The Simplest Statement of the Rove Treason

It boils down to this:

Joseph Wilson went to Niger to ascertain whether or not Iraq was attempting to buy nuclear materials. Who sent him is irrelevant.

In the 2003 State of the Union Address, George W. Bush said this: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece entitled, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," contradicting Bush's claim.

Robert Novak, citing two White House administration sources, announced that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.

The White House denied Karl Rove was a source. Bush said he would "take care of" anyone who is a leaker of classified information.

Two years later, Rove's attorney admitted Karl Rove was a source.

The White House refused to comment.

Rove currently retains his security clearance.

So in the course of two years, when did Bush know that Rove was the source? Why hasn't he followed through on his promise? Why is Rove still sitting behind Bush in cabinet meetings?

Wilson's motives are irrelevant. Who sent him is irrelevant. The facts are that Bush claimed Iraq sought Uranium, was proven wrong, and his closest aide disclosed the identity of a CIA agent who specialized in WMD in time of war in order to discredit Wilson, who had proven Bush wrong...or a knowing liar.

Rove is a traitor. He has aided and abetted the enemy by directly exposing an operative of the CIA who worked as a NOC, which means she had no diplomatic protection while undercover. All her contacts and assets in other countries--intelligence assets in the area of WMD--are now compromised. This has undercut our ability to fight the war on terror and prevent the proliferation of WMD into terrorists' hands.

Rove is a traitor.
Rove is a traitor.
Rove is a traitor.
And those who cover for him are traitors as well.

And don't take my word for it. Go visit Bloomberg News for their take on things--hardly a left-wing bastion.

It's Not Partisan Hype: Rove Was and Is a Threat to America's Security

When yours truly was doing his duty during the Cold War in a classified position, among the things emphasized in the non-technical part of the training was the absolute necessity of remaining silent about the mission, the people doing the mission, and anything at all in any way connected to the mission. The reasons for this were simple. Just as we pieced together seemingly disconnected bits of information into usable wholes, so were our adversaries doing the same. A question about what one did or who one knew could be innocent, or could be the normal data collection that most intelligence operations is made of. A name here, a location there, measure some antennae on a building, observe the comings and goings of people, and before you know it, you've figured out exactly what some intelligence entity is up to and you can now work to thwart their mission.

So when it came to light two years ago in Bob Novak's column that two White House officials had exposed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, I naturally assumed that this would be one screwup that would not be countenanced by a White House which was staking its entire being on a war on terror. After all, exposing someone in intelligence operations, even someone who is not on a covert mission, is a very serious act, and had I or one of my colleagues back in the early 1970s done such a thing, we would have been stripped of our clearances, banished from any access, and likely court martialed for violating clear security rules. There would have been no question, no hesitation, and no spinning. You compromise security, it's over for you. Period.

So here we have the commander in chief of all US forces, a man who is at the top of the pyramid for our security, and his right-hand man, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, tells not one, or two, but at least three reporters that Joe Wilson's wife is in the CIA. However, innocent he may have been of Valerie Plame's darker assignments undercover, and however ignorant he may have been of how useful such information might be to skilled intelligence services, he broke the trust of his position.

Something else that is not discussed by our kneepad press is what might have happened to all those foreign operatives who were connected to Valerie Plame when she was indeed working overseas to investigate WMD. What has become of them? Once her name was out, those known to have socialized with her or been involved in the cover business under which she operated were in deep jeopardy. Fraternizing with an attractive blonde woman in business circles surely gets you attention in the Middle East, and if that blonde woman suddenly becomes known as a CIA agent who did extensive work on WMD in your country, well, you might find your testicles wired up to a telephone generator at some point while your relationship is explored.

That's why Karl Rove is dangerous and even treasonous. I expect him to follow the same code I swore to back in my day, and I also expect him to suffer the same fate I would have had I acted as he did.

Karl Rove is a traitor at worst, or at minimum a political partisan to whom power means more than the security of the American people. He needs to be taken down. And if George W. Bush has known this all along, then he too must go, and I expect to see articles of impeachment drawn up within days.

Of course, with a Republican Congress, that won't happen, which shows you just how corrupt and dangerous that party has become to our entire nation.

Just Two Ways in Which the Bush Criminal Empire Is Ruining Our Country

First, there is this little matter of using the wife of someone who criticized one the administration's lies about why we should invade Iraq, that being that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger. That "someone" was Ambassador Joseph Wilson, once ambassador to Gabon and also a former acting ambassador to Iraq in the run-up to the first Gulf War in 1991, whose actions won him high praise from then-president George H.W. Bush. Now that Karl Rove has been thoroughly fingered as the source for the outing of Wison's wife as a CIA agent (and fingering is going to seem quite pleasant compared to the prodding he'll get as this thing widens...and then there's prison life--ba-da-bum!), the White House spin is shifting to say that Rove did what he did only to discredit Wilson because Wilson was lying about who sent him to Niger and what he saw there.

The single largest charge against Wilson's credibility? That his wife recommended him for the mission. Given his background, it doesn't seem at all like the boss forcing you to take his ne'er-do-well son-in-law as your new supervisor, but that's the spin the White House and its whores keep making. They're intimating nepotism, but unfortunately for them, Wilson was possibly among the very best qualified people in the country for the mission. The White House just didn't like the results, because it directly contradicted their increasingly hysterical claims about Iraq's capabilities. Remember the "mushroom cloud" that Condie Rice and Chimpie kept saying would appear over us if we didn't invade?

So let's just weigh the credibility of these two men. Joseph Wilson is a lifetime public servant who put his own neck in harm's way on behalf of those in his charge, even showing up at a meeting with journalists in Iraq in 1991 wearing a noose around his neck. "If you want to execute me, I'll bring my own fucking rope," Wilson was reported to have said, staring down Hussein who had considered taking embassy personnel hostage. Wilson was also, as mentioned, ambassador to Gabon, and was familiar with the people, the culture, the politics, and the officials who were in a position to know something about their uranium supply and who might be in the market for it. He had also served as President Clinton's national security advisor on African affairs. He has had a stellar career, been honored by Republicans and Democrats alike, and has demonstrated courage under fire.

Then there is Karl Rove, fired by George H.W. Bush from his campaign in 1992 for leaking material to (surprise!) columnist Rovert Novak. He is known for his ruthless campaigns against Republican and Democratic opponents alike, the apotheosis of which was perhaps the smear campaign that took down John McCain in the South Carolina primary in 2000, after McCain had wiped the floor with Bush Jr. in New Hampshire. Rove's brilliance and "total war" approach in any campaign has proven quite successful for Bush Jr., who by any measure is a second-rate intellect wrapped in an adolescent's temperament. Given Rove's penchant for scorched-earth retaliation against opponents, no one expects Bush Jr. to be the one to put the brakes on.

So if Rove attacks Wilson on the basis that his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame recommended Wilson as envoy to Niger, given his extensive experience and service, how does that discredit Wilson? And since it is Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove (that's Chimpie's nickname for him) doing the leaking of these allegedly damning charges, why should anyone believe him, he who orchestrated the campaign that claimed that John McCain collaborated with his torturers at the Hanoi Hilton while he was a POW?

