How many people have to ask before a certain someone recognizes reality?
The United States must provide a "very clear timeline" to withdraw its troops from Iraq as part of an agreement allowing them to stay beyond this year, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Sunday.
Moqtada mentioned it a couple of days ago.
Not that we can trust him, but there seems to be a trend developing.
Barack and Sadr
Sittin' in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G....
Because they both want timetables, of course:
Anti-American Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr would dissolve his Mehdi Army militia if the United States started withdrawing troops according to a set timetable, a spokesman said.
Of course, W has himself a new term lately:
U.S. President George W. Bush has refused to set a firm timetable for withdrawing 144,000 American troops from Iraq, but spoke last month of a general "time horizon" for a pullout.
Because, to paraphrase Jon Stewart, you can always move toward the horizon, but cannot actually reach it.
Oh, and here's another Iraq Update from the same article:
A car bomb in the northern town of Tal Afar killed 21 people and wounded 72, police said, an attack that demonstrated the potential for violence that persists in a country that has become far more peaceful over the past year.
Police said the bomb struck a crowded vegetable market. The town is near the city of Mosul, in an area where U.S.-backed Iraqi forces have launched a crackdown on al Qaeda Sunni Arab militants in recent months.
U.S. forces said 15 people were killed and 50 wounded.
Seriously, it's time to get out from between these people.
(Tip to Crooks and Liars!)
David Kilcullen did a little writing:
After nearly seven years of costly strategic ignorance in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a coming handbook written mostly by a former top aide to Gen. David H. Petraeus seeks to instruct senior civilian policy-makers about the complexities of counterinsurgency.
"Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers" takes the lessons learned by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan and elevates them to the highest levels of national strategy. Counterinsurgency is defined in the text as "the politico-military techniques developed to neutralize... armed rebellion against constituted authority."
David Kilcullen was asked for a comment:
More bluntly, Kilcullen, who helped Petraeus design his 2007 counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, called the decision to invade Iraq "stupid" -- in fact, he said "fucking stupid" -- and suggested that if policy-makers apply the manual's lessons, similar wars can be avoided in the future.
I was going to bleep the word out, but I believe it states the truth in such a blindingly obvious way that the poet in me simply could not do it.
A few days ago, QT made a point about the oh-so successful Surge policy in Iraq.
Today, I read this at truthout:
While everyone's looking at Iraq's effect on American politics -- and whether or not John McCain and Barack Obama are converging on a policy that combines a flexible timetable with a vague, and long-lasting, residual force -- let's take a look instead at Iraqi politics. The picture isn't pretty.
Considering the news we hear, whatever could he mean?
There are at least three flashpoints for an explosion, any or all of which could blow up over the next couple of months. (Way to go, Surgin' Generals!) The first is the brewing crisis over Kirkuk, where the pushy Kurds are demanding control and Iraq's Arabs are resisting. The second is in the west, and Anbar, where the US-backed Sons of Iraq sahwa ("Awakening") movement is moving to take power against the Iraqi Islamic Party, a fundamentalist Sunni bloc. And third is the restive Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is chafing at gains made by its Iranian-backed rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).
So, the choice becomes McCain's 100-year-war or simply allow the Iraqis that want to kill each other get to it...
Thanks, W.
Heckuva job there.
Presented with sadness, not comment:
Female bombers struck Kurdish political protesters in Kirkuk and Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad on Monday morning, leaving at least 48 people dead and 249 wounded in one of the bloodiest sequences of attacks in Iraq this year.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, at least 24 people were killed and 187 wounded, after a female suicide bomber blew herself up amid thousands of Kurdish demonstrators who had gathered near the provincial headquarters building, said Brig. Gen. Burhan Tayyib Taha of the Iraqi police in Kirkuk. The bombing immediately set the city on edge. Many Kurds believed the city’s ethnic Turkmen were behind the blast and retaliated by attacking the headquarters of Turkmen political parties.
In the attacks in Baghdad, three women used suicide vests and a bomb in a bag to make strikes just minutes apart, killing 24 people, all apparently Shiite pilgrims marching in a festival, according to an official at the Interior Ministry. The dead included at least four children, one of them an infant, and there were at least 62 other people wounded, according to police officials and witnesses.
