Billmon has posted again
The Shirer quote was posted not so long ago either here in a thread or in a kindred site and the same thought came to my mind this morning when I read the FT. Soon the MoA collective be channeling Billmon directly!
Back to Main
January 13, 2005
Billmon: Scenes From the Bunker
Comments
The “closed” sign at whiskey bar is gone. Be let it be so.
Posted by: mer | Jan 13 2005 22:17 utc | 2
Bushie doesn’t live in the reality based world. Getting the truth might bring Bushie back to reality. We can’t have that.
Over on Counterpunch is a good article about American fascist tendencies.
Posted by: jdp | Jan 13 2005 22:21 utc | 3
Yet another example of the disturbing similarities between Bush and Hitler. Both revelled in their rejection of logic and their reliance on instinct. Both felt they had been picked by destiny to lead their countries to a bright future in which it dominated the rest of the world. Both actively refused to listen to competing views, much less bad news. Both ridiculted “effete” culture and luxuriated in their fantasies of masculine toughness and violence. Both were not only practicioners of the Big Lie, but apparently had trouble realizing that they were even lying. Both wanted to assert total control, and to not just defeat but annihalate their enemies.
The big difference is, Hitler actually fought in a war — in the trenches on the Western Front, no less.
I’d better stop now. This is scaring me.
Posted by: Aigin | Jan 13 2005 22:22 utc | 4
Aigin, at least Hitler actually won battles took and held ground and marched on Moscow.
Bush just invaded a clapped out sanctioned state that has been bombed and sanctioned to death since 1991.
The insurgents are winning……….
Red faces in Washington.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 13 2005 22:31 utc | 5
CP – thanks for the heads up on Billmon’s post – it is helpful and needed!
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 13 2005 22:35 utc | 6
Now that was a funny post by the old Billmon.
I’m now reading Max Hastings’ Armageddon(the last year of WWII), and when I ran into the quotes from the Speer memo, and Hitler’s reaction, I thought of El Lider.
Strange.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 13 2005 22:46 utc | 7
Actually, the “Open” sign at Whiskey Bar has been there a couple of days.
Posted by: SusanG | Jan 13 2005 22:48 utc | 8
@Jerome. No problem.
Re the Soros thread last night, I was tired and emotional………… I cannot bear to revisit it……… yet.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 13 2005 22:49 utc | 9
flashharry
some detail on the hasting book
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 13 2005 22:52 utc | 10
“The more we do to you, the less you believe we are doing it”- Joseph Mengele
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 13 2005 22:52 utc | 11
ô where ô where are marshall zhukov & chuikov when you need them
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 13 2005 22:58 utc | 12
jérôme
the shire quote was in a recent post of billmon, i think
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 13 2005 22:59 utc | 13
I wonder if the recently canceled WMD snipe hunt has something to do with ongoing preparations for pre-emptive strikes against Powell’s character after January 20th when Powell leaves for good and the new team takes over.
Can’t you just hear Bush saying “What does Powell know, he’s the one who told us that the WMD was in the trailers . . .”
Posted by: bcf | Jan 13 2005 23:08 utc | 14
Here is the link: Gary Leupp at Counterpunch on whether there is such a thing as “Christian Fascism.” I think Leupp is a Christian and I think he is a good man, despite my general lack of enthusiasm for organised religion…
see also David Orr on the “imminent demise” of the Repub Party, I don’t know if he is wishful thinking or not, but it’s on the topic of not being able to deal with realities (“feral facts”, my favourite phrase from Daly and Cobb’s otherwise somewhat dry tome For the Common Good). I often want to make a typo and call Daly and Cobb “Codd and Date,” but that’s a hacker joke 🙂
A couple of other things Bush and Hitler share: Both had fathers who were paragons of bourgeoise respectability who encouraged their sons to be serious and apply themselves to a career in government. Both rebelled against their fathers by being lazy slackers into their mid-twenties. Both found that the only thing they were good at was propaganda. Both equated propaganda with politics. As politicians both were lazy, non-systematic thinkers.
Posted by: kaleidescope | Jan 13 2005 23:14 utc | 16
yeah…but both bush and hitler know that you can “sell politics like soap.”
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 13 2005 23:21 utc | 17
@RG:
A link to some reviews of Hastings book got posted over on the Bumper Sticker thread..
How tpad did that is beyond me.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 13 2005 23:33 utc | 18
Bush and Hitler’s reactions is a classic. They’re not the first dictators to do it and likely won’t be the last. For instance, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nero had that kind of reaction when the first news of widespread rebellion in the Western provinces came to him.
