Quote du jour

Anyone who can be shocked by someone in America getting hold of a firearm and shooting a bunch of random strangers simply hasn’t been paying attention.

-- WIIIAI

Quote du jour

"The president is using a primitive, inarticulate argument that leaves him open to criticism and caricature." -- James Jay Carafano, a homeland security and counterterrorism expert for the Heritage Foundation.

Which of the thousands of Bush's primitive, inarticulate arguments is Carafano referring to? This one: "This is a war in which, if we were to leave before the job is done, the enemy would follow us here." Carafano is one of several think-tankers and in-government "experts" telling McClatchy that this particular argument is just so much GWBS.

Quote du jour

If there is a tragedy associated with Bill Clinton's case, it is not his, but ours: that a man with the insight and intellect that he has often displayed should reach the pinnacle of national power, and do nothing with it but serve the rich, serve the masters of war, and serve himself. But then, if Clinton had been other than what he was, he never would have reached that pinnacle.

-- Chris Floyd.

Quote du jour

You know, I hear people equate supporting this war with "supporting our troops" twenty times a day, but every so often it just pisses me off all over again.

-- WIIIAI

Quote du jour

"In the beloved Iraq, the bloodshed is continuing under an illegal foreign occupation and detestable sectarianism." -- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, today (emphasis added).

Quote du jour

Now that night has descended and illusions about the great crusade shattered for ever, let us tip our hats to those who opposed this war from the start ­ the real left: the libertarians and those without illusions about the "civilizing mission" of the great powers.

-- Alexander Cockburn.

Bizarre quote du jour

[Update added 3/19 for clarity--see below]

"Why does the US support Musharraf? Because he has nuclear weapons and could hold the key to finding Osama bin Laden." -- Andrea Mitchell on tonight's NBC Nightly News.

Frau Greenspan didn't bother to elaborate on her claim about nuclear weapons. She didn't quote anybody, administration liar or otherwise, to support it. I think there's some truth to it, but to just hear her brazenly make such a claim on national TV after the US has rattled and even inserted the sword at many countries because of alleged weapons programs? Bizarre.

The whole Nightly News experience reminded me why so many Americans are so ignorant. If all you know about the world is what you get from network news, you know less than nothing.

[Update] James e-mailed me wondering why I thought the quote bizarre, since I should know that Pakistan has nukes. Rereading the post, I can see that that is the simplest way to interpret the post--that I was shocked that anyone could suggest that Pakistan has nukes. That isn't what I intended--I've know that Pakistan has nukes for almost as long as they've had them (I've even ranted about it). I thought that what Mitchell said was bizarre was because she gave Pakistan's nukes as a reason for US support. While I believe there is some truth in that, I don't think any administration official has come out and said "We support Musharraf because he has nuclear weapons." It's always "Musharraf has been a good partner in the war on terror," or some similar BS. It seemed bizarre to me that Mitchell, in the middle of a supposedly straight news story about riots in Pakistan, would brazenly editorialize like that--and without any corroborating evidence or quote. [End Update]

Quote du jour

"The only thing I would trust Cheney for advice on is if I had a dead hooker in my hotel room." -- Jon Stewart

Another quote du jour

One of the infuriating aspects of covering Iraq in the past three years has been to hear the US and British governments claim that there are large parts of Iraq that are at peace and know it is untrue, but to prove that they are lying would mean getting killed oneself.

-- Patrick Cockburn

Quote du jour

With not a shred of victory in sight, "our troops" have become the prime symbol of both American virtue and insecurity, the prime reason to stay in Iraq now that every other publicly ballyhooed reason has disappeared.

-- Ira Chernus, from an essay on the possibility of an "Iraq syndrome" arising, similar to the "Vietnam syndrome," and its being turned rather quickly, as the Vietnam syndrome was, as a basis for even more militarism and imperialism.

Quote du jour: "It's over. You lost."

And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse.

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It's worse. It's over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq's first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.

-- Iraqi blogger Riverbend, in a post about the alleged gang-rape of an Iraqi woman by the so-called security forces (and their immediate exoneration by puppet-monkey Maliki). More on the subject from Chris Floyd and WIIIAI.

Meta-quote du jour

Holy Joe Lieberman hang-doggedly warned today that the non-binding resolution will turn into a constitutional crisis, "an escalating battle that threatens to consume our government over many months ahead, a battle that will neither solve the sprawling challenges we face in Iraq nor strengthen our nation to defeat the enemies of our security throughout the world from Islamist extremists." In other words--and I suspect you're all way ahead of me here--exactly like the war in Iraq.

