Tag: Iraq

Rumsfeld’s Epiphany — ‘Insurgents’ Are Really ELIGs

Buck Banks

Too much turkey: Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Defense Secretary of Torture Donald Rumsfeld had what he called an “epiphany” that led him to conclude that the homicide bombers and setters of roadside bombs in Iraq do not merit the lofty sobriquet “insurgent.” Rummy delivered this idiotic insight at a press conference at the Pentagon of Torture yesterday.

“This is a group of people who don’t merit the word `insurgency,’ I think,” Rumsfeld said. He said the thought had come to him suddenly over the Thanksgiving weekend.

“It was an epiphany.”

Rumsfeld’s comments drew chuckles but had a serious side.

“I think that you can have a legitimate insurgency in a country that has popular support and has a cohesiveness and has a legitimate gripe,” he said. “These people don’t have a legitimate gripe.” Still, he acknowledged that his point may not be supported by the standard definition of `insurgent.’ He promised to look it up.

An astute Associated Press reporter did look it up, and noted that Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines the term “insurgent” as “rising up against established authority.”

The excursion into lamebrained linguistics went even further when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace, who also spoke at the news conference, found it impossible to describe the fighting in Iraq without twice using the term “insurgent.”

After the word slipped out the first time, Pace looked sheepishly at Rumsfeld and quipped apologetically, “I have to use the word `insurgent’ because I can’t think of a better word right now.”

Without missing a beat, Rumsfeld replied with a wide grin: “Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government. How’s that?”

ELIGs, huh? In a military-industrial establishment that loves acronyms, it might just catch on. Meanwhile, the men responsible for the continued loss of American and Iraqi lives quibble over semantics. Almost makes one want to “rise up against established authority” don’t it?

Bush: ‘God Put Me Here’

Jon Ponder

Delusional: The president’s religiosity is over the top:

“He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ”

Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

The deaths of American soldiers and innocent Iraqi children mean nothing to Mr. Bush, who sees these losses as part of God’s plan:

“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said.

Don’t worry. Jesus is in his head, talking to him, telling him what to do:

Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.

For Bush, Iraq War Has Always Been About GOP Politics

Jon Ponder

Bush’s war: From the outset of the Bush team’s “marketing campaign” (their words) promoting the war in Iraq in 2002, cynical types such as yours truly have suspected that going to war in Iraq on the timetable they rammed through the Congress and the Pentagon had everything to do with electing Republicans – including themselves in 2004 – and nothing whatsoever to do with WMD, democracy in the Middle East, fighting terrorism “over there” and the dozens of other reasons they have tested on us for sending American youths to die in Iraq.

I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’ He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.’ “

Now – at long last, and way too late – the former Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate confirms this suspicion:

Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, remembers the exchange vividly.

The time was September 2002. The place was the White House, at a meeting in which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressed congressional leaders for a quick vote on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

But Daschle, who as Senate majority leader controlled the chamber’s schedule, recalled recently that he asked Bush to delay the vote until after the impending midterm election.

“I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’ He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.'”

Daschle’s account, which White House officials said they could not confirm or deny, highlights a crucial factor that has drawn little attention amid rising controversy over the congressional vote that authorized the war in Iraq. The recent partisan dispute has focused almost entirely on the intelligence information legislators had as they cast their votes. But the debate may have been shaped as much by when Congress voted as by what it knew.

It was obvious in 2002, and it is crystal clear now, that the Bush team – led by their political director, Karl Rove – carefully scheduled the war so that the timetable would work with the schedule of the next two election cycles.

[…]

Bush Knew Saddam-al Qaeda Link Was False from the Beginning

Jon Ponder

Murray Waas:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

“You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,” President Bush said in September 2002 – one year after he learned that the facts were otherwise.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the “President’s Daily Brief,” a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

This evidence means that the president, vice president and their top staffers lied repeatedly when they connected the Iraqi leader with bin Laden’s terrorist group. For example, one year after reviewing the PDB, Bush said:

“You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,” President Bush said on September 25, 2002.

The next day, Rumsfeld said, “We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.”

And now:

The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 President’s Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won’t say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.

Repost – Bush Advisor: ‘We’re an Empire Now’

Jon Ponder

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

– Unnamed Bush advisor to writer Ron Suskind, as reported in a October 2004 New York Times Magazine article

Michael Moore Answers White House Attack, ‘Confesses’ Scandalous Affiliations

Jon Ponder

Lightning rod: Speaking at the first annual Paul Wellstone Memorial Dinner, filmmaker Michael Moore returned fire against a recent attack by the Bush White House – and helpfully provided fodder to his critics by confessing to associations with groups accused of scandalous, even murderous, behavior.

The White House recently attempted to smear Rep. Jack Murtha, a decorated Vietnam vet, by comparing Murtha’s proposal to withdraw from Iraq to Moore’s position. The smear didn’t stick, Moore said, because it was misdirected:

If they really wanted the American people to hate Congressman Murtha they should have compared him to Scooter Libby. Put that name in there. Then people would dislike him. Put Karl Rove’s name in there. Put Dick Cheney’s name in there.

Another reason the smear failed, Moore said, was the fact that a “majority of the people agree with me now” that the war should be ended. He then stated his position on withdrawing from Iraq, which is not substantively dissimilar to Murtha’s – and is in line with about two-thirds of Americans, according the latest polls:

[…]

Must Listen: If Bush was Joking, Why is Blair Panicking?

