp follower of deficit spending campaigns is beginning to hound us, but the Fed is afraid to raise interest rates because of the stagnating economy. They must be Stupid Liberals too.

John McCain has the answer of course -- it's called more tax cuts and more borrowing and more railing and screaming about Liberals. Anything less would involve being a surrender monkey. Is McCain following in the footsteps of his Bush administration optimist forbears with his continued optimism?

"Iraq will not require sustained aid"

-Mitchell Daniels, director White House Office of Management and Budget. April 2003

"We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."

-Paul Wolfowitz, testifying before the House Appropriations Committee 2003

". . . before we turn to the American Taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community"

-Donald Rumsfeld, 2003

"The costs of any intervention would be very small."

-Glenn Hubbard, White House Economic adviser, 2002

"They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will."

-Richard Perle (who stands to make a personal fortune from selling Iraqi oil to foreign interests)
2002

"It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars."

-Kenneth Pollack, former director for Persian Gulf Affairs, National Security Council. 2002
(The cost has surpassed half a trillion so far, not including the half trillion annual interest on the debt and it's likely to run to three trillion in total.)

" Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits."

- Lawrence Lindsey, White House economic adviser. 2002 **

So how many used ideas would you like to buy from this party of geniuses, you stupid Liberal?

**Quotes, thanks to the Institute of Expertology

Lara's song

"Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever. "

Lara Logan

I was never really conscious of Lara Logan's existence until the Daily Show had her as a guest recently. She made a well presented and credible claim that the news from Iraq was being toned down, under reported, redacted and sometimes ignored, and as someone who has been in the thick of it for years as the chief foreign correspondent for CBS, and who frequently has been in the midst of combat, she has a great deal of credibility. That network has been cutting back its staff in Baghdad and some critics say that the public perception of improvement in Iraq has a lot to do with the lack of coverage. Indeed, despite the constant emphasis on danger and terror, it's possible to sit through a very long period of broadcast news without a single story from Iraq.

“If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” she said to Jon Stewart.

It might be that she pushed the wrong buttons. Headlines and weblogs have begun to bleat about scandals in her private life, led by such Liberal Media as the National Enquirer and Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. Will Bunch at Philly.com has a provocative article today and a link to the Daily Show interview.

Backlashes against less than enthusiastic reportage of Bush's war began immediately after the initial enthusiasm. Networks refused to allow a reading of the names of casualties lest it be taken as criticism of George Bush or his invasion. I don't think it's far fetched at all to see this attempt to ruin a brilliant career as a continuation.

Same old George

No, I don't mean George Orwell, although the two will forever be linked with antinomial rhetoric. I know the theme has been beaten to death, but Bush's reflexive promotion of bad news as good news simply won't let the comparison die. When he didn't send enough troops, that was a good thing and then when finally he did, that was a good thing and now that the all too brief and all too small down tick in violence seems to have lost the coat of whitewash - that's a good thing. "It's a positive moment" he said of the renewed fighting to The Times of London; just as it was positive that British troops had withdrawn previously. In fact every military debacle in recent years has been positive to this administration, including the horrible miscalculation that allowed the collapse of Iraq's infrastructure and the rise of an insurgency and the need for re-enforcements.

Reiterating his commitment to occupying Iraq until they become a willing client state and oil source, Commander Guy said he would not listen to "those who scream the loudest," which of course means those who question his fantasy. It's good to know that foolish consistency remains as unchanging as his mind.

“I understand people here want us to leave, regardless of the situation, but that will not happen so long as I’m Commander-In-Chief.”

How long has it been since we've had or even wanted leadership that recognized the sovereignty of "the people here" or recognized that the term "commander in Chief" refers only to command of the military and not to the nation?

"a very positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation that is willing to take on elements that believe they are beyond the law"

says Bush despite the fact that Iraq isn't a sovereign nation and with the smug consciousness that we aren't either. If we were, we would be willing to take on elements we believe are beyond the law instead of gibbering like demented monkeys about Obama's preacher and how we just hat, hate, hate oh yes hate Hillary. If we were a sovereign nation and not the Kingdom of a God chosen ruler, we would have put the junta behind bars long ago.