-- WIIIAI

Stupid quote du jour

This is a global war on terror. Some people from the other side seem to believe that if we pull out of Iraq, that the Iraqi people are going to go back to tending sheep and herding goats. That's not what's going to happen. If we pull out of Iraq, what's going to happen is you are going to see more bloodshed than we have seen in a long time in this world.

-- Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA). Westmoreland is not, apparently, related to that other champion of endless war, Gen. William Westmoreland. Still, it's hard to know where to start in ripping this moron a new one.

• First, following on my post from earlier today: Shut the Cheney up about a "war on terror!"
• Second, it has been a long time since most Iraqis tended sheep or herded goats (if there ever was such a time). According to Wikipedia: "In 1996 some 66.4 percent of the labor force worked in services, 17.5 percent in industry, and 16.1 percent in agriculture." So I guess he's right there--Iraq is unlikely to return to a past that never was.
• More bloodshed than we've seen in a long time? Well, maybe if you ignore the Congo and what's been going on in Iraq for the past four years. And while there is plenty of evidence that American troops staying is not improving the situation in Iraq, there is none at all that leaving will make it worse. Admittedly, none to indicate that leaving will make it better--because IT HASN'T BEEN TRIED. Staying is a proven failure; leaving isn't a guarantee of anything, but it is evidence of sanity.

Anyway--here's a photo of Westmoron for your dartboard:


And you can read more about him, including his Ten Commandments legislation and his appearance on the Colbert Report, on Wikipedia. Some of these people are too stupid to live, but not too stupid to be in Congress.

Quote du jour

This is what the Bushists are tacitly admitting when they claim that the Shiite militias are fragging their ostensible American allies with Iranian weapons. They are saying that even the factions "liberated" and empowered by the American invasion are now attacking and killing U.S. soldiers, with even more virulence than the Sunni insurgents. They are saying that Bush is now "surging" more soldiers into a situation where every single armed faction in the Iraqi conflict is targeting and killing Americans, including those factions armed and funded by the Americans themselves.

-- Chris Floyd

Quote du jour

To review: news shows are, yes, shows. They do not make money by providing us useful information. They make money by providing us... to the advertisers.

-- Bob Harris, noting that out of the over 100,000 deaths in the world today, only one is getting much attention from our so-called news networks. Harris notes that these "news" organizations are not underestimating the American public--that one particular death is the most popular story on Google News and Yahoo News.

Quote du jour

We had no right to invade and occupy Iraq. Iraq never attacked us, and did not threaten us. We have committed an unforgivable war crime, on an immense scale. Insofar as fundamental moral principles are concerned, we deserve to lose.

"Victory" was impossible before this criminal enterprise began, because we never knew what we were doing at the most basic level. The longer we remain in Iraq, the worse the devastation will be. We must leave as quickly as possible, and then make whatever reparations we can.

-- Arthur Silber

Quote du jour

"Bush is using proper English, as it will be spoken in the 23rd Century after 200 more years of budget cuts in education." -- Ted Rall

Quote du jour

It's quite difficult to convince people you are killing them for their own good. That's our basic problem in Iraq.

-- Molly Ivins, who died yesterday. WIIIAI has a bunch of great Molly quotes, and is collecting more.

Quote du jour

"We are on the brink of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire." -- Chalmers Johnson, from a TomDispatch article introducing his new book.

Johnson concludes with a sentiment that I've expressed several times over the past few years: Our only escape from Bushian endless war and totalitarianism will be through financial collapse (which is pretty close to already being here in Michigan):

So far, both the Chinese and Japanese governments continue to be willing to be paid in dollars in order to sustain American purchases of their exports.

For the sake of their own domestic employment, both countries lend huge amounts to the American treasury, but there is no guarantee of how long they will want to, or be able to do so. Marshall Auerback, an international financial strategist, says we have become a "Blanche Dubois economy" (so named after the leading character in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire) heavily dependent on "the kindness of strangers." Unfortunately, in our case, as in Blanche's, there are ever fewer strangers willing to support our illusions.

So my own hope is that -- if the American people do not find a way to choose democracy over empire -- at least our imperial venture will end not with a nuclear bang but a financial whimper.

Pot-Kettle-Black Department

Orwellian quote du jour: "Iran seems to be conducting a foreign policy with a sense of dangerous triumphalism." -- CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden, speaking to Congress recently.

The quote comes from a WaPo article which states that the Bushies have "authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran's influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program."

The real goal, I'm afraid, is to create a pretext for going to war with Iran, as Paul Craig Roberts writes pretty much every week.

[Update 10:40 AM] Chris Floyd comments:

What Bush has done with this order is to turn the American military into his own private death squad. It is an act of breathtaking dishonor, of unspeakable moral filth. That this pathetic little man and the jumped-up thugs around him--especially the hulking, smirking, lying coward Dick Cheney--are allowed to show their faces among civilized people, much less exercise power over a mighty nation, remains an unfathomable mystery...and a source of deep shame for all Americans.

