The Problem Isn't Mr. Maliki

NYTimes editorial:

Washington's failure to face these unpleasant realities opens the door to strange and dangerous fantasies, like Mr. Bush's surreal take on the Vietnam war.

The real lesson of Vietnam for Iraq is clear enough. America lost that war because a succession of changes in South Vietnamese leadership, many of them inspired by Washington, never produced an effective government in Saigon. None of those changes, beginning with the American-sponsored coup that led to the murder of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, changed the underlying reality of a South Vietnamese government and army that never won the loyalty and support of large sections of the Vietnamese population.

The short-term sequels of American withdrawal from Indochina were brutal, as the immediate sequels of America's withdrawal from Iraq will surely be. But the American people rightly concluded that with no way to win a military victory, there could be no justification for allowing thousands more United States troops to die in Vietnam. Those deaths would not have changed the sequels to the war, just as more American deaths will not change the sequel to the war in Iraq. Once the war in Southeast Asia was over, America's domestic divisions healed, its battered armed forces were rebuilt and the nation was much better positioned to deal with the relentless challenges of global leadership.

If Mr. Bush, whose decision to inject Vietnam into the debate over Iraq was bizarre, took the time to study the real lessons of Vietnam, he would not be so eager to lead America still deeper into the 21st century quagmire he has created in Iraq. Following his path will not rectify the mistakes of Vietnam, it will simply repeat them.

It'll be different this time - there are no mistakes, or admissions of them anyway, in Bush's reality-free zone. Many people are still to die for his ego.

Whorage ...

The next chapter of my novel The Fourth Estate is up at The Practical Press.

I got a million things to do today. Do your own blogwhoring in comments.

How the White House Drowned New Orleans

So, ya pissed off yet this morning? No? We'll fix that. Read Greg Palast.

The charge is devastating: That, on August 29, 2005, the White House withheld from the state police the information that New Orleans was about to flood. From almost any other source, I would not have believed it. But this was not just any source. The whistleblower is Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.

But unknown to the state, in those crucial hours on Monday, the federal government's helicopters had filmed the cracks that would become walls of death by Tuesday.

Van Heerden revealed: "FEMA knew at 11 o'clock on Monday that the levees had breeched. At 2 p.m., they flew over the 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech."

Question: "So the White House wouldn't tell you the levees had breeched?"

Dr. Van Heerden: "They didn't tell anybody."

Question: "And you're at the Emergency Center.'

Dr. Van Heerden: "I mean nobody knew. The Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA knew. None of us knew."

I could not get the White House gang to respond to the charges.

That leaves the big, big question: WHY? Why on earth would the White House not tell the state to get the remaining folks out of there?

The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of God -- but a catastrophic failure of the levees is an act of Bush. Under law dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the damage -- and the deaths -- a federal responsibility. That means, as van Heeden points out, "these people must be compensated."

There's a coupla paragraphs on how the gummint 'compensated' rich folks after a similar federal failure.

And what was the effect of the White House's self-serving delay?

I spoke with van Heerden in his university office. The computer model of the hurricane flashed quietly as I waited for him to answer. Then he said, "Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line."

I hate this bunch more every day.

Indeed!

Stolen unabashedly from our pal Skippy.

The Weimar President

I love historical references - well, accurate ones. Scott Horton on Bush's "It's all your fault we lost in Vietnam" speech:

[...] Those who are ignorant of history make bad, indeed dangerous leaders. And it’s increasingly apparent that Bush is a man without history; or worse still, a man with a malicious understanding of history.

Bush’s speechwriters clearly understand the emotive power of history. In this address, they use it, as Pericles used his funeral oration, to draw political strength from soldiers who fell in battle and who cannot speak for themselves. But deep in this speech, indeed at its very point of catharsis, lies another historical element which should not go unrecognized: it is the stabbed-in-the-back rhetoric of Weimar politics. If you don’t unquestioningly follow my commands, says Bush, you will be betraying our soldiers in the field. Their death will be on your hands. The audacity and hypocrisy of these words is thundering.

