Year: 2007

Olbermann Catalogs Bush’s Flip-Flops and Failures on Iraq

Jon Ponder

Since 2002, when Pres. Bush and his team began “marketing” the war in Iraq, they have floated a string of bogus, often contradictory rationales for invading and occupying Iraq. On Countdown Wednesday night, about a half-hour before the president announced his plan to escalate the war, Keith Olbermann offered a rundown of the president’s failure of leadership, so far:

“[Pres. Bush] has told us the war is necessary because Saddam was a threat, because of 9/11, because of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, because of terrorism in general, to liberate Iraq, to spread freedom, to spread democracy, to keep the oil out of the hands of potentially terrorist controlled states, because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.”
— Keith Olbermann

Before Mr. Bush was elected he said he was no nation builder. Nation building was wrong for America. Now he says it is vital for America. He said he would never have put U.S. troops under foreign control. Today U.S. troops observe Iraqi restrictions.

He told us about WMDs, mobile labs, secret sources, aluminum tubing, yellow cake. He has told us the war is necessary because Saddam was a threat, because of 9/11, because of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, because of terrorism in general, to liberate Iraq, to spread freedom, to spread democracy, to keep the oil out of the hands of potentially terrorist controlled states, because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.

In pushing for and prosecuting this war, he passed on chances to get Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Moqtada al Sadr, Osama bin Laden. He sent in fewer troops than recommended. He disbanded the Iraqi army and deBaathified the government. He short changed Iraqi training. He did not plan for widespread looting, nor the explosion of sectarian violence. He sent in troops without life saving equipment, gave job to foreign contractors and not the Iraqis, staffed U.S. positions in Iraq based on partisanship, not professional experience.

We learned that America had prevailed, mission accomplished, the resistance was in its last throws. He has said that more troops were not necessary and more troops are necessary, and that it‘s up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would be necessary.

He told us of turning points, the fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government, the trial of Saddam, a charter, a constitution, an Iraqi government, elections, purple fingers, a new government, the death of Saddam. We would be greeted as liberators with flowers, as they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course. We would never stay the course. The enemy was al Qaeda, was foreigners, was terrorist, was Baathists.

The war would pay for itself. It was cost 1.7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion dollars. And after all of that, today it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Republicans, Democrats, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.

Bush: Iraq Study Group Report a ‘Flaming Turd’

Jon Ponder

Scatman: What is it with our fratboy-in-chief’s obession with scatalogical slang:

“He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides.”

Informed correspondents of the Washington Post and New York Times related in conversation that Bush furiously called the [Iraq Study Group] report “a flaming turd,” but his colorful remark was not published. Perhaps it was apocryphal. Nonetheless, it conveyed the intensity of his hostile rejection.

This is from the same class act whose term of endearment for Karl Rove is “turd blossom.”

Update: EvilPoet reminds us about the president’s obsession with fart jokes:

“He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we’re learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior. But he’s still a funny, earthy guy who, for example, can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about getting people to gas about that.”

Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ Inconvenienced in Washington Schools

Buck Banks

The heat is off: A guy named Frosty in Federal Way, Wash., is trying to ice Al Gore’s movie about global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” because it does not present an alternative to science as an explanation of why the world is getting measurably hotter. Frosty Hardison supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education — SURPRISE!

There is no opposing view to science, which is fact, and the facts are clear that global warming is here, now.

When he heard that his daughter was going to be exposed to Gore’s PowerPoint presentation, Frosty complained about the film and the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it is calling a “moratorium” on teachers showing the film in class. Frosty explained why he wants to cool Gore’s jets to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

“Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He’s not a schoolteacher,” said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. “The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD.”

Neither is the opposing view that the world will end in ice.

“Somebody could say you’re killing free speech, and my retort to them would be we’re encouraging free speech,” said school board member David Larson, a lawyer. “The beauty of our society is we allow debate.”

School Board members adopted a three-point policy that says teachers who want to show the movie must ensure that a “credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented,” that they must get the OK of the principal and the superintendent, and that any teachers who have shown the film must now present an “opposing view.”