Quote du jour

I want to make sure I hear from as many of those ideas and opinions as possible. Today I heard from some opinions that matter a lot to me... And I am proud to have listened to their points of view.

-- AWol, who is clearly drinking again. (Read more of his gibberish at WIIIAI)

So he talks to families who die and hears from opinions that matter a lot to him. I'd call him a moron again, but that's insulting. To morons.

Quote du jour

"We implore all Iraqis not to become pawns of those who seek to destroy you and your country." -- U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad

Gee, Zal, I thought making pawns of Iraqis was what all this training of police and military was all about!

The ability of all Bushies to completely miss how much everything they say reflects directly on themselves never ceases to amaze.

Quote du jour

Here there is no democracy, no security, no women's rights. When I speak in parliament they threaten me. In May they beat me by throwing bottles of water at me and they shouted, "Take her and rape her." These men who are in power, never have they apologised for their crimes that they committed in the wars, and now, with the support of the US, they continue with their crimes in a different way. That is why there is no fundamental change in the situation of women.

-- Malalai Joya, 28 years old, "the youngest and most famous of all the women in the Afghan parliament." From a Guardian article on the still-miserable state of affairs for Afghan women--an article Bush apparently, like pretty much everything else, hasn't read:

Every ally can take pride in the transformation that NATO is making possible for the people of Afghanistan. Because of our efforts, Afghanistan has gone from a totalitarian nightmare to a free nation, with an elected president, a democratic constitution, and brave soldiers and police fighting for their country.

Over 4.6 million Afghan refugees have come home. It's one of the largest return movements in history. The Afghan economy has tripled in size over the past five years. About two million girls are now in school, compared to zero under the Taliban -- and 85 women were elected or appointed to the Afghan National Assembly.

-- aWol, babbling yesterday at the NATO summit about Fantasy Afghanistan. I wonder how many of those returning refugees are returning from Iraq, or maybe New Orleans? My guess is that that number is a complete lie, unless by "have come home" he means "have died." The part about zero girls in school under the Taliban is directly contradicted by the Guardian article--the woman quoted above worked in secret underground schools in Herat during Taliban times. The article makes it pretty clear that in most of Afghanistan, secret underground schools are still about the only way for girls to be educated.

And I'm guessing that most of the tripling in size of the Afghan economy has come from the resurgence of opium production.

Quote du jour

"We have not failed yet." -- General John Abizaid, speaking at Harvard last Friday.

Not exactly John Paul Jones, is he?

Everything about that article is disturbing, including the crappy writing by Boston Globe writer Charles M. Sennott. (Yeah, I make mistakes too, but this isn't my job and I don't have an editor.) But really...

Speaking over the faint chants of a small group of protesters outside, US Army General John P. Abizaid told an audience at Harvard University yesterday that the war in Iraq was winnable despite the gathering dissent at home.

On a day of distant echoes of the Vietnam War, Abizaid, the senior US commander in the Middle East, and President Bush, who was in Hanoi, faced a quagmire of tough questions about the comparison of that conflict and the Iraq war.

Can you hear the distant echoes of the faint chants saying "Crappy writing! Crappy writing!?" I know I can.

Then there's the group that sponsored Abizaid's talk:

Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which sponsored the talk, introduced the general. She described Abizaid's "uniquely valuable perspective" and cautioned against blaming military leaders for executing decisions made by political leaders.

Referring to the way the Vietnam War polarized the country and crippled the military, she said: "We have been down that road before."

Oh yes, the poor crippled U.S. military, having to get by on only $500 billion a year, plus supplementals for all the actual wars they're fighting, while practically deafened by the faint chants of those of us who oppose those wars. It's all our fault, obviously, isn't it, Ms. Sewall?

Abizaid said the stakes were high in Iraq and in the global struggle against the rise of violent Islamic extremism, which he has dubbed "the long war."
...
The speech was part of a yearlong calendar of events at the Carr Center titled "The Long War Series."

Wonderful. An entire series of stupid talks on endless war (the "global struggle against the rise of violent Islamic extremism" -- yikes! That's the longest one yet).

Of course, the star idiot was Abizaid himself. Like all the lying scumbags, he says it will take one Friedman to turn the mess around:

"We absolutely are in the stage where we have got to make this work," he said. "We need to start having better effect against the sectarian violence within six months."

Of course, he couldn't leave without one more tasteless and obnoxious joke, which also happened to be a lie:

At the end of a grueling week in which he was barraged on Wednesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill with questions and criticism about the war, Abizaid joked with the audience about why he wore camouflage fatigues instead of his green dress uniform for the evening.

