Ain't happening ...

For all of us who hope Chimp & Co. will face some sort of justice for their crimes, you can just about forget it:

...

And putting aside the purely legal obstacles to a prosecution for war crimes, there's also the political cost. Why would an Obama or Clinton Administration waste precious political capital early on with a politically divisive prosecution of former government officials? One can imagine the screaming of countless pundits arguing that the Democrats were trying to criminalize political disagreements about foreign policy. Such a prosecution would make politics extremely bitter and derail any chance for bipartisan cooperation on almost any significant issue. Obama or Clinton would rather get a health care bill passed, deal with the economy, or try to solve the Iraq mess, than have the first several years of their Administrations consumed by a prosecution for war crimes by officials in the Bush Administration.

...

Sounds about right to me.

Ahhhh...So?

Study: Lead-tainted marijuana poisoned users

Gee, I didn't even know they grew weed in China...

Biden Punks Crocker, Blows Six Years Of Administration Policy All To Shit

From Air America Radio:

That was a very significant moment at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings with Amb. Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus. Joe Biden asked Amb. Crocker where it would be better for American national security interests to eliminate Al Qaeda in Iraq or Al Qaeda along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Crocker had nowhere to hide with that question.

Crocker, in an impossible political position -- give the correct answer and humiliate the Bush administration; give the administration's answer and look like a fool -- dodged as much as he could. Then Biden forced him down. Crocker: "I would therefore pick Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

Game over.

Well, the game's over except for the lying and dying.

Every single argument that the Administration and their lapdogs like John McCain have made or are making break down after that answer. The Ambassdor to Iraq just admitted that Iraq is not the central front in the war on terror. He just admitted that the potential for Al Qaeda to gain a beachhead in Iraq should the United States withdraw is miniscule compared to the already-established beachhead along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He admitted that the global fight against terror is currently misdirected.

And will be until the Mis-director-in-Chief and his Merry Band of Machiavellian Miscreants are gone.

Transcript at site.

What the Founding Fathers left out of the Constitution

Click to embiggen

"I keep thinking we should include something in the Constitution in case the people elect a fucking moron."

Yeah, ya blew that one.

The Can Of Iraq Is Officially Kicked Past 1.20.09

Dan Froomkin has a great roundup of what people are saying about the latest Semi-Annual Petraeus/Crocker Turd Polish and Friedman Unit Request. Many links.

Well, it's official. Getting out of Iraq is now exclusively the next president's problem.

That hasn't been in doubt for years.

They refused to acknowledge that reasonable people might disagree with them.

And, as they demonstrated yesterday and in their testimony last September, no matter what the situation on the ground, they are able to use it as an argument for staying the course.

They're under orders and thus not able to tell the truth, which is the overarching feature of Bush administration policy. When one lies, the other swears to it.

"But the bottom line was that there was no bottom line.

On ABC's World News, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulous summed up yesterday's testimony this way:

Gibson: "George, did anything change today?"

Stephanopoulous: "Not much, Charlie. I think this was one, big exercise in kicking the can down the road."

MSNBC host Chris Matthews weighed in: "I didn't get anything out of it except that we're staying there indefinitely; there is no condition we can point to. Petraeus and Crocker never told us what to look for so we can know when we're getting close to the end of the tunnel. I was very dissatisfied by the hearings."

Yo, Tweety, listen up - if there is a light for the end of this tunnel, it will not be installed until 1.20.09, and nobody knows yet when it will be turned on.

"On the contrary, they cited the very problems that Bush created by his decision to invade Iraq -- an Al Qaeda presence and enhanced Iranian influence -- as requiring an indefinite U.S. military effort."

Not only will the War Criminal-in-Chief not admit defeat - and why should he, it ain't his ass going broke and getting shot at - but that pig-headed bastard won't admit his Dad is smarter than he is either.

Robert Scheer, writing in his syndicated opinion column, recalls the controversial " General Betray Us" ads run by Moveon.org last year: "By undercutting the widespread support for getting out of Iraq, Petraeus did indeed betray the American public, siding with an enormously unpopular president who wants to stay the course in Iraq for personal and political reasons that run contrary to genuine national security interests. Once again, the president is passing the buck to the uniformed military to justify continuing a ludicrous imperial adventure, and the good general has dutifully performed."

