Billmon:

It may seem odd that I’m defending Ricks, given some of the harsh things I’ve written about his reporting from Iraq. But I guess my attitude is that if Tom Ricks is going to be criticized, it bloody well should be from the left — not by some pompous neocon windbag who thinks he’s the reincarnation of Thucydides.

Fiasco

In the last open thread, anna missed analysed
the various scenarios the Baker Iraq Study Group, it is to
advise on the empire’s new cloth in Iraq, is currently
systematically leaking to the press. This led me to ask two Kremlinology questions:

1. Has Rove allowed all the rumours to come out from the Baker group
in hope it somehow helps Republicans, i.e. is this a coordinated
election strategy?

or

2. Is Baker and his group working against Rove and leaking this stuff to get a change in Congress that puts Dubya in a squeeze?

small coke answered:

Pure
guess: Rove & B43 may not be outright collaborating with Baker and
PTB [powers that be], but, at the least, they recognize that the word
has been delivered by the PTB, and they acquiensce.

Laura Rozen in her blog writes:

Seems
Baker is a witting campaign prop being coordinated by the White House
to communicate the message, the realists will be in charge of foreign
policy the next two years. Without the White House having to say it, or
it necessarily being true.

I don’t have a grip on this yet. What is your take?

Billmon:

Putting the War in Perspective

Billmon:

How can America hope to survive when the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy has so many tentacles spread in so many places?

The Plot Thickens

Billmon:

[T]he difference between the international and domestic editions of Newsweek (as well as its crosstown rival, Time) is like the difference between the mind of an international business executive wizzing across the Atlantic at 35,000 feet and that of a retarded chimpanzee thrashing around in own feces at the zoo — except I think even the domestic edition of Newsweek is probably a little highbrow for Bush.

Dumb and Dumber

Billmon:

The moral of the story, I guess, is that you don’t need to be an inhuman monster to cause an inhuman amount of death, destruction and suffering. You don’t even need evil — ignorance and arrogance and incompetence can manage the job quite nicely. But, as I’ve said before, it does requires a rare combination of those qualities to take a situation like Saddam’s Iraq and make it worse.

Catching Up With Saddam

Lind: Why We Still Fight

It appears at the moment that a Congressional demand for withdrawal from Iraq is more likely if the Republicans keep the Senate and Senator John Warner of Virginia remains Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee than if the Democrats take over.
[…]
A Democratic Congress will be as stupid, cowardly and corrupt as its Republican predecessor; in reality, both parties are one party, the party of successful career politicians. The White House will continue a lost war in Iraq, solely to dump the mess in the next President’s lap. America or Israel will attack Iran, pulling what’s left of the temple down on our heads. Congress will do nothing to stop either war.

I think Lind he is right here. The Dems might win, but the world will lose anyhow.

Billmon:

No more Prada for you, Mrs. Kim Jong-il!

Getting Tough

London Times (Murdoch alarm sounding) OpEd:

[T]he 43rd President of the United States of America has squandered the political authority of a great country. Never mind whether world leaders still feel the need to check in with the US; ordinary people no longer expect from Washington international leadership of any use. So spent is the authority of the United States that even a foreign affairs ingénue such as myself recognises that there is little constructive it can do any more. So it doesn’t really matter what the President thinks.

Well, it still matters a lot that he can order whomever to be bombed.

But anyhow – to read this in a Murdoch rag is definitly a sign that the obscure elite has thrown the towel on GW Bush.  Just wonder if, or when, he will notice.

Billmon:

The problem, Ralphy boy, is that you and your kind already have asked them to do just that — repeatedly …

The Peters Principle

Billmon:

Hastert’s Navy

Billmon:

Hitting the Trifecta

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, discussing his book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" at TPM Cafe, writes:

In my new book, […], I do not take a position on whether the United States should have invaded Iraq. I begin with the fact that we were there in Baghdad on April 9th, 2003 — and we had a strategic and moral obligation to get Iraq back on its feet.

This curious, U.S. exclusive, "obligation" has by now certainly killed enough people in Philippine, Viet Nam, Haiti, Iraq, (Iran, Somalia, Sudan) …

Americans, please let me asure you of just one thing:

You have NO obligations neither moral nor strategic obligation (whatever that might be) to kill more people who are very well able to take care of themself.

Just leave them/us/me alone.

Thanks

Billmon:

Or, as the test pilots in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff put it, the Republican mothership is "augering in" …

Crash and Burn

Billmon:

I’m sure we all appreciate Gen. Christian’s efforts to save the heathen from the torments of eternal hellfire, but considering there’s about 26 million of them in Iraq and only 140,000 or so of us, this might not be the right time, and Sadr City might not be the best place, for a come-to-Jesus rally.

Tour of Duty

Billmon:

This guy could have suffered — and probably did suffer — serious, irreversible brain damage. Not to mention the open sores and lesions.

Fascisize Me

Billmon:

Cohen is right when he argues that the "the political zeitgeist has changed dramatically in four years," and ratings aren’t the only, or even the most important, explanation. The atmosphere of oppressive fear and ’50s style conformity ("watch what you do, watch what you say") has dissipated.

The Price of Dissent

News & views …

Billmon:

No doubt Tony Snow will step out tomorrow to tell us it’s really not such a big deal — the North Koreans and Kim Jong-il being ever so much nicer and more rational than those genocidal Iranians and their power-crazed dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Test Pattern

Billmon:

Poetic Justice