How Hillary Lost Iraq?!?!?! Nice Going, Dubya!!! (And..More KO Kick-Ass)

Gee…..how so typical of our imperial President.

Your war isn’t going as good?? Just blast your political opponents as traitors and enablers of “the enemy” (from Time magazine).

The Pentagon has issued a stinging rebuke to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, arguing that she is boosting enemy propaganda by asking how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq.Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman wrote a biting reply to questions Clinton raised in May, urging the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.A copy of Edelman’s response, dated July 16, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia,” Edelman wrote.He added that “such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.”

Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has privately and publicly pushed Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace two months ago to begin drafting the plans for what she said will be a complicated withdrawal of troops, trucks and equipment. “If we’re not planning for it, it will be difficult to execute it in a safe and efficacious way,” she said then.

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines called the response “at once outrageous and dangerous.”

“Redeploying out of Iraq with the same combination of arrogance and incompetence with which the Bush administration deployed our young men and women into Iraq is completely unacceptable, and our troops deserve far better,” said Reines, who said military leaders should offer a withdrawal plan rather than “a political plan to attack those who question them.”

As she runs for President, the New York Senator has ratcheted up her criticism of the Bush Administration’s war effort, answering critics of her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq invasion by saying she would end the war if elected President.

Edelman’s letter does offer a passing indication the Pentagon might, in fact, be planning how to withdraw, saying: “We are always evaluating and planning for possible contingencies. As you know, it is long-standing departmental policy that operational plans, including contingency plans, are not released outside of the department.”

Ahhhh…so that essentially means that Hillary Clinton (who, in case you haven’t heard, has been one of the biggest boosters of the war in Iraq, not to mention expanding the war into Iran, and who has done next to nothing as a Senator to stand by her newly found antiwar views)…is suddenly the moral equivalent of Cindy Sheehan as a dangerous al-Queda agent???

And what does that say for the overwhelming majority of the American people who consistently support a withdrawal from Iraq, Mr. Edelman??  I guess that they are traitors, too??

Hillary’s reaction so far: draft a nasty letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates (Edleman’s boss) challenging him to either openly endorse or repudiate this “attack on my patriotism”.

[excerpt follows; taken from Talking Points Memo Cafe]

I am in receipt of a letter from Eric Edelman, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy who wrote that he was responding on your behalf. Under Secretary Edelman’s response did not address the issues raised in my letter and instead made spurious arguments to avoid addressing contingency planning for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.As I noted in my original letter, “the seeds of many problems that continue to plague our troops and mission in Iraq were planted in the failure to adequately plan for the conflict and properly equip our men and women in uniform. Congress must be sure that we are prepared to withdraw our forces without any unnecessary danger.”Rather than offer to brief the congressional oversight committees on this critical issue, Under Secretary Edelman – writing on your behalf – instead claims that congressional oversight emboldens our enemies. Under Secretary Edelman has his priorities backward. Open and honest debate and congressional oversight strengthens our nation and supports our military. His suggestion to the contrary is outrageous and dangerous.[…]

I renew my request for a briefing, classified if necessary, on current plans for the future withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq or an explanation for the decision not to engage in such planning. I also renew my concern that our troops will be placed in unnecessary danger if the Bush Administration fails to plan for the withdrawal of U.S. Forces. Finally, I request that you describe whether Under Secretary Edelman’s letter accurately characterizes your views as Secretary of Defense.

OK….so it wasn’t so nasty, but you get the gist of it.

Fortunately for the rest of us, Keith Olbermann, being a journalist and a commentator, isn’t bound by the politician’s rules of comity and legalspeak.  Fortunate, indeed…..because he unleashed the mutha of all smackdowns onto Wannabe King Dubya last night on his Countdown show….as his latest Special Comment. As a lead off. (KO usually concludes his shows with his Special Comments, so you know he must have been pretty pissed off….and you could see the smoke and fire spewing from every word.

Only problem I have, KO….it’s really not just Bush’s war…..Democrats like Hillary who voted down the line to fund this war and made no real attempt to end it should bear as much responsibility, too.

Either way…turn the sound up and feel the fire.

“Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Special Comment on Defense Dept. Slam on Sen. Hillary Clinton…and Us” (via YouTube; w/ hat tip to the Weasels Yahoo! Group)

How Hillary Lost Iraq?!?!?! Nice Going, Dubya!!! (And..More KO Kick-Ass)

Gee…..how so typical of our imperial President.

Your war isn’t going as good?? Just blast your political opponents as traitors and enablers of “the enemy” (from Time magazine).

The Pentagon has issued a stinging rebuke to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, arguing that she is boosting enemy propaganda by asking how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq.Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman wrote a biting reply to questions Clinton raised in May, urging the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.A copy of Edelman’s response, dated July 16, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia,” Edelman wrote.He added that “such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.”

Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has privately and publicly pushed Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace two months ago to begin drafting the plans for what she said will be a complicated withdrawal of troops, trucks and equipment. “If we’re not planning for it, it will be difficult to execute it in a safe and efficacious way,” she said then.

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines called the response “at once outrageous and dangerous.”

“Redeploying out of Iraq with the same combination of arrogance and incompetence with which the Bush administration deployed our young men and women into Iraq is completely unacceptable, and our troops deserve far better,” said Reines, who said military leaders should offer a withdrawal plan rather than “a political plan to attack those who question them.”

As she runs for President, the New York Senator has ratcheted up her criticism of the Bush Administration’s war effort, answering critics of her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq invasion by saying she would end the war if elected President.

Edelman’s letter does offer a passing indication the Pentagon might, in fact, be planning how to withdraw, saying: “We are always evaluating and planning for possible contingencies. As you know, it is long-standing departmental policy that operational plans, including contingency plans, are not released outside of the department.”

Ahhhh…so that essentially means that Hillary Clinton (who, in case you haven’t heard, has been one of the biggest boosters of the war in Iraq, not to mention expanding the war into Iran, and who has done next to nothing as a Senator to stand by her newly found antiwar views)…is suddenly the moral equivalent of Cindy Sheehan as a dangerous al-Queda agent???

And what does that say for the overwhelming majority of the American people who consistently support a withdrawal from Iraq, Mr. Edelman??  I guess that they are traitors, too??

