"Dead Fish Day"


Sorry for the slow updates--it's been a surprisingly busy Friday here. From WIIIAI, a link to this op-ed from the Guardian's Simon Hoggart:

The president looked like a hooked fish with its head hammered by a humane angler. But he always does. Yesterday he looked even worse. He has moved from the riverbank to the fishmonger's slab. After the midterms and the Baker report on Iraq (executive summary: "We screwed up. Now let's get out"), he has been called a dead man walking. Yesterday he resembled a dead fish twitching.
As for Tony Blair, his mad staring eye was on view again. It hops from socket to socket when he is under strain; yesterday it was the left eye that stared wildly out.

I followed the Bush-Blair presser on television. This is because I believe that in political reporting, being there is no substitute for watching on TV, like the overwhelming majority of people. And not because the Guardian is too mean to pay my fare to Washington. No way.

Our prime minister looked pretty rough. But he was James Bond at the poker tables compared with the president. At the best of times - and these are not the best of times - Bush finds it hard to find the right words, so he thrashes about in the hope that some will pop into his head, like wasps into a jam jar. (At one point he called the sectarian attacks in Iraq "unsettling". It's a word, I suppose.)

After one long question the president said: "I'm getting older, so you're going to have to repeat the second part of your question."

We can all sympathise. You invade a country, and you're blowed if you can remember why you went in the first place!

His replies grew longer. We were not listening to a coherent argument - instead we were floating down Dubya's stream of consciousness, hitting a rock, bashing into overhanging branches.

Asked if he could admit he was wrong, he began a meandering reply. "I do know we have not succeeded as fast as we hoped. I know that progress has not been so rapid ... I am disappointed by the pace of success."

Alongside Hirohito's concession after Hiroshima - "the war has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage" - we can now add another majestic euphemism, "disappointed by the pace of success".

American presidents tend to be elected through having the right soundbites. But this was sound chewing, like watching some old geezer on his porch endlessly working over the same wad of tobacco.

The two men did have a problem. The Iraq Study Group's report was, from their point of view, a stinker. But they can't say so. The grown-ups have spoken. So they constantly repeated how grateful they were for the Baker report. "I read it," the president told us (What? Even before the pop-up version was out?). "Our guest" - here he waved an arm at Tony Blair, possibly having forgotten his name - "also read it. It is important. It is a report written by a commission. They are busy people, yet they took nine months off, they went to Iraq, they talked to a lot of people ... " He was overwhelmed by their amazing thoroughness.

Through the fog of verbiage it became clear that there were two separate press conferences. The president thinks he can still win. "We are going to prevail. I know we may have to adjust, but we are going to prevail."

Tony Blair believes that now the only key is the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is why he is heading there shortly before Christmas.

The great joy of being a world leader is that there will always be room at the inn. So he can watch cable TV if no one will see him.

It's to be Expected

...when you've got government by dolts.

A couple of stories caught my attention this morning, starting with Krugman's op-ed suggesting that it might not be a bad thing to listen to those (of us) who realized from the onset that invading Iraq was a foolhardy enterprise. This, of course, is in light of the Flip-Flopping of the Wise Men Brigade, who back in 2002 (see Greenwald for more on this) couldn't puff their sagging chests out fast enough in support of Operation Enduring Clusterfuck. Indeed, Attaturk even managed to stomach the Weakly Standard (pun intended) article that inspired Dr. Krugman's opinion piece.

Actually, it DOES provide us with an excellent example of wingnut hubris at its finest.

The other article that I noticed was this report indicating that insurgent activity within Iraq is being funded in part...by our "ally" in the region, Saudi Arabia.

You know, it's genuinely pathetic: Team Bush is so blindly, stupidly loyal--with an emphasis on "stupid." The kingdom is truly playing this administration for chumps. And they're not alone: when the United States government finally comes crawling out of the self-induced abyss they've insisted upon dragging us into, we'll ALL be the worse off for it.

But again, what did we expect? Government by dolts inevitably means you'll have doltish policy. It's unfortunate that such policies aren't merely appendages in theoretical pursuit, but decisions that have real, genuine consequences. The bill WILL come due. And we'll all have to pay in some way...

