L'il Bush

Go see "Sociopathic Decider Babies" at Welcome to Pottersville.

The 'L' Word...

Daddy Frank nails it on the Iraq Study Group.

In America we like quick fixes, closure and an uplifting show. Such were the high hopes for the Iraq Study Group, and on one of the three it delivered.

Mr. Simpson notwithstanding, the former senator who most comes to mind is Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. In the early 1990's he famously coined the phrase "defining deviancy down" to describe the erosion of civic standards for what constitutes criminal behavior. In 2006, our governmental ailment is defining reality down. "The Way Forward" is its apotheosis.

This syndrome begins at the top, with the president, who has cut and run from reality in Iraq for nearly four years. His case is extreme but hardly unique. Take Robert Gates, the next defense secretary, who was hailed as a paragon of realism by Washington last week simply for agreeing with his Senate questioners that we're "not winning" in Iraq. While that may be a step closer to candor than Mr. Bush's "absolutely, we're winning" of late October, it's hardly the whole truth and nothing but. The actual reality is that we have lost in Iraq (my em).

That's what Donald Rumsfeld at long last acknowledged, between the lines, as he fled the Pentagon to make way for Mr. Gates. The most revealing passage in his parting memo listing possible options for the war was his suggestion that public expectations for success be downsized so we would "therefore not 'lose.' " By putting the word lose in quotes, Mr. Rumsfeld revealed his hand: the administration must not utter that L word even though lose is exactly what we've done. The illusion of not losing must be preserved no matter what the price in blood (mine).

The lesson in that is clear and sobering: As bad as things may seem now, they can yet become worse, and not just in Iraq. The longer we pretend that we have not lost there, the more we risk losing other wars we still may salvage, starting with Afghanistan.

The members of the Iraq Study Group are all good Americans of proven service to their country. But to the extent that their report forestalls reality and promotes pipe dreams of one last chance for success in this fiasco, it will be remembered as just one more delusional milestone in the tragedy of our age.

I have nothing to add. Mr. Rich got it dead nuts. Please read the rest.

No queers ...

At a time when, of the 1000 people serving at the American Palace Embassy in Baghdad, only six speak fluent Arabic, it might behoove them to put their 'beliefs' aside and hire back some of the gay folks they threw out:

Between 1998 and 2004, the military discharged 20 Arabic and six Farsi speakers. Bleu Copas, 30, was a decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist who was dismissed from the U.S. Army this July for being gay. But he was closeted and was outed by an unidentified email campaign and it was never proven. According to Andrew Sullivan the number of gay discharged Arab language specialists is now 55.

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At this desperate stage you'd think, regardless of the belief that gays somehow can't serve in the military (I've got news for you, the gays I served with acquitted themselves honorably and with distinction), pragmatism might prevail. But no, we stubbornly hold our ground, even when having some of these folks on the ground might help the situation there (or might have if, instead of purging these people from the ranks a few years back, we'd have used their expertise to actually win some hearts and minds).

You know, I was thinking (a first!) last night. Bush was handed such an opportunity in 2001 to use the tragedy of 9/11 to do some good in the world. Remember back then, when 'everybody was an American'? We could have come so far in five years but instead we've fallen so low. It's this closed-minded thinking, not just on the part of the people in charge but of average Americans, that brought us to this point. It's time we grew up.

Howling at the Moon

Via the one and only Skippy, this snippet from a Newsweek article:

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That places the president in a distinct minority. According to the NEWSWEEK poll, more than two out of three Americans believe the United States is losing ground in Iraq (68 percent), versus 21 percent who say it is making progress - the most pessimistic assessment the NEWSWEEK poll has ever recorded. A near-record 53 percent believe invading Iraq was a mistake, compared to 39 percent who say it was the right course of action.

In fact, the public goes farther than the Baker-Hamilton report. Sixty-two percent of Americans want the Bush administration to set a timetable for withdrawal. And not in the distant future. Forty-eight percent of Americans want U.S. soldiers and Marines to come home now or within the next year. Add in the 19 percent who say they would support U.S. troops remaining in Iraq one to two years more and 67 percent of Americans say they would support keeping large numbers of U.S. military personnel in Iraq for no more than another year or two. [my ems]

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The public knows Iraq is lost and no matter what that schmuck McCain says, most of the weasels on Capitol Hill know it too. It's just a matter of getting our guys out in an orderly fashion so they're not running for their lives.

