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Valerie Plame's opening statement.


Highlights 1:


Highlights 2:


From Politics TV, who now have a link in the sidebar.

"My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior officials in the White House and State Department."

So why aren't they going to jail?

It's her turn

Valerie Plame is going to testify today.

She is going to say, that yes, you jackasses, of COURSE I was undercover. She was, in fact, a NOC ("no official cover"). That means that if she was caught, she was screwed - the CIA would deny knowing anything about her. That's the highest level of cover.

Don't expect the testimony to change the mind of the right-wing morons, though. They have been lying to each other for so long ("she was just a desk jockey!") that they actually believe their own lies, and they will be simply befuddled over the fact that no Republican on the hill was stupid enough to stand there and publicly repeat them.

But think about it: the President of the United States blew an American Spy's Cover - exposing her and everyone she had contact with to danger - for POLITICS.

And he's still in office? How, exactly, does such an action NOT warrant jail?

How high IS that mudpile?

Oh, dear.

E-mails released this week, including a set issued Thursday night by the Justice Department, appear to contradict the administration's assertion that Mr. Bush's staff had only limited involvement in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, which Democrats have suggested were a politically motivated purge.

"Every time new information comes out, it proves that the White House was not telling the truth." - Schumer

We already knew that Rove was involved, but it's nice to have email confirmation.

But who leaked the emails?

The ORIGINAL document dump was no doubt done by Rove and company in an attempt to stick the whole thing on Gonzales' chief of staff and deflect attention from THEM.

But somebody ELSE leaked this stuff to make sure that Rove (and by extension Bush) were implicated. "You think I'M taking the fall? You're nuts!"

That means that there is a PILE of mud yet uncovered.

Keep in mind that what they are now known to have done is unethical, tawdry and rotten - but not actually illegal.

And you don't start trying to blame your comrades unless you have something REALLY serious to hide. Unless you're trying to stay out of jail.

The White House fired attorneys for NOT behaving in a partisan fashion. For having the temerity to investigate Republicans. And Gonzales lied to Congress about the reasons and the White house involvement.

But what were they investigating, specifically, that caused them to be fired?

Were they getting too close to something VERY damning - so damning that the White House did something unprecedented to stop it?

Looks that way.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

Maybe Bush should occasionally READ that Bible he claims to believe in.

"We can soft-pedal it a lot of ways, but Congress was lied to." - Darrell Issa, R-Vista.

Why did it take a Republican to say this?

Chapter XLIV
Concerning one of sundry reasons that Democrats really piss me off.

"I’ve had concerns about the qualifications of Gonzalez since before he took the job, when we learned that he was one of the Administration’s architects of the infamous detention and interrogation policies." - John Kerry, in an email.

So why did you vote to confirm him, John? If you had concerns about him since before he took the job, why the hell didn't you ask him any hard questions, John?

Surprise, surprise

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Wednesday rejected key recommendations from a citizens' group asked by Congress to find out people's health care wishes....

Sens. Ron Wyden , D-Ore., and Orrin Hatch , R-Utah, came up with the idea for the group. Wyden said he believes that lawmakers are more willing to work together on health care than they have been in many years.

"We're seeing real signs that members of Congress want to fix health care," he said.

But he said he was disappointed with the administration's response to the report.

Well, of course. When has the Bush administration approved of ANYTHING that would LESSEN death?

Go ahead, name one.

"I cannot tell a lie - HE did it!"

"Kyle Sampson, Gonzales's chief of staff who was responsible for carrying out the firings, quit last night. The attorney general said today that Sampson failed to keep officials at the department properly informed about the process, leading Gonzales and other officials to provide inaccurate information to Congress." - Bloomberg

Do you BELIEVE the sheer brazenness of these clowns? "I didn't REALLY lie under oath, the guy who just quit didn't tell me."

THAT'S what he says in the SAME SPEECH where he claims to accept responsibility.

Holy crap. Does Gonzales actually expect any sane person to believe that his Chief of Staff was making plans with the White House, and didn't tell him? How about the White House? Do they ALSO agree that they were making plans with Gonzales' COS, and kept him unaware of it?

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department laid out an elaborate, five-step plan for firing seven U.S. attorneys on Dec. 7.

Entitled, "Plan for Replacing Certain United States Attorneys," the step-by-step instructions were sent by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson...to Associate Attorney General William Mercer and White House officials William K. Kelley and Harriet Miers.

I think it's time Congress hauled Gonzales, Sampson, Kelley and Myers in to testify under oath.

Followed by Bush.

Gonzales is having a press conference.

Will he resign, or be stupid?

UPDATE: He'll be stupid. He isn't resigning, he's just "accepting all responsibility" for "mistakes that were made." And then making excuses. It's a big place, see. He can't know everything that's going on.

That's how Bushites "accept all responsibility."

When asked how it was possible for him not to know that his Chief of Staff was consulting with the President, he blathered out some total babble.

Bush did it.

WASHINGTON, March 12 — The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers, administration officials said Monday.

You mean they lied? That can't be? When has anyone in the Bush administration EVER lied?

Josh Marshall (read the whole thing):

We now know that Gonzales, McNulty and Moschella each lied to Congress. We know that the purge was a plan that began at the White House -- and it was overseen by two of President Bush's closest lieutenants in Washington -- Miers and Gonzales. Sampson is the second resignation. There will certainly be more.

And remember this key point: The 'document dump' is meant to get bad news out of the way fast. But it's always a hedge. It never includes the really bad stuff. And if you're not in deep crisis mode, ya' never do it on a Monday.

White House admits that Rove was involved in the attorney firings.

They're melting.

Halliburton moves to Dubai

March 11, 2007 — The much-maligned defense contractor Halliburton is moving its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Well, I guess the maligners were right, eh?

Today's Republican Party: "Who CARES about America when we can make a few extra dollars?"

Sickening, isn't it? They expect OTHER people to sacrifice arms and legs and eyes and lungs and lives for the insanity that THEY dreamed up. But THEY aren't willing to sacrifice a TAX CUT.

THEY fatten their wallets; soldiers lose thier lives.

Fire Gonzales

Today's New York Times Editorial

"Chris Matthews just asked a Libby juror whether she thought Patrick Fitzgerald was "very virginal...like he never had a date." She looked at him as though he were completely, totally, stark-raving insane." - John Podhoretz.

Heh.

GUATEMALA CITY - Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday....

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace.