"I usually wear my green uniform," he said to a polite round of laughter. "But there was so much blood on it, I had to come in this uniform."

WIIIAI noted Abizaid's casual dress when meeting with Maliki on November 13, and again on November 16 when Abizaid showed up in his dress uni to talk to the Senate Armed Services Committee. But the next day, he's back in his fatigues speaking to "polite laughter" at Harvard. Was that committee meeting really that bloody?



Wouldn't stunned silence have been more appropriate than polite laughter to a sick "joke" like that? Better yet, why not just tell him off and walk out, like the audience did after Michael Richards' tirade?

Quote du jour

NY Times:

Downtrodden Republicans enjoyed the spectacle of the split between Ms. Pelosi and those Democrats who rallied behind Mr. Hoyer.

"I can't believe they are self-destructing before they even get started," said Representative Ray LaHood, Republican of Illinois. "Everyone on our side is giddy."

Actually, Ray, the word is "insane."

That the Dems don't have a Hammer to make sure every lemming acts exactly the same way should be seen as a good sign--for the country, if not the party. Hopefully LaHood is giddy about the chances that lawmakers will now be more likely to evaluate legislation on its merits, but I'm sure that he's not.

Weasel quote du jour

There is a great opportunity for us to show the country that Republicans and Democrats are equally as patriotic and equally as concerned about the future and we can work together.

-- aWol, today

Of course there was no such opportunity in the past six years, was there George, as you and your minions ignored and belittled any Democratic (and democratic) concerns about anything, with your secret task forces, recess appointments, and refusal to answer legitimate and necessary questions. I have my concerns that W may be right about Repugs and Dumbos being equally concerned about the future (which for both means only one thing--2008), but with his Gates and Bolton nominations in the past couple of days, he has already shown that he has no more interest in working together than he did before.

Quote du jour

A country ruled by a political party that is great at winning elections but terrible at actually governing is heading for one hell of a smash up, sooner or later. The only question is how long it will take and how bad the crash will be -- in the real world if not in the ballot booth.

-- Billmon, in a post on how the Rovians have intertwined politics and governance, with huge success in the first and abysmal failure in the latter. He compares the Rovians with FDR's New Dealers, who also intertwined politics and governance, but were actually able to do the second one.

Quote du jour

There is scarcely an acknowledgement anywhere in the Media Establishment that the Iraq War was an evil and misbegotten enterprise from the very beginning: conceived in greed and arrogance, sold by deceit, a criminal action by every legal and moral reckoning. As Hamlet said: "It cannot and it will not come to good." And it has not. Wars of aggression are evil things -- the "supreme international crime," as the Nuremberg Tribunal recognized -- and they will breed nothing but evil. When Bush sat before the television cameras to announce the invasion of Iraq that night in March 2003, he might as well have pulled out the shredded corpse of a child and began gnawing on the red, corrupted flesh, for he was at that moment consigning thousands upon thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of innocent people to death.

-- Chris Floyd

Quote du jour

I find it humiliating to live in a country where Henry Kissinger can go outside without being spit on by hundreds of concerned citizens.

-- Jonathan Schwarz

Why do you even have a table then?

Quote du jour: "We've taken nothing off the table and we've put nothing on the table." -- James Evil Baker III

So the man who played a major role in creating the mess in Iraq years ago, and who helped assure the appointment of our current pResident in 2000, has now been appointed to the "Iraq Study Group" by said pResident in order to do nothing for month after month.

"I will say one other thing -- there's no magic bullet for the situation in Iraq. It is very, very difficult," Baker said on Tuesday in a speech to the World Affairs Council of Houston.

"So anybody who thinks that somehow we're going to come up with something that is going to totally solve the problem is engaging in wishful thinking," he said.

Don't worry, evil one, I don't think anyone expected you to solve the problem, especially when your sponsors are profiting so excessively from it.

Given the track record of the likes of Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger, Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, and Condi Rice, can anyone explain why we even HAVE a Secretary of State? Just a more efficient way to piss off the world? And certainly, once they're out of office, can't we PLEASE forbid them from doing any further damage? In addition to Baker's continuing damage direction (control isn't the right word), Woodward's latest book says that genocider Kissinger is still giving advice to our current crop of war criminals.

Quote du jour

"Lack of confirmation is not proof of a non-event." -- Unidentified intelligence official, commenting on reports that there is no evidence of radiation from North Korea's supposed nuclear test.

Quote du jour

Dennis Perrin writes about the right-wingnut reaction to the latest report on the number of deaths caused by the Iraq war:

For all the lip-smacking and arm-waving about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial, there's plenty of comparable moral blindness on our end, the major difference being that Ahmadinejad, so far as I know, had no hand in operating or supporting Nazi death camps. Americans can't say the same about those we've exterminated either by hand or through tax dollars and political support.

