One of the big problems with ignorance these days is that our journalistic and foreign policy elites are so eager to infect each other with it that it innevitably spills over into the general population.

Getting the Boot

I have to tip my hat to Sgt. Wood for managing to report Cheney’s comments accurately and objectively […] while still making it abundantly clear what a total mental case the vice president has become.

More Deadpan Humor

Obviously, the Rovians would like to focus the debate on "liberal" attempts to expose or question the administration’s policies — such as the use of "practices tantamount to torture" — rather than on the abject failure of those policies.

Exit Strategy

If Rove really believes what he said — and we’ve had absolutely no indication from the GOP politburo that he didn’t — then it would appear the Cheney administration has concluded the war is already lost.

Situation Hopeless

(title unknown)
by anna missed

pigment/paint on wood
(fullsize, 145 kilobyte)

Skull & Bones

If that isn’t an open and shut case of “undermining” the war against terrorism, I don’t know what is. Ordinarily, I’m opposed to capital punishment, but in this case I don’t think the court has any choice but to impose the maximum penalty provided by law. And I’m sure a patriot like Bill O’Reilly would agree.

The O’Reilly Factor

"Al Jazeera now broadcasts to the region the words of Senator Durbin, certainly putting America’s men and women in uniform in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."
Karl Rove, 06/21/05

"It’s outrageous that the same Democrats who stood by Dick Durbin’s libeling of our military are now expressing faux outrage over Karl Rove’s statement of historical fact."
RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, 06/23/05

(fullsize – original)

Cont. reading: Historical Fact

News, views, opinions …

All along, the bedrock of Rove’s political “philosophy” has been the conviction that propaganda will always trump reality — as long as the desired message is consistent with existing popular myths and prejudices.

Punch Drunk

Missing a run-away Caucasian bride, Mr. Rove yesterday tried his new communication concept to divert the public from the administrations disasters with the Bolton nomination and Social Security legislation, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rove said:

"Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," […] "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

Liberals were right.

• Diligent criminal investigations and harsh indictments against anybody proven to be connected to 9/11 and other terror incidents would have brought the responsible people to jail by now. How many people were rightfully indicted and convicted for terrorism by the Bush administration? None that I know of.
• Therapy for the victims and the nation would have gone a long way to find  a rational answer to the attack. Instead of such an answer the Americans did get duct tape, stinking socks at airport gates and a $320 billion bill (and counting) for an unjustifiable war.
• Understanding the motives of the attackers, how false these may have been, would have helped to correct the course of future attackers. If there was grievance that these attackers felt the need to avenge, the long term strategy has to be to avoid such grievance and to take away the motives for future attacks.

Rove also said:

"Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said we must understand our enemies."

Liberals were right.

• One can not defeat people who are willing to die for their cause, when each of their death creates two more of such people. One can take away their cause. But that first requires to understand that cause and some willingness to reflect your own attitude and the feeling of others .

So what is all the fuzz about? Liberals were right. And they should say so.

Maybe you didn’t notice this, but:

The War is Over, and We Won

What the establishment media covering Iraq have utterly failed to make clear today is this central reality: With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over. Egregious acts of terror will continue—in Iraq as in many other parts of the world. But there is now no chance whatever of the U.S. losing this critical guerilla war.

…
But in the longer run, I’d still like to believe that the more tenaciously the Republicans cling to power, the more they rig the system to protect themselves from the wrath of the voters, the more sweeping will be their eventual defeat. 

Rotten Boroughs

Some on the left of the U.S. politic spectrum are trying to excuse their sorry administration, compatriots and themselves from the Iraq disaster.

E.J. Dione, Brookings scholar and Washington Post OpEd contributor, writes today:

The notion that the president led the country into war through indirection or dishonesty is not the most damaging criticism of the administration. The worst possibility is that the president and his advisers believed their own propaganda.

Dionne goes on to prove they believed their propaganda by citing it. Sure E.J., they were just dumb and not liars … aren´t they just terrible?

Blogger hero Atrios chips in his two cents:

We
need to distinguish between the "WMD" and "the threat." Without a real
investigation we’ll never know to what degree they hyped WMD claims
they thought were false instead of simply hyping claims they did not
know were true.
…
Believed in WMDs they hyped? Perhaps. Believed in the threat they hyped? Nope.

Repeat:

"Without a real investigation we’ll never know to what degree they hyped Poles attack Gleiwitz claims they thought were false instead of simply hyping claims they did not
know were true."

Yes, perhaps Hitler just did believe that, and yes E.J., if he did believe it and told his people so, it’s much worse than if he just would have lied?

Dione, Atrios you must be kidding me.

Like me, you did listen to, or read Mohamed El Baradei’s report to the U.N., Feb. 14, 2003:

As I have reported on numerous occasions, the IAEA concluded, by December 1998, that it had neutralized Iraq’s past nuclear programme …
We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear related activities in Iraq.

or Hans Blix’s presentation:

So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed. Another matter – and one of great significance – is that many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for. […] One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist. ..

This was the very, very best intelligence anybody could get. Baradei and Blix had several hundred experts on the ground in Iraq with access to everything they demanded to see, to smell or to touch. All Blix and Baradei could come up with, under very significant pressure, were possible accounting problems.

Now Atrios thinks maybe BushCo were just ‘hyping claims they did not know were true.’

No Duncan, they did know their claims were false, as you would have, if you would have cared to listen. There was nothing in doubt about Iraqi WMDs, not a bit. Neither for those common people, like me, who did listen, nor to Bush or Cheney.

Duncan, may I cite the head of the British Intelligence reporting to Tony Blair directly after coming back from a meeting with the CIA director in 2002?

Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

Now please grow up and stop making up excuses.

The Incredible Shrinking Governator

I.

If some idiot with a blog could see this fiasco coming two years ago, why couldn’t the world’s most powerful military — and its most expensive and sophisticated intelligence agency — see it as well?

Dining With the Devil

II.

Intentional Irony?

Finally, there’s always the chance the past few months have been a fluke — a case of lingering denial by voters who don’t want to accept just how badly Bush has fucked up.

Invisible Means of Support

High Value Detainees

So, while my conscience won’t allow me to gloat over the sight of the Cheney administration hopelessly impaled on its own Iraq lies, and I’m far too pessimistic to take much comfort in Shrub’s falling poll numbers, I have absolutely no objections whatsoever to savoring the public humiliation (and, with luck, multiple felony convictions) of Duke Cunningham, conservative asshole extraordinaire.

The Duke in Stir

News, views, visions … open thread

Next on Fox News: Liberals conspire to poison military water supply; smuggle plutonium to bin Ladin; sacrifice disabled Christian babies to Allah.

Looking for a Scapegoat II