Very few commentators today have recognized the moral bankruptcy of Bush’s speech. One did, and he recognized in its core the manipulation of the time-worn theme that was used to murder democracy in Weimar Germany. Interestingly, it’s not a liberal, but a conservative who makes the point: Andrew Sullivan. From his analysis today at The Atlantic (go read it - G):

To place all the troops into the position of favoring one strategy ahead of us rather than another, and to accuse political opponents of trying to “pull the rug out from under them,” is a, yes, fascistic tactic designed to corral political debate into only one possible patriotic course. It’s beneath a president to adopt this role, beneath him to coopt the armed services for partisan purposes. It should be possible for a president to make an impassioned case for continuing his own policy in Iraq, without accusing his critics of wanting to attack and betray the troops. But that would require class and confidence. The president has neither.

Last year, Donald Rumsfeld appeared about this same time before two veterans organizations and gave speeches talking about “appeasement,” “Munich,” and “1938.” The malicious and historically uninformed nature of his remarks could not, I thought, be topped. I was wrong. The resort to the “stabbed in the back” argument reflects the worst sort of political bottom fishing. It is the sort of thing a democratic leader should never do. We should all keep in mind the peculiar provenance of the argument that Bush brandished yesterday and promises to make into a theme: it was used to demolish a democracy and to introduce a totalitarian dictatorship. Weimar fell because it was a democracy without enough democrats committed to its institutional survival. Too few of her citizens mustered the courage to stand for the basic values of a democratic state. And that is the lesson of Weimar Germany which we dare not forget.

We're not going to go the way of the Weimar Republic. Our situation is completely different. Unlike them, the U.S. installed its fascists first, before losing a war and economic meltdown. Fast-forwarding is the modern way.

NIE helps enemies?

The Horse's Mouth reports on what the other end of the horse is spewing:

Lieberman Attacks Democrats For Criticizing Maliki -- On Same Day That Report From U.S. Intelligence Services Criticizes Maliki

Okay, it's admittedly not hard to have fun at Joe Lieberman's expense, but this one's too good to pass up.

This morning Lieberman and his chief flack Marshall Wittmann put out a press release containing Lieberman's usual attacks on Democrats over Iraq. The duo faulted "Congressional critics" of Iraq's Maliki government and slammed Dems who have criticized Maliki as basically helping our "enemies."

But in a case of comically awful timing, Lieberman and Wittmann's latest attack on Dems came just hours before the release of excerpts of a new National Intelligence Estimate from our intelligence services that...criticized the performance of the Maliki government in terms that are awfully similar to the things Democrats have been saying.

Needless to say, Lieberman and Wittmann have yet to put out a subsequent press release attacking the U.S. intelligence services that authored the NIE.

And in a final irony, the NIE assessment is actually closer in key ways to what Dems have been saying than Lieberman's claims are. Lieberman's release says we have made "enormous progress" in Iraq. But the NIE says that we have only had "measurable but uneven improvements" on the security front, and adds that "the level of overall violence remains high" and that Iraqi leaders are "unable to govern effectively" -- an overall view of things echoed by Dems in recent days.

When Lieberman and Wittmann send out their next release attacking our intelligence services for painting this dire picture of the state of play in Iraq, this blog will be the first to post it. Guaranteed.

Don't hold yer breath, Horse.

You can't make up stuff like this!

Okaaaay ...

One more before I run.

The area where I live on Long Island is a crazy sort of place. We're very diverse, you can hear thirty languages walking down my street, and we have our share (maybe more than our share, and we talk about Californians) of nuts. To wit:

A man wearing a dress, make-up and a blonde wig robbed a Citibank in Central Islip Thursday -- one of two separate bank heists within three hours in Suffolk County, the police said.

Walking calmly into the store, the heavyset man wearing the disguise waited in line and then handed the teller a note demanding cash. He didn't threaten to use a gun and only spoke once, telling her to hurry up, the detectives said. With the cash in hand, the man, who weighs about 220 pounds and stands roughly 5 feet, 8 inches tall fled on foot at about 9:39 a.m.

...