Thank Bast the surge...worked?
28 killed in twin suicide attacks in Iraqi city
The twin blasts in Baqouba recalled the scenes of mass terror and grief that were almost a daily routine before last year's steep decline in violence.
In an old tactic of Sunni extremists, two suicide bombers set off explosives among the army recruits Tuesday, killing at least 28. Violence also flared in the northern city of Mosul, where a dozen people died in bombings that targeted the Iraqi police and army.
The attack in Baqouba, capital of Diyala province, came ahead of a planned Iraqi military offensive to halt attempts by militants to regroup in the volatile area northeast of Baghdad.
There's nothing I can say at this point.
They say things are improving in Iraq, yet we still get stories like this:
Two near simultaneous bomb attacks in the Iraqi Sunni city of Fallujah on Wednesday killed six people and wounded 18, security officials told AFP.
The bombs exploded at around 6:30 am (0330 GMT) within minutes of each other near a bank in central Fallujah, the former Sunni rebel bastion in the western province of Anbar.
Those killed included four policemen, a security official said, adding that the second bomb went off as officers were aiding victims of the first attack.
The painfully slow process of progress explained:
Lt. Gen. James Dubik was expected to tell the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that Iraq's security forces have grown by more than a quarter — from 444,000 to 566,000 — since he assumed command of the Multi-National Security Transition Command in June 2007. And, he says, the forces are improving their ability to execute operations on their own.
But the fast-growing force lacks experienced military leaders and the inability to train all of its new recruits, Dubik says.
"As I often said to my command in Baghdad, 'progress doesn't result in no problems, it results in new problems,'" he wrote in prepared testimony for the hearing.
And, well, speaking of progress resulting in new problems:
Alcohol is openly for sale once more in Baghdad. All over the Iraqi capital, drink stores, which closed their doors in early 2006 when sectarian strife was raging, have slowly begun to reopen. Two years ago, al-Qa'ida militants were burning down liquor stores and shooting their owners. Now around Saadoun Street, in the centre of the city, at least 50 stores are advertising that they have alcohol for sale.
The fear of being seen drinking in public is also subsiding.
And that's a good thing. A meeting over drinks could help find the more fundamental people in the mix and allow the Iraqis to conduct their own witch hunts.
And now that these stores have REopened, could a few more people please acknowledge that Iraq under that ruthless megalomaniacal tyrant Saddam was at least not a very fundamentally religious place?
After all, the ruthless megalomaniacal tyrants we spend so much time and money supporting need all the worship they can get. No room for those other gods around, right?
It continues:
A roadside bomb killed three American soldiers and an interpreter north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Wednesday, and Iraqi police reported 14 Shiite gunmen were arrested after fighting south of the capital.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, American soldiers using specially trained dogs sifted through the wreckage Wednesday of an office in Sadr City where a bomb killed 10 people, including four Americans working to restore local government in the former Shiite militia stronghold.
Also Wednesday, U.S. soldiers in Baghdad killed three gunmen who fired on an American convoy that had stopped along the side of the road just west of the city's airport, the U.S. said. No further details were released.
My question of the day is, if the MSM continues to differentiate between religious sects killing each other in Iraq, why don't more people recognize the fact that it's basically a civil war?
I'm just curious.
I already know I'm an idiot, so don't bother commenting on that...
Some quick snippets from the Washington Post:
Two U.S. soldiers were killed and three were wounded Monday when a council member opened fire on them after a meeting in a small town south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
An Iraqi interpreter also was wounded in the shooting in Salman Pak Nahia, which is about 20 miles south of Baghdad, said Capt. Charles Calio, a U.S. military spokesman.
Two Salman Pak residents identified the assailant, who was killed, as council member Raed Hmood Ajil.
Residents Rafi Suleiman, 39, and Abu Dawood said in phone interviews that Ajil, a Sunni tribal leader, opened fire on the soldiers without provocation.
*
Also Monday, the U.S. military announced that a Canadian man working as an interpreter for the U.S. military in Iraq was sentenced to five months of confinement after pleading guilty in the stabbing of a colleague in February.