You make the call. Here's the the Los Angeles Times' Robert Sheer has to say about it:

In the end, though, what Rove's leak and Novak's column really exposed was the depravity of the administration's deliberate use of a false WMD threat and its willingness to go after anyone willing to tell the truth about it.

"Depravity" is exactly the right word.

So now we're in Iraq. And the upshot? The Army is stretching to the breaking point. According Chicago Tribune piece,

According to the RAND study, the strain on the Army is so great that combat units are spending one of every two years deployed on overseas battlefields, instead of one of every three years, as called for in troop deployment guidelines.

These frequent absences from the U.S. and the exposure to combat not only have a negative effect on recruiting but interfere with the Army's ability to train troops in new skills or have them available to deal with contingencies elsewhere.

So are we stronger or weaker now after this ill-conceived war? Are we safer or in more danger?

And this takes us back to the crime that Karl Rove has committed, which is only one of many that were committed in leading up to the greatest, and international crime, of illegal war. Rove tried to suppress through intimidation and denunciation any report that contradicted the desired intentions of the Bushits to invade Iraq.

And even if there are a few of you hanging on to this notion of "pre-emptive war" as legitimate, you might want to take a gander at the U.S. Army website which contains a report by a military historian and analyst.

America will likely be unsuccessful in the war against terrorists through military superiority alone. A doctrine of preemption without a substantial nonmilitary component may well place the United States in a strategic box similar to that of Dulles’s massive retaliation: undertake military operations on the scale of a national invasion or do nothing at all. In practice as much as in policy, America’s defense doctrine must include, as the National Security Strategy outlines, more sophisticated and nuanced diplomatic initiatives and humanitarian programs, efforts designed, in former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s words, “to reduce the underlying sources of terrorist motivation and recruitment.”

With our military stretched to, and beyond, its limits, what seems like the most prudent path? More invasions based on more lies to feed the grandiose and increasingly insane dreams of glory for deserter George "Chimpie in a Flight Suit" Bush?

Now the iron is hot. This administration must be taken down. Bust Rove, impeach Bush, and send the whole criminal gang to the cells they deserve, or to the gallows, if the International Criminal Court dictates that it be so. This is our country they're destroying. It's time to take it back.

"A Climate of Fear"--Is This Our America?

From a Buzzflash interview with former ambassador Joe Wilson, whose wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA operative by Karl Rove, in retaliation for Wilson's blowing the whistle on the Bushit lies about Iraq obtaining yellowcake uranium from Niger:

BuzzFlash: Up until now, hasn't Rove succeeded? His goal and modus operandi is to use any weapon possible to intimidate persons critical of his candidates or elected officials, even if it is harmful to the national interest. Doesn't the acquiescence of the media to the White House spin and the relatively few whistle blowers indicate that Rove's reckless bullying has silenced many people who would otherwise come forth with the truth?

Ambassador Joe Wilson: I have always said that I believed the outing of Valerie was a signal to others that, should they step forward, the White House would do to their families what they did to mine. I have also had a number of journalists share with me their own experiences of being intimidated by senior officials in the White House. We should not be surprised that a climate of fear prevails in Washington.

I don't think that those who stood to defend our nation over our history did so to enable a collection of gangsters to rule through a "climate of fear." Sixteen years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we find our own "leadership" adopting the tactics of that regime in the quest of perpetual power, power to wage illegal war launched on lies and then to silence critics through personal destruction.

Take the country back. Send these criminals to the stockades, starting with Karl Rove. And when he squeals, the whole fucking enterprise is going to unravel, mark my words. Karl thought he was untouchable, a god. But when the rough trade in prison reaches him, he's going to remember what mortality means, and I think he is going to rat out the bunch of 'em.

Uptight Down in Dixie

Since it's Friday, how about something lighter? Here is one reason to get the hell out of the South. I realize that stripping can be an exploitive business, but really--should parents be arrested for giving their son a birthday thrill? After all, he didn't have sex with the woman (which I'm sure he wanted to)--not that that would make any difference, because the age of consent in Tennesee is fourteen, I believe, and young girls that age can be married off to lecherous old dudes with no problem. Anyway,

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A couple pleaded guilty Thursday to hiring a stripper for their son's 16th birthday party and were sentenced to two years probation.

Landon and Anette Pharris, who were charged with contributing the delinquency of a minor, also were ordered to take parenting classes.

The parents hired the stripper to perform at a September party attended by about a dozen young people.

Good grief! You can read the rest of it here.

Forty-two Percent and Climbing: Impeach the Bastard

In a Zogby poll now available there is some really bad news for Bush, but excellent news for the country and the world.

Days after President Bush’s televised address to the soothe the nation’s anxiety over Iraq, the latest Zogby International released a poll finding that 42 percent say they favor impeachment proceedings if the president is found to have misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.

That sounds about right. And this news from the red states isn't going to cheer Chimpie up either:

In the Red States, 36 percent say Congress should use it if the president is found to have lied on Iraq, while 55 percent reject this view

Even with whatever bounce Chimpie thinks he'll get from the London bombing, this is got to have the White House working overtime to distract and coverup the crimes of this administration. He's going down, and it's just a matter of how fast it's going to happen. Well, actually, there is a problem.

First, the mainstream media doesn't seem to think that this is news, as Dan Froomkin notes in his blog for the Washington Post:

But you wouldn't know it from following the news. Only three mainstream outlets that I can find made even cursory mention of the poll last week when it came out.

You also wouldn't know it judging from the political discourse in Washington, but that makes a little more sense. After all, impeachment is for all practical purposes a political act, not a legal one. So with a Republican-controlled Congress that doesn't even like to perform basic White House oversight, it's basically a moot point.

And second, as Froomkin notes, a right-wing Congress won't do its duty to the country that is now mired in an illegal war.

Vietnam becomes Vietnow.

More Tragedy, and Yet More Tragedy

Innocent people killed in London, and it is a terrible, terrible thing to attack people who only happen to live in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hope all of you will remember, even as you commiserate with Londoners after this terrorist attack, that tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have also paid the ultimate price for having committed no sin but being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. The killing of innocent, non-combatants is wrong, period, whether carried out by rogue terrorist groups or governments in the name of anti-terrorism.

That's something that George W. Bush will never understand, and that is why his words from Edinburgh today after the London attack are so offensive and hollow. His sociopathic view of reality prevents him from seeing the awful irony of his declarations, and that is a great danger to us all in this world.

The True Heart of Young Republicanism

Taking their cue from chickenshit chickenhawks George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and countless other right-wing warlovers, young Republicans have learned that hypocrisy and insincerity are valuable assets. This summer, I want all college Republicans to really examine their hearts and see if there isn't the tiniest squib of honesty there that shames them about not throwing their own bodies up for a war for which they have bleated so loudly. As the Army struggles to meet its recruiting goals, it is considering lowering standards regarding criminal background, education, aptitude, and possibly even sexual orientation. This last alteration alone should have the good Republicans flocking to enlist to prevent gay soldiers from protecting their asses, even if conscience can't motivate them.

It's a simple equation, folks. If you support the war and yet do not volunteer to fight it yourself (or, if you are overage, then encourage your children to enlist), you are a hypocrite and a coward and not deserving the spittle that should be sprayed at you from those who have so honorably and selflessly served.