Trish

Stop what you’re doing and listen to this NPR report on the British cover-up of Tony Blair holding Bush back from bombing the headquarters of Arab satellite station Al Jazeera.

Blair putting a restraining hand on George Bush casts Bush as somehow trigger happy…with Blair constantly reaching for the cold flannel to mop his forehead and calm him down

Day to Day’s Madeleine Brand interviewed the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, who reported the questions being asked in England are: If that good-natured, wacky cut-up George Bush was just joshing, then a) why was his proposition – and Blair’s attempts to talk him out of it – included in an official memo; and b) why is the British government going to such great lengths – invoking a gag order and threats of criminalization against anyone who might leak the memo’s contents – to squash it?

The answers to those questions include the possibility that there are other things in other memos, both about Bush’s idiocy and Blair’s restraining hand. And maybe, just maybe, the actual bombings of Al Jazeera in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the one at the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad, which killed one Al Jazeera journalist and critically wounded two more, were not the pure accidents the Bush administration claimed.

Nabil Khoury, a U.S. State Department spokesman in Doha, said the strike on the Arab satellite TV network’s office was a mistake, and he called upon al-Jazeera not to jump to conclusions. “My personal view is that it is a mistake, a grave mistake. It is something we all regret,” Khoury said. “I personally cannot imagine that a country which respects general freedoms can target media establishments.”

Time to get a more vivid imagination, Nabil.

Some Al-Jazeera employees felt the bombing might have been deliberate, for the station has been reporting extensively on the plight of Iraqi civilians and the number of casualties from U.S. bomb attacks…

Chief editor Ibrahim Hilal, speaking from the station’s headquarters in Doha, said witnesses “saw the plane fly over twice before dropping the bombs. Our office is in a residential area and even the Pentagon knows its location.”

Meanwhile, Freedland paints an even more nauseating picture.

The idea of Blair putting a restraining hand on George Bush casts Bush as somehow trigger happy…with Blair constantly reaching for the cold flannel to mop his forehead and calm him down. That’s not a flattering image, really, for either of them.”

British Government Censors Documents That Show Bush Efforts to Bomb al-Jazeera

Jon Ponder

Another scandal quashed : Guardian:

The [British] attorney general last night threatened newspapers with the Official Secrets Act if they revealed the contents of a document allegedly relating to a dispute between Tony Blair and George Bush over the conduct of military operations in Iraq.

It is believed to be the first time the Blair government has threatened newspapers in this way. Though it has obtained court injunctions against newspapers, the government has never prosecuted editors for publishing the contents of leaked documents, including highly sensitive ones about the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, last night referred editors to newspaper reports yesterday that described the contents of a memo purporting to be at the centre of charges against two men under the secrets act.

[…]

While Bush Says ‘Stay the Course,’ Pentagon Plans Withdrawal from Iraq

Jon Ponder

Cut and run: While President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been lashing out at critics who dare to suggest that the time has come to cut our losses and get out of Iraq, the Pentagon has been planning the U.S. withdrawal:

The Pentagon tentatively plans to reduce the number of U.S. forces there early next year by as many as three combat brigades, from 18 now, but to keep at least one brigade “on call” in Kuwait in case more troops are needed quickly, several senior military officers said.

Pentagon authorities also have set a series of “decision points” during 2006 to consider further force cuts that, under a “moderately optimistic” scenario, would drop the total number of troops from more than 150,000 now to fewer than 100,000, including 10 combat brigades, by the end of the year, the officers said.

The Anti-Anti-War Rhetoric Is Spinning Out of Control

Buck Banks

Earth to Dick: In an address today to the American Enterprise Institute, Vice President of Torture Dick Cheney continued the administration’s aggressive response to critics of the Iraq War. In what may mark a change in tactics, Cheney is using irrational ideas to purposefully perplex the administration’s critics.

At the same time, Cheney pressed the administration’s high-voltage attack on war critics, particularly Senate Democrats who voted in October 2002 to give Bush authority to go to war in Iraq and who now oppose his policy, calling them “dishonest and reprehensible.”

“The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight. But any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false.”

So, if you’re a Democrat senator who voted to give the president authority to go to war — not voted to go to war, mind you — and now you’re pissed because the intel was false and trumped up, you’re “dishonest and reprehensible”? That does not compute.

And Cheney is careful to note that it’s not Bush who distorted, hyped or fabricated — we all know he ain’t equipped — but it just could be … Cheney himself, right?

As to proposals for a rapid pullout of U.S. troops, Cheney said, “It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone.”

Cheney ticked off a long list of terrorist attacks on American interests going back more than the two decades that preceded the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and earlier ones in Beirut, Saudi Arabia and Africa.

“Now they’re making a stand in Iraq, testing our resolve, trying to intimidate the United States into abandoning our friends and permitting the overthrow of this new Middle Eastern democracy,” Cheney said.

What terrorists? Where’s the connection between the insurgency in Iraq (Iraqis fighting a military invasion) and terrorism? Since when are they terrorists “making a stand” in Iraq? Does anybody besides the chickenhawks and neocons believe this drivel?

It’s the old ploy of acting irrational, crazed, to get folks to leave you alone. I just wonder how much of this is an act. If you act crazy and say crazy things for years, aren’t you liable to go crazy? Yeah, crazy like a fox ….