Cape-Tugging and Wind-Spitting
I've got the remarkable Jim Croce on my mind tonight. A stellar manifestation of human genius sadly extinguished way too early. I'm prone to having "something in my eyes," and I thank him for helping me accept over the years that this is both natural and healthy, even (or esp.) for a male. He'd have some things to sing about regarding our current travails, for sure. He was actually from what I can tell way too nice and classy a guy to be exposed to the slime dripping off of our former model nation these days. He'd probably be living somewhere else.
Be forewarned: this is a bit of a slumgullion/mulligatawny/gumbo. But maybe we are all used to that by now. I need to tell you about my first duck-cooking experience sometime. Great jumbalaya in the aftermath.
I'm going to kick it off with some contemporary Even Better Than the Real Thing (U2) poetry, courtesy of Calvin Trillin by way of The Nation:
They sent me a law against torture.
I signed it, although it was quaint.
I said, though, that I'm the decider
Of if something's torture or ain't.
I'll do what I want when I want to,
Though Congress's will may be foiled.
I've always done just what I want to.
You see, I'm a little bit spoiled."
Froomkin will set the table here with my principle focus on a repeated program by the bush unadministration of trying to peg someone else for their own devious anti-democratic decisions. Typically of course, semi-mainstream folks intent on keeping pipeline(s) (both and in and out!) flowing are prone to what I have to consider over-polite wording. "Revisionist" indeed. The lie-detector knows better.
These lying, sleazy, untrustworthy blame-it-on-someone-else we-can't-be-accountable (since we never have before!) folks are still at it, despite the evidence of elections and polls that the majority of voting Americans know they are at best swine (no offense to actual pigs, a far superior group):
President Bush is pushing a revisionist explanation of how he came to support an escalation of troop strength in Iraq.
From the transcript of Bush's remarks at a Georgia military base yesterday:
"The [Iraqi] Prime Minister came and said, look, I understand we've got to do something about this violence, and here is what I suggest we do. Our commanders looked at it, helped fine-tune it so it would work. . . .
"The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to -- by the way, that's what you want your Commander-in-Chief to do. You don't want decisions being made based upon politics, or focus groups, or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. And they analyzed the plan and they said to me, and to the Iraqi government, this won't work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence. . . .
"And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, Mr. President, it's not going to work until -- unless we support -- provide more troops. And so last night I told the country that I've committed an additional -- a little over 20,000 more troops, five brigades of which will be in Baghdad."
It was a bold attempt by Bush to rebut the widely-reported story that he stopped listening to his commanders -- and in fact, reassigned some -- when they stopped telling him what he wanted to hear.
But Bush's new story lacks a certain important quality: Believability.
Previous reporting -- see, for instance, Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks in The Washington Post on Wednesday -- has made it abundantly clear that adding U.S. troops was not an idea that emerged from the American commanders -- nor, for that matter, from the Iraqis.
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Alas for the chimp, we who pay attention know full well by now that our government has been for a good long time now - six years at least - overpopulated with folks with little regard for truth - and quite often as a result, actual law-breakers. Domestic criminals, as in a president who feels he is above the law. Flat-out war-criminals, ditto. We don't even have to drag in the historical Bush family collusion and profiteering in German fascism. Although admittedly that may come up in court later.
There's really no boubt adoudt it. I'm sure I am far from alone in sensing that there was little if any "military" content to the proffered "surge" - actually Escalation - number - this was an excruciatingly triangulated guess at what was available and was not too hot and not too cold. Gazillions of dollars to donuts this had nada to do with anything remotely resembling military tactics, never mind strategy.
Jim C sings "it doesn't have to be that way," and he's bang-on. Steve Earle has "my old friend the blues." We could easily get it together tonight.
I've been struggling through Woodward's "State of Denial." By now it is out there that there are some useful insights in this book, but he sure could have used an editor with an eye on an actual straightforward story line. There's way too much ambling and wandering, points the author feels a need to make but can't find a context for. My overall book grade for quality: C+. For sheer amount of content/debris that is useful: maybe B-. But you have to want it pretty badly to slog through this 500-page monster.