Here are a couple of people who are going in your place, you fucking chickenshits:

Many of those soldiers who have answered the call have come to Fort Jackson, S.C., for training. It's a place none of them really expected to be. In fact, very few expected to be mobilized at all.

"I automatically started crying for about two hours. I couldn't stop, because I knew I was gonna have to leave my babies," says Spc. Carey Trevino, who was called up in August.

She's 31, and has three kids; the youngest, a 7-month-old baby boy. She'll be leaving her children behind when she goes to Iraq for another year and a half.

"I need to serve my country and the call has come out, so I am doing that," says Chief Warrant Officer Margaret Murray, who did her active duty back in the '60s.

She's 55, and 4 feet, 8 inches tall. Her M-16 is almost as big as she is, but that didn't stop her from qualifying as a marksman this week.

Does she find it unusual that the Army is now calling up a female soldier in her 50s?

"No, although I think what they need to look at is our ability to perform in a tactical environment," says Murray. "For myself, I am going to find that a difficult thing to do physically."

Especially if Murray winds up in a place like Fallujah. Does she find that daunting? "Scary," says Murray. "[But] I need to do my job. … I did not retire. And so, now the Army's calling me back to service. And I'm here to do that."

Doesn't that make you feel proud, tough, like a real American freedom fighter?

Chimpie could go a long way toward improving his image if he put daughters Jenna and Barbara up as new recruits. Such a gesture from the "war president" would help stimulate the Republican base to get in the act instead of cowering on the sidelines, shitting themselves that they might be held accountable for the policies they cheerlead. Out of the bleachers, Republicans! Iraq and Afghanistan beckon to you to show your love.

This Land Is Your Land, Our Land, Belonging to ALL the People

This should be our national anthem. HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
words and music by Woody Guthrie

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

Isikoff Confirms O'Donnell's Scoop

Read all about it at Editor and Publisher. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek has corroborated Lawrence O'Donnell's revelation last night that Karl Rove was Matthew Cooper's source; however, I do note that nowhere does it explicitly say that Rove was the key leaker of Valerie Plame's name and status as a CIA operative. If he did, then it gets very, very interesting. The last paragraphs in the E&P piece tells why.

According to published reports, Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the case, has interviewed President Bush and Vice President Cheney and called Karl Rove, among others, to testify before the grand jury.

"The breadth of Fitzgerald's inquiry has led to speculation that it has evolved into an investigation of a conspiracy to leak Plame's identity," the Chicago Tribune observed on Friday, "or of an attempt to cover up White House involvement in the leak."

Iraq increasingly looks like Vietnam, and the Chimpie regime looks like it's found its very own Watergate.

O'Donnell Makes It Clear: It Was Rove

There's no misinterpreting this statement from Lawrence O'Donnell. But why did this have to come out over a three-day weekend? In any case, watch all the players carefully. Rove is clever, and this could be just an elaborate ploy to actually defuse something else. However, my hope is that Rove is as susceptible to his own arrogance and power as other powerful men have been and will bring about his own ignominious and disgracing downfall. Cross your fingers, say your prayers, burn your sage--whatever it takes. I anxiously await tomorrow's papers, as O'Donnell declares

I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.

Coming on the heels of Chimpie's weak Iraq speech last Tuesday, this administration is looking more and more like it's, to borrow from Dick "I Kill Your Kids for Oil" Cheney, "in its last throes."

Oh, Could It, Could It, Could It Be True???!!!?!?!?!?

With the screaming heads on the McLaughlin Group on TV tonight, with me poking at my laptop and not paying a lot of attention, I thought I heard Lawrence O'Donnell say that Time magazine's notes which are being released will corroborate that Karl Rove was the source of the Valerie Plame leak. What? No, too good to be true, maybe he just meant that it could be inferred or something. But then Daily Kos has the link to the transcript of the show and sure enough, I heard right.

Cross your fingers. Is it possible that Karl the Genius is going down?

Imagine Justice This Sweet

Read the following piece from an article about desertion thus far into 2005 which appeared today in the Stars and Stripes, the overseas newspaper of the US military. Think about Crusader Bunnypants aka Chimpie the Warrior as you go.

Questions and answers about military desertion ...
Q: What is the difference between AWOL and desertion?

A: A servicemember who is not officially on leave, and fails to report to his or her training or duty station is Absent Without Leave (or UA, Unauthorized Absence, in the Navy and Marine Corps).

On the 31st day that a servicemember fails to report to his or her training or duty station, the member’s AWOL status changes to Dropped From Rolls (DFR), or desertion.

Q: Does the U.S. military go looking for deserters?

A: No, the services do not have the manpower to hunt down deserters, except in rare instances — such as members thought to possess top-secret information, or who are suspected to have committed a serious crime.

Q: How do deserters get caught?

A: The services send the names of all deserters to the National Crime Information Center, a nationwide database circulated to civilian law enforcement offices and other government agencies. Deserters can be identified by something as simple as a routine traffic stop.

Q: What happens when deserters get caught or surrender?

A: They are “returned to military control” or sent back to their parent service.

Now imagine that someone happens to do a search of the National Crime Information Center's database of deserters and the name George Walker Bush came up. And imagine that because the law is the law, Chimpie is "returned to military control." He wakes up in a bivouac in the Anbar region of Iraq a few days later. Busted back to E1, he is now under the command of an officer whose unit has been patching together armor for their Humvees from scrap salvaged from dumps. Three quarters of the men are wearing body armor sent from family and friends. They also have recently learned of some "irregularities" in Halliburton's accounting.

The platoon sergeant sticks his head in the door.

"Drop your cocks and grab your socks, boys. We're headin' out. Bush, you'll be on point."

How sweet it would be.

Why We Fight . . . for Plutocracy!

It's nice to know that the burden of responsibility for financing the republic has shifted so dramatically to the poorer people among us, just like Jesus would have liked. From the New York Times:

The chances of having a large income but not paying taxes on any of it are growing, according to the data, issued in the Internal Revenue Service's annual report to Congress on well-to-do Americans who live tax free. About one in every 436 high-income Americans paid no taxes in 2002, up from one in 531 in 2001 and one in 1,010 in 2000.

Yes, this is what El Presidente Chimpie means when he talks about the "sacrifice" being "worth it." For his class, giving the ultrarich new means to weasel out of taxes while siphoning off the energies of the poor through an illegal and incompetently run war is the perfect sort of sacrifice that he's used to.

But there's one fatal flaw in Chimpie's scheme, and that's that the rich still are a tiny minority, and as the wheels fall off his wagon in the form of exposure of his lies and shameless rhetoric, more and more average Americans in both red and blue states are thinking that he deserves to be stripped of office.

In Red States (those carried by Bush in the 2004 presidential election), support for impeachment reaches 36 per cent. In Blue States (those where Democratic nominee John Kerry won in the last election), 48 per cent of respondents believe the president should face charges.

The 36 percent in the Red states is quite startling to me, because according to the Bush view, those states contain nothing but gun-wielding, god-fearing, gay-hating, war-loving born agains, and if over a third of them are already calling for Chimpie's scalp, as the revelations and bodies mount, all that wrath they aimed at gay marriage and Terry Schiavo's husband is going to find a newer and juicier target in El Presidente.