Could be

I guess the idea is to keep the lies coming so fast and furious that rebuttal is useless. I guess the idea is just to keep saying things, no matter how factually or logically untrue they might be so that the faithful will continue to have something to hold on to as the lies get shot down one by one.

Sure the administration has denied any connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein or that he had a nuclear weapons program or had chemical weapons factories and the means to deliver all that stuff to Festus Missouri in a suitcase, but they keep saying it anyway; they keep basing arguments on it and they keep getting people to believe their war was necessary.

The McClatchy website today quotes Bush as saying on a Radio Farda broadcast that Iran has "declared they want a nuclear weapon to destroy people" and that the Islamic Republic could be hiding a secret program. [italics mine] Of course they never actually declared any such thing and the phrase could be doesn't accompany the caveat that could be covers everything from the likely to the ludicrous. I could be the Easter Bunny. Saddam could have had invisible nuclear bomb factories and George Bush could be an honest man too.

"they've hidden programs in the past and they may be hiding one now. Who knows?" says Bush. The US has gone to war under false pretexts in the past and they may do it again, say I.

If George Bush had not turned the nuclear inspection program in Iraq into a passion play we would not have had this war and it could be that we could have contained Saddam quite well at a ten thousandth of the cost, which would have allowed him to continue to keep al Qaeda out of Iraq and us to concentrate on crippling the group that planned the 9/11 attack rather than the economy and our civil liberties. Could have - it's a fun game. You can do almost anything.

Beat the clock

They used to say that the sun never sets on the British Empire. Will we have to say the clock never runs out on the American Empire?

George Bush's rhetoric is still all about freedom in Iraq and that means the freedom of George Bush to do what he pleases with Iraqis with impunity and immunity from any of the silly laws they pass under the false impression that they are free. It's no more convoluted than the argument that we had to attack Iraq for having a nuclear program when we knew he didn't have any - an absurdity that only Condy could say with a straight face.

The UN mandate authorizing our presence in Iraq expires at about the same time George Bush's term of office and George seems to want very much for the association to continue indefinitely according to the New York Times today. With the customary secrecy and anonymity protecting the customary suspects, White House, Pentagon, State Department and military officials have drafted a proposal that would commit the next president to keeping troops, both regular and mercenary, there indefinitely and keeping them above and immune to any laws Iraq might pass to protect its citizens from their boots and bullets.

It's a technique familiar to students of the British Empire and should be a caution to anyone who thinks Iraq 's citizens will be content to submit to tyranny and institutional abuse of power in order to further the interests of an occupier.

Nothing here surprises me except for the fact that the media continue to insist we'd rather hear about celebrity overdoses and childish spats between candidates than about the fact that Bush continues to equate freedom with eternal domination of Iraq and acts as though he did not give a flying hoot about representing the will of the United States People. If this becomes law, we might as well forget about electing a new president at all, because Bush will have the last laugh.

Click me!

Dwell time

They call it dwell time; the amount of time at home between military tours and our troops aren't getting nearly enough of it. That's what an Army Captain told Joint Chief Chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen at his recent stop at Fort Sill, OK.

“That year we’re back, it’s just not good enough.”

Mullen has been hearing a lot of that sentiment both in the US and at stops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“She has put her whole life, her whole career, and everything, on hold for me. ... And now I have to say, honey, I just got back, but we’re moving. And when we get there, I’m gonna leave again" Said a Captain of his wife's efforts to return to college. "I can do that. That’s what I do,” the captain said. “But when it comes to hurting my family, sir, it’s repulsive.”