It's to be Expected

...when you've got government by dolts.

A couple of stories caught my attention this morning, starting with Krugman's op-ed suggesting that it might not be a bad thing to listen to those (of us) who realized from the onset that invading Iraq was a foolhardy enterprise. This, of course, is in light of the Flip-Flopping of the Wise Men Brigade, who back in 2002 (see Greenwald for more on this) couldn't puff their sagging chests out fast enough in support of Operation Enduring Clusterfuck. Indeed, Attaturk even managed to stomach the Weakly Standard (pun intended) article that inspired Dr. Krugman's opinion piece.

Actually, it DOES provide us with an excellent example of wingnut hubris at its finest.

The other article that I noticed was this report indicating that insurgent activity within Iraq is being funded in part...by our "ally" in the region, Saudi Arabia.

You know, it's genuinely pathetic: Team Bush is so blindly, stupidly loyal--with an emphasis on "stupid." The kingdom is truly playing this administration for chumps. And they're not alone: when the United States government finally comes crawling out of the self-induced abyss they've insisted upon dragging us into, we'll ALL be the worse off for it.

But again, what did we expect? Government by dolts inevitably means you'll have doltish policy. It's unfortunate that such policies aren't merely appendages in theoretical pursuit, but decisions that have real, genuine consequences. The bill WILL come due. And we'll all have to pay in some way...

Faith Based Initative


Once again, Team Bush and their crony friends play us ("us," as in "U.S.") for suckers:

An eight-month investigation by the Interior Department’s chief watchdog has found pervasive problems in the government’s program for ensuring that companies pay the royalties they owe on billions of dollars of oil and gas pumped on federal land and in coastal waters...

Oyster has more, including this link to an article that describes the existing method of calculating royalties as an "honor system."

As if there's any honor among that particular gang of crooks.

On Swords and Plowshares


Scout Prime points to a video posted at Ray's site:

Blogger Ray in New Orleans has posted a great video made by Gordon Soderberg from New Orleans Voices for Peace. It features the relief work being done in New Orleans by the Iraq Veterans Against the War.

There are interviews with Iraq and Afghanistan war vets. They questioned why we're fighting in Iraq with so little being accomplished there when so much needs to be done on American soil. In New Orleans the vets group worked on the home of a Vietnam War vet. What I found particularly interesting is that they talk about how therapeutic it is to go to New Orleans and help in rebuilding after fighting in Iraq. As one said it was far more helpful being with his brothers and sisters "to help out our brothers before us" than is talking to therapists about PTSD.

This is a long video (40 minutes) but I'd suggest taking the time to view it.

A Modest Proposal


I think I'd like to see Alan Richman sent on an extended visit to Baghdad, where he can complain all he wants to about ill-prepared chicken and rice...and perhaps claim that there's no such thing as a "Shi'a."

h/t Dr. Morris.

Hey, what was that noise--good riddance?

Wrong on So Many Levels


When I saw Gen. William Caldwell's op-ed in the WaPo where he claims "I don't see a civil war in Iraq" I was tempted to say, "that's because you've got your head in the sand/up your ass/whatever metaphor you want...sometimes pictured like this
:

But then I remembered--today's military has more sophisticated methods to obtain the desired result...and, according to the internets, there's the added bonus of such methods in reducing...or even eliminating...the possibility of...blinking in code.

Note to General Caldwell: your rosy picture might be due to all the blood. Maybe check up on that.

Lind: The Boomerang Effect


Geez...I hadn't QUITE considered the possibility that William S. Lind looks at, although more than once I've posted about the possibility of there being a nascent John Allan Mohammed or Tim McVeigh in the ranks...and now, with recruiting standards being what they are, periodic reports suggest the Mohammeds and McVeighs are sharing barracks space with gang members, white supremicists, etc...well, as Lind notes:

Last week, one of my students, a Marine captain, asked whether I had heard a news report about an "IED-like device" supposedly found near Cincinnati, and if I thought we would soon start seeing IEDs here in the U.S. I replied that I had not heard the news story, but as to whether we would see IEDs here at home, the answer is yes.