Southeast Asia.

Central America.

The Middle East.

Iraq.

And we still "celebrate" Columbus Day.

Quote du jour

"Between T.O. and North Korea, I'm surprised we're even on television." -- Detroit Tigers' pitcher Todd Jones.

For those who come here mainly for the politics, "T.O." stands for controversial Dallas Cowboys' wide receiver Terrell Owens, who made headlines last week by not killing himself.

Quote du jour

Billmon, in response to the Amish school shooting:

It's a horrible story, and as a father my heart goes out to the families involved, but I feel compelled to point out that if this were Baghdad, a day with only five dead children and five wounded ones would be considered the dawn of a new era of peace, and Tony Snow would be bragging about how much progress we're making in Iraq.
...
If it bleeds, it leads -- as long as it's American blood, that is.

Quote du jour

"The only reason I know we're doing the right thing is that we're widely criticized." -- Roger Ailes, president of Fox News.

If the only reason you've got for running a sleazy faux news channel supporting a criminal administration is that people criticize you for it, don't you think maybe you ought to stop? Sometimes, carrying on in the face of criticism is a sign of strength and perseverence. But a lot of times it's because you're just plain wrong. And if the criticism is your ONLY reason for thinking you're right, you should probably think a little harder.

I don't know who was the first slimeball to justify his actions by pointing out that people he doesn't like disapprove of them, but it's a stupid, childish ploy which is used constantly. Bush uses it all the time, quoting terrorists to validate his own actions (supposedly) against terrorists.

Quote du jour

"If I were one of these sickos, I'd be nervous with America's Most Wanted on my trail." -- Rep. Mark Foley (R-Sicko), via Josh Marshall, who has the video.

Quote du jour

As a general rule, it's a bad idea to call a news conference if you have nothing to say. It's worse if you announce that answers are urgently needed but then decline to provide any.

-- Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank, describing yesterday's "briefing" by the co-chairmen of the Iraq Study Group, James "#$%@!@#$#" Baker and Lee "%$##%$#@@" Hamilton. These imperial jokers have been "working" since March to come up with solutions to Bush Quagmire Two. So how's it going?

"We're not going to speculate with you today about recommendations," Baker announced at the session, hosted by the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Can the war in Iraq be won?

"We're not going to make any assessments today about what we think the status of the situation is in Iraq," said Hamilton.

Could they at least explain their definitions of success and failure in Iraq?

"We're not going to get into that today," Baker replied.

After more such probing, Hamilton became categorical. "We've made no judgment of any kind at this point about any aspect of policy with regard to Iraq."
...
"The next three months are critical," Hamilton warned at the start. "Before the end of this year, this [Iraqi] government needs to show progress in securing Baghdad, pursuing national reconciliation and delivering basic services."

But no matter how urgent the situation in Iraq, the solutions will have to wait at least until Nov. 8 -- and possibly much later -- because of a more urgent consideration: domestic politics. We're "going to report after the midterm election," Baker announced.

Bill Jones of Executive Intelligence Review asked the obvious question. "The situation in Iraq seems to be degenerating from day to day" and may not be a "salvageable situation" by November, he said. "Shouldn't the urgency be propelled by developments in Iraq rather than the calendar here?"

Baker didn't think so. "We think it's more important, frankly, to make sure whatever we bring forward is taken, to the extent that we can take it, out of domestic politics," he said.

Because, frankly, they don't give a flying Cheney about the thousands of Iraqis who will die between now and then.

On the other hand, the less we hear from James "#$%@!@#$#" Baker, the better.

Milbank clearly deserves a Pulitzer for this one--providing a suitably mocking tone when reporting on two jokers who richly deserve to be mocked. Milbank even (gasp!) checks what the jokers said yesterday against what they said before:

Baker, a troubleshooter for President Bush, said "We have said from Day One that we were going to report after the midterm election." In fact, Baker said on Day One -- the commission's launch on March 15, 2006 -- that "we have not set a time frame" and that "we may come forward with some interim reports."

"Half of Lebanon is destroyed; is that a loss?"

That's from Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, as reported in Haaretz. I first saw that quote at WIIIAI. I wanted a little more context, so I went Googling, finally finding that Haaretz article from September 6. As bad as it sounds, the context actually makes it sound worse (emphasis added):

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee yesterday, with reference to the impact on Syria of the recent war in Lebanon, that no country "in our vicinity would take a chance on this or that military move with a marginal tactical goal because it understands the price it would pay. Thus, the fighting in Lebanon was a deterrent act."

Olmert said the Syrians "understand our strategic capabilities in other wars, when we would remove the limitations we placed on ourselves in the fighting in South Lebanon."