“Family considerations don’t play a part in the assignment process.” That's what another officer was told and that's what made him decide to leave the service.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, some coddled political warriors like Mel Martinez (R) FL have been telling us that what these men and women who have been fighting for 5 years want is disgraceful to the troops and Commander Guy, who tells us so often that we have to give them everything they need, save adequate equipment, pay, medical benefits and time off, isn't interested in hearing "phony soldier" talk like that.

Mullen himself says: “I am not willing to see the United States military return to the kind of challenges that we had when I was young. We’ve got to figure out a way to make sure that family considerations are very much in play."

Just the kind of America-hating talk you'd expect from a guy who thinks our troops are real people rather than painted tin soldiers.

I expect that he will soon be corrected by true Americans like Rush who would most assuredly be over there himself save for his anal problem.

We don't need another hero

The English language isn't what it used to be. It's not as much the expression of a culture but more and more a tool for manipulation. Take the word hero. It used to connote a doer of bold and noble deeds; someone favored by the divine, but as with most things these days, the requirements have been dumbed down and conferring the title of hero is a way to make the exploited seem, well, less exploited.

The guy who runs into a burning building to save someone else can fairly be called a hero but what about the guy who unwittingly holds the door for the guy who runs in to pillage the place before it all burns up? Is he a hero if he's killed so that others may steal during a fire that was set for the purpose? Most people wouldn't say so; they'd say he was a victim and the law would agree, but if we talk about soldiers and not firefighters, everyone is a hero now.

I was struck by an article in the Miami Herald this morning about Staff Sergeant Lillian Clamens, wife and mother of three, killed in Iraq by a missile. Lillian was a personnel clerk only three days away from coming home to her family. Her three children have already bought the costumes for the Halloween party planned to celebrate her return. Her husband, a logistics manager for the Army ROTC program seems stoic, or so the Herald plays the story. They're all heroes, you see and heroes don't cry and consequently neither should we. We should celebrate the heroism of another senseless death, another casualty of the Neo-con crusade to make the world free for exploitation by the rich and corporate; another destroyed family, three more orphans because of a colossally mismanaged power grab by a government that never sheds a tear unless it has to pay for some kid's medical insurance or old person's medicine.

Maybe it's OK to be stoic; to act as though it was important that men and women are dying, but it's not OK for us to pass by it all, to absolve ourselves by calling her a hero, to pretend her children aren't crying, because she's a hero, that we haven't lost one of our own forever, because she's a hero, because soldiers are warriors and warriors are heroes even if they die for someone else's ambitions, our arm chair patriotism and our apathy.

What have we done to ourselves if fathers and mothers, sons and daughters and husbands have to believe that our government hasn't got the blood of their families on their hands and in their wallets; what has become of a nation that it can't cry for someone's mother, someone's wife? What of a culture that has to hide contempt for what they know is wrong; hide grief for what they know is a tragedy behind the cult of Bush and the myth of the warrior hero?

Less is more

There's a lot of diminishing going on - in the mind of Pat Buchanan, that is. When Pat Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank agreed with that former Nixon speech writer who helped the previous pinnacle of corrupt and demented presidencies divide the country with scurrilous arguments, that President Carter's characterization of Dick Cheney as "a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military" is not appropriate for a former president and "diminishes" Carter. Sure, it's the same old argument that obedience is freedom but it's also irony; Buchanan having avoided service by faking a bad knee.

Why is it not appropriate? Beats me. Most Americans dislike Cheney and his intransigence in the face of constant error, constantly contradictory facts and failures of policy. There must be some reason why someone with foreign policy expertise and experience can't say what most people would agree with. (and please take note Ann: he's a committed Christian.) I guess it's the same reason Obama has to wear a tawdry flag pin to prove the required degree of mindless allegiance; or the reason decorated veterans can't give back their medals because of matters of conscience and for the same reason that no one can criticize a general for fudging the figures when there's evidence he has.

Poor Gerald Ford is apparently "diminished" post mortem for criticizing Cheney and Rumsfeld as well, even though I don't think any sane person can argue his right to apply his insight or his right and indeed duty as a public citizen to advocate for better government. But he's diminished, says the man who never thought to diminish the felons he worked for in the Nixon White House - so diminished that the shop worn effigy of Michael Moore can be brought out of the warehouse and propped up against the wall. That's diminishment!