Hillary’s reaction so far: draft a nasty letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates (Edleman’s boss) challenging him to either openly endorse or repudiate this “attack on my patriotism”.

[excerpt follows; taken from Talking Points Memo Cafe]

I am in receipt of a letter from Eric Edelman, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy who wrote that he was responding on your behalf. Under Secretary Edelman’s response did not address the issues raised in my letter and instead made spurious arguments to avoid addressing contingency planning for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.As I noted in my original letter, “the seeds of many problems that continue to plague our troops and mission in Iraq were planted in the failure to adequately plan for the conflict and properly equip our men and women in uniform. Congress must be sure that we are prepared to withdraw our forces without any unnecessary danger.”Rather than offer to brief the congressional oversight committees on this critical issue, Under Secretary Edelman – writing on your behalf – instead claims that congressional oversight emboldens our enemies. Under Secretary Edelman has his priorities backward. Open and honest debate and congressional oversight strengthens our nation and supports our military. His suggestion to the contrary is outrageous and dangerous.[…]

I renew my request for a briefing, classified if necessary, on current plans for the future withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq or an explanation for the decision not to engage in such planning. I also renew my concern that our troops will be placed in unnecessary danger if the Bush Administration fails to plan for the withdrawal of U.S. Forces. Finally, I request that you describe whether Under Secretary Edelman’s letter accurately characterizes your views as Secretary of Defense.

OK….so it wasn’t so nasty, but you get the gist of it.

Fortunately for the rest of us, Keith Olbermann, being a journalist and a commentator, isn’t bound by the politician’s rules of comity and legalspeak.  Fortunate, indeed…..because he unleashed the mutha of all smackdowns onto Wannabe King Dubya last night on his Countdown show….as his latest Special Comment. As a lead off. (KO usually concludes his shows with his Special Comments, so you know he must have been pretty pissed off….and you could see the smoke and fire spewing from every word.

Only problem I have, KO….it’s really not just Bush’s war…..Democrats like Hillary who voted down the line to fund this war and made no real attempt to end it should bear as much responsibility, too.

Either way…turn the sound up and feel the fire.

“Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Special Comment on Defense Dept. Slam on Sen. Hillary Clinton…and Us” (via YouTube; w/ hat tip to the Weasels Yahoo! Group)

Playing Catchup: “Vittergate”, and Dimocrat Cave-In #2,689

Aight (or as my younger, more hip-hop enable nephew would say)…I’ve been swamped this last few weeks by tons of work, and only now have I had the chance to actually exhale and get some rest….so I guess that I have to update this blog of mine before it stagnates.

So, here we go:

Issue #1:  “Vittergate”: Dirty Diapers and Dirtier Sexual Hypocrisy

Ahhhhh, lookee here….my home state’s junior US Senator David Vitter busted with his hands in his Depends undergarments (oooh, diaper fetish!! Gotta love the freakery!) over at Debra Palfrey’s DC ‘ho house, and, allegedly, several other brothels in N’Awlins, too)..  Oh, the hypocrisy!!!  The seaminess!!  The sight of a hard-Right religious conservative (he openly sponsored an anti-gay marriage Constitutional amendment, and was one of the loudest voices for Bubba Clinton resigning over spilling his seed on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress) having to fess up to his “sin”…while blaming the media and the Democrats for sticking their noses into his personal sex life. Hey, at least his wife didn’t give him the Lorena treatment as she once threatened.

And to think that Vitter actually got his political start as a replacement for Bob Livingston (the former Repub US House Majority Leader), who was also hoisted on his own pecker for his own sexual indiscrections.  And by basically the same source, too…Larry Flynt must have some love for the Great State of Louisiana, must he?? Or maybe we’re just oversaturated with right-wing sex perverts who want ot jail and kill everyone else for doing the things they do surrpendiciously and privately. I can say this for Mr. Vitter….at least he didn’t attempt to mount a horse.

For the moment, though, he does seem safe; the state Repubs have rallied around him for the most part, with some exceptions.  (There is a campaign afoot to get him to resign and get our present guv Kathleen Blanco to appoint former guv Dave Treen to fill out his term until the next scheduled election of 2010. So far, Kitty Blanks has balked, probably because her own party bigwigs would prefer insurance commish John Kennedy to take over rather than switch to the GOP and take on Mary Landrieu for the other Senate seat.) Obviously, I’d think that the national Dems would love to see Vitter fall, mostly to cover their asses if Holy Joe Lieberman decides to follow his voting record and bolt to the GOP; thus swinging the actual control to the Senate back to the Repubs. 

And of course, most of the liberal blogosphere is in total orgasmic overkill over the hypocrisy angle…as if it was only Repubs who visit brothels and engage in sex fetishes; and if this would in any way move the pure believers into exile and stunned silence.  Nice try, y’all, but knowing the Religious Right as I do, they probably won’t let a scandal like this one block their efforts at political takeover.  They already have Fred Thompson (Tennessee US Senator) waiting in the wings to play the role that Dubya played in the 2000 elections, when it was thought that the RR was toasted after the PTL/Jim Bakker scandals that rocked the evangelical communities back then.

I’ll just let Dr. Susan Block to fill in the blanks on Vitter and right-wing pols cloaking their inner sex freaks:

If Senator Vitter were not such a rabid social conservative, I would say leave the poor sorry schmuck alone with his God, his wife and his hookers. But this particular poor sorry schmuck is mightily trying to impose harsh, inhumane restrictions upon the sexual freedoms and rights to privacy of the rest of us, and he’s been doing it for years.

On the back alleys of the French Quarter, Vitter might be a tomcat, but in Congress, he’s a vociferous crusader for “family values.” He was an aggressive Clinton critic during the Lewinsky scandal, calling for the President’s resignation to “preserve the moral fabric of the country.” The New Orleans Times-Picayune quotes Vitter saying that “infidelity, divorce, and deadbeat dads contribute to the breakdown of tradition.” Vitter has also vowed to outlaw abortion in almost all cases, even when the pregnancy results from rape or incest (wonder how he’d feel if he learned he’s knocked up one of his hookers?). Senator Dave is a stern master with the kids too; he’s sponsored legislation to federally finance abstinence-only programs at the expense of real sex education. Of course, “abstinence education” has been proven to be spectacularly ineffective, in part because the kids simply lie about whether they’re having sex, having learned this behavior handily from their elders like Vitter.

