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KO's history on our "progress" in Iraq

This is from Countdown on Monday - it took me a while to find the video.

This is one of the better pieces I've heard from Keith Olbermann this year, if not the best. KO takes us on a walk down memory lane. It's a history of the Bush & Co. boilerplate about the progress of the war, and reasons for being there.

The best line in this clip: "Progress: Never enough to justify leaving, always enough to justify staying."

Truer words were never spoken by anyone in broadcasting.

The Bush administration wants perpetual war, and it won't accept Congress saying it can't have it.

Kudos to C&L for the video

Mission Accomplished in a sort-of rap

This is through-provoking; the images are every bit as good, if not better than the rap itself.

An excellent compilation to observe "Mission Accomplished"

Today has been an introspective one for me - I guess a three-hour commute to work tends to do that, but that's a separate subject for another post.

This is a pretty good compilation of the lies, distortions and half-truths told by Bush, Cheney and all the rest.

I've stated this to the point of cliché, but the footage doesn't lie.

Happy "Mission Accomplished" Day!

Where has all the time gone? It's hard to believe that the photo above was taken 1460 days ago today. So much has happened since then, most notably about 600,000 dead Iraqi civilians, along with over 3,300 Americans.

The banner itself, high above President Bush's head on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, was the cause of controversy itself. My favorite part about that is how quickly the White House ran for cover, saying "it was the Navy's idea." Just one in a seemingly bottomless supply of lies this administration shoves in our gullets on a daily basis.

Reportedly, when Bush flew in on the S-3B Viking, the pilot who was really at the controls asked Bush to "please not touch anything." It's not hard to imagine Bush going, "What's this button do? Heh heh heh." The pilot must have been terrified. I know I would have been.

Halloween in May. This is probably my favorite picture from the entire circus - Bush playing soldier. I don't think it's an overstatement that this is the most ridiculous presidential photo-op ever. Anyone who disagrees - I'll listen, but I'd love to hear one you think is more absurd and embarrassing than this one.

The images are priceless, and really, they only get more and more absurd over time.

Our preening president. The only thing that was really surprising to me is that the Bush people didn't hand out voter registration sheets and Bush campaign bumper stickers.

Last year, this powerful protest was set up on a beach in southern California, with one cross for each dead soldier.

This was the scene in front of the White House yesterday. Pretty tame, but I'm sure that there will be more organized protests today. I'll post more pictures tonight.

April was one of the deadliest months in the war's history and the deadliest this year - 105 Americans killed. This marked only the sixth time since the war began that American deaths reached double digits.

Best political parody ad, EVER!

Warning: Not for work, or around the kids! It's a bit racy.

I have not laughed this hard about a political parody on the 'Net... EVER.

Watch it, laugh uncontrollably, watch it again.

Miiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssion Accccoooooomplishhhhhhhhed!

Don't get your hopes up, conservatives - it's not a working phone number, according to ThePatriotsMaxim, the user I got this YouTube Vid from.

If you can't laugh at this one, you need a check up from the neck up.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession ~ Count me skeptical

Yesterday, to great fanfare, the Pentagon released transcripts of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession of his role in 9-11. Mohammed, a high-level Al-Qaeda operative, has been in custody since 2003 or 2004 (depending on where you get your information - our government is so secretive, it's tough to tell). He was moved to Guantanamo Bay in September of last year. Funny how not too long after he gets moved to Guantanamo, he confesses. More on that last point later.

What really strikes me is how neat and tidy the story seems. To believe Mohammed, you'd think that he was responsible for every terrorist act since Watergate. Okay, a bit of hyperbole there, but take a read on some of the things he confessed to: Masterminding the September 11th terrorist attacks; the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean; the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower; the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63; planned assassination attempts on Pope John Paul II, Pervez Musharraf and Bill Clinton; planned attacks on Heathrow Airport and Big Ben clock tower in London; the Millennium Plot; and the murder of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in 2002.