Geez, I feel like dancing all of a sudden. And Chimpie is feeling the heat. If you recall, on September 17, 2003, he said, "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th attacks." Yet in his speech on Tuesday, he repeated September 11 over and over and over while supposedly adressing the need to be in Iraq. This, to me at least, is a sign of desperation on his part, because he is trying to reconstruct an appeal to emotion for September 11 to get support for his illegal war in Iraq. But living as he does in his insular little bubble, he doesn't realize that even something as horrific as that attack cannot be squeezed over and over for the same effect. The polls show it. He even dared to trot out the name of Osama bin Laden, who as far as I know is still thumbing his nose at us because Bush's hardon for Iraq diverted necessary resources out of Afghanistan, taking the pressure off bin Laden, al Qaeda's core and the Taliban.

Of course, that only concerns you if you believe Chimpie gives a shit about anything except the continuation of the oligarchy that he was so lucky to be born into. There is no price too great for him to have us pay so long as his class retains power.

"Rebuilding a country after three decades of tyranny is hard, and rebuilding while at war is even harder," he said.

I wonder if he's actually talking about the United States and not Iraq. Of course, what does this child of privilege know about hard work, despite his claims to the contrary?

Have Jenna and Barbara signed up yet? They could at least shovel some rubble or something, you know, as a sign of "sacrifice."

Chimpie Role Models on LBJ

I really am speechless after Chimpie's address Tuesday night. I think his tactic now is to just bore the shit out of us with the same platitudes. His audience has really shrunk, I think, because they get the gist, you know, ruthless killers, freedom, terror, democracy, blah blah blah. When the drinking games become common, you know your speeches are getting too well worn; in fact, wouldn't it be a hoot to have Bush give his speech in front of an arena of people hoisting bottles of tequila at every designated word or phrase?

Anyway, I just can't bring myself to analyze that text yet again. Here's an easier way to do it. Just compare Chimpie's rhetoric to that of Lyndon Johnson's at a point in the Vietnam war when we only had had 400 young Americans killed.

Here's Bush:

As Iraqis grow confident that the democratic progress they are making is real and permanent, more will join the political process. And as Iraqis see that their military can protect them, more will step forward with vital intelligence to help defeat the enemies of a free Iraq. The combination of political and military reform will lay a solid foundation for a free and stable Iraq.

Here's LBJ:

Our objective is the independence of South Viet-Nam, and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves-only that the people of South Viet-Nam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way.

In Vietnam it took 58,000 American lives and between 2 and 3 million Vietnamese. So far in Iraq we have 1740 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead. Vietnam spanned a decade. We're only into our third year in Iraq. In both cases we had been fed terrible lies about the reasons for war, its progress, and our actual goals. LBJ finally decided not to run for office again when he realized that the cat was out of the bag, but Nixon managed to keep it going long enough for the death numbers to double. Chimpie shows no shift in his perceptions, so you'd all best settle back and let the bodies pile up until even the braindead recognize how badly they have been led. And, sadly, history shows us that that is usually a long, long and costly time.

This is what you get when chickenshit chickenhawks get the war mania. A sociopath like Bush isn't even capable of empathy with those who are truly suffering because of his hubris, but he's learned to mouth the words over and over and to ignore anything to the contrary. He's yet to attend a military funeral, but he never shies from standing up the very men and women he is willing to sacrifice as props for his robotic recitations of the same old words.

Better Late than Never, But Not for 1700 Americans or Tens of Thousands of Iraqis

Okay, so now they get it.

A record 57 percent say the Bush administration "intentionally exaggerated its evidence that pre-war Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons," according to the poll.

It was the first time a majority said the administration "intentionally misled" the public, the survey said.

Who knew Americans could be so fallible? Well, P.T. Barnum, H.L. Mencken, and Karl Rove, but only the last one actually was able to translate that into the deaths of so many.

I appreciate that no one likes to admit he's a sucker, so this is actually quite a startling poll, because it means that Americans can no longer rationalize away how baldly they have been lied to and how terribly our brave military has been used.

I'm curious to see what happens after Chimpie prances around Ft. Bragg tonight to try again to abuse our soldiers as a cheap emotional tool to cover his mendacity and incompetence. No president in my lifetime has ever so blatantly hidden behind our armed forces even as he ran from them in his youth or tries to destroy them now.

George W. Bush, America is learning to hate you for the cowardly, ignorant, dishonest shithead you truly are. You can't hide behind our warriors and even Jesus isn't going to cover for you any longer.

This Ought to Make It "Mission Accomplished," eh?

According to Reuters:

As part of a newly honed White House focus on Iraq, Bush will travel to an army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on Tuesday to deliver what his aides are billing as a major speech on the conflict.

Gee, I thought that El Presidente Chimpie thought about Iraq "every day; every single day." You'd think that he'd be "honing" his "focus" on a continuing basis. I hate to be impatient, and patience is a virtue, but since his triumphant landing and prance aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln over two years ago, the crotch-enhanced dress-up queen's message just hasn't seemed to have reached the insurgents . . . or some of his own party.

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

Now, according to Daily Kos, Cheney, as another lying mouthpiece for the whole Bushit echo chamber and propaganda machine, is going after Hagel, which just delights me, given that Cheney is a fucking chickenshit chickenhawk and Hagel is a decorated Vietnam veteran. And even though he doesn't carry the weight of a Chuck Hagel, Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones, a Republican Congressman from North Carolina, has now also turned against Bush's little lying war.

"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong," he is quoted as saying. "Congress must be told the truth."

I wish he'd gone a little farther, adding, "And after Congress gets the truth, we're going to impeach the bastards, remove them from office, indict them on war crimes, and then convict them. It should not be long before they meet their maker at the gallows in the Hague." But still, for the guy who wanted the word "French" excised from American menus, this is quite a turnaround.

Of course, Karl Rove can send his thugs around to "correct" those errant Republicans to keep them in check, but it's going to take more than a Bush charm offensive, with or without the Village People attire, to reverse this:

Barely one in five Americans -- 22 percent -- say they believe that the insurgency is getting weaker while 24 percent believe it is strengthening. More than half -- 53 percent -- say resistance to U.S. and Iraqi government forces has not changed.

On the other side of the world, the sparkling victory given to the Iraqi people fails to impress them.

It is not just the political violence, the bombs and assassinations, and all the security measures taken to suppress them, that bother many people in Baghdad and other badly-hit areas.

It is also straightforward criminality and the feeling that there is no authority controlling the streets.

Perhaps this is what Bush meant while mugging beneath his "Mission Accomplished" banner. In chaos, one finds opportunity. Just ask Halliburton, ask Bechtel, ask the weapons manufacturers. Add to the unnecessary slaughter of Iraqi civilians and the deaths of Americans for a lie the crime of war profiteering and I'd say there's more than enough for these scummy liars to swing from the city gates.

Who Really Hates Our Troops?