The Senator has been particularly colorful in his metaphor for same-sex unions, having called them “the crossroads where Katrina meets Rita,” gaily mocking the agony of his own home state in the wake of the actual hurricanes. Vitter is so vehement in his condemnation of all things homo that he has introduced legislation calling for a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage, stating that this is “the most important issue” of our time.

Vitter sounds like an Evangelical, but he’s Catholic. He’s also Southern regional campaign manager for the Giuliani campaign and was rumored to frequent French Quarter prostitutes even before his phone number appeared on Palfrey’s published records). Interestingly, Vitter first ran for Congress to fill the seat of Speaker of the House Bob Livingston, who resigned after his extramarital affairs became public during the Clinton Follies. While Vitter was campaigning, his wife Wendy was asked what she would do if her husband cheated on her. Mrs. Vitter responded: “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

Ouch. Wonder if castration was one of Wendy’s prerequisites for the “forgiveness” that Vitter said she (and God) gave him when he confessed to his “very serious sin.” Is that a Catholic thing?

Nope, Doc Suzy…probably more of a “differentiat yourself from them librul Democrats” thing than anything else.

Anyways..I’m eager to see what other Repub freakery comes out of the woodworks, since Flynt says he has leads on up to 20 high ranking conservatives.  Should be plenty of fun.

——————————————————————

Issue #2: Iran: The Dimocrats Cave In…Again

Now…not nearly so funny or fun is the prospect of extending war into Iran…..and guess which “opposition” party decided to cast it’s vote for a possible military invasion??

You got it….your great Dimocratic Party caves in one more time (this from Chris Floyd’s “Empire Burlesque” blog)::

As you may know — unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of course — yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever Dick Cheney tells him to.

The bipartisan Senate resolution – the brainchild (or rather the bilechild) of Fightin’ Joe Lieberman – affirmed as official fact all of the specious, unproven, ever-changing allegations of direct Iranian involvement in attacks on the American forces now occupying Iraq. The Senators appear to have relied heavily on the recent New York Times story by Michael Gordon that stovepiped unchallenged Pentagon spin directly onto the paper’s front page. As Firedoglake points out, John McCain cited the heavily criticized story on the Senate floor as he cast his vote.

It goes without saying that all of this is a nightmarish replay of the run-up to the war of aggression against Iraq: The NYT funneling false flag stories from Bush insiders. Warmongers citing the NYT stories as “proof” justifying any and all action to “defend the Homeland.” Credulous and craven Democratic politicians swallowing the Bush line hook and sinker.

To be sure, stout-hearted Dem tribunes like Dick Durbin insisted that their support for declaring that Iran is “committing acts of war” against the United States should not be taken as an “authorization of military action.” This is shaky-knees mendacity at its finest. Having officially affirmed that Iran is waging war on American forces, how, pray tell, can you then deny the president when he asks (if he asks) for authorization to “defend our troops?” Answer: you can’t. And you know it.

This vote is the clearest signal yet that there will be no real opposition to a Bush Administration attack on Iran. This is yet another blank check from these slavish, ignorant goons; Bush can cash it anytime. This is, in fact, the post-surge “Plan B” that’s been mooted lately in the Beltway. As you recall, there was much throwing about of brains on the subject of reviving the “Iraq Study Group” plan when the “surge” (or to call it by its right name, the “punitive escalation”) inevitably fails. Bush put the kibosh on that this week (“Him not gonna do nothin’ that Daddy’s friends tell him to do! Him a big boy, him the decider!”), but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a fall-back position – or rather, a spring-forward position: an attack on Iran, to rally the nation behind the “war leader” and reshuffle the deck in Iraq.

Of course, the United States is already at war with Iran. We are directing covert ops and terrorist attacks inside Iran, with the help of groups that our own government has declared terrorist renegades. We are kidnapping Iranian officials in Iraq and holding them hostage. We have a bristling naval armada on Iran’s doorstep, put there for the express purpose of threatening Tehran with military action. The U.S. Congress has overwhelmingly passed measures calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government. And now the U.S. Senate has unanimously declared that Iran is waging war on America, and has given official notice that this will not be tolerated. It is only a very small step to move from this war in all but name to the full monty of an overt military assault.

And just so you noticed, EVERY SINGLE DIMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (including Hillary, Obama, Edwards, and Biden) voted for this proposal.  Hell, even Russ Feingold (who was praised among some quarters for being the “guiding light” in the earlier surrender on funding Bush’s war in Iraq, voted for this amendment.

So…tell me again about the difference between the two parties???

More updates later as I have time……

Playing Catchup: “Vittergate”, and Dimocrat Cave-In #2,689

Aight (or as my younger, more hip-hop enable nephew would say)…I’ve been swamped this last few weeks by tons of work, and only now have I had the chance to actually exhale and get some rest….so I guess that I have to update this blog of mine before it stagnates.

So, here we go:

Issue #1:  “Vittergate”: Dirty Diapers and Dirtier Sexual Hypocrisy

Ahhhhh, lookee here….my home state’s junior US Senator David Vitter busted with his hands in his Depends undergarments (oooh, diaper fetish!! Gotta love the freakery!) over at Debra Palfrey’s DC ‘ho house, and, allegedly, several other brothels in N’Awlins, too)..  Oh, the hypocrisy!!!  The seaminess!!  The sight of a hard-Right religious conservative (he openly sponsored an anti-gay marriage Constitutional amendment, and was one of the loudest voices for Bubba Clinton resigning over spilling his seed on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress) having to fess up to his “sin”…while blaming the media and the Democrats for sticking their noses into his personal sex life. Hey, at least his wife didn’t give him the Lorena treatment as she once threatened.

And to think that Vitter actually got his political start as a replacement for Bob Livingston (the former Repub US House Majority Leader), who was also hoisted on his own pecker for his own sexual indiscrections.  And by basically the same source, too…Larry Flynt must have some love for the Great State of Louisiana, must he?? Or maybe we’re just oversaturated with right-wing sex perverts who want ot jail and kill everyone else for doing the things they do surrpendiciously and privately. I can say this for Mr. Vitter….at least he didn’t attempt to mount a horse.

