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November 29, 2005
WB: Second Thoughts
Comments
One of my favorite things about billmon is that he never apologizes for light blogging.
One of my other favorite things is that he breaks his dry spells with posts like “Second Thoughts.”
Posted by: ralphbon | Nov 29 2005 22:19 utc | 1
It is interesting how Wilkerson is consistently trying to shield Bush from his attacks.
He always goes for Cheney and Rumsfeld and Bush was probably not told or deceived or his orders were followed.
That man has an agenda and I am not sure if it is Powell’s (who’s mouth he has been for years) or Rove’s.
That man has an agenda and I am not sure if it is Powell’s (who’s mouth he has been for years) or Rove’s.
I’m guessing Jim Baker’s. The Main Street Republicans are desperate to keep the country from going over the cliff, and the Republican Party with it. Big Dick was supposed to be the designated adult in the Administration, but he’s either drunk the Neocon kool-aid or simply let his intrinsic nastiness come through. So the plan is to blame everything on him and get somebody in fast to make sure Bush doesn’t do anything else too stupid.
Too late.
Posted by: Aigin | Nov 29 2005 22:32 utc | 3
Triage? Emergent versus merely urgent?
I assume (conjecture) because Cheney and Rumsfeld are the fucking crazies. Rove’s paraphilia is political shock-and-awe – destruction on a more intimate, personal scale.
Posted by: eftsoons | Nov 29 2005 22:37 utc | 4
I believe this puts Wilkerson at the front of the race for the Captain Renault Award for Feigned Naïveté.
Seems to me he is still functioning as Powell’s mouth by laying the groundwork for the defense Powell is going to use when he tries to regain some of his lost credibility.
Posted by: Monolycus | Nov 29 2005 22:51 utc | 5
I agree Monolycus. This whole thing is about saving Powells reputation. But if they take Cheney down at the same time, yah whooo.
I also agree with Aigin, Baker and the so called the grown ups are pissed and want someones head for f—ing up what they built over time. The deception machines wheels are falling off and thiry years of propaganda is falling apart.
Posted by: jdp | Nov 29 2005 23:01 utc | 6
I remember during the Reagan years, I used to think that Elliott Abrams and Richard Perle were kept on at State and Defense, respectively, just to make George Schultz and Caspar Weinberger look reasonable by comparison. It worked. Same deal with the likes of Wilkerson and Armitage, the latter of whom may seem angelic by contemporary neocon standards but was hip-deep in the Central American slaughters, back in the day.
Posted by: ralphbon | Nov 29 2005 23:14 utc | 7
US stock market this last month is pushing up at a faster rate than even the headiest Net-bubble days, to its highest level in history, and while there are more houses on the market for longer than at any time in 18 years, there are more house sales than ever. All of which goes towards that graphic over Thanksgiving of holiday travel, the lines of dense green like capillaries in some massive carcinoma, connecting Huntsville, WA DC and SoCal, Red to Red, everyone on the move in search of war jobs, even as pundits say the CBOT is 2% overvalued, that consortiums are colluding to push up commodities and build inflation, so bonds and mortgages will have to return higher yields, as stocks are trading at a 200% premium to established P/E’s, and now, ‘there has never been a better time to hold and go long’. (smile)
The key word is ‘fast’, as in ‘augenblick‘ blink-of-an-eye, which is how it will go off retrograde once it reaches Mystical SetPoint,
thanks to the automated trading hedge funds,
and massively colluded insider tip network.
Bush knows that, which is why he’s locking down the border, and issuing an IDIQ for more ‘beds’, which is think-speak for detention camps, even as New Orleans, like New York and Iraq, won’t get rebuilt because all that money done got spent!
Learn to drink the Kool-Aid and kiss the Ring!
Really, what are your other options anymore?
Move to Singapore and invest in silicon dust?
IDTS.
Posted by: Harold Dreyfuss | Nov 29 2005 23:51 utc | 8
You begin to speculate, you begin to wonder
yeah, i’ve been speculating a lot lately. for instance, those kidnapped christians. i notice the pr it provides in the time of need(murtha fallout) . remember bergs execution after abu garaib? b’s red flag post today didn’t help. all that counter intellegence going on. hanging out w/you guys/gals the last couple years , i notice i take nothing at face value anymore. you are my sanity, for all it’s worth! (i guess that says a hella lot more about me than it does about you…)
hope your sticking around for awhile billmon.
Posted by: annie | Nov 30 2005 2:10 utc | 9
For his daughter’s coming-of-age celebration last weekend, multimillionaire Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks booked two floors of the Rainbow Room, hauled in concert-ready equipment, built a stage, installed special carpeting, outfitted the space with Jumbotrons and arranged command performances by everyone from 50 Cent to Tom Petty to Aerosmith.
I hear it was garish display of rock ‘n’ roll idol worship for which the famously irascible CEO of DHB Industries, a Westbury-based manufacturer of bulletproof vests ….
DHB Industries is the parent company of Point Blank Body Armor.
RECALL NEWS STORY 1
RECALL NEWS STORY 2
November 17, 2005 Army, Marine Corps recall 18,000 body armor vests
BUT ITS QUALITY CONTROL PROBLEMS ARE AN OLD STORY
As evidence that DHB Industries’ Point Blank Body Armor has profited substantially from military engagements around the globe, taxpayers need only look at the company’s 2004 Christmas party. Held on Singer Island in Palm Beach County, the 50-person affair rewarded Point Blank’s most loyal employees and customers.
It cost the company $207,000, or roughly $4,000 per head, according to court records filed in Miami-Dade County. The host of the party was CEO Brooks, who that year earned $70 million, plus $186 million in company stock sales.
Posted by: eftsoons | Nov 30 2005 2:11 utc | 10
annie- catch Democracy Now! today. Goodman has video of the hostages and Hersh also commented that these guys were way before him in cataloging the abuse of Iraqi prisoners… and had been totally ignored by the mainstream American media.
Hersh, basically, forced the issue when he published in the New Yorker, but apparently the information was available to any msm producer who wanted to let America in on the little secret of our willing torturers throughout the chain of command.
The spokeman from their group who spoke to Goodman by phone said that they had been in the region for a while, and their muslim friends in the country knew they were attempting to help stop abuses…these are not fundamentalist, evangelical, Franklin Graham-style “christian soldiers.”
They look like they could be sitting in the local Unitarian church on Sunday.
So, yes, if they are executed, I would really have to wonder who was behind their capture. If they are being held by a group in Iraq that is not related to psy ops, then that group is beyond stupid to harm them….I cannot see how they could gain support from the Iraqi people by the action, and the American powers-that-be would probably be very happy to see these guys “disappeared.” So, if the guys are killed…are they being held by some Iraqi group that wants to get in good with the U.S.? — proxies, maybe?
Since the torture of Iraqis is a horrific abuse, how would holding these guys further any goal, other than making for good propaganda here (as long as the whole story isn’t covered, vis a vis these guys positions.
How could It help any insurgencies’ cause..
and I wonder if anyone in the msm will now note that these men were instrumental in making the issue of torture visible…if they do, they might be able to help save these men’s lives if they could document their work via the knowledge of trusted Iraqis.
If they don’t do this to appease the Bush junta…would the media be complicit in their deaths?
The Christian organization also issued a statement condeming the occupation of Iraq by U.S. and British forces…so I wonder how much courage and real humanity we’ll see in the U.S. media…or hear, since I’ve not seen too much tv lately.
If they are killed, what position will Limbaugh take? Or O’Reilly? Apparently these guys didn’t see the torture as a little “frat house” hazing.
Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 30 2005 18:55 utc | 11