Bank robbing has become a sport here, and the robbers are getting more creative when trying to outwit the surveillance cameras. They'll get him eventually, but how much you want to bet the local news will name him the 'Drag Queen Bandit' before his 'career' is over?

Just sayin' ...

If I got busted driving drunk with a quantity of cocaine in my pocket, my ass would be doing 1-1/2 to 5 in Riverhead. Must be good to be one of the 'elites'.

Just sayin'. Off to work, TGIF!

Why I'm so pissed ...

About Bush invoking Vietnam yesterday. The Rude One:

...

Unzipping his pants, President Bush took out his half-tumescent cock and rubbed it on the [Vietnam Memorial] wall. "Yeah," he said as he became fully rigid. To him, the wall at that moment was just a pair of spread-eagled legs, like the legs of a slave girl, the haunches of a rotting corpse in the jungle, held open, just calling for a fucking. Propping himself awkwardly in the cleft, hands pressed against the sides, he began thrusting away, fucking right into the heart of the names of those who, to him, lost the war and disgraced America, yeah, they just had to lay there and take it, 'cause this goddamn wall should be twice as fuckin' large so that we could have taken down Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol...

...

After all he's put us through with Iraq, now he has the balls to spit on graves of those who had their lives squandered in another misbegotten war. A war that he and his henchmen did their goddamnedest to avoid. Motherfuckers. Every last one of them.

A soulless mercenary ...

Pays a price ...

...

I have been living and working in Baghdad for the past 16 months and will be leaving next week for good. I am one of those overpaid Department of Defense contractors, or, as some would call me, a “war profiteer.” Yes, I have profited. I am out of debt and have money saved. But it has cost me. I am a changed man. I have become hardened. I almost feel like a zombie.

...

Hope you never sleep again, pal. Go read his story and realize it's closer to the truth than anything you'll hear about Iraq on TV.

The Big Connection

Fixer and Lurch have both posted on Ari Flyshit's Freedom Watch group. We've all heard the Chimp's "Back to Bataan Vietnam" speech, and we're all aware that the talk is of replacing al Maliki, possibly with Allawi. Cursor ties it all together:

The head of Freedom's Watch is Brad Blakeman, a former White House staffer who was also a vice president at the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith and Rogers. IraqSlogger reports that the firm has been retained by Ayad Allawi, the former Iraqi interim prime minister, who is calling for the ouster of Prime Minister al-Maliki.

Hit the links.

There you have it - the TV ads, the stirring up of Veterans, the rumor* of a new Iraqi puppet government - all carefully orchestrated to try to get enough uptick in support for the occupation to get them probably two more Friedman Units out of the Iraq clusterfuck, no matter what Petraeus and Crocker say next month. Enough time for Bush to serve out his term and blame the loss on his successor.

Let's not let him get away with it this time.

*Rumor, shit. Maliki is talking to the next door neighbors and he hasn't gotten his countrymen to cough up the oil yet. He's not doing what Bush wants. He's toast.

Gotta know when to fold 'em...yeah, like that'll happen

There is such a wealth, a plethora even, of stuff on Bush's "Return to Vietnam" speech. This one at Time hits the V-ring:

Politically, President Bush has reached the point all gamblers fear: being so far down that higher stakes start to look worth the risk.

In the end, it is the familiarity — critics would say the lack of credibility — of those themes that provide the answer to Bush's risky invocation of Vietnam. He has so often emphasized the disastrous ramifications of failure and the potential glories of victory, they no longer hold the same currency with a war-tired public. So, given how low support for the war is, why not add the specter of Vietnam to the costs of defeat? And why not suggest that victory in Iraq could help expunge the indignity of America's loss in Vietnam? Petraeus and Crocker will say what they will regardless of Bush's assertions, so raising the rhetorical stakes in the hopes of bolstering political support ahead of their report is the only card Bush has left to play.

Give the fucker a deck of cards and some chips and let him lose at Solitaire in the privacy of his own cell instead of killing more and more people for his misguided and failed delusions.

Just don't let 'em breed - oops, might be too late...