Watch Bush give Petraeus a Medal Of Honor before his term expires.

Here's the most disturbing part:

"Iran was the heart of the matter during Senate testimony on the war. With al-Qaeda on the run in Iraq, the Iranian threat has become the rationale for the mission, and also the explanation for our shortcomings. The Iranians are the reason we're bogged down in Iraq, and also the reason we can't pull out our troops. The mullahs in Tehran loom over the Iraq battlefield like a giant Catch-22."

Mission creep once more. Bush is the mission creep.

Much, much more.

"Hey, Fox?"

You'll be guarding the henhouse now ...

Mental Health ...

Yeah, I know mine's questionable, but then I'm not carrying a rifle in a war zone. Nicole at C & L found the report Petraeus used to justify the troops' morale as being good:

... Now, having said that, as there is actually something called "The Mental Health Assessment" which is done every year, the last one in the late fall, I believe it was. And after several years of a generalization of morale as going down, morale actually went up ...

But Nicole says:

...

Ah, there’s the rub. If you factor out the women, the NCOs and those who have done multiple tours of duty over several years, things are looking great! By the way, I admit I was never a math major, but that last sentence about the morale being close to double this year…well, that’s true if 7.4% was half of 13.1%. Either way, that’s only 1 out of every 7 troop members who consider their morale high. Is that something to celebrate? [my em]

...

Not to mention that senior enlisted and field officers are leaving as soon as the opportunity comes up. I wonder where McCain thinks he's gonna get the troops to continue this a "hundred years"?

Teflon McCain ...

Stolen, in toto, from Mr. Philadelphia:

I do just wonder how much media bullying will be necessary before they decide that if they demand that Hillary Clinton release her tax returns, then maybe John McCain should too. I'm not going to hope that the Clinton rules - where each new disclosure automatically leads to demands for further disclosures - will apply, just that they at least require Huggy Bear to release the damn things.

Can McCain just get a pass on everything? Why do they even bother covering him but to give him basically free campaign publicity? As noted here and elsewhere earlier, we want to see the old codger's medical records too. You think they'd let Obama slide if there was a history of sickle cell in his family?

Gord's eyeball, she all feexed now

Backstory here and here.

Went in at 6:15 this morning and got my cataract removed. The last thing I remember is the gas passer, a large friendly gentleman from Estonia, plugging something into my IV. Woke up in the recovery room with everything said and done. My doc, Jeff "Shakes" Camp said it went just fine. Home by 10AM.

A shoutout to all the gang at Sierra Eye & Optical and Tahoe Forest Hospital. Terrific folks.

I am voluntarily keeping my eye shut right now because it's still dilated and feeling a little irritated, which is understandable since it was sliced open and its innards hoovered out, but I can look through it and it already works ten times better. No eye patch, but they issued me some hollywoods to keep dust and shit out of it.

It's about like getting a new windshield put on your car. One you can see out of. Me happy.

Congressional fellatio ...

I caught pieces of the hearing yesterday in between running dad-in-law around to get his shit squared away. Seemed like a gang blowjob to me. The Rude One musta thought so too:

Oh, yes, what wondrous fellatio is taking place on Capitol Hill right now where sainted General Petraeus is before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his hearing on "How I Haz Not Fucked Up Iraq." Yes, there's a chance Democrats may act like an opposition party and eviscerate the Bush administration, and the Rude Pundit'll deal with that tomorrow.

Instead, let's talk about the inevitable, that Petraeus will stand before the Republicans on the committee, unzip his fly, present his cock, and say, "Who's a-gonna suck it first?"

...

And that's the tame stuff. I heard some talking head on the teevee yesterday say "well, they can't grill Petreaus the way they would a 'political appointee'." Um, when have the Rethugs in Congress (Chuck Hagel excepted) done anything other than blow the Chimps 'appointees' when they testified before committee? Please ...

And by the way, Petraeus is a politcal appointee. All the others before him who actually tried to tell the truth were cashiered or forced to 'resign'.

Off to work ... for the first time in 2 1/2 weeks ... wonder if I remember how to fix a car? Heh ...