Update:

Commander Huber cuts to the chase as usual:

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I've got news for Gates and everybody else who has their head cross-threaded up a place that sunshine seldom penetrates: when history's mightiest nation isn't winning a war nearly four years into it, it's losing.

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Good

See you in Hell:

Pinochet dies peacefully at a ripe old age. The son of a bitch got off easy.

Animusic sampler

I saw this stuff for the first time last night on PBS. I just think it's cool. If you like it, there's dozens of these things at YouTube, or you can go to their site.

animusic

ISG: It's still all about the oil

LATimes

WHILE THE Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.

The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.

All told, the Iraq Study Group has simply made the case for extending the war until foreign oil companies - presumably American ones - have guaranteed legal access to all of Iraq's oil fields and until they are assured the best legal and financial terms possible.

We can thank the Iraq Study Group for making its case publicly. It is now our turn to decide if we wish to spill more blood for oil.

We knew it all along. Now it's in writing.

Blood for oil: it's the American Way.

The road to Hell ...

Is paved with good intentions.

Hmmm ...

Maybe we were hasty?

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Ha, I thought at the time, aren't these Republican lawmakers incompetent. These guys are given enormous responsibilities to understand the challenges we face in the Middle East, and they aren't even sure about the basics, such as what faith al Qaeda is. Just wait, I thought, until Dems get in there and show them what competency looks like.

Perhaps I was a little hasty.

Stein sat down with Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), soon to be the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and started asking him some of the same basic questions Republicans got wrong a couple of months ago. It didn't go well.

Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?

'"Al Qaeda, they have both," Reyes said. "You're talking about predominately?"

"Sure," I said, not knowing what else to say.

"Predominantly - probably Shiite," he ventured.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they'd slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

Asked later about Hezbollah, Reyes said, "Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah... Well, I, uh..."

Now, it's worth noting that Reyes wasn't completely lost. Stein noted that Reyes, unlike the House Republicans he talked to a couple of months ago, "knows that the 1,400-year-old split in Islam between Sunnis and Shiites not only fuels the militias and death squads in Iraq, it drives the competition for supremacy across the Middle East between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia." The GOP didn't even know this much, so Reyes is a little better off.

But in the end, he was still shaky on some pretty basic details. When the typical person on the street doesn't know about al Qaeda's or Hezbollah's beliefs, he or she can be forgiven. When the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee doesn't know, one has to wonder what members of Congress have been doing the last four years.

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Before I got into blogging, I thought I was pretty well informed about what went on in government. I was under the impression, since most of our elected representatives had much more formal education than I did, that the people we sent to Washington were intelligent, curious people who would do research on subjects they were involved with, subjects they are expected to vote for the good of the nation on.

Shit, I was a babe in the woods.

I think many of the American people share my former misconceptions. Most of the people we put in government are clueless ignorants who couldn't find their ass with both hands tied behind their backs. Let's just hope the incoming bunch is smart enough to listen to real experts instead of ideologues.

How George W. Bush has ruined the family franchise

Our resident Angry Old Broad went off the other day, and rightly so, on 41 boohooin' it up over No. 2 son's loss of the Florida governor's race a number of years back. I touched on this in 'comments' as being in response to No. Wrong son backing into the presidency instead of Jeb. Well, Elinor Clift, obviously a regular reader of the Brain, expanded on my riff:

On the eve of a report that repudiates his son's leadership, former president George H.W. Bush broke down crying when he recalled how his other son, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, lost an election a dozen years ago and then came back to serve two successful terms. The elder Bush has always been a softie, but this display of emotion was so over the top that it had to be about something other than Jeb's long-ago loss.

That election turned out to be pivotal because it disrupted the plan Papa Bush had for his sons, which may be why he was crying, and why the country cries with him. The family's grand design had the No. 2 son, Jeb, by far the brighter and more responsible, ascend to the presidency while George, the partying frat-boy type, settled for second best in Texas. The plan went awry when Jeb, contrary to conventional wisdom, lost in Florida, and George unexpectedly defeated Ann Richards in Texas. With the favored heir on the sidelines, the family calculus shifted. They'd go for the presidency with the son that won and not the one they wished had won.

