Billmon:

This is like Spiro Agnew saying it was all Tricky Dick’s fault.

Dead Man Talking

Billmon:

I think if Shrub were ever forced to let go of his vision, his one big idea, it would not only crush his fragile ego, it would leave him completely incapable of making any sense at all out of his presidency, out of America’s role in the Middle East, out of the universe.

So now he’s imitating the hedgehog as literally as any human being can — he’s rolled himself up into a defensive ball, spines out. He has nothing useful to say and absolutely no strategy beyond hunkering down and passively defying reality.

Hedgehog Defense

by citizen
(lifted from a comment)

At LeSpeakeasy, b real brought up for question Bookchin’s use of the terms "revolutionary" and "scarcity". I answered there, and will cross post here:

About scarcity:

Cont. reading: “Revolutionary” and “Scarcity”

News, views and other issues …

What Next? ask Daniel L. Byman, director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies, and Brookings Institution’s  Kenneth M. Pollack in a piece on the Iraq civil war. It is a quite bleak outlook.

They explain how other civil wars in Ruanda, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Lebanon spread into neightbouring countries, splintered off new guerilla groups and escalated far beyond their starting cause. This, they say, will happen in Iraq too. It is Michael Ledeen’s wet dream of a Middle East cauldron coming true.

The piece is riddled with historic ommissions (the Taliban did get support from Pakistan’s ISI they say, but the CIA’s major role is not mentioned) and the usual anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian propaganda (the countries many Iraqis already fleed to are named, except Syria and Iran, who did take several hundered thousand refugees.) But I recommend to read it, because the scenario given is realistic and very probable.

Their recommendation to the U.S. is to stay involved by setting up very large refugee camps and by threatening Iran away from engaging in Iraq. The former recommendation is not marketable to the U.S. taxpayer and will therefore not happen. The later threat has already been made and is very well on its escalation route.

To have the U.S. stay in the area and to have it play the players certainly guarantees a longer and more brutal war in the Middle East than all scenarios without U.S intervention.

But then, that may be what these Democratic pundits may really have in mind.

Tactics is the art of organizing an army. They consist of a bunch of concepts and moves to defend or conquer some territory. But when I visited the Germany army officer courses, they somehow skipped this variant:

Major-General Moshe Kaplinsky, Israel’s deputy chief of staff, said his country intended to keep unmanned "outposts" in southern Lebanon.
Stand by Hizbullah says Lebanese army

Cont. reading: UNIFIL Problem Solved

This is not the ailment, but a symptom of a sinking empire:

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s second-largest carmaker, said first-quarter profit rose 39 percent on increased sales of fuel-efficient Corolla and RAV4 vehicles in the U.S. and a weaker yen.
…
Toyota is spending a record 1.55 trillion yen in the year
ending in March to expand production in North America, Europe
and Asia, and plans a Texas factory this year and a factory in
Russia in 2007.
Toyota’s Profit Rises 39% on Higher U.S. Sales, Yen – Aug 4, 2006

The Ford Motor Company, which is struggling to keep its grip on second place in the American car market, said Friday that it would cut by one-fifth the number of vehicles it plans to build in the final three months of the year.
…
Together, Ford and General Motors are shedding tens of thousands of jobs, closing more than two dozen plants and cutting billions of dollars of costs. But those measures are effectively canceled out when automakers cannot sell the vehicles already on the showroom floors.
Ford Is Slashing Production 20% for 4th Quarter – Aug 18, 2006

News & views … Enjoy!

Billmon:

So instability is good, but Hizbullah is a force for instability, which is bad. But Hizbullah lost the war, which is good, so it can’t be a force for instability any more, which could be bad or good, depending on what day of the week it is and whether or not Shrub has been hitting the sauce again.

Stability

Billmon:

Uncle Sam to the Rescue

Billmon:

Being and Nothingness

Billmon:

It’s the rare supertanker that has the brass (or the bilge water) to begin an op-ed in the Washington Post with such a blatant, obscene lie …

False Labor

The "democracy" argument on Iraq is melting away:

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month …

Here is Bush’s official (final?) replacement:

[L]eaving before we complete our mission would create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would be willing to use to extract economic pain from those of us who believe in freedom.

(Emphasis added)

Billmon:

It’s a very cold day in hell when I agree with Rush Limbaugh about anything.

Sticks and Stones

Other topics …
and a link to the older OT.

Billmon:

Like all polices, our relentless promotion of stability in the Middle East had a price, and now we’re paying it.

In that sense, if no other, America is "responsible" for the rise of what Shrub likes to call Islamofascism. His own rhetoric about democratization (a.k.a. the "forward strategy of freedom") implicitly recognizes this. It’s an effort, albeit a hopelessly naive and contradictory one, to address a problem that Will has decided simply doesn’t exist — that is, outside the blogosphere’s "fog of paranoia."

A Different Kind of Cluelessness, Part II

Billmon:

Next up on the new, improved PBS: Morning Rendition, All Things Conservative and Hot Air.

Propaganda Broadcasting Service

Billmon:

But until Hizbullah clarifies its intentions, I think the Alphonse & Gaston shtick is going to continue — long past the point where it strikes even me as funny.

II. Alphonse & Gaston

—

If the goal is to restore trust, and public confidence in the state and its armed forces, then Israel’s military and political elites are going to have to come clean and admit the full scale of their failure — and explicitly renounce the long-obsolete notion that Israel’s security can be guaranteed by military force.

I. The Reckoning

Billmon:

But what makes things different — and potentially more exciting — this time around are the gaudy new financing gimmicks Kevin mentions: no money down loans, interest-only mortgages, ARMs that reset to truly usurious rates, etc. If and when these loans blow up, which they will, they could leave many home "owners" with no alternative but to sell and sell quickly — or simply mail the keys back to the bank.

Home is Where the Sink Hole Is

Some fiveteen hours ago, when reading the NYT story and the AP dispatch cited below, I thought everybody will do a post on this. Nobody in my bookmarks did – which about tells you the real story.

More generally, the participants said, the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. “I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States,” said another person who attended.
Bush Said to Be Frustrated by Level of Public Support in Iraq

Well, whatever Bush supporter attended that meeting, (and only Bush supporters did,) according to records:

There was no official government estimate, but reporters at the scene said hundreds of thousands of people had taken to the streets.

But really, there were only 10,000, or so …

So why do they hate us?

An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed each day in July, according to the figures.
…
United Nations officials and military analysts say the morgue and ministry numbers almost certainly reflect severe undercounts, caused by the haphazard nature of information in a war zone.

Many casualties in areas outside Baghdad probably never appear in the official count, said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group in Washington.
Iraqi Death Toll Rose Above 3,400 in July