Will Durst puts it exactly right:

Okay, get this and get this straight. Criticizing our Government is not the same as criticizing our armed forces. Okay? The same way that criticizing our Government is not the same as criticizing our postal workers. Or criticizing our zoo keepers or our ceramic mosaic tile grout installers. And let me make this clear, I am not in any way suggesting that any of these groups be criticized. Especially the postal workers.

Furthermore, telling the press that you are disgusted by reports of torture does not endanger our troops. You're all so fired up desperate to know what does endangers our troops; I'll tell you what endangers our troops: Greedy, cretinous toad leaders who send them 12,000 miles away to a desert to fight a war based on lies. Lies about the threat, and lies about a phantom desire to negotiate. That's who is responsible for putting our troops in harm's way. The idiots who sent them into this -- and yes, its time to say it out loud -- this quagmire.

Now go read the rest of it, then have a beer (Pilsner Urquell for me) and have a great weekend. Try to have some fun because liberals enjoying themselves in America really pisses off the theo-fascists and neocon shitheads. In fact, see if you can get the phone numbers of some Republican activists in your town, and when you're really feeling good, call some up and tell them how happy it makes you that they are destroying themselves by tying their fortunes to Team Bushit. Those motherfuckers are going down, and going down hard. The right wing is, to paraphrase Dick "Evil but Stupid" Cheney, in its death throes.

See you Monday.

Chickenshit Republicans

The label is fitting if you are a Republican, support the war, but refuse to donate your body or the body of a loved one to be an instrument of the military in fighting the Global War on Terror in Iraq. Not that you don't have a rich tradition of cowardice, allowing others to fight your battles whenever you can. Let's review:

1. George W. Bush - escaped duty in Vietnam by mincing into Texas Air National Guard thanks to daddy's connections; failed to finish service. Wasted a substantial investment in his training when he stopped flying for unspecified reasons. Unexplained absence from duty.

2. Karl Rove - Avoided service to his country through numerous student deferments, but never completed a degree.

3. Dick Cheney - married to avoid draft, then fathered a daughter to avoid draft, used grad school deferment, claiming he "had other priorities." Still using wife and daughter to protect his sorry ass.

4. Donald Rumsfeld - hid from service in Korea by staying in school playing in ROTC. However, unlike most chickenhawks, he actually served on active duty for a while. In spite of this, they let him join the neocon cabal. Has more than earned his stripes by destroying the US Army and Marine Corps.

5. Former Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft - received deferment to teach at SW Missouri State in business education.

6. Paul Wolfowitz, did not serve
7. Richard Perle, did not serve
8. Bill Kristol, did not serve
9. House Majority Leader Tom "Giant Flying Cockroach "Delay - avoided the draft, claiming that minorities "had all the good jobs" in the army.
10. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - avoided the draft, did not serve.
11. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist - did not serve.
12. Rick "Man on Dog Sex" Santorum, R-PA, third ranking Republican in the Senate - did not serve
13. Jeb Bush, Florida Governor - did not serve.
14. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich - avoided the draft, did not serve but still defends Vietnam action.
15. Rush "Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy" Limbaugh - used his anal cyst to escape service during Vietnam and still relies on it as the source of his lying, vitriolic radio presence which has proven popular with similarly afflicted, i.e. shit-for-brains, Americans

You get the idea. For a more complete list visit Chickenhawk Central.

Jonah Goldberg of The National Review is the poster boy for today's chickenhawks. He wrote,

I think that war with Iraq is necessary to save lives in the long run. I think that those who are opposed to toppling Saddam are risking American (and Arab and Israeli) lives too.

Soldiers will die in any war, that's why they call it war.

Then he wrote, without the slightest shame,

As for why my sorry ass isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my ass is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.

Yes, that's so sad, Jonah. God knows that no men or women in their thirties who can't afford lost income or have kids are in the military.

So you've got plenty of support and solidarity with your leadership, and from the accounts I've heard, Operation Yellow Elephant has yielded no volunteers for Iraq from all you College Republicans, so I applaud your consistency in cowardice and hypocrisy.

Chimpie, Karl and Rush are so proud of you for not showing them up as the big yellow 'fraidy cats that they are. Cowardice--a proud and continuing neocon tradition.

Alternative Service for Republican Warriors

All right, I know that despite your tough talk, some of you are frightened little squirrels, so I want to give all of you Young Republicans and College Republicans who just can't bring yourselves to tangibly contribute to the Global War on Terror by actually signing up for the military a different option: Just take a one-month vacation to Iraq outside the so-called "Green Zone." You don't have to go through basic training, or advanced infantry training, don't have to get your head shaved, don't have to wear fatigues or obey orders. Just take a 30-day tour of Iraq. Based on Dick Cheney's knowing affirmation of the last throes of the insurgency, by the time you get there, it should be the great undiscovered cool locale for swinging right-wingers. Be a trendsetter!

Your president is triumphal in his optimism, and it is more than two years since "Mission Accomplished," so you should book now to get the exit row seat. You can make reservations at Air Gorilla.

Good Job, Chimpie! Making America Safer, part 73

I can't wait to hear the rightwing nutfucks rationalize or refute this:

The CIA believes the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better-trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, a U.S. counterterrorism official said on Wednesday.

Comforting, no? El Presidente Chimpie has managed to make the world less safe and the US less safe while bankrupting the treasury and getting America's best killed for no good reason. The little deserter chimp, the self-proclaimedd "war president" (that rancid ejaculation swallowed like a good whore should by Tim Russert on Meet the Press), the "Mission Accomplished" dress-up artist with the potato in the crotch of his flight suit, this inbred cretin has managed to make every goddamned thing worse.

But with one exception. I do want to be fair. The "No-Call" legislation, banning unlimited phone solicitation, did pass on his watch. Good job.

How many ways can you spell "failure"?

The Free Ride Is Over, Young Republicans

If you voted for Chimpie and you're between the ages of 18 and 39, then your country needs you right now! I won't quibble about which branch of the service you choose, unlike Jesus' General who thinks you all should join the infantry, but you do need to sign up.

Yes, I know Chimpie is your hero, but just because he deserted his post in Alabama doesn't mean it's right. Get your ass down to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, or Coast Guard recruiter right this minute, or you forever forfeit your right to claim to be a patriot. Real patriots aren't afraid to lay their own lives on the line, unlike your current heroes, for example, Dick "I had other priorities" Cheney, Tom "the minorities had all slots" DeLay, and Rush "What do you mean you can't tell where my anal cyst ends and I begin?" Limbaugh.

And yes, I'm a vet, assholes, 1971-74, so my money is where my mouth is. Trust me, you will make those recruiters so very happy and you'll get to play with the latest in weaponry and maybe even kill some non-Christians! Doesn't that make your little soldier stand at attention?

Chimpie: Addicted to Lies

Bush is out on the road now, trying to do for his criminal Iraq war what he imagined he could do for Social Security destruction, and probably with the same result. That is, he is going to lie his ass off even as it contradicts his own words. This is what he said in his radio address this weekend:

"We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.