For the moment, though, he does seem safe; the state Repubs have rallied around him for the most part, with some exceptions.  (There is a campaign afoot to get him to resign and get our present guv Kathleen Blanco to appoint former guv Dave Treen to fill out his term until the next scheduled election of 2010. So far, Kitty Blanks has balked, probably because her own party bigwigs would prefer insurance commish John Kennedy to take over rather than switch to the GOP and take on Mary Landrieu for the other Senate seat.) Obviously, I’d think that the national Dems would love to see Vitter fall, mostly to cover their asses if Holy Joe Lieberman decides to follow his voting record and bolt to the GOP; thus swinging the actual control to the Senate back to the Repubs. 

And of course, most of the liberal blogosphere is in total orgasmic overkill over the hypocrisy angle…as if it was only Repubs who visit brothels and engage in sex fetishes; and if this would in any way move the pure believers into exile and stunned silence.  Nice try, y’all, but knowing the Religious Right as I do, they probably won’t let a scandal like this one block their efforts at political takeover.  They already have Fred Thompson (Tennessee US Senator) waiting in the wings to play the role that Dubya played in the 2000 elections, when it was thought that the RR was toasted after the PTL/Jim Bakker scandals that rocked the evangelical communities back then.

I’ll just let Dr. Susan Block to fill in the blanks on Vitter and right-wing pols cloaking their inner sex freaks:

If Senator Vitter were not such a rabid social conservative, I would say leave the poor sorry schmuck alone with his God, his wife and his hookers. But this particular poor sorry schmuck is mightily trying to impose harsh, inhumane restrictions upon the sexual freedoms and rights to privacy of the rest of us, and he’s been doing it for years.

On the back alleys of the French Quarter, Vitter might be a tomcat, but in Congress, he’s a vociferous crusader for “family values.” He was an aggressive Clinton critic during the Lewinsky scandal, calling for the President’s resignation to “preserve the moral fabric of the country.” The New Orleans Times-Picayune quotes Vitter saying that “infidelity, divorce, and deadbeat dads contribute to the breakdown of tradition.” Vitter has also vowed to outlaw abortion in almost all cases, even when the pregnancy results from rape or incest (wonder how he’d feel if he learned he’s knocked up one of his hookers?). Senator Dave is a stern master with the kids too; he’s sponsored legislation to federally finance abstinence-only programs at the expense of real sex education. Of course, “abstinence education” has been proven to be spectacularly ineffective, in part because the kids simply lie about whether they’re having sex, having learned this behavior handily from their elders like Vitter.

The Senator has been particularly colorful in his metaphor for same-sex unions, having called them “the crossroads where Katrina meets Rita,” gaily mocking the agony of his own home state in the wake of the actual hurricanes. Vitter is so vehement in his condemnation of all things homo that he has introduced legislation calling for a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage, stating that this is “the most important issue” of our time.

Vitter sounds like an Evangelical, but he’s Catholic. He’s also Southern regional campaign manager for the Giuliani campaign and was rumored to frequent French Quarter prostitutes even before his phone number appeared on Palfrey’s published records). Interestingly, Vitter first ran for Congress to fill the seat of Speaker of the House Bob Livingston, who resigned after his extramarital affairs became public during the Clinton Follies. While Vitter was campaigning, his wife Wendy was asked what she would do if her husband cheated on her. Mrs. Vitter responded: “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

Ouch. Wonder if castration was one of Wendy’s prerequisites for the “forgiveness” that Vitter said she (and God) gave him when he confessed to his “very serious sin.” Is that a Catholic thing?

Nope, Doc Suzy…probably more of a “differentiat yourself from them librul Democrats” thing than anything else.

Anyways..I’m eager to see what other Repub freakery comes out of the woodworks, since Flynt says he has leads on up to 20 high ranking conservatives.  Should be plenty of fun.

——————————————————————

Issue #2: Iran: The Dimocrats Cave In…Again

Now…not nearly so funny or fun is the prospect of extending war into Iran…..and guess which “opposition” party decided to cast it’s vote for a possible military invasion??

You got it….your great Dimocratic Party caves in one more time (this from Chris Floyd’s “Empire Burlesque” blog)::

As you may know — unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of course — yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever Dick Cheney tells him to.

The bipartisan Senate resolution – the brainchild (or rather the bilechild) of Fightin’ Joe Lieberman – affirmed as official fact all of the specious, unproven, ever-changing allegations of direct Iranian involvement in attacks on the American forces now occupying Iraq. The Senators appear to have relied heavily on the recent New York Times story by Michael Gordon that stovepiped unchallenged Pentagon spin directly onto the paper’s front page. As Firedoglake points out, John McCain cited the heavily criticized story on the Senate floor as he cast his vote.

It goes without saying that all of this is a nightmarish replay of the run-up to the war of aggression against Iraq: The NYT funneling false flag stories from Bush insiders. Warmongers citing the NYT stories as “proof” justifying any and all action to “defend the Homeland.” Credulous and craven Democratic politicians swallowing the Bush line hook and sinker.

To be sure, stout-hearted Dem tribunes like Dick Durbin insisted that their support for declaring that Iran is “committing acts of war” against the United States should not be taken as an “authorization of military action.” This is shaky-knees mendacity at its finest. Having officially affirmed that Iran is waging war on American forces, how, pray tell, can you then deny the president when he asks (if he asks) for authorization to “defend our troops?” Answer: you can’t. And you know it.

This vote is the clearest signal yet that there will be no real opposition to a Bush Administration attack on Iran. This is yet another blank check from these slavish, ignorant goons; Bush can cash it anytime. This is, in fact, the post-surge “Plan B” that’s been mooted lately in the Beltway. As you recall, there was much throwing about of brains on the subject of reviving the “Iraq Study Group” plan when the “surge” (or to call it by its right name, the “punitive escalation”) inevitably fails. Bush put the kibosh on that this week (“Him not gonna do nothin’ that Daddy’s friends tell him to do! Him a big boy, him the decider!”), but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a fall-back position – or rather, a spring-forward position: an attack on Iran, to rally the nation behind the “war leader” and reshuffle the deck in Iraq.