*
On Sunday, a suicide bomber killed 15 people in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala. In a town north of the provincial capital, 10 members of an Awakening Council, or armed neighborhood watch group, were killed when their office was attacked with mortars Sunday night, according to Lt. Gen. Abdul Kareem al-Rubaie, the commander of the province's security operations center.
I realize that war doesn't always go according to plan. Unfortunately, the people that brought our troops in to this endless meatgrinder didn't really bother with such things as plans in the first place.
And now, thanks to the GAO, the pentagon is learning the cold truth of W's plan - to foist this mess onto his successor:
More broadly, the GAO said the Bush administration has not planned adequately for the end of the U.S. troop build-up that began in early 2007 and is now winding down.
Although administration officials have spoken about goals for Iraq, they have not specified a new strategy to follow the troop buildup, the GAO said.
Who needs a plan when you can skip town?
Starting with the utterly obvious:
THE Iraq war’s defenders like to bash the press for pushing the bad news and ignoring the good. Maybe they’ll be happy to hear that the bad news doesn’t rate anymore. When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it.
The only problem is that no news from Iraq isn’t good news — it’s no news. The night of the Baghdad bombing the CBS war correspondent Lara Logan appeared as Jon Stewart’s guest on “The Daily Show” to lament the vanishing television coverage and the even steeper falloff in viewer interest. “Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier,” she said. After pointing out that more soldiers died in Afghanistan than Iraq last month, she asked, “Who’s paying attention to that?”
As it turns out, a lot of people are paying attention. Not enough, frankly, but the pictures are out there.
Jurassicpork summed it up as frustratingly as possible:
Why didn’t this picture of Sgt. Ryan John Baum lying in his coffin make the front page of the NY Times or the Washington Post instead of the back pages of the Rocky Mountain News? Baum’s widow Dana tells us that her husband desperately wanted to get out of Iraq so he could hold his daughter Leia, born 11 days after his death last May in Iraq, on his chest. The next best thing was to put her picture on him as he lie in state. So, again, why is this prize-winning photograph restricted to a few dying blogs instead of on the august pages of the NY Times or the WaPo? Well, that still wouldn’t have been humanistic as much as subversive or controversial.
We’re not supposed to be reminded that war has consequences, that it involves dead, shattered bodies and living, shattered families. This is why the coffins are not allowed to be photographed as they stream off the transports at Dover Air Force Base, why Senator Joe Biden is not even allowed to meet with and comfort the families, why Bush and Cheney never go to a funeral for a single one of them.
Why Barbara Bush’s beautiful mind can’t be allowed to contemplate ugly images such as a body bags, why the 1000th, 2000th, 3000th and 4000th deaths were just numbers and why makeshift memorials for the troops get mowed down less than a mile from the presidential retreat in Crawford, Texas.
This is what is being done in our name.
A few weeks ago, Kirk sent me an email linking to James Kunstler and his reasonable beliefs about BushCo dissembling us all into Iraq.
This part seemed reasonable to me:
However, the true objectives of the action were still as stated above: to punish an Arab nation for 9/11, to establish a military presence between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and to "secure" a large reserve of oil (not to steal it, but to assure access to buying it). This was an extremely ambitious program in which an awful lot of things could go wrong.
And, as we know now, a great many things have and continue to go wrong in Iraq.
On the other hand, some things seem to be going exactly as planned:
Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
*
The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.
*
The Iraqi Oil Ministry, through a spokesman, said the no-bid contracts were a stop-gap measure to bring modern skills into the fields while the oil law was pending in Parliament.
It's hard to believe, I know, but we've seen it before even if not many remember Smedley Butler, about to be quoted at length:
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
I would normally get snarky at this point, but I'm not in the mood.
We are still in that surge to keep violence down and allow the government "space," aren't we?
These things are still happening:
BAGHDAD — A car bomb set to explode during the busiest time of day killed at least 51 people and wounded 75 Tuesday evening as shoppers were strolling through a Shiite neighborhood market in Baghdad. It was the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in more than three months.