Athenae the masochist ...

She went and bought Dougie "The Dumbest Fucking Guy in the World" Feith's book, actually sat through reading it, and then reviewed it:

...

The book proceeds as a list, which I'll paraphrase here:

I was born.

I grew up.

Kind of.

I work at the Pentagon!

Old school liberals aren't pussies! They're hawks! Richard Perle is awesome!

Being a lawyer sucks.

9/11.

I shook the president's hand! I was in a meeting! I wrote a policy paper! Rumsfeld listens to me! The president listens to me! Everybody listens to me!

The president didn't want to go to war, except that he did, and we didn't make him, except that we have enormous influence, which is impossible to resist.

I hate Seymour Hersh.

Colin Powell is an asshole.

The CIA sucks.

WAR!!!!

Acronyms. Operational details. Tom Clancy.

WAR!!!!

Whoa, war sucks.

Here's what Bush screwed up to make the war suck.

Let me teach you my ways, so that you might replicate my phenomenal successes.

The end.

...

As I remember Gord saying a while back, paraphrasing, this guy should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Mondegreen of the Day and More

Mrs. G was home for lunch and we were watching a pretty good group on Hardball discussing the Petraeus/Crocker turd-polishing session in terms of how solidly McCain has tethered himself to Bush policy on Iraq.

She said the following: "He's hooked his cart to the wrong horse."

Here's what I heard: "He's hooked his heart to the wrong whore."

They're both right, but I like mine best!

Senator Boxer asked Crocker something to the effect of, and I paraphrase from memory, "How come Ahmadinejad gives three days notice of his Iraq visit, got kisses and flowers, a parade down main street in an open car in broad daylight, and Bush has to sneak into Iraq like a thief in the night?"

Crocker stumbled all over himself without giving her much of an answer. She finally gave up. I think it's because the Iraqis know Bush started this whole deal but we're going to leave, be forced to leave perhaps, someday, but Iran will still be there.

Just as an aside, some protesters in the Senate room started acting up while she was asking her question. She hollered, "Hey, cool it!". They shut up, too. A Repug woulda called for security.

I love ya, Babs. If yer ever in town and lonely of an evening...

Senator Kennedy asked how come we're paying to reconstruct Iraq while Iraq is getting $Billions from oil and in fact has $30B in our banks, let alone how much in God knows where else. Crocker didn't give him much of an answer, but I can:

Because Bush is perfectly willing to impoverish the U.S. for generations by throwing borrowed money at his demented fantasy and the Iraqis are perfectly willing to let him. I don't blame them.

I hope Petraeus asks for multiple Friedman Units instead of just one at a time. It'll save him a lot of travel time.

Hillary's tin ear ...

Our pal Creature hits it on the head as to why Hil hasn't won this thing going away:

...

The fact that Penn is still talking to the press is just another sign that Hillary's ears are nearly as tin as the president she hopes to succeed.

The last home opener ...

At Shea Stadium. Next year, they'll be playing in their beautiful new stadium being built right next door. I've been a Met fan since I was a little kid, cutting school and taking the train to Shea since I can remember. A good portion of my summers were spent there growing up. I'll miss Shea like the old Brooklyn Dodger fans miss Ebbets Field.

Let's see them ...

The PoliticalCat is absolutely correct. John McCain should release his medical records:

...

Senator McCain, you're in your 70s. Your grandfather died young (61 years), your father died at the age of 70, relatively young also. You've had repeated bouts of a particularly lethal form of cancer:

...

Most certainly. My cousin Robert died when he was 29 from melanoma and I'd rather my President wasn't sequestered in Sloan Kettering (why would he go anywhere else?) when he should be running the country, let alone die suddenly and leave Condi in charge.

...

And what about mental functioning? Eight years of a dumbkopf in the highest position in the land — a man who can't string eight words into a correct sentence — is plenty enough. Every time we walk into a room and find ourselves thinking, "Now, what did I come here for?" we wonder if that's what is making McCain repeatedly confuse Sunni with Shi'a, and putting al Qaeda in training in Iran, and telling undoubtedly horrified Israelis that Purim is the Jewish version of fucking Halloween, wouldja believe? And we're decades younger than that old fart.

...