Of course, the United States is already at war with Iran. We are directing covert ops and terrorist attacks inside Iran, with the help of groups that our own government has declared terrorist renegades. We are kidnapping Iranian officials in Iraq and holding them hostage. We have a bristling naval armada on Iran’s doorstep, put there for the express purpose of threatening Tehran with military action. The U.S. Congress has overwhelmingly passed measures calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government. And now the U.S. Senate has unanimously declared that Iran is waging war on America, and has given official notice that this will not be tolerated. It is only a very small step to move from this war in all but name to the full monty of an overt military assault.

And just so you noticed, EVERY SINGLE DIMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (including Hillary, Obama, Edwards, and Biden) voted for this proposal.  Hell, even Russ Feingold (who was praised among some quarters for being the “guiding light” in the earlier surrender on funding Bush’s war in Iraq, voted for this amendment.

So…tell me again about the difference between the two parties???

More updates later as I have time……

This Is Your Democracy, People. Use It, Or Lose It.

Well….between the US Supreme Court transforming itself into the executuve wing of the Federalist Society, King Dubya deciding that Scooter Libby should not be punished with jail time for outing an CIA agent to cover up the propaganda war preceding the real war in Iraq, and the usual cravenness of the Dimocrats in responding to such with empty cries signifying nothing…well, this year’s Fourth of July isn’t feeling so jolly to me today.

Especially since it takes a TV journalist to say the things that our supposed quasi-liberal “opposition” party should have been screaming in unison from the very beginning.

Paraphrasing the immortal words of Arsenio Hall: Kick it, KO.

From Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Special Comment on Scooter Libby Commutation (7/3/07) via YouTube, with the usual h/t to Crooks and Liars)

Though I’m not hitching my hopes on Dubya or Big Dick resigning in disgrace (more likely, they’ll sooner be dragged out of the White House kicking and screaming, or hatch another terrorist plot to suspend the elections for good), resignation seems to be looking pretty good as an option. Especially since the Dimocrats aren’t going to revive impeachment any time soon……damn them to hell.

An Open Letter To The ByrdBrain (aka Birdeye)

Hey, jackass:

I really tried to give your brown nosed, MRA-sniffing, right-wing ass the benefit of the doubt, but when you decided to drop this lovely turd onto Renegade's blog, you crossed the line and earned yourself a serving of The Can of SmackDog Whupass(tm):

You do realize that the bodycounts racked up under Marxist/Commie regimes (like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc) – as far left as you can possibly get – absolutely DWARFED the absolute WORST estimates under Nazism (just to use your revisionist definition of it as "right-wing" for argument's sake)?

Anyhow, it's obvious the only reason you support "women's lib" is so you can get in their sex+ panties easier. 😀  

 Now, let's examine all these memes one by one, shall we??

1) Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot — as far left as you can possibly get — dwarfs the worst estimates under Nazism…

OK…I guess that you can say that as a general statement.  If you manage to avoid the fact that most of the supposed 2 million people allegedly squashed by Stalin during his regime happened to die as a result of World War II…when his country was actually invaded by Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Or…the basic fact that Pol Pot was so "far to the left" that his regime actually got the support of those evil socialists at the Reagan Administration when the Khmer Rouge-led government decided to launch a war with Vietnam during the 1980s??? (Not to mention that Pol Pot actually came to power following the invasion of his country by American forces, which followed a coup where the previous leader was toppled in favor of a much more right-wing govenor who was more amicable to the US??

And what is so "revisionist" about calling the Nazis "right wing"??  They were backed by the wealthiest sector of German industry and defended the socially conservative values of the most reactionary institutions.  They targeted homosexuals, women who didn't follow their standards of German social and sexual "purity", Jews, the Roma ("Gyspies"), and other scapegoats of their "Aryan supremacy" ideology. And they developed a mass propaganda and social machine for controlling and punishing deviant thought.  But, since they mocked the name "socialist", they can be attached onto anyone on the Left for you to slander, right??

And what would you say about the governments of Mussolini and Tojo in Italy and Japan, respectively?? They never called themselves "socialists", yet they too decided to team up with Hitler for their own reasons….and they have their own record of repression and violence.  I guess that that makes them left-wing, too….right??

But this is so inmaterial piffle compared to your feeble attempt to smack me down:

 Anyhow, it's obvious the only reason you support "women's lib" is so you can get in their sex+ panties easier. 😀 

Yeah. Right. 

I mean, every word of defense of Ren (who doesn't even see herself as a feminist that much anyway) and Belledame and Trinity and Amber Rhea is designed not as a means of social solidarity or a statement of support and respect….it's designed merely as a ploy by me to get into their panties.

Ahhhh, dewd…why go there?? 

As much as I consider Ren to be quite teh sexy (and she damn well IS, too, in addition to being smart and compassionate), I have this thing about breaking up healthy relationships….and last time I remember, she was already attached. I don't know her or any other of the women I meet online, and since I have this thing I call a JOB (not a handjob, ByrdBrain, but an actual JOB) that consumes much of my time, I really don't think that I'll be quite able to attempt to even meet them in person….heaven forbid, try to hook up with them.

But..guess what, BB? If they actually wanted me to get with them, I wouldn't mind it one damn bit, since these women, in addition to being decently attractive, happen to have something that you frankly don't show much of: a heart, some compassion and empathy, and a working brain.  They actually represent what's right about feminism, even if they are a bit estranged from the concept due to getting burned by the likes of Witchy-Woo.

I am soooo sorry to disappoint you and your strawman fantasies, ByrdBrain, but I don't support "women's lib" merely to get free sexual conquests (these days, my hands get me through quite well, thank you very much), but because it is the right thing to support. Either women are to be treated as fully human beings, or they are not. That some people who use the feminist label can on occasion abuse it as a club to beat other women down or as a crutch for their own myopia does not diminish the need for feminism one iota.

At least I respect women enough to value their brains and their humanity as much as I do their sexuality.  Can you top that..or is all your bluster nothing more than the rantings of a scared little man who can't stand women more powerful or smarter than he is??

As Beyonce would say: "To the left." (As in, either SYAD and pour yourself a tall glass of STFU; or waddle your sorry ass somewhere else and find somebody who really gives a damn.) 

Oh..and stop reading your faxes on the blogs, too.

 

US Appelate Court to FCC on Obscenity Rules:

Oh, but this is too damn sweet for words.