Now you'll note that Karl Rove has Chimpie do a smart thing here. He doesn't say "Iraq" even though that's exactly what he means, because if he's challenged by the kneepad press (unlikely) he can say, "What I meant was we went to war in Afghanistan because we were attacked." But of course what the presidential monkey's handlers want is that the Americans who haven't yet found out that there was no connection between 9/11 and Iraq will once again go to the mat on that mistaken and, frankly, boneheaded belief. But that's how the Bushits got into power--by playing to the dumbest fucks in the country. If any of you dumbfucks are reading this (doubtful, since most are illiterates, apparently) please read the following words from George W. Bush himself, and then burn them into your fucking forearm so you won't forget. This is from Septermber 18, 2003, okay? Got it? Pay attention. Now move your lips along if you have to.

President Bush said there has been no evidence that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, disavowing a link that had been hinted at previously by his administration.

"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," the president said yesterday after a meeting at the White House with lawmakers.

In the following paragraph from the same Washington Post article, we are reminded of the fact that this conflation of 9/11 and Iraq is an old tactic.

In stating that position, Bush clarified an issue that has long been left vague by his administration. On Sunday, Vice President Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that success in Iraq means "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

A Washington Post poll last month found that 69 percent of Americans thought it at least likely that Hussein had a role in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Polling experts said Americans held that view mostly because of an instinctive suspicion of Hussein, but Democrats and some public opinion experts said Bush and his aides exploited that impression by implying a link.

Yes, at one point 69 percent of the American public swallowed that fucking lie, and now how many additional unnecessary deaths have there been because of it? How many impeachments? How many of these criminal motherfuckers under war crimes tribunal in the Hague? And is Bush backing off one bit, admitting a mistake, shifting policy? No, he's trotting out the same line of argument and hoping that his blowjob friends in the mainstream media will once again repeat the words without question, analysis, or really any rational and responsible journalistic investigation at all.

Fools, fools, and fools. It makes me want to puke. Because in this report, we just get the White House lies, with no goddamn refutation of the facts that Bush once again hopes he can obscure by just lying and lying and lying.

These people have no honor, no shame, no scruples and no crime is too large for them to commit to hold onto power. History will record this as a dark age in American history, when evil men held sway over a gullible people to commit one of the great crimes of modern history, all in the name of power and oil and a tiny elite of cronies who should spend eternity twisting on a spit over Satan's barbecue.

Yet still I have hope that ultimately justice will be done and these bastards will be known for the scum that they are for all time and generations to come.

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.

Dean Speaks Truth But Cowardly Dems Side with Their Elite Corporate Cash Brethren

Gee, I guess Howard Dean speaks the truth that the Republican Party is a party of white Christian men. Eighty-seven percent of them are white and Christian. Ninety-nine percent of ALL Republican legislators across the entire nation are white, and the vast majority male, even in Texas with a 47 percent minority population. Americablog's John Aravosis has more from the book The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America by Dr. John Sperling.

So will this cause Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi to reconsider their traitorous statements distancing themselves from John Dean even as he speaks factually? Don't count on it. Remember, it's not about truth but about power, and the hacks who have lost the White House and the Congress and now the judiciary to the theo-fascist wing of the Republican Party are desperately trying to hang on to their tiny remaining shred of power. If that means betraying the working people they are claim to represent, not to mention decency, truth, and the American way, well, they've been inside the country club. They're not going to shake their sucking mouths off the teat of corporate cash and walk out through those gilded gates and shed their special privileges and to mingle and be responsible to the rabble that is us. Are you kidding? They're clinking glasses with their Repug pals and having a good laugh.

Inside the beltway, there is only one party, and it ain't yours or mine.

Where's Superman when you really need him, anyway?

Lying Liars and the Cowardly Cowards Who Blow Them

Good Lord! Read this excerpt from a press forum with the New York Times' Elizabeth "I Can't Lose My Elite Status!" Bumiller and USA Today's Susan Page. It explains what we mean by "kneepad press."

Here's my favorite part, which sort of sums up Ms. Bumiller's identification with her, and Georgie W's, class of powermongers and servants of fascism:

That’s why it’s very hard to write those, because you can’t say George Bush is wrong here. There’s no way you can say that in the New York Times.

Yes, it is taken out of context, so go read the exchange at the link above. But it just kills me that Bumiller gets indignant with the audience for challenging her authority. Of course, she well understands that one does not get to be an elite reporter with the corporate-serving NY Times by challenging authority, even in an alleged democracy with a Constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press. Of course, as I've said before, the right to a free press does not require the press to actually behave as if it is free.

Liars, cowards and whores! Oh, my!

What Makes the Democrats So Gutless?

George W. Bush is the most vulnerable president in my lifetime (over half a century, if you must know). When he speaks publicly, as with Tony Blair this last week, one gets the impression of a cartoon character who has been shot full of holes who insists that he's fine. Then, when he drinks a glass of water, it comes streaming out of him in all directions. This presidency is like a sieve when it comes to truth or integrity or faithfulness to the American people--it doesn't hold water. The question is, then, why the fuck don't the Democrats make hay and start taking back our government?

We've had to watch Dems like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who should be leading the assault, backing away from the only Democrat who seems to understand that attacking means being aggressive instead of assuming the kneeling position with hands held up in contrition. It's disgusting. So why are the Dems so weak-kneed?

They're in the club, that's why.

One of the interesting things about colonialism was the fact that after the European powers left Africa, for example, many leaders who emerged in those countries were horribly corrupt and bad news for their people, which seems puzzling, particularly when many of these leaders had come through oppressive colonial experience themselves. But what had happened to too many of them was that by the time they had gained power, they identified more with their elite white European counterparts than with the common people who they claimed to represent. Emperor Bokassa, Idi Amin and Sese Seko Mobutu are a few prime examples of this.

Now the Democratic Party in the United States once may have really been the party of the working class, but that was long ago. Now that someone like Howard Dean has the courage to go after the Republicans for the disaster that they are for this country, for the bigotry that grows from the extreme right-wing theological fanatics who have seized control, and for the corruption, cronyism and lies that this administration have made standard operating procedure, we can see the Democratic Party "leadership" for what it is--just another face of the elite class that runs this country and identifies with the working people only when they can be exploited for money or votes, but who have otherwise been abandoned in favor of the inside-the-beltway daisy chain that constitutes the ruling class in this country. Like the post-colonial leaders who had had too much of the good life under their masters, these folks, while mouthing words to soothe their betrayed constituency, are more frightened of losing the key to the executive washroom that the theo-fascists now control than they are of upholding the traditions and responsibilities of an opposition party.

They're traitors to their class. They disgust me.

The Welcome We Got

Arriving at Berlin Tegel airport for our European vacation, we were required to fill out no forms, make no declarations, and were issued no warnings about anything we might do or the official reaction thereto. When we crossed the border from Germany to the Czech Republic, a pair of officials representing each nation passed through the train for passport checks, but again, no forms, no warnings. So imagine my amusement at returning to my home country.

We were scarcely out of British airspace (after transfer from Prague at Heathrow) when the forms and regulations for entry in to the United States were introduced. In the seatback pouch before each passenger was a color-coded card explaining which immigration form non-citizens, non-greencard-holders and a few other categories needn't fill out, but those in the other categories had better have a grasp of boolean logic to figure all the "ands" and "ors" that directed them to either the white or the green form. But hell, what do I care? I just had to fill out a customs declaration. Easy. Just remember everything spent on goods coming back into the country, their itemized costs, etc. Fine.

