Year: 2006

Media Buys into Bush’s Fake Iraq ‘Listening Tour’

Pensito Editors
[It’s] hard to decide which is more pathetic: Bush’s “listening tour,” or the national media, which have cravenly agreed to call it by that name and cover it within that frame.

Foregone conclusions: Without the assistance of Our Liberal Media, Pres. Bush and his political handlers could not get away with an extravagant charade like the one we’re witnessing now:

[It’s] hard to decide which is more pathetic: Bush’s “listening tour,” or the national media, which have cravenly agreed to call it by that name and cover it within that frame.

This “tour” has required no tourism. It has taken Bush from the Oval Office, over to Foggy Bottom, back to the West Wing, then over to the Pentagon, and back again to the White House. But the media have treated it like Lenin’s trip to the Finland Station, or the Beatles coming to America. Wow! Lookit him go! He’s even taken his fingers out of his ears! That bubble boy sure can listen!

You can imagine the staff meetings in the days leading up to the Iraq Study Group report. “We gotta give the appearance of paying attention to the report, Mr. President. We gotta let some time pass after Baker’s big show, until some serial killer or anorexic distracts the country again. In the meantime, we gotta give those newsie jerkoffs something to cover. Snow can only snow ’em for a day or two. We need action. Photo ops. Soundbites. A storyline…. Wait a minute, I’ve got it: we’ll put you on a listening tour. Yeah, that’s the ticket. They’ll eat it up. A listening tour… and A New Way Forward!”

I’m not surprised that Bush has tried such a brazen stunt; I’m just stunned that the media has fallen for it so frictionlessly. Maybe it’s just the time of the year; perhaps the press corps’s just preoccupied with playing Secret Santa.

It is amazaing that, with the exception of Keith Olbermann, no one in the Gang of 500, not a single talking head or pundit, has voiced any doubts about the president’s campaign to convince Americans that he’s in the throes of decision-making about Iraq.

As we suggested here and here, the decision about what to do will be based on what best suits the interests of George W. Bush — and among the choices available, there is only one that suits his personal and political aims: sending in more troops.

Sen. Johnson Suffers Stroke – GOP Could Retake Senate

Jon Ponder

Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson, 59, has been hospitalized in Washington, D.C., after suffering a stroke.

If Johnson is unable to serve his term, South Dakota’s Republican governor, Mike Rounds, will appoint his successor. This would change the makeup of the Senate to 50-50 Dems and Gops, with Vice Pres. Cheney voting with the Republicans, thus reverting control to the GOP.

Update: At 5PM PDT MSNBC reported that Sen. Johnson’s spokeswoman said he had not had a stroke or a heart attack. However, she and others refused to say whether or not he was conscioius.

Saudis Say They Will Support Iraqi Sunnis When U.S. Leaves

Jon Ponder

Remember last month when Vice Pres. Cheney made a quick and apparently unplanned visit to Saudi Arabia? Cynics that we are, we suggested that the purpose of his trip was to raise money for Pres. Bush’s $500 million “lie-berry” to be built in Texas after that glorious day when Bush leaves office.

Yesterday, we learned that Cheney’s visit may have been in response to an announcement by the Saudis that they intend to side with their Sunni brethren in the Iraq Civil War when the United States deploys its troops out of the country.

Today, for what it is worth, Bush spokesman Tony Snow denied that the Saudis made the threat:

The White House said on Wednesday Saudi Arabia shared U.S. concerns about the future of Iraq and denied it threatened to take sides in Iraqi sectarian violence if the United States pulls out its troops.

The comments came in response to a report in The New York Times that Saudi Arabia has told Washington it might give financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in their fight against Shi’ites if the United States withdraws from Iraq. “That’s not Saudi government policy,” White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters. “The Saudis have made it clear that they are committed to the same goals we are, which is a self-sustaining Iraq,” Snow said. “I’d refer any further comments to the Saudi government but, certainly, their stated public policy and the policy that they have shared with us does not reflect that.” According to the Times, Saudi King Abdullah delivered that message to Vice President Dick Cheney during Cheney’s visit to Riyadh last month. The Times cited unnamed U.S. officials and Arab diplomats.

So why did Cheney rush to Riyadh at the end of November?

Bush Will Do What’s Best for Bush in Iraq: Send More Troops

Jon Ponder
After Pres. Johnson sent an additional 50,000 troops to Vietnam, the United States remained there for another decade, during which tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel and innocent civilians were killed and untold millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted.

The front-page, above-the-fold headline on the Los Angeles Times this morning read, “Pentagon’s plan: More U.S. troops in Iraq.”

That was quick. Yesterday, we suggested the ISG report and Bush’s s “way forward” strategy sessions were all for show — that in fact Bush had decided earlier this year to send a “surge” of personnel into Iraq in 2007.

This prediction was based on looking at the options as the president saw them and choosing the one that would most benefit him personally and politically. Bush’s motives are focused entirely on salvaging his legacy. His short-term objective is to tamp down the violence in Iraq sufficiently to create a false perception of success. With a semblance of order in Iraq, he can declare victory before he leaves office. Whether the victory is real is irrelevant. If Iraq collapses under the next president’s watch, it will be his or her responsibility, not Dubya’s.

According to the Times article:

As President Bush weighs new policy options for Iraq, strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to “double down” in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive…

The size of the troop increase the Pentagon will recommend is unclear. One officer suggested an increase of about 40,000 forces would be required, but other officials said such a number was unrealistic. There are about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

The flaw in this strategy, as we pointed out yesterday, is that it has been tried before — by Pres. Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam in 1965. After Johnson sent in an additional 50,000 troops, the United States remained in Vietnam for another decade, during which tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel and innocent civilians were killed and untold millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted.