Memo to Teh Veep Dick: Try not to tell an opposing Senator to “f’ck yourself”; cause it just might come back to bite your ass.

From the New York Times today:

June 5, 2007

 

Court Rebuffs F.C.C. on Fines for Indecency

By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, June 4 — If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.

That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language.

Although the case was primarily concerned with what is known as “fleeting expletives,” or blurted obscenities, on television, both network executives and top officials at the Federal Communications Commission said the opinion could gut the ability of the commission to regulate any speech on television or radio.

Now, while that would probably be a very good thing…more than likely probably it wouldn’t, since cable TV and satellite already exist for the more raunchier forms of TV, and over-the-air staions would still fall under FCC licensing purview.

Kevin J. Martin, the chairman of the F.C.C., said that the agency was now considering whether to seek an appeal before all the judges of the appeals court or to take the matter directly to the Supreme Court.

The decision, by a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, was a sharp rebuke for the F.C.C. and for the Bush administration. For the four television networks that filed the lawsuit — Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC — it was a major victory in a legal and cultural battle that they are waging with the commission and its supporters.

Under President Bush, the F.C.C. has expanded its indecency rules, taking a much harder line on obscenities uttered on broadcast television and radio. While the judges sent the case back to the commission to rewrite its indecency policy, it said that it was “doubtful” that the agency would be able to “adequately respond to the constitutional and statutory challenges raised by the networks.”

The networks hailed the decision.

“We are very pleased with the court’s decision and continue to believe that the government regulation of content serves no purpose other than to chill artistic expression in violation of the First Amendment,” said Scott Grogin, a senior vice president at Fox. “Viewers should be allowed to determine for themselves and their families, through the many parental control technologies available, what is appropriate viewing for their home.”

Hear, hear.  That’s why we have filters and that thing we call the “OFF” switch.

Mr. Martin, the chairman of the commission, attacked the panel’s reasoning.

“I completely disagree with the court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families,” he said. “The court says the commission is ‘divorced from reality.’ It is the New York court, not the commission, that is divorced from reality.”

He said that if the agency was unable to prohibit some vulgarities during prime time, “Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.”

Oh, really, Mr. Martin???  I mean, it’s not as if people were howling four-letter bombs before your “Zero Tolerance” policy took effect.  Well..other than Dick Cheney, of course….

Beginning with the F.C.C.’s indecency finding in a case against NBC for a vulgarity uttered by the U2 singer Bono during the Golden Globes awards ceremony in 2003, President Bush’s Republican and Democratic appointees to the commission have imposed a tougher policy by punishing any station that broadcast a fleeting expletive. That includes vulgar language blurted out on live shows like the Golden Globes or scripted shows like “NYPD Blue,” which was cited in the case.

Reversing decades of a more lenient policy, the commission had found that the mere utterance of certain words implied that sexual or excretory acts were carried out and therefore violated the indecency rules.

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

“We find that the F.C.C.’s new policy regarding ‘fleeting expletives’ fails to provide a reasoned analysis justifying its departure from the agency’s established practice,” said the panel.

Emily A. Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had no comment about the ruling.

Although the judges struck down the policy on statutory grounds, they also said there were serious constitutional problems with the commission’s attempt to regulate the language of television shows.

“We are skeptical that the commission can provide a reasoned explanation for its ‘fleeting expletive’ regime that would pass constitutional muster,” said the panel in an opinion written by Judge Rosemary S. Pooler and joined by Judge Peter W. Hall. “We question whether the F.C.C.’s indecency test can survive First Amendment scrutiny.”

In his dissent, Judge Pierre N. Leval defended the commission’s decision to toughen its indecency policy.

“In explanation of this relatively modest change of standard, the commission gave a sensible, although not necessarily compelling, reason,” he said.

“What we have is at most a difference of opinion between a court and an agency,” Judge Leval said. “Because of the deference courts must give to the reasoning of a duly authorized administrative agency in matters within the agency’s competence, a court’s disagreement with the commission on this question is of no consequence. The commission’s position is not irrational; it is not arbitrary and capricious.”

The case involved findings that the networks had violated the indecency rules for comments by Cher and Nicole Richie on the Billboard Music Awards, the use of expletives by the character Andy Sipowicz on “NYPD Blue” and a comment on “The Early Show” by a contestant from CBS’s reality show “Survivor.”

The commission did not issue fines in any of the cases because the programs were broadcast before the agency changed its policy. But the networks were concerned about the new interpretation of the rules, particularly since the agency has been issuing a record number of fines.

Two years ago, Congress increased the potential maximum penalty for each indecency infraction to $325,000, from $32,500. Producers and writers have complained that the prospect of stiff fines had begun to chill their creative efforts.

The case, Fox et al. v. Federal Communications Commission, along with a second case now before a federal appeals court in Philadelphia involving the malfunctioning wardrobe that exposed one of the pop singer Janet Jackson’s breasts during the halftime show of the 2004 Super Bowl, have been closely watched by the television industry and its critics for their broad implications for television programming.

Neither cable TV nor satellite programming faces the same indecency rules even though they cover about 85 percent of homes. And as the Bush administration’s appointees have taken a tougher view on indecency, the industry has waged a countercampaign in the courts.

The commission has struggled to consistently explain how it applies the rules. In the Bono case involving the Golden Globe awards, the staff initially ruled in favor of the network. After lawmakers began to complain about that decision, the commission, then led by Michael K. Powell, reversed the staff decision.

But the commission declined to impose a fine because, it noted, “existing precedent would have permitted this broadcast” and therefore NBC and its affiliates “necessarily did not have the requisite notice to justify a penalty.”

For those who might have missed the Bono/GGA brohaha, Bono dropped the “f’n brilliant” bomb when recieving his award. The FCC board mostly responded to the DeLay/Dole Congress, who raised such a stink that “liberal Hollywood” was so corrupting people by allowing graitiuous f-bombs.  Of course, dropping real bombs on Iraqis is perfectly OK still, you know…

Broadcast television executives have complained about what they say has been the arbitrary application of the rules. They expressed concern, for instance, that they might be penalized for broadcasting “Saving Private Ryan,” a Steven Spielberg movie about the invasion of Normandy during World War II, because of the repeated use of vulgarities.