I don't expect much different from that lying old Nixonian hack and supporter of disastrous and bloody wars. I expect that the same old patriotic nonesuch to be performed ad infinitum and I expect the United States, like some angry, lonely and delusional teenager with his diminished ability to deal with reality to reach for the weapons and go out in a blaze of violence.

Take these medals and. . .

I guess he has no immediate plans to run for office and that's good for Josh Gaines, a 27 year old Iraq war veteran who announced his plans today to mail his medals to Don Rumsfeld. Since he did nothing, says Gaines, to protect our country or to further the Global War on Terrorism, he doesn't deserve them.

“I’m going to give those back because I truly feel that I did not defend my nation and I did not help with the Global War on Terrorism. If anything, this conflict has bred more terrorism in the Middle East.”

Gaines, according to Army Times today spent a tour of duty in 2004 and 2005 guarding two military bases and issuing ammunition to soldiers. He never fired a weapon.

Of course one doesn't need a weapon to shoot oneself in the foot and the man has reason to resent the Army for having discharged him "less than honorably" for smoking cannabis after his return from Iraq; to help him, as he says, to sleep. It's a shame of course, since I essentially agree that demolishing Iraq and presiding over the smoking ruins isn't protecting the United States and is creating more hatred towards us than anything else, but his gesture will only provide fodder for the war lovers who would like to dismiss all dissenters as dopers, misfits and fringe elements. It would hardly take the Swift Boat Veterans a moment to sink him with their wake.

I realize that Americans need faith that we're always in the right and our wars are always part of the good fight and I know that all soldiers are heroes save those with the courage to question the ruler, but like at least one man who served with him said, I'm also proud of him and I wish there was less pride in submission and obedience in the ranks. I wish that more generals could give their real opinions and I wonder what Colin Powell has to smoke to sleep at night.

Men in Black go back

Are we witnessing a new birth of testicularity in Iraq? It seems like Blackwater Security; the guys with the black helicopters and carte blanche to do as they will in Iraq are being kicked out by the Maliki government. The company that operates out of a secret and massive privately owned military base in North Carolina and charges enormous fees for shady operations free from any military code or oversight is accused of being involved in a Baghdad shootout that ended 8 lives.

The astonishing rise of Blackwater has been, in my opinion, one of the most frightening developments of the Bush administration. They rose from relative obscurity to being an enormous private army for hire after 9/11 - George Bush's private army paid for by the public, sometimes at a rate of over $100,000 per man as we saw when they were hired to police New Orleans. If we allow the free government of free Iraq to exercise a bit of freedom, the men in black may be back home for Christmas. What about your son or daughter, or father or cousin?

Tu est Petraeus

et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam

- with apology to Matthew 16:18

There are a lot of disgusting things going on in the world, but Rudy Guiliani hasn't made a fuss about them. He is however in full faux outrage mode at present and it's all about the lack of respect George Bush's pet General is getting for what seems to many to have been more of a pep talk than an open and honest assessment of conditions in Iraq. Petraeus may be an ass kisser, but the red marks on his backside are from Rudy's lipstick.

Certainly Rudy wouldn't be defending the GAO report if it were being inquired into by Hillary Clinton, but then the GAO isn't the hand chosen spokesman for wars and their indefinite continuation. About the most we can say for Petraeus and his report is that he may be right that Bush did not clear it beforehand, but he did choose Petraeus, reputation for sycophancy and all, in pretty much the same way he has chosen everyone in his circle. You swear on the bible and with lips on Bush's butt. He chose Petraeus because the barrel of reasons for the war is about empty and he had to have something apparently rock solid to build his church of war upon.