Formerly a member of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organization in Kuwait, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, he was "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks." If all of this is true, great. But, will we ever know if it's true? This administration has lied so much, it's hard to believe what's true and what's not true anymore. When listening to the Bush Administration's spin on just about anything, I'm much more inclined to not believe it than believe it.
Following American politics today is like being an airline pilot, flying through a thick fog, who doesn't trust his instruments.

I'm highly skeptical of anything Mohammed says, and I'm not alone. One CIA official has been quoted as saying that anything Mohammed says should be treated with a high amount of skepticism, even referring to at least some of his confessions as white noise - useless chatter devised to get himself through another day's interrogation, and more importantly to send the U.S. government on wild goose chases. Unfortunately, our government has been on many of those before, especially since 9-11.

He's claiming responsibility for quite a laundry list of terrorism. Are we now supposed to believe that Osama bin Laden is inconsequential? The Bush Administration would no doubt love that, but I hope the rest of America isn't buying into this bull - the bottom line is that ultimately Osama bin Laden is responsible for 9-11. Not to go all X-Files on you, but The Truth is Out There.

I also find the timing of this announcement awfully convenient. In the last month, the Bush Administration has had these crises to deal with: Continuing debate on the troop surge, the firing of eight federal prosecutors, the Scooter Libby trial, the Walter Reed scandal, and a host of smaller prickly issues I'm sure Bush wishes would just go away. Many of above have been flashing hot lately, so why not release a bit of good news to get all of the bad press off the front pages of Websites and newspapers?

If you think this administration is above manipulating the press in that way, think again. A few quick examples...

1. In December 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured, conveniently right before the primaries for the 2004 election were set to begin. Patently absurd that it took the biggest and best military in the world nine months to catch him. Kind of like how absurd it is that we are going on six years since 9-11, and still no bin Laden. But, I digress.

2. The announcement of Saddam's verdict in his trial, 48 hours before the 2006 mid-term elections. When the press protested, Tony Snowjob had the nerve to go before the press and declare that the U.S. would never interfere with the Iraqi judicial process. Unreal. Press reports later confirmed that the actual verdict was not completely ready until four days later. Hussein heard that he was guilty, then had to wait four days to find out what he was guilty of. Yea, no tampering there.

3. In the spring and summer of 2004, anyone remember the numerous "terror threats" that were issued? You remember, the color coded system that we heard about all throughout 2004? Seems funny that we haven't heard about many of them since the '04 election. I expected to hear lots of them again in '06 before the November election, but we didn't. I half wonder that the reason we didn't is because of all of the negative press about Republicans trying to scare everyone to death before the '04 election. Have the threats gone away? I don't think so.

4. How about in February 2006, when Bush publicly boasted about the administration's foiling of a plot to blow up the "Liberty Tower" in Los Angeles. (He probably meant to say "Library" Tower, but, you know, a president can get the tallest building in LA wrong, especially when talking about its potential destruction when delivering a major anti-terrorism speech.)

What's more, we should distrust anything that might have been confessed to under any form of torture. I love analogies, so allow me to turn to a brilliant movie, Reservoir Dogs:

Mr. Blonde (played by Michael Madsen) is part of a criminal enterprise that just robbed a jewelry store. At the very beginning of the heist, the cops show up. Quickly. Too quickly in the eyes of the criminals. They begin to turn on one another. Blonde shoots his way out of the robbery, taking an officer hostage to get away. Mr. Blonde has just cut off a police officer's ear, trying to find out about a possible snitch in the group. Chris Penn walks in, and he starts screaming at Mr. Blonde, bellowing, "This guy will tell you he started the Chicago Fire if you beat him hard enough, but that doesn't fucking necessarily make it so!"

I'm sure you can see where I'm going here - just because someone confesses to something under torture (something that is oft-speculated about in Guantanamo Bay, where Mohammed is being imprisoned), that doesn't mean it's true. Often, it's not.



Of course, Sean Insanity was all over the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confession, treating it like the Bush Administration had just captured the real man responsible for 9-11, Osama bin Forgotten.