From AgWeb, Letterman's Top Ten Top Good Things About Marrying Into The Bush Family:

10. Great deals on Fallujah honeymoon.
9. You’ll inherit President Bush’s extensive collection of Chuck Norris memorabilia.
8. It’s a good bet the wedding reception will have an open bar.
7. Might see Cheney shoot an old guy – still a reference, ladies and gentlemen.
6. Learning from Grandma Barbara how to spit chaw.
5. Every Wednesday is Taco Night.
4. What could be more fascinating than learning what makes Jeb tick?
3. If half the family hates you, you still have a better approval rating than George.
2. W can lend you the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner to put up in the bedroom.
1. Little chance you’ll be the dumbest guy in the family.”

"I'm not really a president, but I play one on TV..."

Click to make an even bigger pile of shit out of him

Desperate Despots Do Desperate Deeds to Dodge the Dildo of Doom

p m carpenter smells a rat:

In 2004, as Iraq was mutating from desert to quicksand, George W. Bush flatly rejected the Vietnam analogy. Yesterday he went over the top to seize it, to claim it as his own.

The pundits are stumped. What could Bush be thinking? Why this Vietnam-analogy argument, now? Why the 180? What's the sense of it all?

Well, as one is so justifiably inclined to do with this endlessly scheming White House, I smell a rat. A big, ugly one.

It's probably more like a chimp shittin' its britches out of fear and desperation, but do go on:

But, of course, nothing went according to plan. So now, the Bush administration has made the conscious and calculated decision to refight Vietnam at home as well -- partially as an arm-twisting tactic against a disgruntled Congress, but principally as a political strategy that goes far beyond that.

Which is to say, the administration may be hoping to violently divide this nation at large -- much as Vietnam violently divided us -- and, above all, put that violence and divide on the streets. It seeks to reawaken Nixon's hardhats-and-veterans crowd as its visible cadre. It longs for a reissuance of right-wing "America: Love it or leave it" sloganeering in action.

The nation is not nearly as divided over the iraq clusterfuck as it was, or as much as Bush would like it to be. He's pissin' up the wrong rope if he thinks we're going to refight Vietnam in Iraq and have it come out any different. We sorta already are, and the outcome is going to be the same.

If he wants to refight Vietnam and have us win, it gets done every night in VFW and American Legion halls all over the country. We kick ass over there particularly well on 'cheap beer nite'.

Just as an aside, back in the late '60s, I drove a pickup because I a) had to haul my motorcycle to the desert every weekend, and b) I like pickups. I was a Veteran, and worked in an oil refinery, so I had (still have) a hard-hat. I also smoked a lot of weed in those days, which was a felony back then. I kept my hair pretty short, and had a rifle rack and an "America: Love it or leave it" sticker in the rear window as protective coloration. I never got stopped. I was as anti-war as anybody, but I wasn't a hippie. A clean-cut all-American boy is what I was then and am now, albeit a might superannuated. OK, a clean-cut all-American hard-hat gun-totin' Veteran and pissed-off Olde Farte (lctp).

In short, the administration's seemingly bizarre reversal on the Vietnam analogy might very well come down to nothing more than a sociopolitical do-over at home. In seeking that bloody division of old -- which the political right then cynically cast as the dividing line between the patriotic and unpatriotic, the American and unAmerican -- it can at least buy some time, if not remake America, at long last, in its right-wing image.

That might be what Bush is trying to do, but his last-ditch attempts are going to fail miserably, like everything else he's ever done.

I liked some of carpenter's 'comments' as well:

This is like Germany claiming they would have won WWII, if only Hitler hadn't given up.

George Bush Meets Graham Greene

Greg Mitchell of E&P has some interesting comments on Bush's addled 'Vietnam' speech.

Now that’s going too far. George W. Bush cited my favorite 20th century novel and its author – Graham Greene’s prescient "The Quiet American" (also a fine movie starring Michael Caine) – in his speech on Wednesday that drew several dubious links between the catastrophic Vietnam and Iraq conflicts. Perhaps because it’s unlikely he’s ever read the book it was difficult to figure out exactly what the president meant.

“But Greene wrote his book about the way American bumbled into Vietnam, not how it left it. By reminding people of Greene's book, Bush was inviting listeners to recall the mistakes his administration made in entering and prosecuting the Iraq War. Did he really want to do that?”