I will begrudgingly quote from this too-long, mediocre, and too-late marginal woodward-a-culpa for his prior bush-sycophantic-volumes tome by dude who sure deserves an outrageous tattoo along the lines of "So Sorry;" forehead, bold, two inches (pp. 269-270):
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The President finally decided on November 12 that they should do early sovereignty.
Bremer recalls in his book that he made the point that the decision they had just made to turn over sovereignty should be portrayed as something that the Iraqis had come up with, not the Americans.
Bush laughed. "I agree with that. And I suggest that maybe this can be the one morning in history where everybody doesn't rush out to tell the press what we decided."
It worked. The front-page headline in The Washington Post on November 15 read "Iraqis Say U.S. to Cede Power by Summer; Town Meetings to Set Process in Motion," and the NYT headline was "US Is to Return Power to Iraqis as Early as June." Just as had been agreed in the White House, it was portrayed in the Times and elsewhere as a plan that had been "put forward by Iraqi leaders," couriered to Washington by Bremer, and then "broadly accepted" by Bush.
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On the remote chance there is any soul out there with a foolish "give them one more chance" attitude towards the war-criminals, let me know how this feels as it slides past your tonsils:
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The strategy is the same when the White House, any White House, wants to push an unpopular plan.
First, look for the weakest link in the opposition; play to your opponents' egos by dangling "secret" information; and if all else fails, attribute the idea to a desperate ally. That formula played out recently as the Bush administration tried to blunt Democrats' anger over the proposed increase in U.S. forces in Iraq.
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And so, looking to peel off one of the gazelles from the Democratic pack, the White House pounced on Rep. Rick Larsen. He was invited in a bipartisan group of 15.
The four-term congressman from Lake Stevens sits on the Armed Services Committee, has a sizable military population in his district, had a stronger opponent in his re-election than other Democrats in the delegation, and is more junior than them. A perfect target.
But Larsen asks a lot of questions, and despite his avuncular manner, doesn't like to be pushed. He was against the troop increase and didn't fold.
The next week, a day before Bush's speech announcing the troop build-up, the White House called over an elite group of committee leaders, including Rep. Norm Dicks of Bremerton, the delegation's dean, and Rep. Adam Smith of Tacoma.
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Bush proffered them special information: He said the plan for increased U.S. troops was the idea of Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who had suggested it to Bush himself in late November.
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Larsen told Dicks that nobody at the White House had mentioned any Iraqi-driven plan to him a few days earlier.
He speculated that the explanation had been drummed up by Bush's political advisers at the last minute to try to placate more senior members.
News stories confirmed that al-Maliki himself was denying responsibility for the plan.
So, reiterating, class, how much trust and credibility should we be investing in these folks? Bingo!
As a late update, I nearly Heimliched on this when I saw it several places in the last few days, then struggled to track it down. I'm a pretty frail sensitive sort and thus never contemplated actually watching the insecure obviously dimly-endowed strutter on 60 Minutes (I know one who listened but purposely did not watch). So I do not know if this was a part of the show or side business (and of course I have already broken out with a boil over quoting the W Times, here by way of US News - what depths we have fallen to in the interests of overcoming the regressive bias of the MSM):
The Washington Times, meanwhile, reports that Bush was also "contrite, acknowledging that he has made mistakes in the execution of the Iraq war." The President "admitted" that the relatively low troops levels throughout the war "could have been a mistake" adding "Americans should not blame the military." The president said, "If the people want a scapegoat, they got one right here in me, because it's my decisions."
Mr. (cough cough) President: you and your sleazy cohorts have had more or less a monopoly on the craft of scapegoating for the past six+ years. Please do not pretend to be so foolish as to so underestimate and demean the American people (i.e., voters) as to suggest that they are not fully aware of that by now. The "people" have no interest in scapegoats - in my humble opinion they (we) are in a mood to find leadership that actually takes responsibility, at least is open to if not welcoming of corrective information and data regardless of its conflict with their accepted dogma, might even as a result change course, if called for admit to and learn from mistakes, and fight terrorism instead of lining corporate pockets and expending tens of thousands of human lives and billions of dollars to win elections and save face. You personally, and your administration across the board have failed to comply with any of those so-basic expectations of decent government.