That shouldn’t be hard to do, as the oil companies have been spending millions to disprove man-made global warming for years, using the same tactics as the tobacco companies used to convince people smoking is good for you. Chrysler has gone so far as to criticize European views of global warming, describing climate change as “way, way in the future, with a high degree of uncertainty.”

So there’s plenty of naysayers out there. You don’t have to be a knuckle-dragging creationist like Frosty to find alternative theories. Like Satan is doing it. But the Hardisons’ opposition is actually more, er, simple than that:

“From what I’ve seen (of the movie) and what my husband has expressed to me, if (the movie) is going to take the approach of ‘bad America, bad America,’ I don’t think it should be shown at all,” Gayle Hardison said. “If you’re going to come in and just say America is creating the rotten ruin of the world, I don’t think the video should be shown.”

You can’t argue with that kind of rhetoric, now can you?

Laurie David, a co-producer of the movie, said that this is the first incident of its kind relating to the film.

“I am shocked that a school district would come to this decision,” David said in a prepared statement. “There is no opposing view to science, which is fact, and the facts are clear that global warming is here, now.”

Sorry, Laurie, there is an opposing view to science. It’s called ignorance.

Polls: Majorities Have Lost Faith in Bush, War

Pensito Editors

Two new polls provide more evidence that decided majorities of Americans have lost conifdence in Pres. Bush:

Bush is scraping bottom even before his new war escalation gets underway.

ABC/Washington Post: Americans broadly reject President Bush’s plan for a surge of U.S. forces into Iraq, with substantial majorities dismissing his arguments that it’ll end the war more quickly and increase the odds of victory, an ABC News/Washington Post poll finds.

Indeed, rather than Bush bolstering public confidence, the national survey, conducted after his address to the nation on his new Iraq strategy, finds that a new high — 57 percent — think the United States is losing the war. Just 29 percent think it’s winning.

CBS: Fifty percent of those who saw the speech said they disapprove of the president’s proposals, while 37 percent said they approve. Just one-third of those surveyed said they support Mr. Bush’s call to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq.

Following the speech, 68 percent of Americans — the same number as prior to the speech — said they were uneasy about the president’s ability to make decisions about Iraq.

The 29 percent in the WaPo poll who are under the delusion that we are winning in Iraq is very similar to another number: In 1974, roughly 25 percent of Americans still approved of Pres. Nixon when he resigned over his involvement in Watergate-related crimes. The Nixon number has historically been considered the benchmark for the hardcore Republican base.

If so, Bush is scraping bottom even before his new war escalation gets underway.

Post-Withdrawal Iraq Could Resemble Bloody Aftermath of First Bush’s Gulf War

Jon Ponder

In 1991, the first Pres. Bush promised military support to Iraqi rebels after Saddam’s surrender. But Bush broke the promise and Saddam’s forces masssacred 30,000 rebels and buried them in unmarked graves.

This is how Pres. George W. Bush’s failed Iraq war will end. When U.S. forces pull out of Iraq — whether it is next week, next month, or, as Pres. Bush now prosposes, 10 years from now, the civil war for control of the country will escalate.

The warring factions will include various sects within the majority Shia communtiy, the Sunni minority and the Kurds seeking secession and independence. There may also be forces of outside fundamentalists militias, including al Qaeda, who move in to fill the vaccuum left by departed American forces.

The battle for control of Iraq could be bloody and long, perhaps comparable to the war in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, George Bush lit the fuse on this bomb in the heart of the Middle East in 2003, when he foolishly ordered the invasion of Iraq. Those of us who opposed the war from the start, and who now favor moving our troops out of harm’s way, should be prepared for the violence and bloodshed that erupt in the aftermath of our retreat.

To get a sense of what Iraq will suffer when the U.S. pulls out, we need look no further back than 1991, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

Inmediately after the end of the first Gulf War, Pres. George H.W. Bush promised Iraqi Shiites and Kurds American military support if they would rise up and overthrow the newly defeated Saddam Hussein. In a broadcast to Iraqis via Voice of America on Februrary 15, 1991, then-Pres. Bush said:

There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations’ resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.

