Happy Holidays from the Future

Holiday Cheer From Jon and David

David Corn on Bunker Bush
I'm sleeping a lot better than people would assume.
--George W. Bush

Don Rumsfeld is the finest Secretary of Defense this nation has ever had.
--Dick Cheney

This is scary. The president of the United States of America has created a hellish disaster that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and thousands of American soldiers, and he's resting well. The vice president believes that the man responsible for three of the greatest military blunders in U.S. history (attacking Iraq without devising a strategy for securing the country after the invasion; dissolving the Iraqi army, creating armed and trained recruits for the incipient insurgency; and mounting an extensive de-Baathification campaign that destroyed the governing infrastructure of the nation) did his job well.

Such comments suggest that the two people in charge of this country are not living in denial but detachment. They must realize that Iraq is a mess perhaps beyond remedy. But that doesn't seem to affect them. How can that be?...(read more)

Stimulating Thought: Impeachment

"Still, there is accumulating evidence that Bush is talking to mirrors and taking instruction from his dog. He makes no sense, saying he's amenable to change one day and digging in his heels the next. "I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," he said recently. Yes. Absolutely. But what is the mission? Please, ask the dog. Lives are being wasted." (from the Washington Post editorial page)

"The Awful Grace of God"

"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." --Aeschylus (Robert Kennedy's favorite poem--recited when he announced the assassination of MLK)

"Rage, Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ Son Achilles…hurling down to the House of Death so many souls, great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion for the dogs and birds….(
from Bill Moyer's "The Poetry of War"

Jimmy Carter Speaks Truth to Power: Israel and Palestine

Iraqi Sunnis: "Desperate, fearful and impoverished"

Ban on procreative freedom...And America 20 years from now...if the Republican Right gets back in Power.

Tribute To A Pubic Servant

Olbermann Does George on Vietnam

Ship of Fools: Jumpin Ship

"Few of the original promoters of the war have grown as disenchanted as Adelman. The chief of Reagan's arms control agency, Adelman has been close to Cheney and Rumsfeld for decades and even worked for Rumsfeld at one point. As a member of the Defense Policy Board, he wrote in The Washington Post before the Iraq war that it would be "a cakewalk."

But in interviews with Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and The Post, Adelman said he became unhappy about the conduct of the war soon after his ebullient night at Cheney's residence in 2003. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction disturbed him. He said he was disgusted by the failure to stop the looting that followed Hussein's fall and by Rumsfeld's casual dismissal of it with the phrase "stuff happens." The breaking point, he said, was Bush's decision to award Medals of Freedom to occupation chief L. Paul Bremer, Gen. Tommy R. Franks and then-CIA Director George J. Tenet.

"The three individuals who got the highest civilian medals the president can give were responsible for a lot of the debacle that was Iraq," Adelman said. All told, he said, the Bush national security team has proved to be "the most incompetent" of the past half-century. But, he added, 'Obviously, the president is ultimately responsible.'"

What We Now Know: One of the Trinity is Gone: Two More To Go!

MORE PROOF THAT MOST EVANGELICALS LACK BOTH MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY.

“It looks like the white evangelical base of the Republican Party pretty much held firm,” said John Green, a senior fellow with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said. “The white evangelicals did show up, and they did vote Republican.”

oops! Who's Covering My Ass?

An amazing quote from Rumsfeld:

"Rumsfeld's account yesterday in the Oval Office of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan might also stand as his defense of his record: "The first war of the 21st century . . . is not well known, it was not well understood. It is complex for people to comprehend."

_______Really means: "The first war of the 21st century . . . I don't understand, it was not well understood. It is complex for me to comprehend."

Another great Rumsfeldian quote:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me," Rumsfeld said, "because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

He said, "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
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LET THE CANNABALISM BEGIN! from The Raw Story

"Conservative activist Richard Viguerie has released a statement that blasts the GOP's Congressional leadership in the wake of the loss of both the House and Senate.

"Every single member of the Republican leadership in the House should be replaced," says Viguerie. "They have failed the conservatives who put them in office, and they have failed the people of this country."

