...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.