It's funny to hear Insanity talk about Rosie O'Donnell's "irresponsible rhetoric," something which he has a Ph.D. in. Wait, I forgot - he's a college dropout. Scratch that. By the way, I'm in no way defending O'Donnell - a true blabbermouth moron.

I got a kick out of Hannity's leading questions to Slade Gorton in this piece, too, especially when he said to Gorton, "So, these statements [by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] were not made under duress, RIGHT?" Of course, Hannity didn't get the answer he wanted, as Groton stated he wasn't sure under what conditions Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's statements were made. Swing and a miss for Insanity. But, that never stops him.

The thing that enrages me the most about this particular piece of footage is Insanity's beating the oft-beaten drum about the United States refusing to take bin Laden when he was offered, during the Clinton Administration. This has been thoroughly debunked, yet the right won't give up on this story. Hey, it's the old adage of the right - keep on repeating a lie, over and over and over, until people begin to believe it. And there are many who believe that Clinton refused to take bin Laden into custody, but that we could have. (By the way, can there ever be any sort of national debate, specifically when it's about the GOP's bread and butter, the War on Terrorism, without bringing up Bill Clinton's supposed "shortcomings"?)

I'm not going to get into this again here, other than to briefly say this about Clinton and terrorism. Yes, the Clinton Administration could have done more to combat terrorism - Clinton himself will freely admit that, and he has, very publicly, on many occasions. But, he did as much as he could at the time. Clinton tried to increase the terrorism budget, but was rebuffed by the GOP-controlled Congress every time he did it. When he once closed off Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, he was called "hysterical" by many people, almost all Republicans. What's more, Clinton gets very little press about the various successes in combating terrorism that happened on his watch.

The evidence is strong, given by people who were inside the Bush Administration prior to 9-11, that Bush and his cabal did little to combat terrorism. In fact, John Ashcroft even cut the terrorism budget in the summer of 2001, a few months before the attacks. Then there's the August 6, 2001 memo, entitled Bin Laden determined to Strike in US, which was included in the presidential daily brief, that gets consistently ignored, and conveniently forgotten, by the likes of Sean Insanity. But instead, let's keep harping about Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Advisor, about taking some classified documents from the National Archives. What's more important here?

About those files that Berger took ~ he pleaded guilty to taking classified information, and was sentenced to pay a $50,000 fine, two years probation and 100 hours community service. And he also lost his top secret security clearance for three years.

But, morons like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Insanity won't let a good conspiracy theory go. The Wall Street Journal, which has one of the most conservative editorial pages in the country, wrote this about the Berger incident:

Justice says the picture that emerged is of a man who knowingly and recklessly violated the law in handling classified documents, but who was not trying to hide any evidence. Prosecutors believe Mr. Berger genuinely wanted to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission but felt he was somehow above having to spend numerous hours in the Archives as the rules required, and that he didn't exactly know how to return the documents once he'd taken them out... We called Justice Department Public Integrity chief prosecutor Noel Hillman, who assured us that Mr. Berger did not deny any documents to history. "There is no evidence that he intended to destroy originals," said Mr. Hillman. "There is no evidence that he did destroy originals. We have objectively and affirmatively confirmed that the contents of all the five documents at issue exist today and were made available to the 9/11 Commission."

Keeping sizzling that Berger though, Hannity. Some sheep are bound to believe you.

The things that I loved most about Insanity's rant in the clip above is the "death score card" that Faux News posts about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which totals 3,197.

Hmm. Let me think about that for a minute. That number, 3,200, that means something to me. Where have I seen that before?

Oh yea, the number of Americans killed in Iraq since the war began four years ago this Tuesday. (The current total sits at 3,204 at this writing, with 12 more inconfirmed.)

Whether you agree with the War in Iraq or not, don't buy into all of the spin about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's "confession," specifically from an administration that's in as much political trouble as this one. (Bush's approval ratings remain in the toilet, at 30 percent. The most recent Newsweek Poll rates his embattled Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, more popular than he is. Ouch.)

In my humble opinion, it's probably just another clumsy attempt by Bush and his cabal to reintroduce common knowledge into the mainstream media as "news" in order to turn around the president's sagging approval ratings.