MK Ran Cohen (Meretz), who called Olmert's appearance before the committee "haughty," said everyone in Israel knows the war is the forerunner for the next one. "This war ended in complete failure," Cohen added.

Banging on the table angrily in response to the criticism, Olmert said, "I'm sorry that some MKs have lost their sense of proportion. Stop exaggerating.

"No danger to Israel was revealed during the past month. You didn't know that Hezbollah had 12,000 missiles in Lebanon? You didn't know that Iran supported them?"

Olmert also told the committee that "there were failures in the war, but there were also amazing achievements. Has the U.S. collapsed after three years in Iraq? What's the panic? We all make mistakes, I first of all."

"What did you think, that there would be a war and nothing would happen to our soldiers," Olmert asked the committee. "The claim that we lost is unfounded. Half of Lebanon is destroyed; is that a loss?"

With regard to the demand for a state commission of inquiry, Olmert said that while he valued the judicial system very highly, "that does not mean that at any given time they have to be the problem-solver."

The prime minister argued that a state commission would paralyze the political and military systems for a long period of time.

To which I say, with all sincerity: Is that a loss?

And don't you just love how the US debacle in Iraq is being used by Olmert as a positive example? Pooty-Poot didn't let aWol get away with that nonsense.

Quote du jour

"His face just started to turn red. I thought, personally, he had to go to the bathroom." -- Tyler Radkey, age 13, who was one of "The Pet Goat" readers at Booker Elementary School when its most infamous visitor dropped in five years ago.

Scary quote du jour

"My message to the world is this: Just treat us the way we treat you." -- AWol's Labor Day speech.

Actually, world, feel free to regime change us, but without all the bombs and depleted uranium and Abu Ghraibs, okay?

Quote du jour

I've come back to New Orleans to tell you the words that I spoke on Jackson Square are just as true today as they were then.

-- aWol, yesterday in New Orleans.

As WIIIAI points out, that is precisely the problem. Lies then, lies now. Just as true.

Collecting oil

Here's an interesting paragraph from Juan Cole's daily rundown of the mayhem in Iraq:

The explosion at a leaking oil pipeline near Diwaniyah that killed 16 persons who came to collect petroleum from it would have been bad news enough all on its own. Instead, a mere deadly accident flew under the news radar. The tragedy came because of the severe fuel crisis in Iraq, which drives people to try to collect oil in dangerous ways.

In a larger sense, the tragedy came because of the severe fuel crisis in America, which drives people to try to collect oil anywhere and everywhere in extremely dangerous ways.

Juan Cole's summary of the situation:

Bombings stretched from Istanbul to southern Iraq on Monday, in a new arc of crisis. This isn't going very well.

Which leads to the quote du jour: "Iraq will never be in a civil war." -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki

Just imagine, President Abraham al-Malincolni delivering the Gettysburg Address: "America will never be in a civil war."

Quote du jour

Because many in the administration and Congress feel strongly that coerced confessions constitute the "best practice" to get truth from people suspected of bad things, then, under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, American citizens should be permitted to use the same method to pry the truth out of their elected representatives.

-- "rob payne," in a comment at A Tiny Revolution

This blog does not endorse the use of torture under any circumstances, but admits to finding the above suggestion intriguing.

Quote du jour

An old one, but very relevant:

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Quote du jour

Did you ever think we'd see more wall-to-wall JonBenet Ramsey cable coverage in our lifetimes? I honestly believed that was over, but that's what happens when you think positively.

-- Dennis Perrin

Quote du jour

According to reports, Fidel Castro is alert and being briefed. And I'm thinking, why didn't we get a president like that?

--David Letterman, via Past Peak

Quote du jour

Every day, the Regime makes it abundantly, overwhelmingly, undeniably clear that there is only one thing that sick poor people--and used-up soldiers and chained-up prisoners--can do to play their part in Bush's noble vision for American society: they should all slink off into the dark somewhere and die.

That is the very quintessence of Bushism. That is now the actual, actionable platform of the modern Republican Party. This is the reality they want to create behind the words "the United States of America."

-- Chris Floyd, whose latest post discusses three recent news stories about recent Badministration efforts to 1) Cut funding for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center even as IED's in Iraq and Afghanistan are swelling the number of brain-damaged servicemen and women; 2) Loosen regulations on using prisoners for drug testing; and 3) Huge cuts in Medicaid funding.

Quote du jour

Gar Lipow, writing at Maxspeak:

We need to break the frenzy of fear and bloodlust that makes people willing to give up any liberty, to commit any atrocity if Daddy will just save them. The sane people of American need take a new pledge--a pledge against cowards and cowardice. A pledge that their fear of terrorism is not so great they will sacrifice their liberties, their judgment, their sacred honor to stop it. A pledge that fear of terrorism will not cause them to support the continued destruction of Iraq or the terror bombing of Lebanon, or new wars on Iran or Syria. A pledge that they understand that 911 did not change everything--that the laws of physics were not repealed, that bluster was not magically transformed into bravery, that our memorial to the murder of 3,000 people was not to say “evil be thou my good”.