The blast struck a crowded bus terminal near a market in Huriya, a northwest Baghdad district that once had a large population of Sunnis but after the American-led invasion saw horrific ethnic cleansing by Shiite militias and death squads, who killed or drove thousands of Sunnis out.
We uncorked the bottle that led to this, I know, but there's little we can do now but keep our own troops from getting killed...
Time to bring 'em home.
...and may god have mercy on your soul for it:
In a home movie, 1st Sgt. Jeff McKinney sings softly to his new son while his wife, Chrissi, gives the baby a bath. McKinney teases tiny Jeremy about this, his first nude video.
Someday, McKinney says, the family will show off the footage to Jeremy’s first girlfriend.
“Cause that’s how our parents did us,” McKinney sing-songs. “You’ll be 15, 16 years old, and you have your first date ... .”
It won’t ever play out that way, though. The McKinneys made the movie during his two weeks of home leave halfway through what was supposed to be a 15-month Iraq war deployment. He spent the break bonding with his new son and talking to his 18-year-old son, James, about going to college.
But everything changed July 11 in the bright sunshine of Adhamiyah, Iraq. That day, while out on a simple meet-and-greet patrol, McKinney stepped out of his Humvee and yelled.
“F--- this!”
He raised the barrel of his M4 to his chin and squeezed off one shot.
Read the rest here.
Kirkrrt directed my attention over to Clusterfuck Nation, where Jim is giving his take on the recent revelations of Scott.
There is the obvious truth regarding the time after 9/11 and what was going to happen:
However, the true objectives of the action were still as stated above: to punish an Arab nation for 9/11, to establish a military presence between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and to "secure" a large reserve of oil (not to steal it, but to assure access to buying it). This was an extremely ambitious program in which an awful lot of things could go wrong.
And they certainly did. The Iraqis were not grateful for the American occupation. They proved uneducable in the ways of American-style democratic governance. They reverted to a persistent diet of religious-ethnic-and territorial warfare within their own artificially-drawn borders. They regarded their American teacher-protectors as detestable interlopers and blew them up whenever possible. They ran what was left of their economy into the ground, including their oil industry. The incompetence of the US military occupation, its reliance on mercenary security thugs, it's "out-sourcing" important tasks to venal corporations such as KBR, its ineptitude in carrying out the mission of restoring basic electric and water services -- all contributed to the disastrous quagmire that Iraq turned into.
But the real point of Jim's post is a bit later:
For my money, the "we were lied to" chorus only represents the obdurately self-righteous cluelessness in every band of the American political spectrum. We lied to ourselves. We continue to lie to ourselves every day. The US public barely understands the first thing about the energy predicament we're in, and what it means for how we live in this country -- or how we get along with the rest of the world -- and the news media tragically reflects that ignorance. We fantasize about being "energy independent" and still being able to drive to the mall three times a day to eat caesar salads grown on the other side of North America. Get this: we deserve exactly what is happening to us. We might as well keep on lying to ourselves to pretend that we are not descending into a dark phase of our own history. After all, the true basis of American life these days is to feel good about yourself no matter what you do.
It is Jim Kunstler, after all, and it wouldn't be fun for him without an ending like that...
If you're not reading NewsHoggers, you're missing out on some excellence in blogging.
I'm just saying.
For example, today's post about Iraq simply states some realities we, as a nation, hate to face up to:
The Washington Times Post editorial today writes that "the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war" in Iraq, following reports that the month of may saw the lowest US casualty count - 19 - since the beginning of the occupation. Iraqi civilian deaths are down from 2007 highs too - although only to 2005 levels that were sufficient to cause the collapse of Iraqi society - while recent high-profile offensives by the US military and the Iraqi security forces have enabled supporters of the occupation to claim exactly what the WaPo editors are, that the war is being won.
But the war ended in 2003. This is an occupation ,and an occupation is only won when the occupiers go home and the nation is at peace.
The trouble is going to be our collective conscience when we leave and the killing that is natural for a civil war continues in a lopsided fashion.
...but history being what history is, eventually more people will come to realize the truth:
There's a 'war' between Iraqi factions that still hasn't been decided. There's a proxy 'war' between Iran and the US that seems to be a draw with no end in sight so far. Both are part of a combined anarchy of occupation and civil strife that means Iraq as a whole will be traumatised for years to come. Let's not forget that these conflicts are in large part due to the quickly-won invasion and the botched first five years of the occupation. High fives are certainly not in order.