Poll: Bush Losing His Base Over Iraq

Buck Banks

Wingnuts wig out: It’s finally started to happen — things have gotten so bad in Iraq and the president is doing such a horrendously crappy job of leading the nation that his once-solid Republican base is eroding. Not that they actually “get it,” they apparently are just tired of staying the course with George, according to National Journal’s PollTrack:

A CBS poll conducted late last week tracked a 21-point drop-off among Republicans in support for Bush’s handling of Iraq.

President Bush’s approval numbers have long been somewhat deceptive. On the one hand, a popularity rating hovering in the 30s and 40s indicates that a lot of Americans don’t care for him. But partisan breakdowns have often revealed that he’s still popular with his conservative Republican base. A new CBS News survey shows the Iraq war sapping some wind from Bush’s sails.

In a poll that CBS News conducted with the New York Times in late October, 68 percent of Republican respondents approved of Bush’s war policy. Just 21 percent of independents and 7 percent of Democrats said the same.

Fast-forward to now. The long-awaited Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq is out, and Bush is scrambling to hear alternatives on how the White House should proceed before announcing what has been billed as a significant policy change in Iraq. The most recent CBS poll, conducted late last week, tracked a 21-point drop-off among Republicans in support for Bush’s handling of Iraq. Three-quarters of all respondents disapproved, a hike from the 64-percent disapproval in the previous survey.
[…]

Bush Strategy Sessions on Iraq: White House Creates Another Fake Reality

Jon Ponder
If the Bush team had used half the intellect and energy they have expended over the past six years on lying, spinning, smearing and political machinations to try to govern competently,the country wouldn’t be in this terrible trap — and they would not be the worst presidential administration in our history

They way the newsers tell it, Pres. Bush and his team read the Iraq Study Group’s indictment of their abysmal war-making in Iraq last week and immediately set out to get advice on the war from a wide range of experts in Washington.

After the president has gathered advice, he, as the Decider, will formulate a new way forward. He’ll announce the plan in a speech to the nation.

It sounds reasonable, but it is not true.

The Bush team has known the contents of the report for weeks, if not months. Condi and crew undoubtedly negotiated with the ISG over the wording, especially the sections describing Bush’s incompetence.

The president’s strategy sessions this week are strictly from Potemkin. The Bushies know what they must do in Iraq, and hardly anything can stop them from doing it. It’s all about politics for them. The deaths of military personnel and innocent civilians are unfortunate collateral damage attendant to their political goals. Ditto the billions of taxpayer dollars.

Their political goal in taking the country to war was to give Bush status as a “war president,” so that, among other things, he would sail to reelection in 2004. Now they are focused on their legacy. They urgently need to de-escalate the violence. which is why they have probably already decided to go for the “surge” of an additonal 30,000 to 50,000 more troops into Iraq that John McCain and others have proposed.

This is literally the last-ditch military solution and it fits their timeframe. Any new major operation needs to be over or winding down by January 2008, when the political necessities of the Republican presidential candidates, especially McCain, begin to assert primacy over Bush’s desire to tart up his legacy.

Sending in a large wave of troops is problematic because it is similar to a failed strategy Pres. Lyndon Johnson undertook during the Vietnam War. On July 28, 1965, he announced he was committing an additional 50,000 troops to the war effort. Then as now, the goal of the deployment was to quell escalating violence so that order could be established.

It failed utterly. The enemy was energized and met the surge with counter-offensives. The war dragged on for another 10 years, until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

Joni Mitchell’s New Gallery Exhibit: ‘Art, Revolution and Torture’

Jon Ponder

Mitchell believed the photographs were infused with political undertones that somehow felt urgent.

Joni Mitchell retired from the music industry a few years ago and returned to her first love, painting. She has exhibited her work here in Los Angeles but usually with very little fanfare.

I found out about her latest show, “Green Flag Song,” in an unexpected place: the Opinion section of the Sunday Los Angeles Times.

Mitchell had nixed doing publicity for this exhibit altogether, but Megan Daum, who writes a weekly column for the Times, happened upon a banner promoting the exhibit on La Brea Avenue. She contacted the gallery owner, Zev Moross, and he set up an interview with Mitchell over dinner at restaurant in West Hollywood:

[Joni Mitchell] said she had had little interest in publicly showing her paintings but that the photographs were infused with political undertones that somehow felt urgent. Though the images, if you look close, range from shots from old movies to talk-show hosts to news coverage, the overall effect has the whiff of brutality.

“The theme of this show is ‘war, revolution and torture,'” she told me. “I was in such despair about the world’s current state of affairs that I didn’t even know where to start. I was taking a lot of landscape photos near my home in Canada. Then I got back to L.A. and suddenly I had this magical TV set.”

Mitchell talked a lot about the photos — “my bedroom lamp is reflected in a lot of them” — and about how she has ideas for more exhibitions. Though she “retired” from music several years ago, she’s writing new songs. She said they were hard in coming, that it’s easy to doubt yourself.

Links:

Another Evangelical Preacher Is Forced Out of the Closet

Jon Ponder

Paul Barnes of Grace Chapel, a 2,100-member church in the Denver suburbs, resigned last week and came out to his congregation in a 32-minute videotaped message that was played during services yesterday:

“I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy,” Barnes said in the 32- minute video, which church leaders permitted The Denver Post to view. “… I can’t tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away.”

His wife, Char, cradled his hand.

Barnes’ resignation was prompted by an anonymous phone call to an associate pastor at the church. Barnes’ name had been mentioned, the caller said, as part of a campaign of “blowing the whistle” on closeted gay evangelicals.