But the F.C.C. in that case ruled in favor of the networks, finding that deleting the expletives “would have altered the nature of the artistic work and diminished the power, realism and immediacy of the film experience for viewers.”

WOW.  That would be considered a total rout.

Of course, it will be appealed to the Supremes, and with the new Scalito majority, you never know about these things.  Just stay tuned.

 

Presente, Steve Gilliard

Steve Gilliard (1966-2007)

[Updated on 6-5-07 for minor syntax errors.]

When I heard the news that Steve Gilliard of The News Blog finally surrendered to his recent illness at the far too young age of 51 41; I was more than a bit saddened.

I was a regular reader of his blog even when it was at Blogger, and I had heard for the past two months a daily account of his degeneration, his surgery, and the prognosis of recovery from his companion and blog co-hostess Jen….but I never anticipated that things would spiral downhill this quick.

Although my own personal politics and outlook was and still remains pretty far to the left of Mr. Gilliard — he was an old school liberal Democrat pragmatist with no love for third parties and Naderites (whom he dismissed as single issue hagglers) — I can say without malice that he was a major pioneer who made it possible for other Black progressive/radical bloggers like me to exist in the first place.

His no-nonsense, no frills philosophy and his low tolerance of BS — not to mention his willingness to take on even friends and allies when needed to set them right about race and class issues — raised the bar for Black progressive bloggers and the blogosphere in general.

And despite his mental toughness, he could also be just as much a sensitive and heartwarming fella, too.

May he hook up with Miss Molly in the afterlife, and both of them make beautiful music together smacking down right-wing nonsense.

His current blog is presently preparing a memorial to his legacy; you can also catch some of his work at the old location of his blog here.

Wingnuttery Plus Manifest Destiny = Whiskey? Tonto? Foxtrot???

The following is a classic result of what happens when you consume a little too much of the right-wing Kool-Aid.

The New York Sun, who obviously must see the New York Post as a bastion of evil liberalism in comparison, decided to bring forth an editorial on the “sellout” of Dimocrats in Iraq. (For them, though, the sellout is not in backing Dubya’s war, but in having the gall to criticize Dubya’s noble mission in the first place.)

And to that end, they envoke the earlier period of “Manifest Destiny”; the acquisition (or, as real honest historians would call it, the outright theft) of half of Mexico to justify the present campaign.

Nezua does such a good job of dissecting this pile of horse dung over at his place..but this deserves a special can of SmackDog Whupass(TM) on its own.  So, if you will pardon my indulgence, on with the fisking.

Iraq and Mexico

New York Sun Editorial
May 29, 2007

News that Senators Clinton and Obama, acting on the eve of Memorial Day weekend, cast their votes against funding our GIs in Iraq put us in a mind to read about Abraham Lincoln and the Mexican War. This had been suggested by Governor Cuomo, in his spirited letter to the editor in response to our editorial about how President Lincoln turned away the editor of Chicago Tribune, Joseph Medill, and a delegation that had gone to see him, late in the Civil War, in hopes of getting him to back off a draft call from Cook County.

Of course, we all know the reality of that vote (and how Hilary and Barack really maneuvered themselves to act like they were in opposition…but why let facts get in the way of a good McCarthyite smear??

Lincoln had listened to the Illinois pleaders in the cavern of maps that was the office of his war secretary, Edwin Stanton. As Stanton recited the sanguinary statistics that illuminated the need for yet more men for the battle, Lincoln bowed his head. Then he turned on Medill, long a supporter, reminded him of how the Tribune had supported the war and called for Emancipation and told him to go back to Chicago and get the men. Medill retreated, saying that it was the first time he’d ever been whipped and that he didn’t have an answer.

The better analogy, Mr. Cuomo argued in his letter to the Sun (http://www.nysun.com/article/54464) , is the war that President Polk started with Mexico. “As a Congressman in the late 1840s,” Mr. Cuomo wrote, Lincoln, “objected passionately to America‘s war with Mexico.” The former governor quotes the man who would become the 16th president as warning, on the floor of the House on January 12, 1848, of the “exceeding brightness of military glory that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy.”

The more we read about Lincoln and the Mexican War, however, the less it strikes us as offering a historical harbor for Democrats seeking to legitimize their appeasement line in Iraq. It is certainly true that Lincoln objected to the war, demanding that Polk show him the spot where the first firefight took place, Lincoln believing that it was not in America at all but in Mexican territory. Then a Whig congressman, Lincoln reckoned that the war would lead to an expansion of slave territories. Much of his term in the House was consumed to his opposition to the war.

OK…so tell me how giving the President a virtual blank check with timetables that he can basically ignore like so much chaffe in the wind amounts to legitimizing “appeasment”??  I guess that according to the Sun editorialist, only outright boosting for the war and unswerving allegiance to the President will count as anything other than “surrender”.

But what does this illuminate that could possibly help the Democrats in their current predicament? In contrast to Lincoln, Mrs. Clinton did not object to our entry into either the global war on terror or the battle of Iraq. On the contrary, she voted for it. Mr. Obama, who was not yet in the Senate, opposed Iraq expedition. In any event, there is another difference; once our military was engaged in battle in Mexico, Lincoln always voted to supply our soldiers, a point underlined for us by one of the city’s notable Lincoln scholars, Harold Holzer, co-author of part of Mr. Cuomo’s ” Why Lincoln Matters, Now More Than Ever.”

Lincoln’s support for our soldiers in the Mexican war is something that the Illinoisan boasted about in his debates with Judge Douglas. After all, his opposition to the war with Mexico, however high-minded, was costing him votes. This was particularly true because, even if Polk’s motives were ignoble and the fight seemed unjust at the beginning, the Mexican war had a favorable outcome for America. The Mexican Cession, made under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the war on February 2, 1848, established our border at the Rio Grande, ended any dispute over Texas, and gained us not only California, Nevada, and Utah but also parts of Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

Translation: Hey, who cares about moral considerations….WE WON!! And who cares about principles if it costs us votes??

But here’s where the cesspool really meets the Cat 3 hurricane (and this is exactly the money paragraph that Nez grabs):

Can it be that Mr. Cuomo and his fellow Democrats want to go into the 2008 election questioning the bona fides of the states of Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico? That’s a lot of electoral votes. The fact is the fate of those states illustrates one of the great truths about America — that those who either threw in with us or were won by us prospered and lived more freely than any of them would have under the ancien regimes. This is something that has been learned by other peoples, in Europe and in Asia, even into the late 20th century.

