Motto for the Bushits

If you ever saw the movie Blaze with Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich, you might remember a great line from Newman as Louisiana Governor Huey Long: "Honey, old age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill." Modified for use in the current administration it would become, "Arrogance and incompetence will always overcome humility and competence, so long as you lie your ass off."

Furthermore, if the lies don't work anymore, then divert, obfuscate, ignore, and play completely dumb. Check out the pathetic and apparently witless Scott McClellan, White House spokesclone, trying to shut down a line of questioning that points out the lies of Dick "As Evil as I Wanna Be" Cheney. Just a sample:

Q But the insurgency is in its last throes?

McCLELLAN: The Vice President talked about that the other day -- you have a desperate group of terrorists who recognize how high the stakes are in Iraq. A free Iraq will be a significant blow to their ambitions.

Q But they're killing more Americans, they're killing more Iraqis. That's the last throes?

McCLELLAN: Innocent -- I say innocent civilians. And it doesn't take a lot of people to cause mass damage when you're willing to strap a bomb onto yourself, get in a car and go and attack innocent civilians. That's the kind of people that we're dealing with. That's what I say when we're talking about a determined enemy.

Q Right. What is the evidence that the insurgency is in its last throes?

McCLELLAN: I think I just explained to you the desperation of terrorists and their tactics.

It continues like this until Scottie finds the thread he started with to complete a totally circular path of logic, which is to say, there is no logic. Of course, the question I want answered is for the members of the White House press pool--why don't you ALL start getting tougher like this and pursue McClellan on his lying? I'm amazed that all of you keep from bursting out laughing every time he opens his mouth.

Anyway, getting back to the motto for the Bushits, as national polls show the American public souring on Bush and his illegal war, and some Republicans are now deserting him too, what will the Bushit camp do? Well, Chimpie is being sent out on a tour, based on the success of his Social Security propagandizing (yes, that's a joke), to try to once again create a national reality distortion field. Here's the arrogant and ignorant Scottie McClellan again:

"The president recognizes that this is a concern that's on the minds of the American people," McClellan said. "That's why he's going to sharpen his focus, spending more time talking about the progress that's being made on the ground — there's significant progress that has been made in a short period of time — the dangers that remain and that lie ahead, as well as our strategy for victory in Iraq."

Isn't our strategy for victory already in place? Wasn't it there on day one of the invasion? Didn't Chimpie declare "Mission Accomplished" two years ago while thrusting his enhanced crotch across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln?

See what I mean? Arrogance+incompetence="Strategy for Victory." And trust me, those words will be used over and over, directed at all opposition in the form, "Don't you support our Strategy for Victory?"

You see, for the Bushits, reality isn't the reason for slippage in the poll numbers, but rather an indication that their lying is not intense enough. So, liar-in-chief Chimpie will try to swell the bubble that surrounds him to include the American people again, but I don't think it's pliable enough to cover all those coffins coming back from Iraq that we're not allowed to see, or the legless and armless and blind veterans who are awaiting treatment. The general populace always wants to believe their leadership, but as they learned thirty-five years ago in Vietnam and as they've learned yet again, most leadership doesn't deserve such trust and should NEVER be given the benefit of the doubt.

As the motto of my old unit in the Air Force went, "Freedom through Vigilance."

Is the Mainstream Media Waking Up?

What's most interesting about this piece is that it's posted on the CBS News website:

Mid-May saw the leak of the so-called Downing Street Memo written by high-level British national security officials offering textual proof of what those of us who've been paying attention have long suspected: The Bush administration was determined to invade Iraq almost immediately after September 11, and the whole business with WMD, UN inspections, and so forth was just so much kabuki theater designed to lay the groundwork for a policy whose true motives lay elsewhere. This weekend, a second memo, leaked to the Times of London, provided further background. The British government, it seems, had committed itself to joining the United States in this war and was rather gravely concerned that the policy to which it had committed itself violated international law, making it necessary to design an appropriate pretext.

In other words, the deed was going to be done and the task at hand was to sell the rationale to the rubes in Britain and the U.S. To their credit, the British never supported the war in the majority, but I think they read, whereas here in America, TV news is king and, well, it took five weeks just to get these memos mentioned on U.S. television, and there never was a serious, literate discussion about going in in the first place.