Maybe we can get him to do it to Bush himself. See if he'll melt/

Edwards Responds

I've got to tell you, the media attention is all on Hillary and Obama, but so far, I'm liking Edwards more and more. It's WAY past time that the Democrats stop being afraid of every shadow, and said what they were actually thinking (and yes, it includes a pitch for money, but so what?):

Fox Attacks

Deputy Campaign Manager Jonathan Prince sent the following email to supporters this evening.

You may have heard by now that John Edwards was the first candidate to officially say no to the Fox News debate in Nevada -- and because of the hard work of so many grassroots and netroots Democrats, news is breaking tonight that Fox is out.

Fox has already started striking backat John for saying no. (There's a surprise - Fox attacking a Democrat.) Last night, Roger Ailes - the life-long Republican operative who is now Chairman of Fox News Channel - said that any candidate "who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake" and "is impeding freedom of speech and free press."

And John's not their only target. Tonight Fox News Vice President David Rhodes is telling news organizations not to get involved in the Nevada Democratic Caucus because of "radical fringe" groups - meaning grassroots Democrats (that would be you) - who objected to Fox's long history of spreading Republican propaganda at the expense of Democratic leaders.

The whole right-wing is getting in on the attack; the Drudge Report is blaring the headline: "War! Dems Pull Out of Fox News Debate."

Enough is enough. It's time to send a clear message to Fox News and their allies that their right-wing talking points and temper tantrums won't go unchallenged anymore - when it comes to what Democrats should do in the Democratic primary, we'll decide - no matter what they report:

https://johnedwards.com/action/contribute/fox

Fox News has already proven they have no intention of providing "fair and balanced" coverage of any Democrat in this election.

In recent weeks they have run blatant lies about Senator Obama's background. And Fox was only too happy to give Ann Coulter a platform to spew more hate a few days after her bigoted attack on Senator Edwards and the gay community.

Now it's time for Democrats to stand together and send a clear message to Roger Ailes, Fox News and all the rest of them: bias isn't balance, but turning tables is fair.

The truth is, Fox News can "report" whatever they want. And when it works for us, we'll deal with them on our terms. But this campaign is about responsibility and accountability, and we need to send the message to Fox that if they want to be the corporate mouthpiece of the Republican Party more than they want to be an impartial news outlet, they shouldn't expect Democrats to play along.

You can send that message by contributing today, and remind Fox News that in this election, Democrats won't take their spin lying down:

https://johnedwards.com/action/contribute/fox

Thank you for standing up for what we believe in.

Jonathan Prince
Deputy Campaign Manager
Edwards for President

P.S. If the folks at Fox wonder why nobody thinks they play it straight, they should take a look at what Roger Ailes said about debates in 1988 when he was a top Republican spinmaster for then Vice President Bush: He told the Washington Post, "I don't know that we need to do more than one [debate]. There's no reason to think we'd need more than one." And he told the New York Times, "I don't think you learn anything about the issues" from debates. So please send Roger Ailes a message: Hypocrisy isn't fair and it isn't balanced; it's just hypocrisy - and we've had enough of it from you.

Fair and balanced

FOX NEWS OFFICIAL STATEMENT 9:15PM EST: 'News organizations will want to think twice before getting involved in the Nevada Democratic Caucus which appears to be controlled by radical fringe out-of-state interest groups, not the Nevada Democratic Party. In the past, Moveon.org has said they ‘own’ the Democratic party — while most Democrats don’t agree with that, it’s clearly the case in Nevada' -- David Rhodes, VP.

That's the OFFICIAL STATEMENT.

From a supposed NEWS ORGANIZATION.

When Clinton was President, it wasn't so obvious. They were attacking the guy in power, and muckraking news organization do that, after all. And when Bush was actually popular, it wasn't so obvious. But now the guy in power is EXTREMELY unpopular, on the grounds that he screws everything up - and FOX does nothing but desperately try and prop him up.

Pure propaganda. And it has become more and more obvious. FOX is 21st Century America's Pravda.

The Republicans support the troops by breaking the Army.

Military leaders are struggling to choose Army units to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan longer or go there earlier than planned, but five years of war have made fresh troops harder to find.

Faced with a military buildup in Iraq that could drag into next year, Pentagon officials are trying to identify enough units to keep up to 20 brigade combat teams in Iraq. A brigade usually has about 3,500 troops.

Luke 14:28-31, y'all.

The Nevada Democratic Party has pulled out and refuses to allow FOX News to host a 2008 Democratic debate.

Good move.

Firefighters dis Rudy because of how he handled 9/11

Seen on kos.

The Firefighter's union is hosting a bi-partisan Presidential forum and inviting all the candidates.

Except Rudy.

This has the potential to kill his candidacy.

Early on, the IAFF made a decision to invite all serious candidates from both political parties — except one: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

We made this decision after considerable soul-searching and close consultation with our two New York City affiliates, the Uniformed Firefighters Association Local 94 and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association Local 854, as well as our former Local 94 President and current IAFF 1st District Vice President covering New York.

The IAFF recognizes that Mayor Giuliani generally enjoys a favorable reputation as a result of his actions immediately after the tragedy of 9/11. As such, we want our affiliates and every one of our members to clearly understand the reason and rationale behind this very serious and sober decision.

Many people consider Rudy Giuliani "America's Mayor," and many of our members who don't yet know the real story, may also have a positive view of him. This letter is intended to make all of our members aware of the egregious acts Mayor Giuliani committed against our members, our fallen on 9/11, and our New York City union officers following that horrific day.

Rest assured, our exclusion of Mayor Giuliani is not about any particular contractual or policy issue or disagreement, nor is it based on his unfriendly relationship with our New York City affiliates prior to 9/11 — which we will document and explain in additional correspondence later on during the campaign. In fact, we invited several candidates with whom we have had substantial disagreement on policy issues because we feel very strongly that our members have the right to hear from all candidates, not just those who tow the IAFF line.

Regrettably, the situation with former Mayor Giuliani is very different. His actions post 9/11 rise to such an offensive and personal attack on our brother and sisterhood — and directly on our union — that the IAFF does not feel Rudy Giuliani deserves an audience of IAFF leaders and members at our own Presidential Forum.

The disrespect that he exhibited to our 343 fallen FDNY brothers, their families and our New York City IAFF leadership in the wake of that tragic day has not been forgiven or forgotten.

In November 2001, our members were continuing the painful, but necessary, task of searching Ground Zero for the remains of our fallen brothers and the thousands of innocent citizens that were killed, because precious few of those who died in the terrorist attacks had been recovered at that point.

Prior to November 2001, 101 bodies or remains of fire fighters had been recovered. And those on the horrible pile at Ground Zero believed they had just found a spot in the rubble where they would find countless more that could be given proper burial.