The notion that respect for generals should prevent scrutiny of their reports even when world stability, the economy and millions of lives are at stake, is reprehensible even for a grandstanding drag queen with delusions of grandeur like Rudy who seems far too often and much too conveniently to forget who works for whom. Evidence of the administration's respect for the American people has been harder to find than evidence for Saddam's chemical, nuclear and biological weapons facilities.

I never had any respect for Guiliani and any vestige of respect for Petraeus was substantially dried up when he pulled the malodorous cliche so many war lovers rely on: that we only have freedom of speech because soldiers gave it to us. It's a partial truth at best and partial truths are the worst kind of lies. Nobody is fighting to preserve the Bill of Rights in Iraq and few if any administrations have done more to weaken and nullify our civil rights than this one. By trying to make our long term occupation of an oil producing country; building airfields, bases, fortified embassies to facilitate making Iraq an economic subsidiary of the US and the international oil companies seem all about our civil liberties, Petraeus has indeed betrayed us and betrayed the people to whom we were supposed to be bringing freedom and independence. By playing along with the bomb-and-switch game of falsely identifying Iraq with al Qaeda and 9/11, he has betrayed us.

Would you buy a used war from this man?

Expect to hear a lot more about the MoveOn.org Petraeus/betray us ad in the New York Times. Expect never to hear the end of it. It's something that looks like it's got more legs than the photo of Jane Fonda on the Anti-aircraft gun. Somehow we're supposed to give him the kind of respect that asks no questions, looks at no prior performance and refrains from comparing his word to the words of others with less personal involvement. Somehow we're supposed to skulk away like a punished hound dog when blind respect for blind leaders and their sycophants is what got us involved in this mess in the first place. If past experience is any indication, we're going to be shown this ad as evidence that we "lost" the war in Iraq because of peaceniks and wimps called Bush's pet general a traitor. Our grandchildren will believe it. Our grandchildren will think it was a noble war for a noble cause and will refer to it while fighting to "Free" some other country.

The Mainstream parrots may stumble over their tongues trying to cast him in gilt bronze, but his superior officer, CENTCOM Chief, Admiral William Fallon, thinks he's an "ass kissing little chickenshit" and told him so to his face. It's going to be hard to smear Fallon with the usual slime however; he may have more than enough firepower of his own to blow any swift boats out of the water, so the media will no doubt do what it does - ignore him while parading their painted soldier.

Youssif

If you're a human being, you are saddened by the story of Youssif, the Iraqi boy set on fire by unknown assailants. His face is deformed and we can only imagine how this child's view of the world is deformed by the pain he's been through and the ugliness he sees in the mirror. Of course you and I are pleased to see that some American hearts bled enough that he will receive the best in burn treatment and reconstructive surgery in the US.

Dr. Peter Grossman spoke on CNN this afternoon, outside the Grossman Burn Center in Sherman Oaks California, about the course of surgery that will probably involve more pain and as much as a year of treatment. He seemed a bit non-plussed when the reporter asked him how seeing Youssif had changed his views. For a second I half expected a denunciation of war, of violence, of the unthinking, uncaring horror of using massive military force to bomb crowded cities, but no, Grossman gave CNN what CNN wanted.

CNN wants heroes and has been blathering for weeks about heroes as though we needed men of marble instead of a world where common decency was common. Acting as though the masked men who burned a little boy could be taken out of context of the country we have destroyed in the name of fake freedom and real oil, he told us that all the good, warm, caring loving Americans who will surely send him teddy bears and pay for his expenses until they forget about him, balance out the bad men.

Youssif is 5. Had he been a dozen years older we would care about him as much as we care about all the other "Hadjis" we identify with "alqaeadainiraq" many of whom are shot, arrested tortured and blown to bits with little fanfare every day: just another brown skinned teenager standing in the way of the oil giants. It's too much to expect of CNN to ask how many children have been burned by American bombs or Iraqi bombs in the war America started; burned maimed, killed, orphaned, made homeless and deprived of a childhood and education. It's exactly what we expect of these toads to blame it on "alqaedainiraq." It's exactly the kind of tokenism we expect of self-idolizing Americans.

