"I consider your acceptance of Luskin's word with a "no show letter", an MRE in the Food For Thought Department"* rimone:
"The Carpetbagger totally has the last word (on Blinky's speech in autria): ‘Suppose I should give the president credit for consistency. He uses the exact same baseless, straw-men demagoguery against his critics in Europe as he does against his critics in the U.S. If you disagree with Bush, you don’t understand 9/11 and you want to condemn people to tyranny. Where have I heard that before?one thing that didnt get much play - but i saw it on lehrer - when the reporter was asking the question, Blinky literally shrugged at the point where the guy was quoting PEW.
‘As for Bush’s standing in Europe, I had foolishly assumed that he couldn’t get any less popular. The president, once again, is able to go well beyond my expectations.’"
* wow. rumsfeld also weighed in on the hoekstra/santorum nonsense:
"Asked about the potential danger to U.S. troops, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said: "They are weapons of mass destruction. They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found.""and to answer simon's question:
"Intelligence officials said the munitions were found in ones, twos and maybe slightly larger collections over the past couple of years."
* john gibson @ FoxNews:
"We (Fox) also didn't fire a reporter because her colleagues couldn't stand what she was writing after we promised to stand by her while she sat in jail resisting a subpoena.that.is.hysterical. read it again. savour.
That would be Judith Miller, whose offense was to accept the possibility — as all the world did except The New York Times — that Saddam did have WMD. They fried her at The Times for that. By the way, the latest news proves she was right and Raines and the rest of The Times Bush haters were wrong."
* NYT:
"Some politicians are outspoken allies in Mr. Gaubatz's cause. He is just one of a vocal and disparate collection of Americans, mostly on the political right, whose search for Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons continues.uh-oh. If dewey is saying that there are WMD in sudan... (many think he was involved in the niger forgeries)
[]
Also among the weapons hunters is Duane R. Clarridge, a long-retired officer of the Central Intelligence Agency who said he thought that the weapons had been moved to Sudan by ship.
"And we think we know which ship," Mr. Clarridge said in a recent interview."
* wow. Spitzer endorsed NYBri:
"Brian went from blog reader to commenter to Daily Kos diarist to founder of ePluribus Media to endorsed candidate for the State Senate of New York in 18 months. Pretty good blueprint for crashing the gate."
13 comments:
"Intelligence officials said the munitions were found in ones, twos and maybe slightly larger collections over the past couple of years."
...being properly stockpiled by the 'good' guys for use as Weapons of Mass Electoral Distraction...
Gibby:
By the way, the latest news proves she was right and Raines and the rest of The Times Bush haters were wrong.
Seems the volume on the polarizing rhetoric machine is being cranked up again... never mind that even if one were inclined to be hateful, these malignant bastards provide ample reason.
Quick question re: the Pentagon briefing to Congressional GOP on promoting the war. From the NYT piece:
The [war promotion strategy] meetings were followed by the distribution of a 74-page briefing book to Congressional offices from the Pentagon to provide ammunition for what White House officials say will be a central line of attack against Democrats from now through the midterm elections: that the withdrawal being advocated by Democrats would mean thousands of troops would have died for nothing, would give extremists a launching pad from which to build an Islamo-fascist empire and would hand the United States its must humiliating defeat since Vietnam.
I'm a little in the dark on election law, or the legal powers of the Pentagon vis a vis domestic intelligence, but is there nothing on the books against use of DoD (IOW national) resources to produce domestic political election propaganda that subverts the electoral process by targeting a specific party? Is the RNC paying for it or the DoD, i.e. the taxpayer? If nothing else, any legal restraint in terms of who's getting the bill for it?
Meanwhile, looking at the points in the NYT piece:
thousands of troops would have died for nothing
As it stands, staying means they died so more troops can be run through the meat grinder by the fuckups in the administration to be dumped on the next schmo in the White House to deal with.
would give extremists a launching pad from which to build an Islamo-fascist empire
And Iraqis are so in love with the US after being 'liberated', too... can't blame the development of this Jihadist petri dish on the Islamofascists.
OTOH, neither can you blame it on Saddam, the CIA's once-designated bulwark against Islamism. IOW, through both action (taking out Saddam) and inaction (not doing the job right in the first place) BushCo and his GOP enablers promoted Islamofascism.
would hand the United States its must humiliating defeat since Vietnam
Um, hate to tell ya but you're already there, and for the same reasons: short sighted politicians with delusions of glory enabled by spineless, career-minded poli-generals still high on Desert Storm.
Ditto Afghanistan. Ask the Russians. They could have warned you... not that you'd have listened...