Nevertheless, Giuliani, with the full support of his Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, decided on November 2, 2001, to sharply reduce the number of those who could search for remains at any one time. There had been as many as 300 fire fighters at a time involved in search and recovery, but Giuliani cut that number to no more than 25 who could be there at once.

In conjunction with the cut in fire fighters allowed to search, Giuliani also made a conscious decision to institute a "scoop-and-dump" operation to expedite the clean-up of Ground Zero in lieu of the more time-consuming, but respectful, process of removing debris piece by piece in hope of uncovering more remains.

Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill.

Binding resolution

The Democrats are proposing a binding resolution to direct Bush to begin phased redeployment out of Iraq in 120 day.

FINALLY.

The Gonzales Eight

Glorioski, Zero, someone in the mainstrean press actually recognizes the seriously of the attorney firings.

From the New York Times:

David Iglesias, who was removed as the United States attorney in Albuquerque, said that he was first contacted before last fall’s election by Representative Heather Wilson, Republican of New Mexico. Ms. Wilson, who was in a tough re-election fight, asked about sealed indictments — criminal charges that are not public.

Two weeks later, he said, he got a call from Senator Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, asking whether he intended to indict Democrats before the election in a high-profile corruption case. When Mr. Iglesias said no, he said, Mr. Domenici replied that he was very sorry to hear it, and the line went dead. Mr. Iglesias said he’d felt “sick.” Within six weeks, he was fired. Ms. Wilson and Mr. Domenici both deny that they had tried to exert pressure.

John McKay of Seattle testified that the chief of staff for Representative Doc Hastings, Republican of Washington, called to ask whether he intended to investigate the 2004 governor’s race, which a Democrat won after two recounts. Mr. McKay says that when he went to the White House later to discuss a possible judicial nomination (which he did not get), he was told of concerns about how he’d handled the election. H. E. Cummins, a fired prosecutor from Arkansas, said that a Justice Department official, in what appeared to be a warning, said that if he kept talking about his firing, the department would release negative information about him.

Congress must keep demanding answers. It must find out who decided to fire these prosecutors and why, and who may have authorized putting pressure on Mr. Cummins. And it must look into whether Senator Domenici and Representatives Wilson and Hastings violated ethics rules that forbid this sort of interference. We hope the House committee will not be deterred by the fact that Mr. Hastings is its ranking Republican. The Justice Department also needs to open its own investigation. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s claim that these prosecutors were fired for poor performance was always difficult to believe. Now it’s impossible.

Fox News does it again

It's called being "fair and balanced." After all, everybody ELSE says he's guilty. Saying that he isn't is just balance.

First seen here.

Iglesias says that the Republicans pressured him.

Both a Congressperson and a Senator leaned on him to make decisions on the basis of politics instead of the law.

What can you tell me about sealed indictments?" [Heather] Wilson [R-N.M.] asked, according to Iglesias' sworn testimony before the committee today.

Iglesias said "red flags" immediately went up in his mind about the conversation because it was unethical for him to talk about an ongoing criminal investigation, particularly on matters as sensitive as the timing of indictments...

Less than two weeks later, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) called Iglesias at his home in New Mexico, the only time a lawmaker had ever called him at his residence in more than five years as a federal prosecutor, he said.

Domenici...began asking about the local corruption case, which involves Democrats and a courthouse construction project, specifically inquiring about indictments.

"Are these going to be filed before November," Domenici asked, according to Iglesias' testimony. Unnerved by the call, Iglesias said he responded no.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Domenici replied, according to Iglesias, who added that the senator then hung up on him. "I felt sick afterward. . . . I felt leaned on, I felt pressured to get these matters moving," Iglesias told the committee.

Their whole thing is crumbling.

Never trust a 57-year-old man who's still called "Scooter."

Don't get too excited - the bastard will appeal.

And the hits just keep on comin'

The Bush Administration's firing of attorneys who were overseeing corruption probes appears to finally be boiling over into ANOTHER scandal.

The only thing protecting these bastards for the last six years was the Republican Congress. Without the stone wall, this stuff would have been revealed long ago.

William Jefferson Clinton is the Smoothest MoFo in the World.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) _ Four days after criticizing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, New York's highest ranking black lawmaker flew to Alabama with Bill Clinton at the former president's request.

"He invited me to fly down with him to Selma, Ala., for his induction into the Voting Rights Hall of Fame," state Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith said Monday.

Keeping up Appearances

According to the Fox News talking heads, you know the REAL problem is with the scandals at Walter Reed?

It makes Bush LOOK bad.

Somebody saw that wounded soldier sleeping in his own urine. Doesn't that you make you feel sorry for Bush?

It does if your a wingnut.

"This is unfortunate. It looks terrible, which is the problem. The problem is that it looks as if this administration, which has sent troops into harm’s way, is now neglecting them when they’re injured and need care and help." - Brit Hume

Walter Reed isn't the only one

The neglect and the destructive bureaucracy infests the whole system, thanks to the phonies in charge, to whom "support the troops" is just a useful slogan.

Meanwhile, back at the war...

Suicide car bomber kills 26 in Baghdad

Whitewash

Sometimes, I wish I was making it up.

In Sunday's Washington Post, Dana Priest and Anne Hull described the woeful conditions of Room 205 in Walter Reed's Building 18: "Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole."

The Army mobilized. Painters were deployed to cover the offending wall with a fresh coat of white semigloss. And television crews were invited in to inspect the result.

"Some of the paint is still wet against that wall, so be careful," Walter Reed public affairs officer Donald Vandrey, standing on the bed in his socks, advised the film crews. "They just finished repainting it about 10 minutes ago."

Mission accomplished?

Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley thought so. After the media tour of Building 18, the Army's surgeon general gave a news conference. "I do not consider Building 18 to be substandard," he said of a facility Priest and Hull found full of "mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses" and other delights. "We needed to do a better job on some of those rooms, and those of you that got in today saw that we frankly have fixed all of those problems. They weren't serious, and there weren't a lot of them."

Kiley might have had a stronger case if men wearing Tyvek hazmat suits and gas masks hadn't walked through the lobby while the camera crews waited for the tour to start, or if he hadn't acknowledged, moments later, that the entire building would have to be closed for a complete renovation. The general also seemed to miss a larger point identified by other officials: Walter Reed's problem isn't of mice and mold but a bureaucracy that has impeded the recovery of wounded soldiers.

"The global war on terrorism and Iraq are being used as lame rationales for enlarging the military." - retired Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hoffman.

