In English:

The slogan above is still shouted these days during left-wing rallies in Germany. Few remember its historic background though.

Cont. reading: “Who did betray us …”

Billmon:

It occurs me that the "Deep Throat" in this particular scandal might turn out to really be a deep throat.

The Boogie Thang

Billmon:

And the Band Played On

Billmon:

The phrase "homeland security" is rapidly replacing "military intelligence" as the textbook example …

Oxymorons

Court Denies Mother’s Right of Custody

.. the mother is unable to make progress in her efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared improper relations and activities of her daughter.

Pope Orders to Continue Exorcist Procedures

.. the church is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared evil issues and activities of Satan.

Iran defies UN on nuclear program, sparking calls for action

The [IAEA] report said: "Because of this and other gaps in the agency’s knowledge including the role of the military in Iran’s nuclear program, the agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran."

Any more examples? Give it a try.

Billmon:

Boy, you gotta imagine law-and-order conservatives are going to be up in arms about this latest outrage  ..

Liberal Prosecutors Let Known
Drug Offender Go Free

Billmon:

But there are two sides to every gestalt, and you can also argue that America’s ability to dump $800+ billion into a hole in the desert without suffering a hasty financial and economic collapse (or even the kind of inflation seen during the Vietnam War) shows how enormously strong, and prosperous, the empire really is.

Cheaper By the Dozen

No distinguished Moonart this weekend, but Neil Young’s Living With War and your regular news & views.

Billmon:

As long as it’s only a contracting scandal (with the added fillips of sex and spies) this really isn’t much more than a surreal variation on standard operating procedure in Jack Abramoff’s Washington — even if the call girl angle does get the cable news juices flowing (so to speak.)

But it’s at least possible that the intersection of sex, money and official secrecy will turn this story into something much more special. Who knows? Depending on how high the guest list goes for Wilkes’s poker-and-prostitution soirées, this might even become the redneck equivalent of the Christine Keeler affair ..

Nine Fingers

Your Honor,

let me first thank you for the opportunity to defend myself.

I am here accused of having burnt down my neighbor’s house.

Did I do so? Did I set fire on my neighbor’s house?

Sure, I did. And I have never tried to hide that fact. Did this fire catch other houses too? Yes it did and I am really sorry it took down your house too, but then, yours, like the others, was an old and crumbling houses anyway.

But that is all not to the point. I am the wrong one to be accused here and that is why I reject any guilt in this case.

The only one who should be here in handcuffs and indicted is the locksmith. He is guilty of catastrophic mischief.

Let me tell you why.

Cont. reading: The Locksmith Made Me Torch My Neighbor’s House

Billmon:

Justin Rood at TPM is the one who connects the dots and decides they spell G-O-S-S.

It’s only an educated guess — but also a reasonable one, given that Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade, the two contractors involved, were manuevering to stick their dicks in the intelligence community’s contracting honeypot as well as the Pentagon’s. Goss’s previous jobs as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and vice chairman of the low-key but powerful House Rules Committee (which controls the flow of legislation to the floor) obviously would have made him an extremely attractive piece of bowel material to a couple of intestinal parasites like Wilkes and Wade.

Sex Pistols

Billmon:

If Fitz wants to go after Cheney, he needs something a little more down to earth — like obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice, etc.

Whether Karl can give him these things is another story, one that has yet to be told. Like I said, this may all still be about getting Scooter (although Libby could also just be a rest stop on the road to Cheneyville). But if Fitz decides to let Rove off, or taps him lightly on the wrist, in order to get what he thinks he needs to prosecute the foulest son of a bitch to inhabit the vice president’s office since Spiro Agnew copped a plea, then all I can say is more power to him.

Squealer

The non-partisan Congressional Research Service has made a new estimate for the costs of the War on Iraq and War on Afghanistan. Like often, the Washington Post, in reporting this buries, the lead and the day’s real headline in the second last paragraph of a page A16 story:

Of the total war spending, the CRS analysis found $4 billion that could not be tracked. It did identify $2.5 billion diverted from other spending authorizations in 2001 and 2002 to prepare for the invasion.

To my knowledge, this makes the CRS report the first official one to confirm the invasion of Iraq has been actively persued since 2001. Old news you may say, but so far there were only anonymous sources and very few named people who had alleged this.