Oh, yeah….like the brown folk down there really do appreciate everything that the gringos have done to “liberate” them..just as the Iraqis really do, despite popular protests to the contrary, appreciate all the freedom that “we” have brought to them through the democratic means of torture chambers, carpet bombs, and pilfering their assests. Why, there really are flowers underneath those suicide bombs.

I wonder what these asshats would say about Black folks benefitting from slavery and Jim Crow. Or…maybe I shouldn’t.

 

***

As for Lincoln, his comprehension of the responsibilities of leadership changed radically when he acceded as president. He prosecuted the Civil War relentlessly, and his generals knew who was in command or suffered the consequences. Lincoln’s officers arrested the most troublesome of the Copperhead Democrats. In the case of Clement Vallandigham, who was discouraging enlistees in Ohio, Lincoln himself sent that particular Copperhead down through Confederate lines and into exile. Lincoln tested the Constitution as it had never been tested before. He fought his war to win.

 

Now…not that I as a Black man don’t appreciate the fact that the North won the Civil War and slavery was vanquished…but what the hell does that have to do with Iraq??  That because Honest Abe was the Commander-In-Chief who did manage to run the war and outgun his critics, that justifies his running roughshod over the Constitution??  And how does that justifies Dubya’s war games during a war in which 3/4ths of Americans do not support, that the supposed “benefactors” of such war (read, the citizens of Iraq) do not support, and was justified on base lies about Saddam’s invisible WMD and ties to al Queda and September 11th???

Oh, but I didn’t know…to the editorialists of the NY Sun, Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden making nukes with Iran’s mullahs with the full connivance of those “cut-n-run” Democrat appeasers….which more than justifies making Dubya our supreme Emperor and protector against Islamofascists, illegal aliens, and evil socialists/liberals/radical feminists/whatever the particular right-wing panic button is.

It’s hard to imagine what Lincoln would have made of Mrs. Clinton, who started out in Illinois, when she claims to “fully support our troops” but votes against funding for the war in which they are risking everything. Or what he would have made of another Illinoisan, Mr. Obama, when he declares, as he did last week, that “enough is enough” and that the president should not get a “blank check,” or even, at least on these terms, any check. The more one reads about it, the more one gets the sense that Lincoln might have wondered why Mr. Bush has been so punctilious about the legal niceties. It’s hard to imagine Lincoln would not have understood Mr. Bush on the larger issues, particuarly his understanding of, and his willingness to shoulder, the responsibilities of the president in a time of war.

 

 

How nice that these editorialists have such wonderous powers of mindreading, that they can extrapolate the motives of a President who passed from this earthly coil nearly 150 years ago, and read him exactly to fit the mindset of our current occupant of the White House…and be so perfect to say that Lincoln would be smiling at Bush today, cheering him on to do more shredding of the “goddam piece of paper” that the former took to heart to defend the unity of the nation against the Confederates.

Ahhh…the mind of a right-wing wingnut….so simple in its complexity, so brutal in its subtlety….and so genocidal and arrogant in its equnamity.

 

 

…And While Dimocrats Retreat; Dubya Surges…Again

And. right on the cue, this is how Dubya rewards the Dimocrats for giving him basically all he wants: by grabbing more and more.

Say hello to the "second surge" plan…thanks to the San Francisco Chronicle:

 

Bush could double force by Christmas

Stewart M. Powell, Hearst Newspapers

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

(05-22) 04:00 PDT Washington — The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.

Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 — a record-high number — by the end of the year.

The numbers were arrived at by an analysis of deployment orders by Hearst Newspapers.

"It doesn’t surprise me that they’re not talking about it," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a former U.S. commander of NATO troops in Bosnia, referring to the Bush administration. "I think they would be very happy not to have any more attention paid to this."

The first surge was prominently announced by President Bush in a nationally televised address on Jan. 10, when he ordered five more combat brigades to join 15 brigades already in Iraq.

The buildup was designed to give commanders the 20 combat brigades Pentagon planners said were needed to provide security in Baghdad and western Anbar province.

Since then, the Pentagon has extended combat tours for units in Iraq from 12 months to 15 months and announced the deployment of additional brigades.

Taken together, the steps could put elements of as many as 28 combat brigades in Iraq by Christmas, according the deployment orders examined by Hearst Newspapers.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Carl S. Ey said there was no effort by the Army to carry out "a secret surge" beyond the 20 combat brigades ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

"There isn’t a second surge going on; we’ve got what we’ve got," Ey said. "The idea that there are ever going to be more combat brigades in theater in the future than the secretary of defense has authorized is pure speculation."

Ey attributed the increase in troops to "temporary increases that typically occur during the crossover period" as arriving combat brigades move into position to replace departing combat brigades.

He said that only elements of the eight additional combat brigades beyond the 20 already authorized would actually be in Iraq in December.

The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., that tracks combat forces heading to and returning from Iraq, declined to discuss unit-by-unit deployments.

"Due to operational security, we cannot confirm or discuss military unit movements or schedules," Navy Lt. Jereal Dorsey said in an e-mail.

The Pentagon has repeatedly extended unit tours in Iraq during the past four years to achieve temporary increases in combat power. For example, three combat brigades were extended up to three months in November 2004 to boost the number of U.S. troops from 138,000 to 150,000 before, during and after the Jan. 30, 2005, Iraqi national elections.

Lawrence Korb, an assistant defense secretary for manpower during the Reagan administration, said the Pentagon deployment schedule enables the Bush administration to achieve quick increases in combat forces in the future by delaying units’ scheduled departures from Iraq and overlapping them with arriving replacement forces.

"The administration is giving itself the capability to increase the number of troops in Iraq," Korb said. "It remains to be seen whether they actually choose to do that."

Nash said the capability could reflect an effort by the Bush administration to "get the number of troops into Iraq that we’ve needed there all along."

I’m sure if this strategy works as well as the first "surge" did (like, not at all), then the next step will be formal reinstatement of the military draft.  I wonder how many Dimocrats will cave in on that??

Two-party system, my ass. Maybe time for an alternative.