Hearings

The House is holding hearings this morning in the auditorium of Walter Reed, and they plan to call several employees and ex-employees. Good.

Last year, this would have been ignored by Congress.

They knew about Walter Reed since 2003

I guess "support the troops" means "sit on your ass and yell 'rah-rah' at the television set. And let them sleep in their own urine."

Top officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, including the Army's surgeon general, have heard complaints about outpatient neglect from family members, veterans groups and members of Congress for more than three years.

Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, said he ran into Kiley in the foyer of the command headquarters at Walter Reed shortly after the Iraq war began and told him that "there are people in the barracks who are drinking themselves to death and people who are sharing drugs and people not getting the care they need."

"I met guys who weren't going to appointments because the hospital didn't even know they were there," Robinson said. Kiley told him to speak to a sergeant major, a top enlisted officer.

In 2004, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and his wife stopped visiting the wounded at Walter Reed out of frustration. Young said he voiced concerns to commanders over troubling incidents he witnessed but was rebuffed or ignored. "When Bev or I would bring problems to the attention of authorities of Walter Reed, we were made to feel very uncomfortable," said Young, who began visiting the wounded recuperating at other facilities.

Beverly Young said she complained to Kiley several times. She once visited a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad in the hospital. When a nurse ignored her, Young said, "I went flying down to Kevin Kiley's office again, and got nowhere. He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else."

Pentagon to the wounded: STFU.

Ok - you're in charge of an army hospital. It is revealed that the hospital which you are in charge of does a lousy job of caring for wounded. What do you do? Improve the care?

No, you try and make people shut up about it.

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

“Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Dude, where's my country?

Seriously.

Jabour spent five weeks there, chained to a wall and prevented from sleeping more than a few hours at a time. He said he was beaten nightly by Pakistani guards after hours of questions from U.S. interrogators. Then he and others were whisked off to CIA-run sites. Some sites were in Eastern Europe; Jabour went to one in Afghanistan. Interrogators -- whom he described as Americans in their late 20s and early 30s -- told Jabour he would never see his three children again.

Human Rights Watch has identified 38 people who may have been held by the CIA and remain unaccounted for. Intelligence officials told The Post that the number of detainees held in such facilities over nearly five years remains classified but is higher than 60. Their whereabouts have not been publicly disclosed.

"The practice of disappearing people -- keeping them in secret detention without any legal process -- is fundamentally illegal under international law," said Joanne Mariner, director of the terrorism program at Human Rights Watch in New York. "The kind of physical mistreatment Jabour described is also illegal." Mariner interviewed Jabour separately as part of the organization's investigation.

One bombing a day.

So saith Laura.

Stars and Stripes begs to differ.

WASHINGTON — Attacks against coalition forces in Iraq averaged nearly 180 a day in January, the highest level since major combat operations ended and more than double the rate one year ago, according to intelligence officials.

Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday said the attacks matched the previous high, set in October 2006.

Attacks on civilians also reached a new high, with almost 50 per day in January, according to the agency. Attacks on Iraqi Security Forces remained consistent with recent months, at about 30 a day.

Hey, one, two hundred and thirty, what's the diff? Picky, picky, picky.

HT to AmericaBlog.

Speaker of the House

More like this.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that she believes President Bush's judgment on the Iraq war "is a little impaired."

"What the vice president said is beneath the dignity of his office and beneath the dignity of the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform."

"The vice president is in a place that is out of touch with the American people, out of touch with what so many generals are saying and out of touch with even a bipartisan majority in the Congress."

"I think his [Bush's] judgment is a little impaired on this war, with all due respect to the president and his good intentions."

"With all due respect." Somehow, I suspect that Madam Speaker doesn't think he's due much.

Pat Buchanan's head just exploded

Immigrants boost pay, not prison populations, new studies show
Immigrants are less likely to go to prison than U.S.-born residents of the same ethnic group and they boost pay for natives, research says.

Two new studies by California researchers counter negative perceptions that immigrants increase crime and job competition, showing that they are incarcerated at far lower rates than native-born citizens and actually help boost their wages.

18 killed

18 boys were killed in a soccer field in Iraq.

AP points out this:

In July 2005, a suicide bombing in Baghdad killed 27 people, including 18 children and an American soldier. A moment of silence across Iraq was later held. But now, the violence has become so frequent and numbing that it's possible the boys' death will pass without any special note.

And just think, yesterday Laura Bush said:

"And many parts of Iraq are stable now. But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day this discourages everybody."

Laura, it isn't "discouraging" - it's immoral, filthy, horrifying and disgusting, and your husband caused it.

Cheney targetted like a quail.

(CBS/AP) A suicide bomber killed at least 14 people and wounded about a dozen more outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Tuesday, during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney. The Taliban claimed responsibility and said Cheney was the target.

I don't mean to seem harsh, but didn't Cheney claim that the Afghanistan was a success, and the Taliban were routed?

Oh, that's right - we didn't finish THAT job. Occupying Iraq was more important.

Generals may quit

If Bush orders an attac on Iran that is. At least, according to the UK Times:

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.

Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

Good. It would be NICE to think that some people in the Pentagon actually have an ounce of principle, and we haven't seen much of that in the last six years.

Of course, if it happens, Bush will just get five NEW Generals, all of whom agree with everything he says, and will claim that he "listens to his Generals."

And his sycophants will swear to it.

Big news!

Martin Scorcese won an Oscar!

Oh, and...ummmm....41 people were killed in a car bombing in Iraq.

Don't see the second one anywhere on the homepages of CNN and FOX News, though.

"Capitalism tries for a delicate balance. It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff." - George Carlin

Sunday Night Funnies

Sid Caesar, and Your Show of Shows.

Smack down

Carol Shea Porter is a Democratic Congresswoman from New Hampshire. The moron charman of the New Hampshire Republican Party attacked her for being against the war in Iraq and not voting to cut funding:

"If she's going to be against this war, she should have the courage of her convictions and vote to end funding." - Fergus Cullen

Her response:

"If Fergus Cullen has the courage of his convictions, he should go enlist, because they're having trouble meeting their quota. He's young, he's single and he's healthy. If he needs to know where the recruiters are, call me."

I think I'll email Cullen and ask him when he's enlisting. His email address is ferguscullen@aol.com

It's still February

And Oliver Willis is right about the religious left.

So is Denmark

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Denmark was expected to announce plans to begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq at a news conference on Wednesday, Danish media reported.

At this rate, there will be the same number of troops in Iraq post-escalation as there were pre-escalation, they will just be all American.

Britian pulling out.

LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce on Wednesday a new timetable for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, with 1,500 to return home in several weeks, the BBC reported.