I forget things too, but that's because I'm a pothead. I ain't running for President. I'd like the President of the United States to be a bit more lucid than I am.

The Ridenhour Courage Prize

Ron Ridenhour is the soldier who broke the story of the My Lai massacre. An award named for him for excellence in journalism will become a lot harder to give away if Bill Moyers ever retires. He is the Last of the Best, today's Walter Cronkite, albeit without Cronkite's exposure or widespread recognition. Here is part of Mr. Moyers' recent acceptance speech:

NOTE: INTERESTED PARTIES SHOULD FEEL FREE TO QUOTE THE FOLLOWING TEXTS IN PART OR IN FULL. ANY SUCH USE MUST INCLUDE ATTRIBUTION TO THE RIDENHOUR PRIZES, AND TO THEIR SPONSORS "THE NATION INSTITUTE" AND THE "FERTEL FOUNDATION."

Done.

Before his death I produced a documentary about him, and during our interview he told me the story of how he and his friend, Boots Cooper, were playing in the chicken house there in central Texas when they were about 12 years old. They spotted a chicken snake in the top tier of the nest, so close it looked like a boa constrictor. As John Henry told it, "All of our frontier courage drained out of our heels. Actually, it trickled down our overall legs. And Boots and I made a new door through the hen house." His momma came out to see what all of the fuss was about, and she said to Boots and John Henry, "Don't you know chicken snakes are harmless? They can't hurt you." Rubbing his forehead and his behind at the same time, Boots said, "Yes, Mrs. Faulk, I know, but they can scare you so bad you'll hurt yourself."

John Henry Faulk never forgot that lesson. I'm always ashamed when I do. Temptation to co-option is the original sin of journalism, and we're always finding fig leaves to cover it: economics, ideology, awe of authority, secrecy, the claims of empire. In the buildup to the invasion of Iraq we were reminded of what the late great reporter A.J. Liebling meant when he said the press is "the weak slat under the bed of democracy." The slat broke after the invasion and some strange bedfellows fell to the floor: establishment journalists, neo-con polemicists, beltway pundits, right-wing warmongers flying the skull and bones of the "balanced and fair brigade," administration flacks whose classified leaks were manufactured lies - all romping on the same mattress in the foreplay to disaster.

Five years, thousands of casualties, and hundreds of billion dollars later, most of the media co-conspirators caught in flagrante delicto are still prominent, still celebrated, and still holding forth with no more contrition than a weathercaster who made a wrong prediction as to the next day's temperature. The biblical injunction, "Go and sin no more," is the one we most frequently forget in the press. Collectively, we don't seem to learn that all it takes to transform an ordinary politician and a braying ass into the modern incarnation of Zeus and the oracle of Delphi is an oath on the Bible, a flag in the lapel, and the invocation of national security.

The rest of the speech is good as well. And, oh yeah, Bill Moyers is one of the few good things to ever come out of Texas, like Willie Nelson without the weed.

Note to journalism students: Listen to Moyers. Take his words to heart. Don't get to be complacent fat cats as you climb the ladder to success. Stay lean, stay focused on the mission: to dig out and disseminate the truth, corporate masters be damned, so that the media-compliant and -enabled disaster of the Bush years can never, say again never, be repeated. This country doesn't have any periods like that left in it.

Note to complacent fat cat corporate journalists: Same as above plus clean up your act and restart doing your jobs. You shoulder a lot of the blame for Bush's misdeeds and you have one helluva lot to make up for.

Repug Strategy

From one of the worst of the worst neocons, via The Ostroy Report:

Make no mistake: heading towards the general election in November, the Republican Party smells intense fear, and that fear will manifest itself into the dirtiest, ugliest, most divisive presidential election campaign in American history. The GOP's coming off of eight miserable, economically ravished, war-torn, scandal-plagued years of Bush/Cheney. Given the likelihood that Sen. Barack Obama--with his message of inspiration, hope and change--will eventually prevail in his protracted primary battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton, the reality is settling in that the junior Senator from Illinois could be the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania. Just ask neocon pundit William Kristol.

Read it.

Yoo Rotten Bastard

Truthdig. Comments here.