Oh sure, that's all ancient history, the MSM will tell you, but these past deceptions inform us with regard to the continuing ones like the war is going splendidly, there's no mistreatment of prisoners nor detention of innocents, and that the Iraqi people are simply thrilled with how we've helped them out. We still aren't being shown the reality on the ground, the coffins continue to arrive at Andrews AFB with no coverage, and the stories on gravely wounded veterans are no longer aired.

But for the Bushits, it's coming apart at the seams. The story on Cindy Sheehan that was in a Kentucky paper has shown up in a mention in Editor and Publisher. The Democrats, probably thanks to the chutzpah of Howard Dean, are starting to show some gumption, standing up to Alberto "Tortureboy" Gonzalez in limiting the Orwellian-named Patriot Act. Even Donald "I am the God of War" Rumsfeld has admitted that the shit is worse now that it was in Iraq a year ago, but putting his typical rose-colored-glasses spin on it, "A lot of bad things that could have happened have not happened."

Tell that to the families of the 1706 dead Americans, you fucking war criminal. I hope you live long enough to be tried like the vile bastard you are, along with the rest of the Bush criminal empire. I don't think it's too much to hope that one day the platform will swing out beneath all the feet of these fuckers and the hemp around each neck will twang as it snaps at its end in a final jerk.

That, my friends, is called justice.

Orange (as in a jumpsuit) Won't Be Flattering to Chimpie; I Think He's a Winter, Right?

The Bush Evil Empire just slid another mile closer to the dock in the Hague this morning, thanks to the Los Angeles Times:

In March 2002, the Bush administration had just begun to publicly raise the possibility of confronting Iraq. But behind the scenes, officials already were deeply engaged in seeking ways to justify an invasion, newly revealed British memos indicate.

Now I understand the need for planning for contingincies, that is, if there is evidence of a real and imminent threat by Iraq to attack the US or its interests, there has to be planning in place. However, note that this says they need to "justify" an invasion already determined to be made, not to investigate whether or not an invasion was warranted.

The new documents indicate that top British officials believed that by March 2002, Washington was already leaning heavily toward toppling Hussein by military force. Condoleezza Rice, the current secretary of State who was then Bush's national security advisor, was described as enthusiastic about "regime change."

Although British officials said in the documents that they did not think Iraq's weapons programs posed an immediate threat and that they were dubious of any claimed links between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda, they indicated that they were willing to join in a campaign to topple Hussein as long as the plan would succeed and was handled with political and legal care.

So the British seemed to know what those of us protesting around the world already knew, namely that there was no threat of WMD and no connection to Al Qaeda or 9/11. But, they figured, a successful regime change sold as such through a compliant corporate media could let them get away with it. At least they felt that they had to finesse the thing, which reveals that they knew damned well that the truth would not sell the war. And now that the war is successful--don't forget Chimpie's triumphant carrier landing!--the public is overjoyed at being conned, right?

The documents contain little discussion about whether to mount a military campaign. The focus instead is on how the campaign should be presented to win the widest support and the importance for Britain of working through the United Nations so an invasion could be seen as legal under international law.

Note the careful language here: "could be seen as legal," rather than "would actually be legal." Apparently they could feel the spectre of war crimes tribunals even if they weren't sure what was sending that chill up their spines.

Then comes the money shot.

The paper said the British view was that any invasion for the purpose of regime change "has no basis under international law."

But with no WMDs found, no Al Qaeda links (Dick Cheney's syphillis-induced hallucinations notwithstanding), and no ties to 9/11, what do the Repugs say now when all this is pointed out? "Aren't we better off without Saddam?"

Wrong question, boys and girls. If I preemptively take out my neighbor who everyone hates because he throws crap all over his lawn and beats his kids, as the police drag me away I don't think that my crying out, "Aren't we all better off with him gone?" is going to be much of a defense. The British acknowledged that international law does not permit invasion solely to change a regime, however odious. But that's what we did. And with 1700+dead American servicemen and women, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed, maimed, and deprived of their families, with torture camps in hidden corners of the world, someone is going to have to pay.