I can only imagine about what the future lunatic fringe will be saying about how the war was lost by the left, etc....
Almost right off the bat, Frank tells me why I'm already bored with Scotty & the book:
There is no news in his book, hardly the first to charge that the White House used propaganda to sell its war and that the so-called liberal media were “complicit enablers” of the con job. The blowback by the last Bush defenders is also déjà vu. The claims that Mr. McClellan was “disgruntled,” “out of the loop,” two-faced, and a “sad” head case are identical to those leveled by Bush operatives (including Mr. McClellan) at past administration deserters like Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, John DiIulio and Matthew Dowd.
So why the fuss?
Why, indeed - Well:
Americans don’t like being lied to by their leaders, especially if there are casualties involved and especially if there’s no accountability. We view it as a crime story, and we won’t be satisfied until there’s a resolution.
That’s why the original sin of the war’s conception remains a political flash point, however much we tune out Iraq as it grinds on today. Even a figure as puny as Mr. McClellan can ignite it.
That's the drum to beat in this election cycle and it's got to be as merciless a drumbeat as the selling of this war used.
Again...Why?
As F. Scott Fitzgerald would have it, we will be borne back ceaselessly into the past. Or so we will be as long as Americans continue to die in Iraq and as long as politicians like Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton refuse to accept responsibility for their roles, major and minor, in abetting this national tragedy.
Bingo, Frank.
We've known it for a while now:
"WE'RE not leaving, so long as I'm the President." There in nine words is the exit strategy for the United States involvement in Iraq. Depending on your viewpoint, it's either a commitment or an admission of defeat.
That's been the sole reason for continuing our occupation of Iraq, regardless of whatever else seemed to happen or not.
And now the intelligence community is backing him up - again:
Previewing the world for the next U.S. president, a top U.S. intelligence official this week predicted that the Bush administration would make little progress before leaving office on top national security priorities including an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, political reconciliation in Iraq and keeping Iran from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.
A regenerated al-Qaeda will remain the leading terrorism threat, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Donald M. Kerr said. Pakistan's "inward" political focus and failure to control the tribal territories where al-Qaeda maintains a haven, he said, is "the number one thing we worry about."
Meanwhile, the misdirected Iraq meatgrinder continues....
It truly is a bit frustrating.
In the U.K., for example:
A citizen's arrest can be carried out under certain circumstances by a member of the public, if they believe a person had carried out a crime, under the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.
The humour comes when you find out the reason I have that paragraph from the story:
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, has escaped an attempted citizen's arrest as he appeared at the Hay Festival.
That's the kind of fun awaiting a few of our current employees in the executive branch if they travel outside of the U.S., I guess.
In my dreams, it could happen within our borders, as well.
You may never have heard of Sheldon Adelson. He's one of the quiet billionaires in the country today.
You may not agree with everything the man has done:
In 2007 Adelson founded Freedom's Watch, a group that advocates America's continued involvement in the war in Iraq, and is run and supported, in part, by former officials of the Bush administration.
I certainly don't in every case.
But the man does, occasionally, have his heart in the right place:
All too familiar with the gambles of war, Jimmy Kinsey, Kyle Riley and a few dozen fellow soldiers landed in the desert. But for these guys this Memorial Day, the most at stake is a few bucks.
The soldiers-turned-high rollers took a private jet to Las Vegas over the weekend for an all-expenses-paid getaway with all the perks normally saved for casinos' richest regulars.
They were greeted at the airport by Wayne Newton, chilled backstage with the guys from Blue Man Group and hobnobbed with Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul who runs Las Vegas Sands Corp. and paid for the trip.
The trip, organized by the Armed Forces Foundation, brought 40 wounded soldiers from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md., to the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
It's a nice gesture, of course, but I would certainly hope that this is not held up as an example of how all of our returning warriors are being cared for.
There is, as Kirk said, still a lot of work to to in that regard.
So let's get on that, OK?