Blair will also tell the House of Commons during his regular weekly appearance that a total of about 3,000 British soldiers will have left southern Iraq by the end of 2007, if the security there is sufficient, the British Broadcasting Corp. said, quoting government officials who weren't further identified.

Bush says it show that things are going WELL.

Well, then, when can WE leave?

Supporting the troops

Louise Slaughter, the Chair of the House Rules Comittee, is writing to the Pentagon, demanding answers about Walter Reed:

"It is deeply troubling to think that veterans and their families who have sacrificed so much are being left largely alone to struggle with injuries without the care and attention they need," Rep. Slaughter said. "And while I am glad to hear of changes underway at Walter Reed, it shouldn't take a newspaper exposé to spur action on behalf of our wounded soldiers."

"Supporting our troops begins with giving them a mission that makes sense and that doesn't needlessly jeopardize their lives," the Congresswoman continued. "It ends with an unconditional commitment to men and women who have made sacrifices few of us can fully appreciate. If this Administration is going to order soldiers into battle, then it has no right to stand on the sidelines when they come home. We need a serious evaluation of the care being given to our veterans, and must immediately address holes and gaps in a system that can't afford either."

"Critics of the President's escalation of the war are told that they can't both support the troops and oppose their mission," Rep. Slaughter added. "I think that you can't support the troops if you send them into battle without proper armor, or deny them critical medical care and counseling after they are injured. That is the definition of hypocrisy, and our wounded soldiers are paying the price."

Republicans support of the troops

Senate Republicans Said NO to Funding for Military Equipment Repairs. Last night, Senate Republicans voted to kill a proposal to provide $44 billion to improve and repair military equipment. According to sponsor Sen. Jack Reed, “$47 billion worth of equipment which they have used in Iraq and Afghanistan needs to be repaired and reconditioned.” The funding would have been offset by repealing capital gains and dividends tax cuts, while extending protections for middle-class taxpayers. Senators voting against this amendment included Frist, DeWine, Dole, Burns, Kyl, Santorum and Talent. [Vote #8, 2/2/06; Congressional Record, 2/2/06]

Republicans’ NO Vote Came Despite Warnings That Worn-Out Equipment Is Putting Our 138,000 Active Duty Soldiers At Risk. Last week, Rep. Ike Skelton, Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote a letter to Secretary Rumsfeld that “said the Army’s worn-out equipment has placed the force ‘at strategic risk.’” There are 138,000 men and women currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Editorial, 1/31/06; Department of Defense, 1/25/06]

Senate Republicans Said NO to Funding to Military and Veterans Hospitals. Last night, Senate Republicans voted against increasing funding for military and veterans hospitals by $19 billion. The funding would have been offset by repealing capital gains and dividends tax cuts, while extending protections for middle-class taxpayers. Senators voting against this amendment included Frist, DeWine, Dole, Burns, Kyl, Santorum and Talent. [Vote #7, 2/2/06]

More Than 16,000 U.S. Forces Have Been Wounded Since Iraq Conflict Began. According to the Department of Defense, 16,420 soldiers have been wounded in action since March 2003. [Iraq Coalition Casualties, accessed 2/3/06]

Instead of Supporting our Troops and Veterans in a Time of War, Senate Republicans Sided With Millionaires. By voting against helping troops and veterans, Senate Republicans voted to prioritize tax relief for millionaires in the form of dividend and capital gains tax cut extensions. Over half of the benefits of dividends and capital gains tax cut extensions favor households with incomes over $1 million, only 0.2 percent of the nation. [Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 1/30/06]

(N.B. I do not know the original source for the above compilation. If someone does, let me know.)

And to top it all off...

Military members who cannot complete their tour of duty due to being injured are being forced to pay back their bonuses. See, being blown apart kept them finishing their tour of duty.

Soldiers who were paralyzed, suffered brain damage and lost limbs owe the government enlistment bonus money.

They must pay the money back because they didn’t fulfill their tour of duty.

Bob Truska, who was in the Navy, got an honorable discharge for what the Navy calls a personality disorder.

One year later, he got a bill for more than $3,000, part of his $7,000 enlistment bonus.

Bob said, “I didn’t know of anything I had to pay back after I got out of the military.”

The Navy said his honorable discharge “does not exempt him from recoupement of the unearned enlistment bonus, and his personality disorder is not a disability but could interfere with assignment or performance of duty.”

According to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, each month from October 2005 through October of 2006, at least 600 members of the military and as many as 1,100 have owed bonus debts totaling anywhere from $2.5 million dollars each month to $4 million.

The money comes from skyrocketing enlistment and re-enlistment bonuses being offered to lure recruits and keep experienced troops in uniform.

Walter Reed is overloaded

The soldiers sacrifice everything - and then come home to THIS.

What these Republicans do to the soldiers while claiming to "support" them is immoral, filthy and disgusting.

Pirates and Emperors

Here's an odd little tribute to Schoolhouse Rock that will THRILL the right-wingers.

East of East

by Pete Dolack

America's view of GOP crumbles with Iraq

By Thomas F. Schaller
Special to The Baltimore Sun

According to the latest Gallup survey, Republican self-identification has declined nationally and in almost every American state.

Why? The short answer is that President Bush's war of choice in Iraq has destroyed the partisan brand Republicans spent the past four decades building.

That brand was based upon four pillars: that Republicans are more trustworthy on defense and military issues; that they know when and where markets can replace or improve government; that they are more competent administrators of those functions government can't privatize; and, finally, that their public philosophy is imbued with moral authority.

The war demolished all four claims.

In uniform or out, Americans think Iraq is a disaster, oppose escalation and blame Bush and his party for the mess in Mesopotamia. Heading into the 2006 mid-terms, polls showed Republicans trailing Democrats as the party most trusted to handle Iraq and terrorism. Nationally, Bush's war approval ratings hover around 30 percent.

Military members are skeptical, too. A Military Times poll released in December revealed that only 35 percent of military members approved of the president's handling of the war - despite the fact that 46 percent of them are self-identified Republicans (down from 60 percent in previous Military Times polls) while just 16 percent are Democrats.

According to a recent Zogby survey of troops serving in Iraq, 72 percent want American forces home within a year.

Congressional hearings last week on war contracting dispel the second claim. Billions of dollars appropriated for Iraq cannot be accounted for, and contracts have been doled out with limited oversight and little regard for competitiveness.