But when the rebellion got underway, Bush and his war council, which included Defense Sec. Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, changed their minds about helping the rebels.

This decision led to the massacre of at least 30,000 rebels who were buried in mass graves. Mr. Bush himself has said that what happened to the Shiites was one of the deepest regrets of his presidency

Details of the uprising and its horrific aftermath below the fold.

[…]

Sanctuary for Santorum in D.C. Think Tank

Buck Banks

Stink tank: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has landed at a Beltway think tank following his royal pasting in the midterm elections, according to Congressional Quarterly. The irony of Santorum — never known for his thoughtful, measured rhetoric — going to work for something called a “think” tank was not lost on us.

The 48-year-old Santorum will head a program at the Center for Ethics and Public Policy focusing on “America’s Enemies.” According to the center, Santorum will examine a “growing array of anti-Western forces that are increasingly casting a shadow over our future.”

It’s pretty clear who Santorum believes America’s enemies are: His valedictory speech in the Senate Dec. 6 focused on “Islamic fascists” as the prime threat to the United States.

Santorum, in fact, had sought throughout his 2006 Senate campaign to portray himself as tougher in the war on terror than his highly touted Democratic challenger, Bob Casey, then the state treasurer and namesake son of a popular former governor.

But Santorum’s overall image as a conservative hardliner — on social and economic issues as well as on national security — made him highly vulnerable in an Eastern swing state where voters have increasingly been leaning Democratic, especially in an election year when the national tide was running strong against the Republican Party. CQPolitics.com, throughout the campaign, had Santorum rated as the underdog.

Nonetheless, most observers were stunned by the blowout margin by which Santorum was sent packing. Casey won the race by 59 percent to 41 percent, with a margin of more than 700,000 votes.

Gale Norton is Going to Hell

Trish

I hope all those cynics who said former Interior Secretary Gale Norton was too damn friendly to industry are listening. Because, man, were you guys right!

Shell’s getting a bargain, no matter how much Norton sold her soul for

Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is returning to Colorado to work for Shell, the energy behemoth that is pouring millions of dollars into an ambitious research project to produce oil shale on the Western Slope…

Norton will provide legal advice and services to Shell beginning in mid-January. She was unavailable for comment.

Or just unable to come up with anything to say that could ever in a million years put a good face on this.

But let’s face it. Shell’s getting a bargain, no matter how much Norton sold her soul for.

“I think Shell is serious about going in for commercial production of oil shale,” [Director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency in Aspen, Randy] Udall said. “They would need permits for air quality, permits for water quality, and Norton’s Colorado background plus her experience in the Interior Department makes her the perfect person to spearhead their permitting process.”

Yeah, perfect. Say hi to everyone in hell for me when you get there, girl.

Snow Job Tony Takes WH Lying to a New Depth

Jon Ponder

Culture of deception: White House spokesman Tony Snow revised history yesterday:

I think the public ought to just listen to what the president has to say. You know that the mission accomplished banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and the president, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn’t he?

This is wrong is so many ways. ThinkProgress sets the record straight:

[On] May 1, 2003, Bush stood in front of a large banner that read, “Mission Accomplished.” In the opening of his speech, he declared, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” He called the “battle of Iraq” a “victory.” In his radio address shortly after the speech, he boasted, “I delivered good news to the men and women who fought in the cause of freedom: their mission is complete and major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

Additionally, as Bob Woodward reported in October, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to pressure the White House to take out of the speech the actual phrase “Mission Accomplished,” but he couldn’t “get the sign down.”

In Oct. 2003, then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan admitted that the White House — not members of USS Lincoln — had “take[n] care of the production of the banner.”

Olbermann last night, referring to Snow:

I mean, you were hired to lie. At least do it well. We‘re not all third graders out here.