Viguerie attacks what he desribes as "the Big Business wing of the Republican Party" and urges GOP leaders to "get out of the way, and let a new generation of young, principled conservatives take their place," according to the release.

"Congressional Republicans should move as fast as they can to distance themselves from the Bush White House," says Viguerie. "That's the only way to come back from this disaster."

Excerpts from the press release follow...

"Yesterday's mid-term elections were a referendum on George W. Bush and his war on Iraq. Voters couldn't vote to fire Bush, so they did the next best thing -- they fired his party, in the House, in the Senate, in the statehouses around the Nation."

...

"This election," Viguerie said, "was also a referendum on the so-called 'neoconservatives' -- the Big Government Republicans who took us into a nation-building war while they busted the budget and enriched Big Business and its K Street lobbyists."

Viguerie said, "The only thing Denny Hastert & Company cared about was holding onto power. That's what led them to become Kings of Pork. That's what led them to protect the likes of Mark Foley."

MAJORITIES FAVOR SMALLER GOVERNMENT, TRADITIONAL VALUES: "One thing this election was NOT is a repudiation of conservatism. The twin pillars of conservatism -- smaller government and traditional values -- have the support of the same voters who threw out the Republican Congress.""
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Civil War

Civil War: in Iraq and America

If the government does not change on Nov. 7, it means it cannot change by peaceful, democratic means. The scary solution: Revolution.

Neo-Con Culpa and "the medicine"

Neo-Cons are jumping the ship of fools--Vanity Fair

SHIP OF FOOLS! A Magazine of Christian Unrest.

Review: "Naked Republicans: A Full Frontal Exposure of Right-wing Hypocrisy and Greed..."

“Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.” — Tom Delay

“I don’t think people understand quite what motivates political giving anyway. Believe it or not, the main thing that motivates it is friendships, I think.” —Rep. John Doolittle, on taking money from Jack Abramoff

"Gay marriage should be between a man and a woman." — Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

“I did everything but drink the bong water.” — Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, on Politically Incorrect

“Nobody likes beheadings.” — President George W. Bush on TV images of Iraq War, March 20th 2006

“I’ve been to Europe once. I don’t have to go again.” — Rep. Dick Armey

“It’s amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools.”
— Rick Santorum, author, It Takes a Family

Ouch! Jon, the Price of Oil, God is Gay!

Oil Price Manipulation and the Elections:

I wondered why no news outlets had picked this up in Woodward's book:

"Something Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said two years ago while prices were going higher sends chills: "They could go down very quickly. That's the Saudis' pledge." According to Woodward, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, "told President Bush that the Saudis would cut oil prices to ensure a strong economy for Election Day." This prediction has come to fruition."
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CHECK OUT THESE ENVIRONMENTAL RECORDS FOR REP. CONGRESSMAN:

"Committee chairs often have 'horrific' records on science, matters they oversee."
___________________________________________________
...MORE SCARY STUFF FROM SCIENCE...OUR CANNIBALISM CATCHING UP WITH US: "Report Warns of ‘Global Collapse’ of Fishing"..BY 2048!!
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WHAT WOULD IT REALLY TAKE TO HARPOON THIS WHALE?

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MORE STATE OF DENIAL!
Evangelical leader quits after gay sex allegation
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...and more Bushiting...
Congress Tells Auditor in Iraq to Close Office

"Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation."

A Sea of Delirium: Katherine Harris

One of GW's spiritual girlfriends headed for the "other" big white house:
from "Campaign Gone South"

Harris turns stony when she's asked what will happen if she doesn't win.

"Haven't even considered it," she says in a tone that suggests a follow-up question would be foolhardy.

Later in the evening, while talking about her love for Queen Esther, she runs to the passenger seat of her SUV and seizes a Bible.

"I'll give you one verse," she says. "On the day that the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them, the opposite occurred, in that the Jews themselves overpowered those who hated them."

What does that have to do with this race?

"November 7th," she replies.

Can it Get More Ridiculous!