Robert Greenwald's powerful documentary "Iraq for Sale" exposes many of the absurdities. You wouldn't sign a three-year $250,000 lease for a vehicle you could buy outright for $50,000, but our government does. The "cost-plus" procurement protocol pays contractors a fixed percentage on top of whatever they spend, encouraging them to spend as much and as inefficiently as possible. So rather than vehicles with minor mechanical damage being repaired, many are junked in favor of expensive replacements.

Meanwhile, the same troops Bush brags he will do "whatever it takes" to support often wait in two-hour chow lines or shower in bacteria-contaminated water.

"The hearings and the introduction of legislation, while long overdue, will begin to have an immediate effect on those who have been ruthless and relentless in their profiteering," Greenwald says hopefully.

As for the third pillar - superior management skills - there's insufficient space here to revisit the myriad blunders made by America's civilian leaders.

Little foresight was given to post-invasion scenarios. Disbanding the Iraqi army was an early colossal mistake. We had too few troops there, as L. Paul Bremer III, former civilian administrator of Iraq, later admitted. And the torture policies on view at Abu Ghraib gave terrorists a fantastic recruiting tool.

Notice, too, how management "success" has been steadily defined downward: from disarming an unarmed Saddam Hussein, to bringing liberation and democratization, to establishing basic security, to avoiding a domestic civil war, to "holding and clearing" Baghdad, to the current goal of preventing a regional conflagration that wouldn't be imminent had we not gone to Iraq in the first place. Talk about the soft bigotry of low - and lowering - expectations.

Finally, there is the war's morality. In what moral system is it justified to wage a war without paying for it? Bush tormented Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in 2004 for "voting for before voting against" funding the war. But Kerry voted for a version of the $87- billion appropriations bill that also raised revenues to pay for it. Instead, we pile the war's costs atop our mountainous national debt, leaving future generations to pay for it later - plus interest.

The administration is asking for another $245 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan - an amount that, were it set aside and allowed to accrue interest, could pay the entire budget of a mid-size state like Maryland for almost a decade. This sum, too, will be added to America's giant credit card bill - an act of moral cowardice from the same White House that gives lectures about the sanctity of marriage and embryonic stem cells.

The Iraq war's human consequences abroad are far more tragic than any impact they are having on partisan politics at home. But for Republicans, the last casualty of Bush's war of choice may be the party itself.

Isn't the Bush Administration WONDERFUL and SUPPORTIVE of the soldiers? Not only do they lie and create phony excuses for sending them to get shot, but when they come back, they DENY DOCTORS their medical records!

What great guys, eh? What they lack in venality, they more than make up for with sheer incompetence:

Department of Veterans Affairs doctors are furious over a recent decision by the Pentagon to block their access to medical information needed to treat severely injured troops arriving at VA hospitals from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The VA physicians handle troops with serious brain injuries and other major health problems.

Kitty Piano

Posted for Squeak.

Here's Dan Froomkin

Read.

Franken for Senate

Seriously. And he can win.

Bombs

Iraq Offensive Grows, Bombs Don't Stop

Two things that are infuriating about this:

1) They know damned well that this won'tt work and they are trying to save face at the expense of OTHER peoples' lives.

2) The time for more troops was three years ago, but all the folks who said, "Don't you think you need more than 140,000?" were told that they just didn't know what they were talking about, and called every name in the book.

For Mrs. Ignatz

GOP: WE'LL LOSE

Props to TPM.

A strategy memo has been leaked from that GOP Reps. John Shadegg and Peter Hoekstra sent out to the rest of the House GOP. An excerpt:

"The debate should not be about the surge or its details. This debate should not even be about the Iraq war to date, mistakes that have been made, or whether we can, or cannot, win militarily. If we let Democrats force us into a debate on the surge or the current situation in Iraq, we lose."

Got that? "DON'T debate the single most important issue of our day, an issue that effects all Americans! WE might lose." "Who cares what effect it will actually have on those who have to go to Iraq? WE might lose."

I hope to hell that the Democrats hang this stinking albatross around their collective throats.

Moveon eats the Republicans for lunch

Sir John the Insane

"A lot of us are also very concerned about the possibility of a, quote, ‘Tet Offensive.’ "You know, some large-scale tact that could then switch American public opinion the way that the Tet Offensive did,” - John McCain

Ummm...John? 62% of Americans now oppose this war. You think something MAY happen that will turn them against it? It HAS happened you sad, delusional shell of yourself.

Are they moving up the chain to Bush/Cheney?

Pincus Reveals Fleischer As Leak Source

Feb 12, 11:25 AM (ET)

By MATT APUZZO
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer leaked the identity of a CIA operative to Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus during a 2003 phone call, Pincus testified Monday as the first defense witness in the CIA leak trial.

Good god

90 killed in Bagdhdad

Smackdown

Perhaps you heard about THIS piece of crap:

SIDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Australia's conservative prime minister [John Howard] slammed Barack Obama on Sunday over his opposition to the Iraq war, a day after Obama announced his intention to run for the White House in 2008.

"If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats."

Look at Obama's response:

"If Prime Minister Howard truly believes what he says, perhaps his country should find its way to contribute more than just 1,400 troops so some American troops can come home," [Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs] said. "It's easy to talk tough when it's not your country or your troops making the sacrifices."

Dear me, Prime Minister Howard: Is this a piece of YOUR ass I found here on this floor?

Oh, and by the way - how come the right-wingers aren't throwing a shit-fit over the head of a FOREIGN COUNTRY attacking a United States Senator? Isn't that the sort of thing they always get outraged over?

Dynamite.

I sorry to say that Anthony Weiner was not my choice in the primary.

He just changed my mind.

He isn't just calling them "The Republic Party" - what's he's actually saying hands the Republics their heads.

Just because

The Nicholas Brothers (with a little piece of Cab Calloway)

The post below that mentions Janet Jackson's tits

I've gotten a surprisingly large number of hits since yesterday from people searching blogger for the word "tits."

So I'm doing it again.

Hmmm.

During a speech on Wall Street, President Bush said companies should tie the compensation of chief executive officers to performance - AP.

Good idea. How about we start with HIS and tie it to his approval rating?

They do NOTHING right.

Costly amphibious craft breaks down often, leaks

After 10 years and $1.7 billion, this is what the Marines Corps got for its investment in a new amphibious vehicle: A craft that breaks down about an average of once every 4 1/2 hours, leaks and sometimes veers off course.

And for that, the contractor, General Dynamics of Falls Church, received $80 million in bonuses.

Another helicopter down.

I'm not making this up

Only the Russians would have a beauty contest to determine the hottest woman working in the nuclear industry.

Who will be crowned Miss Atom of 2007?

Haggard is now "completely heterosexual."