Fowler, the typical newspaperman, has no use for “isms" and "ocracies,” and just wants the “facts.” He tells Pyle “you and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren’t interested.” What do they want? “They want enough rice. They don’t want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don’t want our white skins around telling them what they want.”

Pyle ultimately assists an urban bombing to be blamed on Viet Minh insurgents, and many civilians die. Greene observes that "a woman sat on the ground with what was left of her baby in her lap; with a kind of modesty she had covered it with her straw peasant hat." Fowler asks Pyle how many such deaths he would accept in “building a national democratic front.” Pyle responds: “Anyway, they died in the right cause. … They died for democracy."

Or as Greene himself wrote of a character in "The Heart of the Matter," another novel: "He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return."

An interesting read.

I think the Chimp may have shot himself in the foot big time with that speech. I hope so, but it doesn't really matter. This bullshit will go on as long as he's in office.

If Democrats Want to Lose...

Robert Parry follows up on our previous two posts:

Today, the U.S. capital is in the midst of a bizarre replay of 2002 when Democrats tried to assuage Bush by acceding to his demands and major mainstream news outlets joined with the powerful right-wing media in a lock-step march toward war.

So, if Bush arranges for Maliki’s removal – either with a violent Diem-like coup as happened in Vietnam or by arranging a comfy exile for Maliki – Levin effectively has bought into another year or so of war funding to give a new Iraqi government a chance to succeed.

In 1967, Michigan’s Republican Gov. George Romney (yes, Mitt Romney’s father) famously described how he had returned from a military-arranged tour from Vietnam in 1965 having undergone “the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get.”

Now, the Democrats are getting the same treatment, focusing on Anbar and other silver linings in the very dark cloud of Iraq.

To me, that's just like "Ooh, look! There's corn in that turd! Things are really lookin' up! Let's eat!"

If national Democrats think that their feckless behavior on war in the Middle East and their timidity in defending the Constitution represent the pathway to victory in 2008, they may find themselves in for a very rude awakening.

We're not going to vote for any Repuglicants, perish the thought, but we may vote for some different Democrats. A lot of folks might vote for Greens or Whigs or Martians or whatever, and hand this country right back to the fascist warmongers, too.

"Bush's Brain" may be gone, but his "Soul" lives on

Scott Ritter with today's 'must read':

[...] Bush's singular appeal has been the impression of steadfastness in the eye of the storm, even if the storm is for the most part self-created. For this we must look not to "Bush's Brain," but instead peer deep into the dark recesses of the White House, where we can glimpse the awful "soul" of the president-Dick Cheney.

The vice president is the single greatest threat to American and international security in the world today (my em). Not Osama Bin Laden. Not the ghost of Saddam Hussein. Not Ahmadinejad or Kim Jung Il. Not al-Qaida, the Taliban, or Jose Padilla himself. Not even George W. Bush can lay claim to this title. It is Dick Cheney's alone. Operating in a never-never land of constitutional ambiguity which exists between the office of the president and the Congress of the United States, Cheney's office has made its impact felt on the policies of the United States of America as had no vice president's office before him. Granted unprecedented oversight over national security and foreign policy by executive order in early 2001, many months prior to the terror attacks of 9/11, Cheney has single-handedly steered America away from being a nation among nations (albeit superior), operating (roughly) in accordance with the rule of law, and toward its present manifestation as the new Rome, a decadent imperial power bent on global domination whatever the cost.

In many ways, the leading Democrats, both those running for office and those currently holding office, are a far greater insult to American values than the conservative standard-bearers for the policies of Cheney. No one of substance takes seriously the manic ranting of the Hannity/Limbaugh/Coulter triad. These Democrats, on the other hand, have mastered the art of compromise to the point that they stand for nothing at all-this at a time in American history when the policies of the administration, derived from the dark abyss of Bush's soul, Cheney, provide the most concrete example of what we as Americans should be standing against.