They are going to pay.

If Only Chimpie Would Read

Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, California, lost her firstborn son in Iraq and is not about to be reticent in her feelings for the people who sent him there. In Kentucky she addressed an interfaith group:

Sheehan ridiculed Bush for saying that it's "hard work" comforting the widow of a soldier who's been killed in Iraq.

"Hard work is seeing your son's murder on CNN one Sunday evening while you're enjoying the last supper you'll ever truly enjoy again. Hard work is having three military officers come to your house a few hours later to confirm the aforementioned murder of your son, your first-born, your kind and gentle sweet baby. Hard work is burying your child 46 days before his 25th birthday. Hard work is holding your other three children as they lower the body of their big (brother) into the ground. Hard work is not jumping in the grave with him and having the earth cover you both," she said.

Now think about Bush, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, the crotch-enhancing flight suit, and the "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him. Think about the 1300+ Americans killed since then in an illegal war and the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis senselessly slaughtered, each one mourned by a mother, a brother, a daughter, a grandfather.

Ms. Sheehan closed with this:

"We're watching you very carefully and we're going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people," she said, quoting a letter she sent to the White House. "Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... ," she said, as the audience of 200 people cheered.

And we'll be there to help you swing the hammer, Ms. Sheehan. God bless you and keep you after your terrible loss.

Question for Chickenhawk Dick Cheney

Dick "I'm so Evil, I make Satan shit his pants" Cheney, fellow draft dodger with Paul Wolfowitz, Tom DeLay, and the other wankers who cheer for others to do their fighting, had the gall to address a Special Forces conference in Tampa last week. Among his remarks:

Looking across this room, I see the diversity of our planet, but an identity of interests. None of us wants to turn over the future of mankind to tiny groups of fanatics committing indiscriminate murder and plotting large-scale horror. And so we must direct every resource necessary to defending the peace and freedom of our world, and the safety of the people we serve.

My question for Dick, and his deserter boss Chimpie, is this: If you really believe what you said, why don't you all hang yourselves over the front porch of the White House in full view of the pedestrians on Pennsylvania Avenue? Such an act might rub at least a tiny spot of dignity on the otherwise large, malignant stain you have left on our republic.

Monday Morning Dreaming

The public outcry, building slowly at first as the American kneepad press tries to bury the Downing Street memo, becomes an exponentially swelling tidal wave of rage. The people begin assembling in mass demonstrations to bring Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, et. al. down. Then there comes impeachment proceedings after the Democrats retake the House and the Senate in 2006. Bush, true to form, stonewalls everything, but is quickly removed from office, turned out by the Secret Service into the arms of federal marshalls who put him and his cohorts in orange jumpsuits and keep them in a special suite at Guantanamo Bay as the Internation Criminal Court in the Hague gets its apparatus in motion for the tribunal on war crimes. So sudden is Bush's fall from power, and so devastating and irrefutable is the evidence against him that the ICC has to rush to meet the demand for indictments.

The trickle of leaks soon becomes a relentless flood once prosecutors begin indicting individuals involved in the Bush administration lies, coverups, distortions of policy and other outrages, and the once hairy-chested macho posing of the Republicans turns into the belly-up, bug-eyed pleading of a bested cur, ready to comply with any order, eager to turn in anyone who could lead to a plea bargain.

Threaded together with lies and hubris, the right-wing hate machine comes apart astonishingly fast. A number of suicides plagued the former administration as apparently some shred of honor remains among a few despite the systematic attempts to expunge it. Finally, the hundred or so former officials to be indicted in the Hague are all placed on suicide watch, because the public demand for justice requires them to face their accusers and accept the blame and shame for the disasters they have caused.

Meanwhile, a constitutional crisis looms as the massive changes in the executive branch challenge the rules of presidential succession, but so great is the relief to have removed a corrupt regime that politics is rendered to the margins as the sobering effect of the people's uprising against the government shocks the remaining politicians into a mode of civic statesmanship tempered with large shakes of self-preservation. A glorious time.

And then I had to wake up and read the newspaper. Still, dreams can come true.