"She turned me into a newt!"

"A newt?"

"Well, I'm better now!"

DENVER — One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is "completely heterosexual."

Don't you wonder what sort of test they gave him?

But don't let Janet Jackson show her tits.

I tend to comepletely ignore football, so I wasn't even there for the Superbowl. One reason I wish I watched was because Prince gave the halftime show, and by all accounts, he was terrific.

I WOULD post a video, but I'm at work, and playing Prince videos on my computer draws attention.

But anyway, apparently he decided to use the shadows to do this:




=ahem=

Don't you love the fact that the Powers That Be decided that Janet Jackson was too shocking - so they'd play it safe and get Prince instead?

What shall we do with the Drunken Sailor?

The Spendthrift President has proposed his new budget. 481 billion for defense, and it DOESN'T include funds for Iraq and Afghanistan; those are off budget. Apparently, if you don't actually put the money down on paper, you aren't actually spending it. Plus 1.4 trillion on 70 new weapons systems.

While the war profiteers get a tax cut.

And while poor, sick kids can't see a doctor.

And while roads crumble, pipes burst, and New Orleans remains a shambles.

It's obscene.

Whenever some Republican starts to tell me about MORALS, I swear I would laugh if I wasn't about to puke.

Republicans block vote.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — Republicans on Monday blocked Senate debate on a bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq, leaving in doubt whether the Senate would render a judgment on what lawmakers of both parties described as the paramount issue of the day.

Republicans have used their filibuster to BLOCK DISCUSSION of what they all concede is the most important issue facing America.

Sort of tells you everything you need to know about what the Republicans have become, doesn't it?

Congress grows a scrotum

"I intend to ask the Administration to identify each and every statutory provision they have not agreed with in signing statements, and to specify precisely what they have done as a result. For example, if the President claims he is exempt from the McCain Amendment ban on torture, I want to know whether and where he has permitted it. And we want to know what has he done to carry out his claims to be exempt from many other laws, such as oversight and reporting requirements under the PATRIOT Act, numerous affirmative action obligations, and the requirement that government obtain a search warrant before opening the mail of American citizens.

"I am also going to ask my staff, along with Ranking Member Smith's staff, to meet with the Department of Justice and the White House so we can get to the bottom of this matter, and to be blunt, we are not going to take no for an answer. We are a co-equal branch of government, and if our system of checks and balances is going to operate, it is imperative that we understand how the Executive Branch is enforcing -- or ignoring -- the bills that are signed into law."

More here.

GOP may filibuster AGAIN

This time to prevent Dear Naked Leader from looking like he's naked.

WASHINGTON — A debate over President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq is set to begin in the Senate today, but it's not clear whether there will be a vote.

Republicans are threatening to use the filibuster, a parliamentary blocking maneuver, to prevent a vote on a resolution that expresses disapproval of the troop increase.

It may be the only way for Bush supporters to prevent a bipartisan vote of no confidence after the release of an intelligence report that painted a grim picture of the situation in Iraq.

Bush has ALREADY received a bipartisan vote of no confidence from the American People and it's time the Republicans caught up.

But remember when the Republicans were whining like infants at what "obstructionists" those nasty Democrats were for filibustering about TWICE in six years? When the Republicans held ALL the cards.

What is this for the Republicans? Number THREE in a MONTH? Despite the fact that they actually still have the Presidency?

Stop circling the wagons. Bush isn't worth it.

Murdoch admits manipulating the news

And the rest of the "news" media ignores it.

Here.

Asked if his News Corp. managed to shape the agenda on the war in Iraq, [Rupert] Murdoch said: "No, I don't think so. We tried." Asked by Rose for further comment, he said: "We basically supported the Bush policy in the Middle East...but we have been very critical of his execution."

Somebody should tell Rupert that his job is to report, not decide.

Think this will make the mainstream press?

Spiegel has an interview with Tyole Drumheller, the Former European CIA Chief about the run-up to the decision to invade Iraq.

It's damning.

Drumheller: I had assured my German friends that ["Curveball's" claims] wouldn't be in the speech. I really thought that I had put it to bed. I had warned the CIA deputy John McLaughlin that this case could be fabricated. The night before the speech, then CIA director George Tenet called me at home. I said: "Hey Boss, be careful with that German report. It's supposed to be taken out. There are a lot of problems with that." He said: "Yeah, yeah. Right. Dont worry about that."

SPIEGEL: But it turned out to be the centerpiece in Powell's presentation — and nobody had told him about the doubts.

Drumheller: I turned on the TV in my office, and there it was. So the first thing I thought, having worked in the government all my life, was that we probably gave Powell the wrong speech. We checked our files and found out that they had just ignored it.

SPIEGEL: So the White House just ignored the fact that the whole story might have been untrue?

Drumheller: The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy.

These bastards lied to start a war. 3000 Americans are dead. Tens of thousands permanently wounded. Tens of thousands Iraqi civilians - dead. It's a total failure. And they lied so they could start it. They CHOSE this. On purpose.

There is no pit of hell deep enough for these people.

Molly Ivins died of cancer.

62 years old.

Heaven just got a little livelier.

Rest in peace, Molly.

Well done, thou good and faithful servant.

Rove may testify

...or take the fifth.

Jan. 26, 2007 - White House anxiety is mounting over the prospect that top officials—including deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and counselor Dan Bartlett-may be forced to provide potentially awkward testimony in the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis (Scooter) Libby.

Have you noticed that the 5th Amendment is about the only one the Bushies haven't tried to gut? Some foresight.

Maureen Dowd

Daffy Does Doom

Dick Durbin went to the floor of the Senate on Thursday night to denounce the vice president as “delusional.”

It was shocking, and Senator Durbin should be ashamed of himself.

Delusional is far too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn’t begin to capture the profound, transcendental one-flew-over daftness of the man.

Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he’s right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

It requires an exquisite kind of lunacy to spend hundreds of billions destroying America’s reputation in the world, exhausting the U.S. military, failing to catch Osama, enhancing Iran’s power in the Middle East and sending American kids to train and arm Iraqi forces so they can work against American interests.

Only someone with an inspired alienation from reality could, under the guise of exorcising the trauma of Vietnam, replicate the trauma of Vietnam.

You must have a real talent for derangement to stay wrong every step of the way, to remain in complete denial about Iraq’s civil war, to have a total misunderstanding of Arab culture, to be completely oblivious to the American mood and to be absolutely blind to how democracy works.

In a democracy, when you run a campaign that panders to homophobia by attacking gay marriage and then your lesbian daughter writes a book about politics and decides to have a baby with her partner, you cannot tell Wolf Blitzer he’s “out of line” when he gingerly raises the hypocrisy of your position.