One of the things U.S. troops are learning in Iraq is how people with little training and few resources can fight a state. Most American troops will see this within the framework of counterinsurgency. But a minority will apply their new-found knowledge in a very different way. After they return to the U.S. and leave the military, they will take what they learned in Iraq back to the inner cities, to the ethnic groups, gangs, and other alternate loyalties they left when they joined the service. There, they will put their new knowledge to work, in wars with each other and wars against the American state. It will not be long before we see police squad cars getting hit with IEDs and other techniques employed by Iraqi insurgents, right here in the streets of American cities...

The Bush administration, as usual, has it exactly backwards. The danger is not that the "terrorists" we are fighting in Iraq will come here if we pull out there. Rather, American involvement in 4GW in Iraq will create "terrorism" here from among the people we have sent to fight the war there. Well educated in the ways of successful insurgency, they will come home embittered by a lost war, by friends dead and crippled for life to no purpose. Thanks to America's de-industrialization, they will return to no jobs, or lousy "service" jobs at minimum wage. Angry, frustrated and futureless, some of them will find new identities and loyalties in gangs and criminal enterprises, where they can put their new talents to work.

It will, of course, be only a small minority of returning troops who will go this route. But something else they will have learned from the Iraqi insurgents, along with how to make and deploy IEDs, is that it takes very few people to create and sustain an insurgency.

The boomerang effect is a central element of Fourth Generation war. When a state involves itself in 4GW over there, it lays a basis for 4GW at home. That is true even if it wins over there, and all the more true if it loses, as states usually do. The toxic fallout from America's 4GW defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan will be far greater than most people expect, and it will fall most heavily on America's police.

Your sobering thought for the day...

Embarrassing Halitosis...and Car Bombs


Seen at Atrios, a link to other big blogger Matthew Yglesias that pretty much gets it spot-on:

Gates seems to be part of the "mainstream" elite consensus which holds that Iraq is almost certainly doomed, but that we should sort of keep on prosecuting the war for years and years just because it would be embarrassing to give up and, hell, who knows maybe a pony will come along. That sort of thing works, I think, if and only if you regard the war as a total abstraction, rather than actual events happening to actual people.

You know, sort of like ring-around-the-collar, except with thousands of US soldiers killed, tens of thousands of US soldiers wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, hundreds of billions of dollars wasted with no end in sight except for the eventual certainty of disastrous failure...but hey, priority one is...ensuring the policy elites in DC avoid embarrassment. Sort of the political equivalent of a breath deodorant.

Well, I'll admit that something sure does stink...

Recycling Suggestion

It's not like this really got much use anyway, it's plenty full of shit, and it's barely a year old.




Link.

Mr. Gore Goes to Discusses (Today's) Washington


And hits the nail on the head:

(when asked about 9/11 and possible warnings, Gore said):

“That’s a separate question. And it’s almost too easy to say, ‘I would have heeded the warnings.’ In fact, I think I would have, I know I would have. We had several instances when the CIA’s alarm bells went off, and what we did when that happened was, we had emergency meetings and called everybody together and made sure that all systems were go and every agency was hitting on all cylinders, and we made them bring more information, and go into the second and third and fourth level of detail. And made suggestions on how we could respond in a more coordinated, more effective way. It is inconceivable to me that Bush would read a warning as stark and as clear [voice angry now] as the one he received on August 6th of 2001, and, according to some of the new histories, he turned to the briefer and said, ‘Well, you’ve covered your ass.’ And never called a follow up meeting. Never made an inquiry. Never asked a single question. To this day, I don’t understand it. And, I think it’s fair to say that he personally does in fact bear a measure of blame for not doing his job at a time when we really needed him to do his job.