Gulf I proved that the troops can kick ass and take names in a purely military engagement, and done right, for the right reasons, you can win the war and the peace. Vietnam lessons learned.
Gulf II's occupations and insurgencies just show that this evolutionarily regressed administration needs to go back to school and earn that degree daddy paid so much for.
And, lest we forget, 20-year-old mustard gas shells, found in ones and twos, do not equal the 'covert nuclear program' over which this war was illegitimately started. They were bound to find scattered shells, probably left over from the Iran-Iraq war or one of Saddams repressions.
The Pentagon's been hoarding these things "over the past couple of years" to pull a fast one with a big pile of rusted chemical shells. The US went to war over falsified Uranium claims, and that's what we should forcefully shove up the nose of every Bushite who screams "We found WMD!"
don - im pretty sure the 74-page doc is illegal wrt electoral propaganda. there has been quite a stink about it this week.
agree with all your points re the NYT - it's kinda like taking candy from a baby. interestingly, (re "Iraqis are so in love with the US") i was watching lehrer the other night and someone (SHields?) mentioned that 80% of iraqis want the US to get the fuck outta the country - and lehrer was amazed! had never heard any such thing before - but it's been the same for AT LEAST a year.
re "We found WMD!" - i cant even believe they did that. for them to try that in mid 2006 is one of the most absurd things i've seen for a long time - it didnt even last 24 hours. at a minimum i wonder why they didnt hang on to it till october if they were gonna pull something so stupid.
That's the part that has me on edge. Rove walks but is still damaged goods. We've got another '20th hijacker' but the Saudis already whacked him. The RNC/GOP/WH and their bots, shills and true believers notwithstanding, consensus is that Iraq is a shit splatter on the White House lawn. "We found WMD" got lost when shot down by the Pentagon (WTF?), although there are a half-hearted Murdochian attempts to revive it. Coulter and O'Reilly are getting publicly crazier by the day and the Pentagon broadly releasing their tactical brief to congress is like Eisenhower transmitting D-Day landing coordinates to the Nazis.
Despite all the characteristic 'happy talk', things are not peachy in or for Bushlandia. Maybe I'm a little too paranoid, but does this all seem like an under-the-radar attempt at political haririkiri?
"haririkiri"?
lol - that's my term! and it has very specific usage...
i dont think there's any such thing as 'too paranoid' these days
re WMD - it's odd that negroponte gave hoekstra and santorum 'enough rope' - but then it's even weirder that rumsfeld joined in
i don't really think that there's anything particularly going on in the background (i might be wrong) - but rather the wheels appear to be coming off the message machine. the remarkable thing is that the wheels should have fallen off a coupla years ago. i cant remember how many occasions i've thought that the house of cards was about to collapse - and every time it happens it scares the hell outta me.
so like you, i'm on edge.
Blinky literally shrugged at the point where the guy was quoting PEW.
breathtaking--could his contempt for others be more obvious? (oh wait--they're only foreigners) but why he's not smacked down (or diplomatically reined in like w/a little 'come to jesus' meeting*) is amazing to me.
*used metaphorically.
Rimone:
why he's not smacked down (or diplomatically reined in like w/a little 'come to jesus' meeting*) is amazing to me.
Is European media in line with American reports on that depiction? I'd check Canadian but it seems to have a mainline going on the Kool-Aid drip...
Speaking of speculation on same, via TMV and Donklephant, Dan DiRito at Thought Theater brings us "The Makings of an October Surprise?".
First para:
Today’s remarks by General Casey, that seem to indicate some troop reduction in Iraq by years end, coupled with yesterdays Associated Press article outlining a significant reduction in military equipment in the troubled country may be the makings of an October surprise. What I find particularly curious is that while we are seeing signs of a pending military reduction, we see the Republican Party spinning calls by Democrats to begin the process of transitioning security and military oversight to the Iraqi’s as a “cut and run” strategy.
Check it out, he did a lot of digging.
rimone - it really was quite disgusting - check out the video
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june06/europe_06-21.html
don - i don't really buy the "Thought Theater" argument. strikes me that conditions on the ground arent going to improve between now and november - and repugs will look even more craven if they try to claim success in any measure
Don--european media seemed to be disgusted at his displayed arrogance when he was over here the other day. then i turned on BBC news last night, only to see them trumpeting about catching the 'terrorists' in FL and how their plans to blow up Sears Tower were thwarted...fucking Gonzalez was on every 5 minutes. of course i emailed them to quit it (not that it did much good).
the entire thing stinks.
Don - looks like TT's suspicions were somewhat on target given the announcement
Rimone - the beeb can be soooo disappointing a lot of the time...
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