Mr. Cheney acts more like a member of the James gang than the Jefferson gang. Asked by Wolf what would happen if the Senate passed a resolution critical of The Surge, Scary Cheney rumbled, “It won’t stop us.”

Such an exercise in democracy, he noted, would be “detrimental from the standpoint of the troops.”

Americans learned an important lesson from Vietnam about supporting the troops even when they did not support the war. From media organizations to Hollywood celebrities and lawmakers on both sides, everyone backs our troops.

It is W. and Vice who learned no lessons from Vietnam, probably because they worked so hard to avoid going. They rush into a war halfway around the world for no reason and with no foresight about the culture or the inevitable insurgency, and then assert that any criticism of their fumbling management of Iraq and Afghanistan is tantamount to criticizing the troops. Quel demagoguery.

“Bottom line,” Vice told Wolf, “is that we’ve had enormous successes, and we will continue to have enormous successes.” The biggest threat, he said, is that Americans may not “have the stomach for the fight.”

He should stop casting aspersions on the American stomach. We’ve had the stomach for more than 3,000 American deaths in a war sold as a cakewalk.

If W. were not so obsessed with being seen as tough, Mr. Cheney could not influence him with such tripe.

They are perpetually guided by the wrong part of the body. They are consumed by the fear of looking as if they don’t have guts, when they should be compelled by the desire to look as if they have brains.

After offering Congress an olive branch in the State of the Union, the president resumed mindless swaggering. Asked yesterday why he was ratcheting up despite the resolutions, W. replied, “In that I’m the decision maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster.” (Or preordained it.)

The reality of Iraq, as The Times’s brilliant John Burns described it to Charlie Rose this week, is that a messy endgame could be far worse than Vietnam, leading to “a civil war on a scale with bloodshed that will absolutely dwarf what we’re seeing now,” and a “wider conflagration, with all kinds of implications for the world’s flow of oil, for the state of Israel. What happens to King Abdullah in Jordan if there’s complete chaos in the region?”

Mr. Cheney has turned his perversity into foreign policy.

He assumes that the more people think he’s crazy, the saner he must be. In Dr. No’s nutty world-view, anti-Americanism is a compliment. The proof that America is right is that everyone thinks it isn’t.

He sees himself as a prophet in the wilderness because he thinks anyone in the wilderness must be a prophet.

To borrow one of his many dismissive words, it’s hogwash.

Blast rocks green zone

BAGHDAD, Jan 27 (Reuters) - A loud explosion rocked central Baghdad on Saturday, prompting sirens and loudspeaker warnings in the international Green Zone and sending up a large plume of white smoke inside the heavily fortified area.

Loudspeaker warnings urged people to take cover. "This is not a drill," the warning said.

From kos:



The folks who did the above in San Francisco want to do the same in DC in from of the Capitol.

"Show up on the sidewalk on the MONUMENT side of 14th Street, at the Mall, no later than 11:50 a.m.."

Details at the link above. If you're in DC today, why not?

Liberal media

This is fun.

At the Libby trial, Cathie Martin, talking about turn, mentioned that the White House likes to go on Meet the Press, because they control Tim Russert, and they orchestrate the release of bad news on Friday, because few people see it that way.

Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.

This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."

"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."...

Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.

With a candor that is frowned upon at the White House, Martin explained the use of late-Friday statements. "Fewer people pay attention to it late on Friday," she said. "Fewer people pay attention when it's reported on Saturday."

It's so odd, that Bush and Cheney would regard that nasty old liberal media as a sympathetic formet, isn't it?

CBS decided NOT to put this on TV.

CBS decided NOT to put this on TV. It's Web Only.

Why?

If there is one good Republican in Washington, it's Chuck Hagel.

This is sort of creepy.

She is Representative Michelle Bachmann.

And an odd film is here.

"Early Wednesday morning, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS showed video of Rep. Michele Bachmann's exchange with President Bush Tuesday night. The video shows Bachmann grabbing onto and holding the president for almost 30 seconds."

Here's an article on her. How does THIS sentence grab you?

August 30, 2006 The congressional candidate [Michelle Bachmann] weighs in on the visit from President Bush with Jason Lewis on KTLK-FM (100.3). First she notes that Dubya is an "awesome date," before adding, "He's so buff. He's like you, Jason, he has 1 percent body fat."

Things that make you go hmmmmm.

Obama stuffs Fox

From Josh Marshall:

Obama is aggressively going after Fox News today for pushing that smear-job report claiming that he went to an Islamic “madrassa” school as a child. The report has already been completely debunked by CNN, but Obama isn't letting up.

The Senator's office has just emailed out a blistering memo targeting Fox that says the following:

In the past week, many of you have read a now thoroughly-debunked story by Insight Magazine, owned by the Washington Times, which cites unnamed sources close to a political campaign that claim Senator Obama was enrolled for “at least four years” in an Indonesian “Madrassa”. The article says the “sources” believe the Madrassa was “espousing Wahhabism,” a form of radical Islam.

Insight Magazine published these allegations without a single named source, and without doing any independent reporting to confirm or deny the allegations. Fox News quickly parroted the charges, and Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy went so far as to ask, “Why didn’t anybody ever mention that that man right there was raised — spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father — as a Muslim and was educated in a Madrassa?”

All of the claims about Senator Obama raised in the Insight Magazine piece were thoroughly debunked by CNN, which, instead of relying on unnamed sources, sent a reporter to Obama’s former school in Jakarta to check the facts.

If Doocy or the staff at Fox and Friends had taken [time] to check their facts, or simply made a call to his office, they would have learned that Senator Obama was not educated in a Madrassa, was not raised as a Muslim, and was not raised by his father – an atheist Obama met once in his life before he died.

Later in the day, Fox News host John Gibson again discussed the Insight Magazine story without any attempt to independently confirm the charges.

All of the claims about Senator Obama’s faith and education raised in the Insight Magazine story and repeated on Fox News are false. Senator Obama was raised in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother. Obama’s stepfather worked for a U.S. oil company, and sent his stepson to two years of Catholic school, as well as two years of public school. As Obama described it, “Without the money to go to the international school that most expatriate children attended, I went to local Indonesian schools and ran the streets with the children of farmers, servants, tailors, and clerks.” [The Audacity of Hope, p. 274]

To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa.

These malicious, irresponsible charges are precisely the kind of politics the American people have grown tired of, and that Senator Obama is trying to change by focusing on bringing people together to solve our common problems.