More shocking details are emerging from the 2003 81-page memo by former Justice Department senior lawyer John Yoo, who determined that the commander-in-chief can order poking out of eyes, slitting of body parts and throwing acid at prisoners, and none of that would constitute torture because it would not result in “death, organ failure or serious impairment of bodily functions.”

Yesterday I posted on Andrew Sullivan's statement that 'officials of this administration will be indicted for war crimes'.

I can't think of a better place to start than with Yoo. He certainly deserves it, and it might be just the ice-breaker we need.

Here's the part that gets me - Yoo is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. What's he teaching? How to cloak war crimes by plating them with bullshit legalese?

Berkeley! UCBerzerkely is probably the most liberal school on the planet, located in the most liberal city on the planet. The Free Speech Movement that kicked off the civic and social awakening of the '60s started there. The locals recently vociferously opposed the mere presence of Marine recruiters in their fair burg!* I'm not talkin' wimpy 'progressives', folks, I'm talkin' bomb throwin' left-of-Lenin radical bolsheviks here. In a hyperbolic way, of course.

How does that torture-enabling asshole keep his job?

C'mon you latte-drinkin', poetry-spoutin', free speech-'n-love lovin', banner-wavin', street-marchin' old hippies over there, yer fallin' down on the job (Sorry, 'job' is a dirty word to some of those folks). Get yer walkers fired up, get on the stick, two if need be, and get over to the campus. Recruit some of the youngsters, hell, they're yer grandkids, show some o' that '60s piss 'n vinegar and get this asshole fired!

* I think the reason the Corps had a recruiter in that anti-war bastion is because it was safer than putting him in neighboring Oakland. Heh.

Sir! By Your Command, Off The Cliff! Aye Aye, Sir!

Another good piece at Truthout:

Vietnam is key to McCain's thinking. Much to his credit, he has made his personal peace with the Vietnamese. But, in his military mind, he still thinks America could have and should have won our ill-advised adventure in Southeast Asia. How much further would he have escalated that incredibly bloody war had he been president? Who knows? But, given the widespread opposition to the war among Americans at the time, he would have had to destroy any pretense of constitutional rights on the home front. And for what? As most scholars now agree, no conceivable escalation would have defeated Vietnam's long-standing fight for independence from foreign rule, whether against the Chinese, the French or us.

As we will hear this week, General Petraeus understands the importance of political and ideological forces far better than does McCain. Petraeus has even publicly scolded Iraqi politicians for not working harder to reconcile their differences. Still, he will not give up the counterproductive military fight. Like McCain, the Princeton-educated general stands steadfast in his refusal to see the obvious. No matter how cleverly we apply our overwhelming force, foreign occupation breeds its own opposition in Iraq just as it did in Vietnam.

A note here - In his heart of hearts, General Petraeus may know the occupation of Iraq is hopeless, but he is a career military man with a mindset that follows orders and would never admit defeat. It matters not that his orders come from political bosses in a losing election year, he will fight to the death of every man in his command against all odds.

Except for the 'election year' and 'political bosses' part, sounds a lot like General Custer.

This is a lesson the gung-ho military mind cannot seem to grasp, which is why Americans would do well to look elsewhere for a president.

So which is worse - a fake military man like we've got now who started a war to show how macho he isn't, or a real one from a lost war of long ago who never got over it and will throw the nation overboard to try to 'win' this one?

It's like asking a condemned man whether he would prefer the gas chamber or the electric chair. The outcome will be the same.

Remember, they're all liars, every goddam one of 'em

William Rivers Pitt

No one is such a liar as the indignant man. - Friedrich Nietzsche

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, along with a slew of administration underlings and a revolving-door cavalcade of brass hats from the Pentagon, have been making claims regarding Iraq for many years now.

Followed by over twenty examples punctuated by "they lied", "liar", or just plain "wrong" and he left out tons of 'em.

Remember: they lie. They all lie, from the top man down to the bottom. If their lips are moving, a lie is unfolding. If they say water is wet, get into the shower to make sure.

They lie.

Period.

End of file.

There weren't any lies from McCain. Perhaps he deserves his own special category, that of "Quixotically Demented Delusional Throwback Who Is Pissin' On Our Legs And Tellin' Us It's Rainin'".