Now this is officialy acknowledged in a non-partisan report to Congress. Why does that fact not deserve an A01 headline?

To answer that question seems to be above my capabilities.

So let us take a look at the reported CRS estimate. It does include some money for diplomatic issues, but not longterm health and benefit costs for veterans like some other recent studies did.

Cont. reading: War Costs

Billmon:

Blessed Addiction

Billmon:

Snow Job

Why are Rice and Rumsfeld in Baghdad?

To bend some arms and legs, either SecState or SecDef should have been enough. But Rice bending Iraqi arms one way, Rumsfeld the other way, changes nothing.

There is a ongoing struggle between R. and R. on responsibility for the political process in Iraq.

"We just want to make sure there are no seams between what we’re doing politically and what we’re doing militarily," Rice told reporters on her plane en route to Iraq. "Secretary Rumsfeld and I are going to be there together because a lot of the work that has to be done is at that juncture between political and military."

Celebrity Deathmatch in the Green Zone?

The official reason Rice is giving for her visit does not sound quite right.

"This is the Iraqis’ time," Rice told reporters traveling with her. "This is the time to support the Iraqi government of national unity. It will be up to the Iraqis to determine how this moves forward and we’re going to be there very much in support of them."

It is up to the Iraqis to ignore both Secretaries as they will.

There is, by the way, no government of national unity. So far a candidate for the Prime Minister has been named, but neither has he selected a cabinet, no one is even named for defense and interior, nor has he been elected by the parliament. Those processes will still have major hurdles and the government, if created at all, will be as partisan as possible.

But the trip is not to help Iraq anyhow, it is the "last chance" to save the project.

There was an atmosphere in her entourage that this visit offered perhaps a last chance to reverse some of the mistakes of the last three
years in providing security for Iraq, getting the oil and power systems
back and curbing sectarian hatreds and corruption within the Iraqi
government.

None of these mistakes can be reversed with the U.S. administration interfering. Iraq is a lost cause, the war against the resistance can not be won.

Unfortunately, like in Vietnam, it will take years until that is acknowledged.

Billmon:

Conservatism these days is a burnt out hulk — intellectually adrift, compromised by power, hopelessly hooked on pork, desperate to stay just one step ahead of the voters (not to mention the Justice Department.) And that’s what the conservatives are saying.
[…]
The [Republicans] could even try telling the truth: That sky-high gas prices are the product of many forces, including the economic rise of China, our national allergic reaction to conservation, the security nightmare of trying to protect a far-flung global energy infrastructure, and, most of all, the inevitable fact that the supply of light sweet crude is finite, and production is probably nearing its peak.

Profiles in Chicken Shit II (GOP edition)

… and playing politics with the the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Under pressure from angry drivers and leaders in both political parties, President Bush said today he was taking steps to at least slow the rising price of gasoline.

He said that deposits of oil in the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve would be halted for the summer to increase supplies available to the public.
[…]

The president traveled in a 14-vehicle motorcade to deliver his speech at a hotel in Washington. A pool reporter noticed that the prices posted at an Exxon station near the Watergate building complex were $3.29. $3.39 and $3.49 a gallon.
Bush to Halt Deposits to Oil Reserve
WaPo; April 25, 2006

Q Sir, Senator Kerry has suggested halting shipments to the emergency oil reserves. Your energy bill is a long-term strategy. What are some short-term steps that can be taken?

THE PRESIDENT: If people had acted on my energy bill when I submitted it three years ago, we would be in a much better situation today.

Secondly, we will not play politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That Petroleum Reserve is in place in case of major disruptions of energy supplies to the United States. The idea of emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve plays — would put America in a dangerous position in the war on terror. We’re at war. We face a tough and determined enemy on all fronts. And we must not put ourselves in a worse position in this war. And playing politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would do just that.

President Discusses Iraq, Economy, Gas Prices in Cabinet Meeting
White House; May 19, 2004

Billmon:

Moral of the story: superpowers that have to import 10 million barrels of oil a day can’t indulge in Wilsonian foreign policies, or even maintain the pretense of indulging in Wilsonian foreign policies — at least, not for long. Addicts can’t afford to be idealists. Just ask any of the other junkies.

The Politics of Scarcity

Currents …