"In its assessment of Iraqi weaponry, the inspector general concluded that of the 505,093 weapons that have been given to the Ministries of Interior and Defense over the last several years, serial numbers for only 12,128 were properly recorded. The weapons include rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, semiautomatic pistols and sniper rifles."
NY Times: "U.S. Is Said to Fail in Tracking Arms for Iraqis"

John Steward on N. Cavuto

Bhagdad

"However strong the wind," reads a new poster of a woman clutching her child, "it will pass."

"Faded and draped over a building scarred with craters from the invasion, it was an ad for the U.S.-funded Iraqi network, al-Iraqiya. In Arabic, its slogan reads, 'Prepare your eyes for more.'"

"No one can stop it but God," he said. "Only God has the power."
Bhagdad

Living in a Cartoon-Horror Movie:

Top US general says Rumsfeld is inspired by God [must be the Old Testiment god of War!!]

Here's something to think about. Cognitive Science tells us that the mind operates by metaphor. We literally live by-and -through the stories we tell. Symbols and metaphors animate those stories and root our consciousness in analogical experience...in other words, as Saint Paul says it...we see "through the glass darkly". But how dark is the metaphor through which Evangelical Fundamentalism and the Bushies "see" the world. As dark as it gets...a Horror movie. Imagine not the world of John Lennon, but living in the world of the book of "Revelations"...where the "evil-doers" battle the "sons of light." Imagine living in a world in which millions of infant "souls" are tortured and aborted by Nature (25% of all human pregnancies end in miscarriage) and millions more tortured and aborted by rational human beings who do not share in this horror-story movie. This horror-story is the world in which the Republican leaders of this country live. Is there any doubt why Rumsfeld and others saw the Bathists as the equivalent of the Nazis, and why they felt the need to "de-Bathify" Iraq. Is there any wonder why they have created a living hell in Iraq with policies logically derived from the worldview of the book of Revelations? Is there any wonder why they are creating a living hell for millions of Americans with poor schools and social services? Is there any wonder why American politics has become a surreal "war" where the opponent is demonized and sent to hell--de-humanized? Is there any wonder why Nativist Fundamentalists see the immigration of millions of poor Mexicans to America as an "invasion"--after all, most of them are Catholic...or "demons who can quote scripture."





Nostalgia...a President with real compassion and understanding...too bad he had a weakness for plump little co-eds.

"Iraq For Sale"

More propaganda from the commie-islamo-facist heartland !? Some things you should see (and think about) right before you vote.



Happy Habeas Corpus and Torture Day--See you in Git-Mo Day

Intellectual and Moral Integrity 101: Grover Norquist doesn't get it!

Read this interview with Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff's buddy, and one of the founders of the "I hate government movement". Grover (I love this name...it reminds me of Grover on Sesame Street) compares the logic and morality of the Holocaust to the progressive redistribution of wealth in the "death tax." A revealing exchange with Terry Gross.
The Jack Abramoff-Grover Norquest connection


MORE ON "TEMPTING FAITH"...duping The Right...


Steven Colbert: Let the fools keep talking..

Neo-Con Compassion at Work: The Death of Habeus Corpus, 655,000 Iraqis, and the Republican Right

Olberman: The "Nuts" Fight Back: How Jesus George and Carl-the-Sleeze-Rove Exploit Their Christian Friends...oops...cat's out of the bag...


655,000 dead in Iraq since American Invasion & The Bushiter's/American Denial


Tax breaks for "the Nuts"
Tax cuts for the "Spiritual"--share the love

Olbermann: The Death of Habeus Corpus


Jon Stewart sums-it-up


Bernie Sanders--our only real socialist--may be headed for the Senate.

Hail to the "Cheer leader-in-Chief"...check out the trailer...what was not in the 911 Report...that should have been.