The Democrats need to stand for something. Cheney has provided the sort of political ammunition that would enable them to fight, and win, a constitutional battle over the heart of America, the kind of defining struggle which I believe the vast majority of Americans would rally around. Unless the Democrats start separating themselves from the policies of the Bush administration, and take an active role in outing and suppressing the true evil that is Dick Cheney, all they will achieve in the coming years is a change in the titular political orientation of America, without the kind of deep-seated break from the failures and crimes of the past six-plus years that have taken our nation, and the world, right up to the edge of chaos.

"Bush's Brain" may be gone, but his "Soul" lives on. It is high time all of America put Dick Cheney fully in the spotlight of collective accountability, purging our nation of this scourge which has harmed us in so many ways. If there is any case for impeachment to be made against any member of the Bush administration today, it can be made against a vice president who has shamed our nation, destroyed our moral standing and broken our laws.

There's a line in a country song that goes "you've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything". Between Cheney and Rove, they got a bunch of gullible people to fall for something that's terribly wrong and then stand for it.

To put it another way, if you want a dog to eat shit, put bacon grease on it. This administration has flavored-up evil and made people eat shit and like it.

Following up on Fixer's post just below, a note to Congressional Dems: What the Hell are you people afraid of? Losing your jobs? Jesus Fucking Christ, we're losing our country! You can stop it. Why aren't you showing some balls and doing it? You've got the goods on these bastards, why aren't you following up?

All it will take to wrest the power back from them is a pair of handcuffs. They're cowards, so just dangling the cuffs in front of them might do it. Be sure to grin while you're doing that, it'll scare the shit out of 'em. When you put the cuffs on 'em, and I hope you do, put 'em on tight.

It's not the investigations ...

It's that nothing comes from them.

The paid punditry of the TV and dead trees wankosphere have decided that Dem voters are pissed at Congress because they've done so much investigating of the Bush administration since January. Wrong-o, butt breath.

We're pissed because, after 8 months of investigation, the Chimp and his people still refuse to recognize subpoenas and are still thumbing their noses as Congress. We're pissed because, after all the investigation (they must realize something stinks at 1600), they cave so readily on one of the Chimp's pet projects:

...

I realize David Broder and his pals like to reframe Congress' low popularity as a response to all those investigations that allegedly prevent Congress from "getting anything done", but the fact is that polls have been clear for well over a year that the public wants Democrats to counteract the administration, to rein-in the excesses and uproot the corruption the Republicans allowed to run riot. Exit polls in November suggested that this was as important to Americans as getting us out of Iraq. In fact, Americans - particularly Democrats and Independents (but more than a few Republicans) - are furious at Congress for getting too many things done: the wrong things. Things like expanding FISA. So why do they keep doing it some more?

...

We sent them there to put an end to this war and to stop the Chimp and his henchmen from using the Constitution as a roll of asswipes. So far, neither has come to pass.

That's why we're pissed off, you idiots.

Update:

MJS:

...

How is it, after all these years with this colon wrangler in office, that not one—not one!—reporter didn’t jump up in his chair and shout "Shut the fuck up, you sack of beaver shit! Shut the fuck up before our country kills itself just to get away from your inane, pathetic blatherings. Shut. the. fuck. up!" Who cares what happens next? That moment would shine like ten thousand stars doing the Hustle.

...

But our media is as pathetic as our Congress.

Vietnam????!!!!!

Dear Mr. President (and I use the term loosely),

A question.

Are you out of your fucking mind?

Another question.

Are you comparing the mess you've got us into to Vietnam?

More questions.

Are you expecting to not go to 58,000 funerals before you end this thing?

Are you planning to leave Iraq with nothing gained but misery for the indigenous people whose lives we've destroyed?

Are you planning to leave Iraq at all?

Just asking because Vietnam left a permanent, indelible scar on a lot of people I call my friends. I've seen the misery of people living (and ultimately dying) from the symptoms of Agent Orange. I've seen the misery of drug abuse and alcoholism brought on by the experience of that war. I'm just wondering if you're going to condemn another generation to go through (and deal) with the aftereffects of a years-long conflict that divides the nation and ruins our military.

One more question.

Why haven't you been impeached yet?

Fixer.