The son who was wrongly launched has made such a mess of things that he has ruined the family franchise. Without getting too Oedipal, it's fair to say that so many mistakes George W. Bush made are the result of his need to distinguish himself from his father and show that he's smarter and tougher. His need to outdo his father and at the same time vindicate his father's failure to get re-elected makes for a complicated stew of emotions. The irony is that the senior Bush, dismissed by Junior's crowd as a country-club patrician, looks like a giant among presidents compared to his son. Junior told author Bob Woodward, for his book "Plan of Attack," that he didn't consult his father in planning the invasion of Iraq but consulted a higher authority, pointing, presumably, to the heavens.

Bush was asked during the campaign in 2000 what would happen if he lost. He said he'd go back to Texas, watch a lot of baseball and have a great life with Laura and the girls. He's an accidental president, a man who was vaulted into a job he wasn't prepared for, and who treated war like a lark. Bush's father observed between sobs in his Florida speech, "A true measure of a man is how you handle victory and how you handle defeat." He was talking about Jeb, but surely it's his first-born who triggers the tears.

No shit.

Besides spawning an accidental president, I wonder if 41 has ever mentally chastised himself for not making that trip to the drug store back in '46 that could have prevented the worst accident of all.

Readiness ...

Huh ... what?

Dec. 8, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- Whatever its ultimate fate, the Iraq Study Group report released Wednesday should have destroyed the spurious notion that flooding Iraq with more U.S. troops might win the war. As the report makes clear, a major influx of U.S. combat brigades into Iraq is somewhere between totally unrealistic and completely impossible.

In interviews with Salon, experts who served on the study group's "working groups" explained why: The military is running out of troops and equipment. The cold, hard facts about military readiness and a 1.4 million-strong active-duty force rule out a big increase in the size of the U.S. footprint in Iraq. "We don't have enough is the short answer," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University who served on the military and security working group of the bipartisan commission headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton. Advocating a big increase in troop levels now is just political theater, Hoffman argued. "This is the beginning of the who-lost-Iraq debate," he explained. "No one wants to be a charter member of the club." [my em]

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Didja hear that, Mr. McCain, Mr. Lieberman you bleedin' fools?

I joined the military just after the Vietnam era and it was in sad shape. Looks like we're heading for that honor again, sooner rather than later.

Hat tip to Nicole at C & L.

What I'm trying to do ...

I started this a few months ago and haven't really done anything with it because ... well ... I been crazy. But I've had this idea to get a buncha bloggers together, not just the crew here, and have them post original content, or cross-posts from their own blogs, and tie the blogs together in a loose ring identified by this button:



Details here. I really don't care the direction it takes and I'd like it if it moves away from political or veterans' issues.

If you and your blog would like to become part of AltBrainNet, just email me and I'll send you an invite and the AltBrainNet blogroll code for your blog.

As always, no rules, no censorship.

Shorter ISG

From Empire Burlesque:

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The Iraq Study Group's report simply confirms, yet again, the bedrock truth of the war: the American Establishment has no intention of leaving Iraq, ever, and no intention of having anything but a pliant, cowed, bullied puppet government in Baghdad to carry out whatever the Establishment decides is in its best interests on any given day. Iraq was invaded because large swathes of the American elite thought they could make hay of it one way or another (financially, politically, ideologically or even psychologically, for those pathetic souls who get their sense of manhood or personal validation from their identification with a big, swaggering, domineering empire). And U.S. troops will remain in Iraq, indefinitely, at some level, because the American elite think they can make hay of the situation one way or another. The war is all about -- is only about -- what the American elite feel is in their own best interest, how it aggrandizes their fortunes, flatters their prejudices, serves their needs. That's it. The rest is just bullshit and murder.

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There should be no 'American elite'.

Tip o' the Brain to Hugo Zoom.

So ...

Whaddaya think about Congressional term limits; 3 terms for senators, 5 for representatives or something of that sort. Froggy suggested it in comments on AOB's post and I think it's a pretty good idea.