Question: Did we lose our "will" in Vietnam, or had we lost our mind. Hasn't history already decided this issue? Wasn't the fear and "domino" theory that justified the Vietnam war been proven wrong by history. Communism died of its own internal contradictions and it's inablity to compete on the world stage with the lusts of consumerism and capitalism. Reagon's "evil empire" produced Michael Gorbechov, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Isn't the mythic "war on terror" equally wrong headed? We were attacked by Al Queda. Why wasn't our effort focused on Al Queda and Bin Ladan? There is only one reasonable answer: Jesus George and his neo-cons were still fighting the first Gulf War with Saddam...informed by their ideological defeat in Vietnam...everything else has been fear, the folly of denial--Woodward nailed with the title--the delusions of power...and the politics of perpetuating power with fear and folly. Furthermore, please see the trailer on the pathos and reasoning behind the 911 hijackers and their hatred of America. Note: it was not because of our "freedom"--which they may have hated too--but because of our foreign policy in the Middle East...including our support for the Israelie hardliners...ironically dominated by Zionists who see all of Palestine as their religious birth right. Why is the dialogue about the Iraq war and our Middle East policy donimated by these zealots and hypocrites on both sides. Are these spiritual people? Because they pray to their gods of mamon and war?

It's no joke: IU study finds The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to be as substantive as network news



Jon Stewart body-slams Bill Bennett on Gay Marriage

Secret Letter from Iraq

"A Marine's letter home, with its frank description of life in 'Dante's inferno,' has been circulating through generals' in-boxes." (CNN)

"...Most Profound Man in Iraq — an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Reconnaissance Marines if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied 'Yes, you...'

Coolest Insurgent Act — Stealing almost $7 million from the main bank in Ramadi in broad daylight, then, upon exiting, waving to the Marines in the combat outpost right next to the bank, who had no clue of what was going on. The Marines waved back. Too cool..."

Biggest Hassle — High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and "battlefield" tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no effect on their preconceived notions of what's going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they've been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here..."

Biggest Outrage — Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq, not that I get to watch much TV. Their thoughts are consistently both grossly simplistic and politically slanted. Biggest Offender: Bill O'Reilly..."

"Most Common Thought — Home. Always thinking of home, of my great wife and the kids. Wondering how everyone else is getting along. Regretting that I don't write more. Yep, always thinking of home..."


READ ENTIRE LETTER HERE--MUST READ.

TIME TO BRING THESE BOYS HOME...SCREW THE BIBLE THUMPING-HORROR FILM ADDICTS AND MORALISTS.

Olbermann Goes OFF on Jesus George

Replay video | Share video | Watch more videos

"Capitcal Crimes"

Bill Moyer's "Capital Crimes" on PBS...that left wing-communist organization staring Big Bird and Elmo is up to it again slandering our great Christian saints on The Hill...the jew-for-jesus Abramoff, and the Christian warriors Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, and Ralph Reed.

More words of wisdom from the deluded Jesus George...in the Washington Post

"As he heads out on the campaign trail, haunted by an unpopular war, President Bush has begun reassuring audiences that this traumatic period in Iraq will be seen as "just a comma" in the history books."

The phrase comes from "Never put a period where God has put a comma..."

"...He is constantly littering his speeches with code words and phrases meant for the religious right. Other people don't hear them, but they do, and most of the time it allows Bush both to say what those who aren't evangelical or born again want to hear, while still reassuring the religious right [what it] wants to hear....But it turns out that the phrase "never put a period" originated not with a Christian conservative figure or biblical passage but with Gracie Allen, the comedienne wife of George Burns. And the phrase is a favorite not of the religious right but of the religious left. The United Church of Christ, which is devoted to fighting for what it calls social justice and opposes the war, adopted the phrase in January 2002."

...spinning Foley into a liberal democrat

...more evidence of intellectual-moral integrity deficit disorder from the Right. The il-logic of getting from pedophilia to gay bashing. A beautiful example of the politics of bait and switch:

Fox spins Foley into a Democrat:

Foley's Folley...the Best of Jon Stewart and the Newt

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...more stupidity from Right:

"Why do Sunni's kill Shi'ites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me."
Trent Lott following a closed-door meeting with President Bush and other Republicans at the Capital

...more insights from Woodward and "State of Denial"

A good discussion of the pre-911, Rice cover-up is here

Cheney's Fever
"Colin Powell, the secretary of state, saw this in Cheney to such an extent, he, Powell, told colleagues that ‘Cheney has a fever. It is an absolute fever. It’s almost as if nothing else exists,’”

OIL POWER/ELECTION MANIPULATION:

"Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day."

"Woodward says that Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: “They’re [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.”"