But then there was this interesting bit of text written as the welcoming words to returnees and visitors alike, long before we had even set foot on the soil of the United States of America:

Please ensure you are in possession of the right form and have completed it correctly before arrival, failure (sic) to do so could result in a fine and cause you substantial delay on arrival in the USA.

Isn't that great? Aside from the comma-spliced sentence (which only embarrasses me in my role as an English teacher), I love the fact that folks start getting official threats of fine and detention before they even enter the country!

Welcome to America, where you can't even drink a beer on the sidewalk in front of your own house (open container laws) and where you still take off your shoes before boarding (not required in Prague or London, interestingly enough, since Richard "Shoebomber" Reid flew from Europe). I shouldn't bitch about the shoe thing though, because the "see through your clothing" X-ray glasses will soon eliminate that need.

I know I may seem petty for pointing this out, but the small things like this are manifestations of a fundamental view of the world, and I am sad to say that the "Land of the Free" seems far more obsessed with correct behavior and a continuous awareness of the presence of law and law enforcement than other places I have visited and lived. The tragedy is that it doesn't have to be this way.

A Nation of Atheists and No Devils in Sight

A week in Berlin, then a week in Prague was just about right for calming down. I got to drink decent beer, eat far too much schinken with wonderfully stinky Tilsiter cheese and Danish butter on black bread and reacquaint myself with Central Europe after far too many years. My internal clock is still not synched with local time here at home, and I yearn for more of those stinky sandwiches so I'm not yet anywhere near ready to reengage with the disasters that the Bushits are visiting upon the world, but there was something in Prague that really intrigued me.

You see, according to The Economist's annual fact book, and corroborated by Czech sources, over 85% of Czechs self-identify as atheists. Yet while there, probably much to the surprise and consternation of the American religio-fascists who read this, I witnessed no demons pouring like a pestilence from fissures in the streets, there was no mass bloodletting, and what you might expect to be more like a scene from a Hieronymus Bosch painting was quite the opposite. Women walked alone on late-night streets, children romped in city parks, the mail and phones and Internet worked, neighbor greeted neighbor and stranger alike, people enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather by dining alfresco and with no compulsion to eviscerate or defile the innocent. If the Rapture Index was in the "Heavy Prophetic Activity" range, just three points below "Fasten Your Seatbelts," the Czechs didn't seem concerned. For a country with so much vulnerability, not believing in invisible cloud beings and all, you'd think that Satan would be taking advantage of the absence of righteousness to get a head start on his reign of brutality. It was positively civilized, I tell you.

It's not like they haven't gotten the Word, of course. The Thirty Years' War started in Prague after all, and this part of Europe has had plenty of exposure to Catholic and Protestant fanaticism alike. But the good Czech people have simply opted out, and they aren't scared. What I want to know is why is James Dobson not doing something about this sinkhole of nonbelief, because it seems to completely refute his thesis about the only path to righteous living and being. Doesn't it bother him that there is a whole country that rejects his theology, and in fact all theology as the superstitious remnants of an earlier and far darker time? And these folks are not afraid to clearly and publicly declare this refusal of the Blood of the Lamb, which really must shave the buzz of the saved who await the front row seat for witnessing the unending torments of the rest of us when Christ returns. As Bill Moyers has observed, these loving, gentle people wet their pants at the prospect that come the Rapture, they "will be transported to heaven where, seated at the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents writhe in the misery of plagues—boils, sores, locusts, and frogs—during the several years of tribulation that follow."

But the Czechs just don't give a fuck. It was lovely, simply lovely to be among such people, even if only for a week. And the beer is divine and cheaper than soft drinks. Baby, the Rapture done already come!

Back in the Good Old USA

After a lovely week in Berlin, a second in Prague, it's home to the compound feeling a little too mellow, perhaps. After a self-imposed virtual news blackout, I may just mellow away completely. Ah, but tomorrow's Sunday and I'm sure a glance over the morning papers should end this blissful interlude, but who can tell? Perhaps my spleen is at last vented to the point of complacency, lethargy, boredom, apathy, and I can now turn the corner to stoogedom with an empty skull and an idiotic grin on my face.

We'll see.

Does This Make You Feel Proud?

Remember when Rush Limbaugh claimed that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were nothing more than the equivalent of fraternity hazings? I defy that fat, lying, morally bankrupt, anal-cyst-picking, drug addicted fuckwad to read this and claim that it's just the equivalent of fraternity hazing. And tell the Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy that it's not leftie propaganda; it's extracted from a 2000-page Army report, dig? Here's a sample that makes me, as a veteran, physically ill.

One captain nicknamed members of the Third Platoon "the Testosterone Gang." Several were devout bodybuilders. Upon arriving in Afghanistan, a group of the soldiers decorated their tent with a Confederate flag, one soldier said.

Some of the same M.P.'s took a particular interest in an emotionally disturbed Afghan detainee who was known to eat his feces and mutilate himself with concertina wire. The soldiers kneed the man repeatedly in the legs and, at one point, chained him with his arms straight up in the air, Specialist Callaway told investigators. They also nicknamed him "Timmy," after a disabled child in the animated television series "South Park." One of the guards who beat the prisoner also taught him to screech like the cartoon character, Specialist Callaway said.

Eventually, the man was sent home.

And I don't buy the Pentagon's bullshit that these are rogue warriors. This shit has official sanction, heavily implied when not explicitly ordered. That's how criminal regimes operate. One of the legacies of the Stalin regime is that Old Joe never actually signed a death warrant or any order explicitly calling for the death or imprisonment of enemies. His subordinates understood what they'd better do . . . or else. Since the Bushits are known for their extreme adherence to loyalty above everything else, what might be the likely outcome from El Presidente's utterances about prisoner treatment?

The platoon had the standard interrogations guide, Army Field Manual 34-52, and an order from the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, to treat prisoners "humanely," and when possible, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. But with President Bush's final determination in February 2002 that the Conventions did not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda and that Taliban fighters would not be accorded the rights of prisoners of war, the interrogators believed they "could deviate slightly from the rules," said one of the Utah reservists, Sgt. James A. Leahy.

"There was the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war, but nothing for terrorists," Sergeant Leahy told Army investigators. And the detainees, senior intelligence officers said, were to be considered terrorists until proved otherwise.

Voila! Bush is responsible for what happens under his watch, especially if his personal determination empowers his subordinates to commit war crimes.

He's bought himself and his cronies a ticket to the Hague as far as I am concerned.

Off to Get a Look Outside America

I don't know if anyone will notice, but for my one or two kind readers, I'm taking a research trip to Berlin and Prague over the next two weeks. The first part of the research is to give me the means to finish a short story collection about the Cold War. The second part is to get a perspective on the United States through the eyes of people not under the steady barrage of Michael Jackson coverage and surrounded by religious extremists trying to destroy the world before God summons them to his right hand in the Rapture. And third, perhaps I'm scoping out a home for future exile.