Originally, elected officials were only supposed to serve a couple of terms and then get back to running their estates. The Founding Fathers never intended for someone to sit in the Senate for 36 or more years and in the House for twenty or thirty years...

Maritime art

Since Gord brought up the subject of crusing, it reminded me of a book I bought while aboard MS Noordam a couple months back. It is a compendium of the works, and the stories behind them in the words of the artist, of maritime artist Stephen Card, commissioned by Holland America Line. You can only buy it through Holland America but I figured I'd introduce you to his stuff. If you're into maritime art, you know Mr. Card already. If you're not, go visit his gallery.

MS Rijndam entering the Upper New York Bay in 1953.

No more Bush

My good friend Indian sent me this via email. Heh ... (yes, ladies, I know it's sophomoric male bullshit.) NOT work or child safe.

If it's Saturday ...

I must be whoring another chapter of my novel The Captains at The Practical Press.

On the homefront ...

Seems the extended deployment of Guard and Reserve troops is having an effect* on more people than just their immediate families:

WASHINGTON - The deployment of thousands of police officers to Iraq, Afghanistan and other military reserve posts is costing local law enforcement agencies up to $1.2 billion per year, according to a new analysis of Justice Department data.

The review, prepared for a law enforcement trade journal by Justice Department statistician Matthew Hickman, found that the number of military call-ups is outstripping the pace of new hires at a time when agencies are struggling to find new recruits, and as crime is ticking upward after several years of historically low crime rates.

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I did 2 years Active Reserve duty once my active-duty hitch was over and I know the part the Guard and Reserves play in their local communities. As you see with the cops, this hurts people who have no direct connection to the military and the war.

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The problem is particularly acute in small police agencies, which often have struggled to fill gaps in patrol coverage left by cops who have been called to military duty, according to Hickman's analysis, just published in Police Chief magazine.

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It's also tough on employers* who are obligated to keep a Reservist's job for them while on active duty. While I support the law, it does cause hardship when the Guard and Reserve are used interchangably with active duty troops.

WASHINGTON - The number of reservists and National Guard members who say they have been reassigned, lost benefits or been fired from civilian jobs after returning from duty has increased by more than 70% over the past six years.

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Retired Marine lieutenant general Dennis McCarthy, executive director of the Reserve Officers Association, a private advocacy group, acknowledged the deployments can be difficult for employers, particularly small companies. "That burden is an acceptable cost when it's compared to the value of reserve service to our country," he said.

What will happen, is Guardsmen and Reservists will be denied employment in the future because of their military commitment and obligation. I can't run a business if I know one or more of my people will be gone for up to 18 months, come home for 6, and then leave for another year and a half.

This is what you get when you put incompetents, amateurs, and morons in charge of the world's strongest military. I dare anyone to tell me our military isn't broken. Like the underreporting of the violence in Iraq, I'll bet you anything they're hiding the fact our Army and Marine Corps are worse off than any of us expect.

*Great thanks to the lovely Pam Spaulding for the links.

Prolific

I was up this morning, hoping to do the switch to the new Blogger software. Then I find we'll have to wait a little longer because they're not ready for the bigger blogs yet. By bigger, I mean the amount of content on a particular blog.

Blew my mind when I realized, over the past 2 1/2 years, we've put close to 7000 posts up. This is #6649. Seems my cohorts and I have a lot* to say. Good ... heh.


*(It may not all be intelligent, thought-out punditry but you're getting the unvarnished truth as it affects real people who have to deal with the consequences of decisions made by the folks living in the fantasyland inside the Beltway. I hope our readers will appreciate what the people assembled here have been trying to do with the little bit of power this blog offers; the opportunity to add their voices to the din of those who want to help this nation reach its potential. To be the nation we all know it can be. ~ Fixer)

ThreatCon

Watch your asses, comrades:

NEW YORK A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists has found that the rise in Internet journalism has fueled an increase in the number of journalists imprisoned around the world. According to the group's new census, 134 journalists are now in prison worldwide, and one in three jailed journalists is now a blogger, online editor or Web-based reporter. [my em]

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Great thanks to Lindsay Beyerstein for the link.