BUSH'S KOOL-AID

"Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? “I asked the president about this. And President Bush said, ‘Well, no,’ and then he got defensive about it,” says Woodward. “Then he said something that really struck me. He said of his father, ‘He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.’ And then he said, ‘There's a higher Father that I appeal to.’"

Today, while most doubt that Saddam still possessed any weapons of mass destruction, the president told Woodward he has no doubts at all about going to war.

The president still believes with some conviction, that this was absolutely the right thing, that he has the duty to free people, to liberate people. And this was his moment, says Woodward.

But who gave President Bush the duty to free people around the world? “That's a really good question. The Constitution doesn't say that's part of the commander in chief's duties,” says Woodward. “That’s his stated purpose. It is far-reaching, and ambitious, and I think will cause many people to tremble.”

AMERICAN ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM

How deep a man is President George W. Bush? “He’s not an intellectual. He is not what I guess would be called a deep thinker,” says Woodward. “He chastised me at one point because I said people were concerned about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. And he said, ‘Well you travel in elite circles.’ I think he feels there is an intellectual world and he's indicated he's not a part of it … the fancy pants intellectual world. What he calls the elite.”

...more from the Kool-Aid Kids in the Big White House

...highlights from "State of Denial"...diagnosis: acute integrity deficit disorder

UNBELIEVABLE--AND SCARY--RUMSFELDIAN MOMENTS--A few "Rumsfeldian moments" below, but the best indication that captain Ahab has lost touch with reality is the last interview...Click here

Exerpts from "State of Denial":

"I told Rumsfeld that I understood the number of attacks was going up.

“That’s probably true,” he said. “It is also probably true that our data’s better, and we’re categorizing more things as attacks. A random round can be an attack and all the way up to killing 50 people someplace. So you’ve got a whole fruit bowl of different things—a banana and an apple and an orange.”

I was speechless. Even with the loosest and most careless use of language and analogy, I did not understand how the secretary of defense would compare insurgent attacks to a “fruit bowl,” a metaphor that stripped them of all urgency and emotion. The official categories in the classified reports that Rumsfeld regularly received were the lethal IEDs, standoff attacks with mortars, and close-engagements such as ambushes—as far from bananas, apples and oranges as possible..."

Another "PURE RUMSFELDIAN MOMENT"

...Here was one of the central questions in any war. Was the other side “gaining strength and increasing capacity?” General Casey the Joint Chiefs’ intelligence staff, and the CIA had all categorically said the insurgency was gaining. Certainly Rumsfeld knew that. I had also quoted from the assessment on a list of 29 sample questions I had submitted in advance, and I know he had spent at least one hour the day before preparing for the interview.

“When was this?” Rumsfeld asked.

Six weeks ago, I answered. The question on the table was whether he agreed or not that the insurgency in the Iraq War was gaining. I was ready for a pure Rumsfeldian moment, and I was not disappointed.

“Gosh, I don’t know,” the secretary of defense replied. “I don’t want to comment on it. I read so many of those intelligence reports”—I had never said it was an intelligence report—“and they are all over the lot. In a given day you can see one from one agency, and one from another agency, and then I’ll ask Casey or Abizaid what they think about it, or Pete Pace, ‘Is that your view?’ And try and triangulate and see what people think. But it changes from month to month. I’m not going to go back and say I agree or don’t agree with something like that.”

He was right that there might be some changes month to month, but, as he knew, the overall assessment and trend was visibly, measurably and dramatically worse...

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Sounds like Rumy might need to be waterboarded to extract a confession. Another symptom of acute integrity deficite disorder and the politics of terror: the willingness to TORTURE. Click on the links below to see what "our" representatives in Washington just legalized in your name...

David Corn and the Killing Fields of Cambodia/America
ABC piece on CIA Torture:

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Powell's Kool-Aid moment with Jesus George:

The "Kool Aid" of Denial

"State of Denial"...WOW...what a perfect title for this administration and the 40% of "Americans" who still support this delusionary (or is it visionary?:) and his Fundamentalist crusaders.