Hussein’s Hanging — A Little Clarification About Iraqi Customs

Buck Banks

Muffed snuff: Mowaffak al-Rubaie is Iraq’s national security advisor and, apparently, a loose cannon when it comes to TV interviews. Al-Rubaie was a witness at Saddam Hussein’s hanging, and soon after the execution he spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about the conduct of witnesses and guards before and after Hussein was hanged. Electronic Iraq has provided al-Rubaie a forum to correct the wrong impression his interview may have given regarding Iraqi customs and behavior when executing a depraved dictator.

From the CNN transcript of the interview:

Cooper: But you are proud of what you did witness? I mean, you — I assume you heard the shouting. You heard — you saw the dancing around his body, because I know you talked about that. Are you proud of that?

Al-Rubaie: This is this a tradition of the Iraqis. When they do something, they … they dance around the body, and they express their feeling. Anderson, what is wrong with that? If that upset the feeling of some of the Arab nations and Arab rulers, I think that is tough luck to them.

Here is al-Rubaie’s clarification of his CNN comments and his answers to critics of the timing and method of Hussein’s execution.

Recently, an interview I had on CNN has been taken out of context and quoted by multiple other sources, unfortunately damaging the image of Iraqis. I mentioned that some of the Iraqis attending Saddam’s execution were happy that Saddam’s era had come to an end, and that all Iraqis can now work together in starting a new chapter. Some of them expressed their happiness through a traditional dance usually preformed at celebrations and weddings.

In no way did I mean that dancing around dead bodies is “an Iraqi tradition”. In fact, it is neither an Iraqi tradition, nor an Arab or Muslim one. Our religion and traditions ban any gloating over someone’s grief, even if we loathed that person and thought he got what he deserved. Our Arabic traditions and Islamic rules pertaining to death prevent cussing, shouting, vengefulness, and wrath towards those about to die; in addition, we are even prohibited from speaking ill of the dead. Our Iraqi traditions in particular are against sectarian or ethnic taunting. All the mistakes that happened during this execution do not reflect our heritage and religion, and they do not reflect our values in building the new Iraq.

So the thugs in the crowd around the gallows were breaking both Arabic and Islamic prohibitions by shouting sectarian taunts at the condemned? He mentions “mistakes,” but does not explain how they happened, which is the key point. How came there to be a whole bunch of rowdy Shiites there for the hanging, anyway?

We do understand many people’s point of view who criticized the execution’s timing as well. We did not mean to offend anyone by picking the Holy Muslim days of Eid Al-Adha, and we regret any other offensive technicalities that occurred during the execution, but we urge the international community to remember the bigger picture, and see Saddam’s execution as a milestone representing an end of a dark era. We, at the Iraqi government, wanted the trial and execution of Saddam to be a reason for putting Iraqis together and uniting Iraq, but it was used by many political groups inside and outside Iraq as an excuse to divide Iraqis furthermore and to find reasons for increasing the violence.

Unfortunately, it seems that many people around the world were distracted from the real issues, which are Saddam’s crimes over the last several decades. Our Prime Minister, Mr. Maliki, went as far as threatening to re-think Iraq’s relationships to any countries that mourn Saddam or find excuses to criticize his trial and execution. We want to keep the attention focused on Saddam’s victims and their sacrifices, and also on the great possibilities of the post-Saddam Iraq.

Oh, so by hanging Saddam, the Iraqi gubmint intended to bring Iraqis — Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians — together. Good call, Mr. Maliki, man. I imagine any rethinking going on is being down by civilized nations that would not want a relationship with a bunch of blood-thirsty tribal maniacs.

We hope that the Western media will not end up playing into the hands of those who wanted to increase the sectarian tension between Iraqis, and we assure everyone that all the mistakes that occurred during Saddam’s execution are condemnable, and that our only intention was to follow our traditions in being respectful and professional during the execution. The Iraqi judicial system will prosecute and punish all the people who transgressed the standards of law and decency during Saddam’s execution.

I will conclude with a quote from our prayer for the dead, a great example of the tradition of tolerance in Islam: “All Mighty, don’t bring about divisions after his death, and forgive us for our sins.”

Oh, puh-lease! If al-Rabaie really wants to do something to protect the image of Iraqis, he’ll just shut up.