That this story was followed by an expensively produced ad gushing over America and it's commitment to FREEDOM accompanied by golden sunsets and pictures of men in battle dress, is fitting. Why bother with truth, justice, honesty, and a concern for humanity when we can grab the oil, kill anyone who stands in our way and make it all disappear behind a curtain of flags and patriotic advertising and a few token acts of mercy?

cross posted at The Impolitic

R*E*S*P*E*C*T

Of course the Republicans want to make a big deal out of the MoveOn.org advertisement; condemning it as a "despicable act" although none of them has ever spent a moment condemning scurrilous attacks on any Democrat. It's not as though public figures and public employees are above criticism or have a history of not deserving it.

Somehow though, nothing can be said these days about anyone in the military without bowing the head and mumbling formulae about honor and sacrifice. It's not about honor and sacrifice, it's about being wrong. It's about the kind of bravado and blind confidence that gets people killed. It's about having a history of predicting imminent and rosy outcomes that never come out as predicted.

Respect, of course, is what you demand when you are defending something most people doubt and you have a record of defending misestimations and mistakes, but respect for generals and their opinions and their ability to speak against their commanders commands has to be earned and so far I don't think that Petraeus has earned respect for his predictions or objectivity, PhD notwithstanding.

It seems that a majority of Americans doubt him; doubt the independence of his thoughts and statements and the success of adding a few more troops after the country is nearly destroyed. A majority doubts that the word "Victory" or "Winning" really apply. While I wouldn't go so far as to say he has betrayed us, and while I give him respect where it is due, he owes us, we don't owe him or Bush or any of his gang of forty thieves. By trying to make the opinion of the public seem the delusion of a fringe group wearing silly hats or some nasty terrorist loving Liberals who don't support the troops or worship the generals and pay too much attention to GAO reports and independent news sources, they are simply distracting us from remembering our own sovereignty.

None of us ever would have voluntarily spent 10 billion dollars a day, year after tedious year or suffered thousands of casualties or hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in order to risk a one in a million chance of a liberal democracy friendly to Western oil exploitation if we had know the cost or anticipated a war that could take another 10 or 15 years to produce a very dubious chance of success. None of us owes any particular respect to any of those who conned us into it and who act petulant when we demand out. None of us need feel bad about disrespecting those who have done nothing whatever to punish the 9/11 perpetrators and who have invoked their deeds every other minute and have convinced us that they are around every corner in order to cow us into continuing on a losing and self destructive course forever.

It's getting better all the time

I'm no longer in that 18% who thinks Congress has enough good men in it to recommend that Yahweh not dispatch it to the same fate as Sodom and Gomorrah. They did their best to make this all about how wonderful our troops are - it's not. They tried to make it about those nasty lefties making it a personal attack on the General - it's isn't. They tried to make it all about the left wing minority - it isn't and they're not a minority who think this "report" is not objective. They tried to make it all about standing up to an enemy and thereby keeping the respect of our allies - it isn't; the enemy is the people of a country who never attacked us and never sponsored "state terrorism." Our allies and our detractors haven't had any respect for us since we allowed the Commander Guy to call himself the President. In short they made it all about what they have been doing and saying day after day to those who question, who doubt and who are aware of the disparity between the official story and the story told by everyone else.

Petraeus says they want us there. Others say 70% want us out. Petraeus says the police and army are improving, others say they are totally ineffective and massively corrupt, some selling the weapons we provide on the black market. Petraeus says we can't get weapons to them fast enough. Others report that we have no idea who we gave them to and that they are turning up in the hands of insurgents in Turkey.

I'm past caring. America will do the stupid thing - we always do and when the piper presents his invoice we will spend generations rewriting history to protect the idiots - we always do. And then we'll do it again, using fake lessons from this debacle to justify another one. We always do.