Quote du jour

"If these horrific actions are not state terrorism then what is state terrorism?" -- Lebanon's prime minister Fouad Siniora, referring to Israel's latest massacre of 40 Lebanese in Houla.

Quote du jour

The difference between Ahmadinejad and Olmert is that the Iranian president is a blowhard. The one who had practical plans to wipe a country off the map was Olmert.

-- Juan Cole, who illustrates his point with these before-and-after satellite photos of a portion of Beirut:

Quote du jour

Billmon:

Anyone who has even a smidgeon of knowledge about, or experience in, the Middle East, and who says he is absolutely, 100% certain he has the right answers, is either a liar, a fanatic, or Tom Friedman -- which is to say, a world-class educated fool.

Blair, unfortunately, is all three.

Wait--Blair is Tom Friedman? Well, Friedman claims the world is flat; Blair is helping W to make it true.

Meta-quote du jour

Condoleezza Rice, Bush's official idiot-savant, gave us a memorable quote last week concerning Israeli barbarism in Lebanon: "We are witnessing the birth pangs of a new Middle East." I wonder what would have been press reaction in America to some high official saying, as the World Trade Center toppled in flames, "We are witnessing the birth pangs of a new America?"

-- John Chuckman

On a similar note, Billmon points out that Rush Limbaugh is sounding a lot like Osama bin Laden these days when it comes to the killing of civilians.

Quote du jour

"George Bush is a 'Wheel of Fortune' President in a 'Jeopardy' world." -- Will Durst, via Past Peak, who has lots of good Bush jokes.

Quote du jour

From Pooty-Poot:

"I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same," Bush said.

To that, Putin replied, "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly."

I must say, that is SOME BUBBLE aWol has. I consider it to be at least marginally insane to have any optimism about Iraq ever having real democracy, freedom of the press, or freedom of religion--especially at the hands of our fascist neocons. But considering Iraq, currently, to be a model for ANYONE is beyond crazy. Freedom of religion, in a country where dozens of people are killed each day for their religion--Sunnis kill people because they're Shiites, Shiites kill people because they're Sunnis, Americans kill people because they're Muslim. And anyone who thinks there is freedom of the press in Iraq hasn't read this interview with Newsweek's Baghdad bureau chief.

The restrictions on [journalists’] movements are very severe. It is extremely dangerous to move around anywhere in Iraq, but we do. We all have Iraqi staff who get around, and we go on trips arranged by the U.S. State Department as frequently as we can.

But the military has started censoring many [embedded reporting] arrangements. Before a journalist is allowed to go on an embed now, [the military] check[s] the work you have done previously. They want to know your slant on a story—they use the word slant—what you intend to write, and what you have written from embed trips before. If they don’t like what you have done before, they refuse to take you. There are cases where individual reporters have been blacklisted because the military wasn’t happy with the work they had done on embed. But we get out among the Iraqi public a whole lot more than almost any American official, certainly more than military officials do.

George! If you really want to promote democracy, start in the country where you actually have some authority. Get rid of the electronic voting machines, promote runoff voting, and stop shredding the Constitution.

BTW, a couple of days ago Chris Floyd wrote about the whackos W is backing to bring "democracy" to Russia. Not too much different from those other guys who tried to "liberate" Russia back in 1941 with Panzer tanks.

Quote du jour

The corporate masters of astroturf PR and industry-funded junk science are in much the same position as their White House colleagues: Still firmly in control on the bridge of the Titanic, even as the forward compartments gradually fill with sea water.

-- Billmon, in a post about Al Gore's movie.

Quote du jour

Right now we are borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the most unstable region of the world, and to bring it here and burn it in ways that destroy the habitability of the planet. That is nuts! We have to change every aspect of that.

-- President Al Gore

Idiot quote du jour

"When history looks back, I'd rather be judged as solving problems and being correct, rather than being popular." -- George Worthless Bush, who has sometimes inexplicably been the latter, but not once in his miserable 60 years been the former. Larry King interviewed him and the worst lady yesterday.

And whereas W gets his news verbally, filtered heavily by his liars advisors, Laura apparently gets her news only from W:

I feel exactly like George does. I think it's really the right thing to do. I think if you look back and we--Saddam Hussein was still there. And nothing had ever been done, and 17 resolutions had been passed and he had never complied with any of those resolutions.