...Check out this integrity deficit disorder!...when Rep. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is asked by Chris Matthews on Hardball about the STATE DEPARTMENT poll that REVEALS over 60% of Iraqis who say it's OK to attach/kill Americans, and 65% OF IRAQI'S who FAVOR AN IMMEDIATE PULLOUT, she simply denies the evidence...more faith based politics and "denial"! Also, notice Ms. Blackburn's contention that Woodward is trying to sell books...argument ad hominem...another attach on a persons character rather than addressing the issues Woodward raises. Not only is the arguement invalid from a perspective of logic (the truth can also sell books and make money!), it is also an ironic strategy coming from the party of big-money values? Please note: a similar attack strategy DID WORK for many naive Americans when Richard Clark came out with his book criticizing the Bush administration's negligence on pre-911 intelligence...see below...Woodward's book confirms much of what R. Clark wrote in "Against All Enemies".


The STATE DEPARTMENT poll also found that "almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents."

More juicy stuff from "State of Denial"..."They didn't see it coming," Garner added. "As the troops said, they drank the Kool-Aid."

In a related article, "Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice" is Woodward's "Bombshell," tells of a meeting between C. Black, Tenant, and Rice that supports R. Clark's contention in "Against All Enemies" that Rice and the Bush team dropped the ball on Al Queda...this is just a great metaphor and insight into this administration's lack of awareness and terrorism expertise: "Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long..."

A question: why wasn't this meeting reported to any of the congressional commissions investigating the 911 failures...Did Tenant and Black agree to conceal this damning evidence of Rice and other Neo-con incompetances in order to keep their jobs?...it didn't work, of course, because they too were evantually asked to fall on their swords--like Colin Powell, see below--for Jesus George, and take full responsibity for the cherry picking of Bush and his neo-cons.

And some juicy stuff from Colin Powell...finally the fallen soldier speaks out..."Falling on His Sword"..."Powell later recalled that most of their time was spent 'trimming the garbage' of the White House's overwrought verbiage and uncorroborated specifics from the speech."

Brad's my Man in 06

More moral integrity from a member of the Republican party?

Oops...who brought this issue to the table?

Saint George's Phony War

Is George's "War on Terror" strategically similar to the mythic "domino" theory that animated the fear and delusions of the Vietnam war? Why did Saint George and his Neo-cons define our response to 911 as a "war on terror" rather than a war on al Queda? The solution to the Catch 22 that is now Iraq: Redefine ande redeploy! De-mytologize the "War on Terror" as a Neo-con political strategy, re-enforced by the mythic delusions of Fundamentalist Christian soldiers like Saint George and Jerry Falwell. Put Fundamentalist Christianity and Islam back in their boxes.





Some things to read and think about before you vote in 06:

"The Phony War": Rolling Stone Magazine

There is no war on Terror

Beware of the NIE

The Cost of being Neo-Coned in Iraq

What Neo-Cons don't want you to read: Richard Clark's Book

"You would think that a consensus report from all sixteen US intelligence services concluding that he has blown the war on terror would be a really big deal to the President. But that assumes that George W. Bush values intelligence....Clearly, he does not." Robert Sheer: "A Distinct Lack of Intelligence"

More absurdity from the Fundamentalist heartland

The Mirror of Iraq in the Christian heartland

But 'a really big hole' in the U.S. strategy, a second counterterrorism official said, is that we focus on the terrorists and very little on how they are created. If you looked at all the resources of the U.S. government, we spent 85, 90 percent on current terrorists, not on how people are radicalized. complete article: "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Hurting U.S. Terror Fight"

American Jihadists

Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect, "Into a Moral Desert of our own devise" (click here for entire article)

"As events would have it, though, our nation is led by men who have carefully avoided both war and literature. By men devoid of a sense of the nation's and their own moral fallibility. By men who have led us into a moral desert and aren't even looking for a way back home."

An interesting article until you realize Jesus George's intellectual, moral, and political horizon (like many "Born Againer's"--including Osama Bin Laden's Islamic version), is informed by the story of the Christian Book of Revelations. I call him Jesus George ironically, because he has obviously failed to understand the sublime message of love and compassion in the Christian Gospels. "Hubris" or arrogance, of course, is the psychology of resentment and the defining characteristic of Satan himself. Maybe Chavez was right, the UN pulpit smelled of sulfur. For those who believe in such a personification of social and psychological forces that inform the evils of our world, the Luciferian characteristics of Georges "War on Terror" is both ironic and instructive.