Waiting for Petraeus

Any minute now General Westmoreland Petraeus, lips still warm from kissing his boss' ass will give us his pep talk about Iraq. Is there any more reason to see at as more informative than the endless harangue about how much weight Don Shula lost on the Nutrasystem Diet or just how much of a sports car the latest land blimp is?

Ari Fleischer's Freedom's Watch has been hammering all morning on CNN about "they attacked US" and about how if we quit now, "it all will have been in vain."

Why bother to watch? We know what they're selling and if they were half as honest as the diet scammers, they would put up the same small print on the screen -- "Results not typical."

Freedom's just another word

It's to the point where every time I see another picture of those damned smoking towers I know somebody's going to lie to me and last night was no exception.

"They attacked us!"

says the legless man in camouflage; The ad run during NBC Nightly News showed that same old video as though he wasn't talking about two disparate and essentially unrelated "they's." A shadowy organization calling themselves Freedoms Watch is shamelessly promoting the Big Lie that Saddam Hussein attacked New York and with the smug, condescending attitude of a second grade school teacher talking to small children about keeping order in the lunchroom.

If we pull out now, the sacrifice will have been in vain, says the pathetic victim of the Bush family vendetta. Well here's the only point on which I agree since it was all in vain from the start. If I don't keep trying to turn lead into gold, I will never turn lead into gold. That's logically true, of course, but a misleading tautology. I won't turn lead into gold no matter what I do.

So what the hell is he really selling with the crude sophistry and fatuous fallacies? Nobody goes to the trouble of creating false equivalences and forging them into truth by relentless hammering on the anvil of American ear drums unless there's something to be gained by it. Freedom's Watch doesn't hide their mission, although they keep their identity and funding out of sight. Their web site is festooned with flags and eagles and tawdry tokens of cheap souvenir patriotism and its mission statement is as gaudy and cliché as one would expect from any carnival barker:

Our mission is to ensure a strong national defense and a powerful fight against terror, especially in Iraq.

National defense being deceitfully defined, of course, as committing all your assets in an attack on and occupation of a non-threatening nation. National defense is using those troops as hostages in an imperial endeavor. But terror is fear, not a country and sorry to say, I'm not afraid much less terrified, so for my part the question is moot.

Our group will give a voice to those who believe that victory is America's only choice.

Which begs the question the answer to which has been accepted by most rational people including the Generals. The question is "what is victory for us in someone else's civil war" and the answer is that military victory is not a concept that applies here. Dealing with the fact that hating America to death is growing like an epidemic that grows faster every time we kill someone in a country that did not threaten us or attack us does not include the prolonged military occupation of Iraq. Those who believe, in this case, are most likely to be those who profit.

Those who want to quit while victory is possible have dominated the public debate about terror and Iraq since the 2004 election.

But that's not too surprising because Victory is undefinable, occupation unsustainable and what seems to be the largest possible majority in America wants out of it -- and they want out because they believe "victory" is not possible. There is in fact no debate about Iraq and terrorism. Iraq was never a supporter of international terrorism. Those countries who supported al Qaeda are being called allies.

For those who believe in peace through strength, the cavalry is coming.

Yes, this is a John Wayne movie and will end nicely as the credits roll on the silver screen. Don't worry about it. Strength means constant war, doesn't it? Strong people are always picking fights.

Our goal, as we await General Petraeus' report, is to make sure our elected leaders do not abandon our nation's mission in Iraq and that they do not cave in to the demands of those who want to cut and run.

After all, it's not their job to execute the will of their constituents, is it? It's what the nameless and wealthy warmongers and plutocrat profiteers want that should matter to them. It's also rather suspicious that they seem to know what General Petraeus' report contains, but of course we know the source of all this, don't we?

There's no fallacy or misstatement there that hasn't been beaten to death, but human nature being what it is, repetition wipes away refutation and lies become history. Click on the about us link at Freedoms watch and you won't find anything about them other than an assertion that they are legal and are asking for money, as though the people who fund it haven't made so much money from this war that they don't need your contributions. What they really want is your freedom, and your future and the blood of your children.