Just like Jim Croce, I've run out of things to say, other than "Thank you for your time - you can keep your dime." And as for Mr. Earle (not the Duke, you understand), "Good-bye is all I've got left to say."
Be forewarned: this is a bit of a slumgullion/mulligatawny/gumbo. But maybe we are all used to that by now. I need to tell you about my first duck-cooking experience sometime. Great jumbalaya in the aftermath.
I'm going to kick it off with some contemporary Even Better Than the Real Thing (U2) poetry, courtesy of Calvin Trillin by way of The Nation:
They sent me a law against torture.
I signed it, although it was quaint.
I said, though, that I'm the decider
Of if something's torture or ain't.
I'll do what I want when I want to,
Though Congress's will may be foiled.
I've always done just what I want to.
You see, I'm a little bit spoiled."
Froomkin will set the table here with my principle focus on a repeated program by the bush unadministration of trying to peg someone else for their own devious anti-democratic decisions. Typically of course, semi-mainstream folks intent on keeping pipeline(s) (both and in and out!) flowing are prone to what I have to consider over-polite wording. "Revisionist" indeed. The lie-detector knows better.
These lying, sleazy, untrustworthy blame-it-on-someone-else we-can't-be-accountable (since we never have before!) folks are still at it, despite the evidence of elections and polls that the majority of voting Americans know they are at best swine (no offense to actual pigs, a far superior group):
President Bush is pushing a revisionist explanation of how he came to support an escalation of troop strength in Iraq.
From the transcript of Bush's remarks at a Georgia military base yesterday:
"The [Iraqi] Prime Minister came and said, look, I understand we've got to do something about this violence, and here is what I suggest we do. Our commanders looked at it, helped fine-tune it so it would work. . . .
"The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to -- by the way, that's what you want your Commander-in-Chief to do. You don't want decisions being made based upon politics, or focus groups, or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. And they analyzed the plan and they said to me, and to the Iraqi government, this won't work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence. . . .
"And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, Mr. President, it's not going to work until -- unless we support -- provide more troops. And so last night I told the country that I've committed an additional -- a little over 20,000 more troops, five brigades of which will be in Baghdad."
It was a bold attempt by Bush to rebut the widely-reported story that he stopped listening to his commanders -- and in fact, reassigned some -- when they stopped telling him what he wanted to hear.
But Bush's new story lacks a certain important quality: Believability.
Previous reporting -- see, for instance, Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks in The Washington Post on Wednesday -- has made it abundantly clear that adding U.S. troops was not an idea that emerged from the American commanders -- nor, for that matter, from the Iraqis.
-clip-
Alas for the chimp, we who pay attention know full well by now that our government has been for a good long time now - six years at least - overpopulated with folks with little regard for truth - and quite often as a result, actual law-breakers. Domestic criminals, as in a president who feels he is above the law. Flat-out war-criminals, ditto. We don't even have to drag in the historical Bush family collusion and profiteering in German fascism. Although admittedly that may come up in court later.
There's really no boubt adoudt it. I'm sure I am far from alone in sensing that there was little if any "military" content to the proffered "surge" - actually Escalation - number - this was an excruciatingly triangulated guess at what was available and was not too hot and not too cold. Gazillions of dollars to donuts this had nada to do with anything remotely resembling military tactics, never mind strategy.
Jim C sings "it doesn't have to be that way," and he's bang-on. Steve Earle has "my old friend the blues." We could easily get it together tonight.
I've been struggling through Woodward's "State of Denial." By now it is out there that there are some useful insights in this book, but he sure could have used an editor with an eye on an actual straightforward story line. There's way too much ambling and wandering, points the author feels a need to make but can't find a context for. My overall book grade for quality: C+. For sheer amount of content/debris that is useful: maybe B-. But you have to want it pretty badly to slog through this 500-page monster.
I will begrudgingly quote from this too-long, mediocre, and too-late marginal woodward-a-culpa for his prior bush-sycophantic-volumes tome by dude who sure deserves an outrageous tattoo along the lines of "So Sorry;" forehead, bold, two inches (pp. 269-270):
-clip
The President finally decided on November 12 that they should do early sovereignty.