I've never seen South Pacific but Frank has and knows how the stories about war can often be passed from conflict to conflict with only a few changes in details:
Watching “South Pacific” now, we’re forced to contemplate Iraq, which we’re otherwise pretty skilled at avoiding. Most of us don’t have family over there. Most of us long ago decided the war was a mistake and tuned out. Most of us have stopped listening to the president who ginned it up. This month, in case you missed it, he told an interviewer that he had made the ultimate sacrifice of giving up golf for the war’s duration because “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf.”
“South Pacific” reminds us that those whose memory we honor tomorrow — including those who served in Vietnam — are always at the mercy of the leaders who send them into battle. It increases our admiration for the selflessness of Americans fighting in Iraq. They, unlike their counterparts in World War II, do their duty despite answering to a commander in chief who has been both reckless and narcissistic. You can’t watch “South Pacific” without meditating on their sacrifices for this blunderer, whose wife last year claimed that “no one suffers more” over Iraq than she and her husband do.
"...those whose memory we honor tomorrow — including those who served in Vietnam — are always at the mercy of the leaders who send them into battle." That can certainly be a problem once the leaders start showing certain...tendencies.
Have a safe holiday.
Kirk sent me an article:
Audit finds lax oversight in contractor payments
An internal audit of some $8 billion paid to U.S. and Iraqi contractors found that nearly every transaction failed to comply with federal laws or regulations aimed at preventing fraud, in some cases lacking even basic invoices explaining how the money was spent.
Of the money paid during a five-year period — from 2001 through 2006 — $7.8 billion in payments skirted billing rules with some violations egregious enough to invite potential fraud, warned the Defense Department's inspector general.
The findings provided fresh fodder for anti-war Democrats, who say the Bush administration has turned a blind eye to the problem of corruption and fraud by relying too heavily on contractors to manage the war.
Kirk: I disagree with the third paragraph. The administration didn't turn a blind eye, they actively encouraged and fired whistleblowers.
I'm assuming that Kirk meant that the administration actively encouraged the lax oversight and got rid of people pointing out the obvious sacking of the U.S. Treasury.
True enough for me to post that alone, but Kirk probably realizes, himself, that it's all going according to plan.
The class war is over, the rich won, and they will continue their own plan for income and wealth redistribution on their own terms and for their own benefit.
I'm speechless.
It is refreshing to see once in a while. Bob Herbert has been consistently rational through a lot of the insanity, inanity, and horrors of the past few years.
Reading his latest column, Let's Be Serious, from the NYTimes, I had quite a few reactions. If you would like to read the column itself, click on the link and read it (relatively) undisturbed.
So let's take a look at it, shall we? I've gone light/nonexistent on links on this as I was typing somewhat furiously. If you've got questions, you've also got Google.
Regardless of how idiotic and possibly (politically) treasonous the President's words were in Israel yesterday, it has certainly brought about opinion.
Larisa Alexandroyna of The Huffington Post was/is...incensed:
Dear Mr. Bush,
Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable.
...and that is perfectly understandable of a United States citizen. Outrage is healthy and keeps a person focused.
Hell, when an archeologist looks back on this era of our nation, it will hard to dispute her.
But, of course, we live here now, so perhaps a more...objective view is necessary:
No, (probably) even Bush's speechwriters aren't so crass as to make such a blindingly partisan move in the American electoral race when their dummy is acting as Head of State of both Democratic and Republican Americans at a major international event. We need to look beyond purely domestic motivations - and we'll find them in the aspirations and dreams of the neoconservative lobby and their Very Serious Person enablers in the media.
Cernig goes on with his/the theory - A Wink And A Nod - and there is certainly a point to be made there.
My own thought is that the people who have been driving the President so far probably thought they could get away with it - Look at the job they've been doing so far, right? Speaking of the job done so far, I doubt that the Israelis would start OR stop a job that needed doing on the say-so of the United States.
So my verdict remains unchanged through the Knesset-times.
My president is an inarticulate speech-reader trying to live up to daddy's reputation.
...and daddy's reputation isn't all that clean, although admittedly unverified.
Thanks again go to jp at Pottersville:
Here's the Full Interview.