“And now the Woodward book has this episode that has been confirmed by the record that George Tenet, who was much abused by this administration, went over to the White House for the purpose of calling an emergency meeting and warning as clearly as possible about the extremely dangerous situation with Osama bin Laden, and was brushed off! And I don’t know why — honestly — I mean, I understand how horrible this Congressman Foley situation with the instant messaging is, okay? I understand that. But, why didn’t these kinds of things produce a similar outrage? And you know, I’m even reluctant to talk about it in these terms because it’s so easy for people to hear this or read this as sort of cheap political game-playing. I understand how it could sound that way. [Practically screaming now] But dammit, whatever happened to the concept of accountability for catastrophic failure? This administration has been by far the most incompetent, inept, and with more moral cowardice, and obsequiousness to their wealthy contributors, and obliviousness to the public interest of any administration in modern history, and probably in the entire history of the country!”

Burn Through It


More Team Bush legacy:

Field upon field of more than 1,000 battered M1 tanks, howitzers and other armored vehicles sit amid weeds here at the 15,000-acre Anniston Army Depot -- the idle, hulking formations symbolic of an Army that is wearing out faster than it is being rebuilt.

The Army and Marine Corps have sunk more than 40 percent of their ground combat equipment into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to government data. An estimated $17 billion-plus worth of military equipment is destroyed or worn out each year, blasted by bombs, ground down by desert sand and used up to nine times the rate in times of peace. The gear is piling up at depots such as Anniston, waiting to be repaired.

The depletion of major equipment such as tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and especially helicopters and armored Humvees has left many military units in the United States without adequate training gear, officials say. Partly as a result of the shortages, many U.S. units are rated "unready" to deploy, officials say, raising alarm in Congress and concern among military leaders at a time when Iraq strategy is under review by the White House and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is lobbying hard for more money to repair what he calls the "holes" in his force, saying current war funding is inadequate to make the Army "well." Asked in a congressional hearing this past summer whether he was comfortable with the readiness levels of non-deployed Army units, Schoomaker replied: "No."

Lt. Col. Mike Johnson, a senior Army planner, said: "Before, if a unit was less than C-1," or fully ready, "someone would get fired." Now, he said, that is accepted as combat-zone rotations are sapping all units of gear and manpower. "It's a cost of continuous operations. You can't be ready all the time," he said.

This from the man who scornfully said in 2000 that

Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the army would have to report "not ready for duty, sir."

A Chief Executive Tantrum


Actions speak volumes:

...when Hume brought up the issue of his father's influence, Bush responded with a forced grin, a clenched fist and a somewhat petulant response: "I'm the commander in chief," he said.

Froomkin points out the similarities between this and last April's "I'm the decider" moment, and also notes

Bush, after all, remains the son whose actions can be seen in large part as a reaction to his father -- rather than an homage.

Anyway, the rest of the column is worth a look. Shrub really seems to believe in a level of grandiosity on his part that's belied by the pathetic situation in which he finds himself. Perhaps, for once, his utter lack of introspection might help him: I doubt anyone with a conscience could live with themself...

Massive Sell-Off


Reading about Robert Gates's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee reminds me once again of our MBA preznut's major "accomplishment" prior to joining the legal monopoly of Major League Baseball and his subsequent foray into politics: his tenure at Harken Energy.

I guess the only major difference between the respective situations is that Shrub is still nominally in charge of the Executive Branch...which in this case perhaps makes Gates's statements about losing in Iraq more analogous to the moment when Enron's investors realized that Kenny Boy Lay was a lying sack of shit.

However, a common theme emerges: you've got Shrub--or his good friend Ken Lay--insisting that all was good long after it became painfully evident that instead there was a major malfunction. And their respective refusals to acknowledge reality made the resounding thud from the crash landing that much louder.

Of course, Kenny Boy WAS eventually found guilty...although he managed to run out the clock, as it were. Shrub, on the other hand, has a history of one, getting away with his behavior, and two, testily changing the subject when asked about his business dealings. And, if I remember right, one of his first actions as president was an executive order restricting the release of official documents.

Of course, you can't restrict the release of reality, which has a way of catching up with its most insistent deniers. Gates admits the obvious--we're losing in Iraq. Maybe the media will finally stop playing the role of Bush's bitch and start asking some real questions...although I'm not holding my breath.