The Rapture Index, by the way, stands at 149, which means, according to Rapture Ready's website:

Rapture Index of 85 and Below: Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 85 to 110: Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 110 to 145: Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 145: Fasten your seat belts

So tighten that sucker down, although if God is going to yank you out of your clothes, your toupee, your gold fillings and your pec implants, I don't see the need for a seat belt, but maybe I'm taking that warning too literally. Of course, that's the whole point for these folks, the "literal word of God," right? Well, they're full of shit, to put it bluntly. Here, from Matthew 24:35, they understood this much :

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

But they conveniently ignore the next verse, Mattew 24:36, which they also must take literally to be consistent, and of course we all know how consistency is a hallmark of the theofascist right wing, yes?

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

No man and no angel know when God will bring the apocalypse, but please, please don't be a dick and spoil the fun of the Rapture Ready people, or puncture the false piety and pretended belief of the likes of Bill "Cat Killer" Frist, or Tom "Giant Flying Cockroach" DeLay or George "I'm a Lying, Simpering, Costume-Wearing Poser" Bush, who play on the hopes and fears of the ignorant to execute their monstrous plans for our country. The apocalypse they will someday experience, if God is indeed just, will be something beyond their most terrible nightmares. And if it buys me a few more turns on the fiery spit over the eternal flames of Satan's blackest pit, I'm still going to gloat when it happens.

Don't spoil the surprise. Get 'em, God!

I'll be blogging as much as I can from Berlin and Prague whenever an internet cafe with good coffee or excellent beer opens upon my path, provided the money holds out, so look for firsthand reports from the former frontier of the Cold War. Since my time there in the 1970s, I am anxious to see if it is still true that "Berlin bleibt doch Berlin."

Newsweek Should Tell McClellan and His Boss Bushie to Fuck Themselves, a la Emperor Cheney

So Newsweek magazine published a story that may (according to Scottie "Mynah Bird" McClellan) or may not (according to Gen. Richard Myers, head of the Joint Chiefs) have contributed to riots in Afghanistan that left 17 people dead. The Bushit administration is going all out nuts on this story, screaming about a disputable and quite indirect effect while still playing us all for suckers when confronted with lies and crimes that have killed tens of thosands of Iraqis, over 1600 Americans, and tens of other coalition soldiers, not to mention while concurrently destroying our credibility worldwide, bankrupting the country, and appealing to a core of the most bigoted extremists in the country.

Am I to believe, then, that an erroneous story about flushing a book down a toilet is more damaging to the US image in the Muslim world than an illegal war, the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Muslims, the systematic and widespread torture of Muslims, many of whom arrested and detained with no due process, in addition to the many treaties pissed upon (Kyoto, ABM, etc.), attempts to jam John "I'm a Fucking Maniac and a Liar" Bolton into the UN, and on and on and on. A few inches in Newsweek merit more attention from the White House than all of that as damaging to our image abroad.

I would say that this in itself is equally, if not more, damaging to our image abroad, because now they know we're a totally deluded nation lacking any sense of proportion or responsibility for anything while we swing our considerable weight arbitrarily around the globe leaving death and rubble in our wake.

But getting back to what may have happened at Guantanamo with regard to the copy of the Koran, Molly Ivins reminds us of what conservative Andrew Sullivan wrote earlier this year:

On Jan. 9, 2005, Andrew Sullivan, writing in The Sunday Times of London, said: "We now know a great deal about what has gone on in U.S. detention facilities under the Bush administration. Several government and Red Cross reports detail the way many detainees have been treated. We know for certain that the United States has tortured five inmates to death. We know that 23 others have died in U.S. custody under suspicious circumstances. We know that torture has been practiced by almost every branch of the U.S. military in sites all over the world -- from Abu Ghraib to Tikrit, Mosul, Basra, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

"We know that no incidents of abuse have been reported in regular internment facilities and that hundreds have occurred in prisons geared to getting intelligence. We know that thousands of men, women and children were grabbed almost at random from their homes in Baghdad, taken to Saddam's former torture palace and subjected to abuse, murder, beatings, semi-crucifixions and rape.

"All of this is detailed in the official reports. What has been perpetrated in secret prisons to 'ghost detainees' hidden from Red Cross inspection, we do not know. We may never know.

"This is America? While White House lawyers were arguing about what separates torture from legitimate 'coercive interrogation techniques,' the following was taking place: Prisoners were hanged for hours or days from bars or doors in semi-crucifixions; they were repeatedly beaten unconscious, woken and then beaten again for days on end; they were sodomized; they were urinated on, kicked in the head, had their ribs broken, and were subjected to electric shocks.

"Some Muslims had pork or alcohol forced down their throats; they had tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Koran; many Muslims were forced to be naked in front of each other, members of the opposite sex and sometimes their own families. It was routine for the abuses to be photographed in order to threaten the showing of the humiliating footage to family members."

The New York Times reported on May 1 on the same investigation Newsweek was writing about and interviewed a released Kuwaiti, who spoke of three major hunger strikes, one of them touched off by "guards' handling copies of the Koran, which had been tossed into a pile and stomped on. A senior officer delivered an apology over the camp's loudspeaker system, pledging that such abuses would stop. Interpreters, standing outside each prison block, translated the officer's apology. A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans."

And by the way, Newsweek's source for their story, remember, was a government source.

I'm leaving for Berlin and Prague in a few days. I'm very interested to hear how Europeans view the ravings that pass for discourse in this country. I have the feeling that my little research trip is going to make my contempt for the mainstream media in this country so much greater that I may come back in an apoplectic state needing serious medication It is likely that my blog entries will be even more incomprehensible ravings. Consider yourselves warned.

Oh, and if you are one of those so offended by the Newsweek article, why don't you first weigh your outrage as if you were a Muslim: Newsweek mistake or tens of thousands of corpses. Come on, get that little peabrain working on it. Can you see the difference?

Back in the Saddle

Your pal Olaf, that is, I (and I shan't use the third person anymore, although it is tempting to adopt that style) have been off securing some semblance of a financial future by working across the divide between art and science. Yes, I've taken on a consulting job, which bangs the rust off some old technical joints and also will refuel the slowly depleting bank account. Although I'd thought I'd turned away permanently from the world of software engineering in late 2001 (terminal burnout combined with the tech implosion), an offer that I can't refuse and which will actually be fascinating and challenging work has plopped into my lap, thanks to an old friend whose generosity extends to giving me a chance to rehone my chops techwise.

So in the intervening days, I've been somewhat inattentive to the news, hustling around getting information, gear, and stuffing information into my noggin that actually will make me some money, as opposed to this solitary ranting that I send into the blogosphere in the hope that someone somewhere might actually read it. Then, after returning from a long day in the Big City, I happened to catch a rebroadcast of Bill Moyers' address last Sunday to the National Conference on Media Reform which had met in St. Louis. Watch this. Read the transcript. All the ranting I have made about mainstream media and how it has been coopted by power to oppress the working people is expressed by Moyers in such an eloquent, logical, and even entertaining manner that I have nothing to add. Here's a sample:

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.

You're going to hear a lot about this. Mr. Moyers is not going to retire quietly. He recognizes the danger we are in and he knows its source.

This speech is going to go down in history as the watershed moment for the left, and even more importantly, for the beginning of the end of the theofascist extremist attempt at a coup. Mark my words.