A related thought: Why did George Bush and his "evil twins", Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, define our response to 911 in terms of a "War on Terror"? Why did we not define our response as a "War on Al Queda", the perpetrator of 911 and numerous other attacks on Americans? Why pick a fight with organization like Hamas and Hezbollah, Iraq and Iran? After all, as Noam Chomsky, and others have pointed out, "terror" is a strategy of war (one that American has also used as numerous times in history--remember Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the fire bombing of Tokyo in WWII). How better off would we be today, if this "war" was defined as a war on Al Queda? Was this characterization of a "War on Terror" consciously defined with the politics of fear in mind, a clear advantage for Republicans and their war mongering, Evangelical base? If this is so, is not GW, his evil twins, and the Evangelical Republican Right's continuous war (ala Revelations) on somebody ("pagans", "communists", "liberals", popular culture, abortion, gays, lesbians, multi-culturalism, "Islamo-fascism"etc.) really just a strategy of "terror"? Is our government--and the Republican Party (not all Republicans), run by political terrorists?

This video deserves to be seen again and again.

Sesame Street of the Religious Right?



Short Film "Submission" referenced in George Will's op ed, 'A Dissident Of Islam' (click here for entire article)



George Will: "It was shown twice before Nov. 2, 2004, when van Gogh, bicycling through central Amsterdam in the morning, was shot by an Islamic extremist who then slit his throat with a machete. Next, the murderer (in whose room was found a disc containing videos of "enemies of Allah" being murdered, including a man having his head slowly sawed off) used another knife to pin a long letter to van Gogh's chest. The letter was to Hirsi Ali, calling her a "soldier of evil" who would "smash herself to pieces on Islam.""

Leave it up to George Will and the Right to use this art and tragedy to rail against European and American multi-culturalism. For those of you who are interested, I will be glad to explain the pedagogical philosophy of milticulturalism--multi-culturalism does not necessarily lead to cultural relativism. That is a separate, yet related, issue of Moral Philosophy.

Our Future Presidents and/or Terrorists

Sesame Street of the Religious Right?



One of the sleezy-est journalists in history and a classic comedy voice...why can't we all just get along? :)



Are you ready to lose your breakfast? This will do it!

NYT columnist David Brooks on our visionary president:

"A leader's first job is to project authority, and George Bush certainly does that. In a 90-minute interview with a few columnists in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Bush swallowed up the room, crouching forward to energetically make a point or spreading his arms wide to illustrate the scope of his ideas -- always projecting confidence and intensity.

"He opened the session by declaring, 'Let me just first tell you that I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions,' and he grew more self-assured from there. I interview politicians for a living, and every time I brush against Bush I'm reminded that this guy is different. There's none of that hunger for approval that is common to the breed. This is the most inner-directed man on the globe.

The other striking feature of his conversation is that he possesses an unusual perception of time. Washington, and modern life in general, encourages people to think in the short term. But Bush, who stands aloof, thinks in long durations . . . All of which prepares him to think about the war on terror as a generations-long struggle."

Something to think about:

What kind of visionary would envision the use of torture and fail to see the moral logic of the relatationship between means and end?

What kind of visionary would fail to see (and admit) the huge blunder that is now Iraq?

What kind of visionary would not have forseen the re-emergence of the Taliban in Afganistan?

What kind of visionary would not have forseen the strategic strengthening of Iran with the emergence of a Shiite dominated Iraq?

What kind of visionary could not see the support of Hezbolla by a Shiite dominated Iraq?

What kind of visionary would not forsee the suffering and misery of the Iraqi people by creating Iraq as a "flypaper" for terrorists? (Whose flypaper is it now?)

Answer: a deluded "visionary" with a severe deficiency of intellectual integrity.

More notes from the intellectual underground:

I commend C. Powell, L. Graham, and the rest for finally standing up and speaking out.