And, like with Harken Energy, when it's all said and done, we're likely to be left holding onto a lot of worthless paper. Let's just hope that other factors, like the historic position of the United States relative to the global political economy, make the thud a little less harsh...

Mr. Rumsfeld is Ready for His Close-Up


Juan Cole on the memo:

Rumsfeld spends more time plotting out how to manipulate the American public than how to win the war. Everything is about spin, about giving the image of progress even in the face of a rapid downward spiral into the abyss...

It is about how we talk, how we are perceived to set goals, what is made to look like progress. It isn't actually about getting progress. The point of going minimalist is to reduce expectations among the American public. If you tell them you can only move the ball a yard, you get a lot of points for moving it two yards.

There is nothing in the memo about effectively stopping the daily sectarian massacre in Iraq. Rumsfeld does not even appear to think there is a problem here. He doesn't see the basis on which the fabric of Iraq is coming apart. But God forbid he should be seen by the US public as failing. So let's set some vague "benchmarks" and make it look like progress is being made.

Again, this is the same "method" they use for all policy matters: spin like crazy, and hope enough people are gullible.

Banjo Boy


I guess it's fiddle for a fire, and a banjo for fire-fights and floods.

Oh, and at least according to one source, Shrub was "specifically briefed" as to the details of the incident that almost claimed the life of Senator-elect Jim Webb's son. What an asshole.

Anyway, check out the links above, two of which take you behind the Times Select wall of shame (to Krugman and Rich), the former asking, "How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully’s ego?" the latter suggesting that Shrub is about to go into talk-to-the- portraits-on-the-wall, um, "phase," to use a recent favorite in the Executive Branch lexicon. Now, if I recall, Al Haig eventually sidelined Tricky Dick near the end, insisting that any executive order be confirmed via his chief-of-staff office...shit, Big Time Dick's probably been doing the same since 2001.

The third link chronicles the administration's cut-and-run policy towards rebuilding the flood protection/levee system in and around New Orleans. After reading it, you might want to also go over to First Draft, if you haven't already done so, for more analysis on this, on the decision by St. Paul Travelers (a major commercial insurer) to likewise cut-and-run...and a link to this post by Bayou St. John David that really puts things in proper perspective.

Hmmm...actually, I've been noticing Shrub's rather odd, deflated demeanor myself. I thought it was maybe jetlag--or perhaps the rumors of his taking to the bottle having some truth to them. But maybe they're pumping him full of anti-depressants from the White House pharmacopeia instead. Because if Shrub isn't totally delusional, he should be thoroughly ashamed of his totally dismal record.

And no amount of music--happy, sad, or ominous--will change that.

Add Another Iconic Image to the List


From the administration that managed to make Iraq WORSE than it was under Saddam comes more evidence--in pictures and video, apparently--that we're being governed by the equivalent of the Stanford Prison Experiment guards:

To Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, the pictures capture the dehumanization of their client during his military detention from mid-2002 until earlier this year, when the government changed his status from enemy combatant to criminal defendant and transferred him to the federal detention center in Miami. He now awaits trial scheduled for late January.

What's amazing to me is that it's isn't as if the standard prison experience, if you can call it that, is any sort of picnic, contrary to the batty claims of wingnuttery (or the occasional genuine psycho like Richard Speck). Incarceration--the legal, habeas corpus variety, complete with hearings re: bail, charges, evidence, etc., leading up to trial, isn't a picnic, and I don't expect it TO be. And the government, far from being a weakling entity held in check by the social contract and other legislation, is quite powerful. It's not a good idea to get on its bad side, as Mr. Padilla--and numerous others incarcerated, or on parole--can attest.

To be honest, I have no idea if Mr. Padilla is an evil mastermind or unfortunate wretch...but neither does anyone else at this point. And Team Bush has managed to, in their blustering igorance, thoroughly poison the situation, well above and well beyond what was already an impossibly tainted legal situation anyway.

In other words, their "solution" is the equivalent of throwing gasoline on a fire. Come to think of it, that same metaphor comes to mind for just about every policy aim they've embarked on. And, as so many of us on the reality-based side of things have noted, we're going to get stuck cleaning the resulting mess...