I guess I'm going to have to look up what those resolutions were--I always thought they had something to do with getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. If Laura's right, the resolutions must have been about shaving his moustache or something.

And W is apparently completely unaware of the liberal-free bubble he travels in. When asked about his low poll numbers, he told Larry King:

It's a sign, but it's not necessarily really what we see. I mean, when we travel around the country, when we visit with people, that's not what we hear all the time.

Is he really not aware that every group he speaks to is one of the following: 1) A bunch of fellow-traveling ideologues, like when he speaks at the Heritage Foundation; 2) A carefully-selected group of brain-dead Repug sycophants, with anyone remotely likely to say something negative screened out at the door--even if they have tickets; or 3) A bunch of military guys under orders to keep their mouths shut? I guess he isn't.

Quote du jour

According to Juan Cole quoting Al-Hayat, an Iranian official joked recently that the US doesn't need to invade Iran:

He said that the US had invaded Afghanistan and established an Islamic republic there. Then it had done the same thing in Iraq. Since Iran has had an Islamic republic for 27 years, he said, there really isn't a point in a US invasion.

Unfortunately--since when has the Cheney administration needed a point? Invasion is an end in itself for these criminals.

Quote du jour

I can't help wondering today how many of the innocents slaughtered in Haditha took the opportunity to vote in the Iraqi elections -- before their "liberators" murdered them.

-- Robert Fisk

Quote du Jour

President Bush called for the National Guard to patrol the US/Mexican border. The guards will track down and find illegals. That's not their job. They're trained to defend our country--not track down and find people. Let's be honest, the Guard couldn't even track down and find President Bush when he was in the National Guard.

-- Jay Leno, via Past Peak

In a similar vein, WIIIAI suggests that we're using unmanned aerial drones on the border because pilotin' is work Americans just won't do.

Quote du jour

Billmon questions whether Friday's WaPo poll showing 63% of Americans supporting the NSA spying on us is accurate. More importantly, he points out that it CAN'T matter in a supposedly free society:

I get a little crazy in the head when I hear people (usually on the authoritarian right) citing the latest poll numbers as a political justification for their own position.

The whole point of having civil liberties is that they are not supposed to be subject to a majority veto. Hobbes may not have believed in natural rights, but our founders did. And their opponents, the anti-Federalists, were even more zealous about restraining the powers of the federal superstate, which is why they forced the Federalists to write the Bill of Rights directly into the Constitution.

It defeats the purpose of having a 4th Amendment if its validiity is entirely dependent on breaking 50% in the latest poll.

The WSWS explains some of the dangers in this program, for those 63% who apparently have never heard of "1984" or "The Gulag Archipelago:"

By these accounts, the computer programs being used by the NSA to analyze the phone call databases it purchased from the big telecommunications companies are a more advanced form of the "social-network analysis" software used by commercial and political marketing firms to profile potential advertising targets. Phone trees are traced to identify nodes and determine common interests and activities among those targeted.

In the case of commercial marketing, the purpose is to identify the best targets to receive a sales pitch. For the intelligence agencies, the purpose is to select targets for more intensive electronic surveillance, or arrest and (perhaps indefinite) detention.

The potential value of this information for purposes of political intimidation is enormous. Every person who has ever telephoned a 900 number, for instance, now has that fact permanently recorded in a government database, making him or her vulnerable to blackmail by federal agents. Likewise those whose phone records suggest problems with gambling, narcotics abuse, or even extramarital affairs.

The FBI regularly used such information for nefarious purposes during the notorious 50-year reign of J. Edgar Hoover, who kept special files on the sexual and other peccadilloes of congressmen and government officials. Now such information will be available on every American citizen.

Now some of the 63% are going to say (and a few even truthfully)--I don't do any of that stuff, so I've got nothing to worry about. Yeah? Got any friends or relatives with these problems, anyone you've called or who has called you. Got any friends or relatives who are politically active or protest in the streets or write blogs?

Remember, we are talking about an administration that clearly told numerous lies to start a war, that has locked up hundreds, including some US citizens, for years without legal protection. They keep a "no-fly" list, but won't tell us who is on it or why. They claim repeatedly to be above the law. Maybe you're thinking, well, if it's that bad, I'll just leave the country. Well, those soldiers they're talking about putting on the borders will be able to control the flow both ways. If these fascist criminals decide to make your life miserable, they can and will. All this data they're collecting just makes it easier. In most cases, they'll just use it as petty harrassment--"Stop calling your Congressman about Iraq or we'll tell everybody at your workplace about your little 'hobby'" or something. "I wouldn't vote today if I were you, if I didn't want my wife to know about that weekend in Atlanta." And so on. Even if the government as a whole weren't engaging in blackmail, the chances that someone with access to the data would be. They shouldn't have this stuff, period.