Bremer recalls in his book that he made the point that the decision they had just made to turn over sovereignty should be portrayed as something that the Iraqis had come up with, not the Americans.
Bush laughed. "I agree with that. And I suggest that maybe this can be the one morning in history where everybody doesn't rush out to tell the press what we decided."
It worked. The front-page headline in The Washington Post on November 15 read "Iraqis Say U.S. to Cede Power by Summer; Town Meetings to Set Process in Motion," and the NYT headline was "US Is to Return Power to Iraqis as Early as June." Just as had been agreed in the White House, it was portrayed in the Times and elsewhere as a plan that had been "put forward by Iraqi leaders," couriered to Washington by Bremer, and then "broadly accepted" by Bush.
-clip
On the remote chance there is any soul out there with a foolish "give them one more chance" attitude towards the war-criminals, let me know how this feels as it slides past your tonsils:
-clip-
The strategy is the same when the White House, any White House, wants to push an unpopular plan.
First, look for the weakest link in the opposition; play to your opponents' egos by dangling "secret" information; and if all else fails, attribute the idea to a desperate ally. That formula played out recently as the Bush administration tried to blunt Democrats' anger over the proposed increase in U.S. forces in Iraq.
-clip-
And so, looking to peel off one of the gazelles from the Democratic pack, the White House pounced on Rep. Rick Larsen. He was invited in a bipartisan group of 15.
The four-term congressman from Lake Stevens sits on the Armed Services Committee, has a sizable military population in his district, had a stronger opponent in his re-election than other Democrats in the delegation, and is more junior than them. A perfect target.
But Larsen asks a lot of questions, and despite his avuncular manner, doesn't like to be pushed. He was against the troop increase and didn't fold.
The next week, a day before Bush's speech announcing the troop build-up, the White House called over an elite group of committee leaders, including Rep. Norm Dicks of Bremerton, the delegation's dean, and Rep. Adam Smith of Tacoma.
-clip-
Bush proffered them special information: He said the plan for increased U.S. troops was the idea of Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who had suggested it to Bush himself in late November.
-clip-
Larsen told Dicks that nobody at the White House had mentioned any Iraqi-driven plan to him a few days earlier.
He speculated that the explanation had been drummed up by Bush's political advisers at the last minute to try to placate more senior members.
News stories confirmed that al-Maliki himself was denying responsibility for the plan.
So, reiterating, class, how much trust and credibility should we be investing in these folks? Bingo!
As a late update, I nearly Heimliched on this when I saw it several places in the last few days, then struggled to track it down. I'm a pretty frail sensitive sort and thus never contemplated actually watching the insecure obviously dimly-endowed strutter on 60 Minutes (I know one who listened but purposely did not watch). So I do not know if this was a part of the show or side business (and of course I have already broken out with a boil over quoting the W Times, here by way of US News - what depths we have fallen to in the interests of overcoming the regressive bias of the MSM):
The Washington Times, meanwhile, reports that Bush was also "contrite, acknowledging that he has made mistakes in the execution of the Iraq war." The President "admitted" that the relatively low troops levels throughout the war "could have been a mistake" adding "Americans should not blame the military." The president said, "If the people want a scapegoat, they got one right here in me, because it's my decisions."
Mr. (cough cough) President: you and your sleazy cohorts have had more or less a monopoly on the craft of scapegoating for the past six+ years. Please do not pretend to be so foolish as to so underestimate and demean the American people (i.e., voters) as to suggest that they are not fully aware of that by now. The "people" have no interest in scapegoats - in my humble opinion they (we) are in a mood to find leadership that actually takes responsibility, at least is open to if not welcoming of corrective information and data regardless of its conflict with their accepted dogma, might even as a result change course, if called for admit to and learn from mistakes, and fight terrorism instead of lining corporate pockets and expending tens of thousands of human lives and billions of dollars to win elections and save face. You personally, and your administration across the board have failed to comply with any of those so-basic expectations of decent government.
Just like Jim Croce, I've run out of things to say, other than "Thank you for your time - you can keep your dime." And as for Mr. Earle (not the Duke, you understand), "Good-bye is all I've got left to say."
posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:39 PM
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