This also reminds me of “The longest day” movie, when Rommel states that Germany will badly lose in France because the Fuhrer is sleeping and no one dares to awake him to tell him the Allies are landing right now, and therefore no orders for the counter-attack would come for hours.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jan 14 2005 1:06 utc | 19
Billmon omitted this:
There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear “bad news.” [snip] Our sources are firm in that they conclude this “good news only” directive comes from Bush himself… [snip]
etc, etc, from Chris Nelson… I thought Josh Marshall posted this originally, but I could only find it at Air America…
Posted by: radish | Jan 14 2005 4:02 utc | 20
I don’t know if Billmon reads this site or not. In case he does:
Billmon, I am delighted that you are back and posting. I missed you.
Posted by: Cybelline | Jan 14 2005 5:37 utc | 21
Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground – War Created Haven, CIA Advisers Report (Washington Post)
Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of “professionalized” terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director’s think tank.
Iraq provides terrorists with “a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills,” said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. “There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries.”
I’ll start a new Iraq thread soon, but this just fits in this one all too well.
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 14 2005 11:43 utc | 22
@Jérôme – Iraq new breeding ground
I do think this is a “report” to justify a further stay of US military in Iraq. “See we were right. Iraq is the breeding ground of terrorism.”
Afghanistan had training camps were some 70,000 were trained in military form and indoctrinated – protected by the Taliban government and with good financial support.
Iraq has many homemade national Guerillas and only very few foreign Jihad fighters. In Falluja the did not even get a dozent and that was supposed to be the center.
There is only “on-the-job” training in Iraq, not organized school training like in Afghanistan, and that is a kind of training where only very few live to make take their exams. (How do you train a suicide bomber “on-the-job”?)
BTW: How was Mohammed Atta trained? In flight school and my Technische Universität Hamburg. How many of those 70,000 trained in Afghanistan have and will actually take up weapons and really become terrorists? So far it’s less than a thousand in my estimate.
b and/or Jérôme, how about an ‘coronation’-open thread? There is so much buzz about it in the internet(s), some hilarious, some serious and some inbetween, some of it probably worth a discussion.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 14 2005 13:19 utc | 24
Atta was an architect (Cairo U) and an urban planner (Hamburg.) His thesis, on the renewal of part of the old quarter of Aleppo (Syria) is apparently excellent – haven’t read it. Atta was a green much involved in adapting traditional techniques, etc.
Posted by: Blackie | Jan 14 2005 14:08 utc | 25
Bernhard: way more than one thousand. 1.000 may be the number who actually went on a suicidal jihad against the West, but those who came back home and joined the local guerilla / gangs is far bigger than that. In Algeria alone, that involved several thousands of “Afghans” who were the backbone of the GIA and spinoff criminal groups. Egypt had problems as well, though the numbers are probably lower.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Jan 14 2005 15:24 utc | 26
Bush regrets “Bring ’em on” remark
via CNN:
“Sometimes, words have consequences you don’t intend them to mean,” Bush said Thursday.
Another Bushism for next year’s page-a-day calendar.
Posted by: kat | Jan 14 2005 15:42 utc | 27
I’d like publicly to thank Chas Freeman for his continued efforts to draw attention to the awfulness of the current crop of leaders. He’s the father of an old roommate of mine in China, and before the first time I met him he was described to me as ‘the white guy with the best Chinese-speaking ability on the planet.’ I’ve yet to meet one better, and can only wonder how good his Arabic became when he studied it before taking the Saudi ambassadorship. It’s worth googling his statements over the last 2 years, and also digging up the video of the Diplomats for Change news conference (where he easily stole the show).
That said, it’s sad that he and Richard Clarke, 2 guys I generally think of as Republicans, made the most articlate case against Bush and Cheney leading up to the election; also sad, of course – for them and me and all of us – that more Republicans didn’t listen. I’m glad to see that hasn’t stopped him from continuting to try.
Posted by: mats | Jan 14 2005 16:20 utc | 28
Look out Whitey, the Asians are coming to get you
Posted by: Ghengis Khan | Jan 14 2005 22:03 utc | 29
@Blackie:
Wouldn’t have wanted to hire that one as my landscape architect.
@Ghengis:
If you have complaints about the service, take them up with the management.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 14 2005 22:17 utc | 30
billmon has another post – “game plan” – about selling politics (social security destruction) like soap – like the other recent manifestations at whiskey bar, it appositions quotes without further comment
Posted by: mistah charley | Jan 15 2005 20:04 utc | 31