Only time will tell if it's another Mission Accomplished by President Bush.

More PBS Frontline on prewar press

About a week and a half ago, I wrote about a great PBS Frontline piece about prewar intelligence. (Click Here to see my previous thoughts.) It just occurred to me that I never brought you the other two parts, so here they are. This is pretty powerful stuff. I have to confess that I grow tired of people saying that we "shouldn't look back" or that we "shouldn't continue to debate how we got started in the war" or "why we went over there." Ree-diculous.

Anyway, I found this to be very thought provoking and informative, so I wanted to bring you the rest of it. Actually, here's Part I again, and Parts II & III follow...

PART ONE



PART TWO



PART THREE

McCain's split personality examined

It's becoming impossible to keep track of Judas John McCain's multiple stances on any given position. Last weekend, the flip-flop du jour was Roe v. Wade. This time, McCain stated publicly that the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the U.S. should be no more, stating, "I do not support Roe v. Wade. It should be overturned."

This position stands in stark contrast to his previous multiple positions on abortion. Take a quick read of these, from Media Matters:

On August 25, 1999, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that McCain had told its editorial board:

"I'd love to see a point where it is irrelevant and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. ... But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe vs. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to (undergo) illegal and dangerous operations."

The Chronicle added:

But on Sunday [August 22, 1999], in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, McCain said he favors the ultimate repeal of Roe vs. Wade, "but we all know, and it's obvious, that if we repeal Roe vs. Wade tomorrow, thousands of young American women would be (undergoing) illegal and dangerous operations."

The next day, according to the Chronicle, McCain issued what the Chronicle called a "clarification," which reportedly stated: "I have always believed in the importance of the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, and as president, I would work toward its repeal."

On the June 19, 2005, broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, however, McCain adopted yet another position, saying that he agreed "to some degree" that Roe should be overturned, but adding: "I don't think it is [going to be overturned] at least not any time soon."

In 2006, McCain issued a statement indicating that if he were the governor of South Dakota, he "would have signed" a controversial bill outlawing all abortions except in those situations in which the life of the woman is threatened, but that he "would also take the appropriate steps under state law -- in whatever state -- to ensure that the exceptions of rape, incest or life of the mother were included."

That's pretty impressive, actually. I guess McCain's Straight Talk Express [circa 2000 presidential campaign - bus at right] is trying to make each and every stop on the road from Pro-Life to Pro-Choice and back again. If that's McCain's goal, it's time for the president to land on an aircraft carrier again, because it's Mission Accomplished.

However, it seems that McCain is just getting started when it comes to wearing all sorts of phoney hats in a laughable attempt to appeal to everyone right of moderates on the political scale. Earlier this week, the Arizona Senator let fly probably one of his biggest whoppers to date. Read on...

It now seems, according to McCain, that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wasn't so great after all. What bravado! What courage! Start measuring the Oval Office drapes, Senator, because you've got this baby all but sewn up.

Quickly now - except for the heartiest of neocons, who among you didn't come to that conclusion years ago? Rumsfeld's arrogance, pomposity, hubris and incompetence were on display from practically day one of the Bush Administration. Even more importantly, who could disagree that McCain is calling Rummy crummy purely for political gain to curry favor among conservatives and moderates for his presidential campaign?

Take a read on what McCain said on Tuesday in South Carolina (from ABC News.com):

"I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history," McCain said to applause.

However, McCain was singing a different tune shortly after Rumsfeld resigned in November, when he said:

"While Secretary Rumsfeld and I have had our differences, he deserves Americans' respect and gratitude for his many years of public service."

If John Kerry was guilty of some flip flopping in 2004 (I won't get started on that smear campaign), then John McCain has grown a dorsal fin.

Thanks for standing up to Rumsfeld when it really counted, Senator. Sleep tight tonight, you moron. I'm sure the troops in Iraq really appreciate your candor about one of the principle architects of this misguided war, post mortem.

It strikes me as beyond ironic that McCain would slam Rummy much in the same way that he was smeared in the very same state in 2000 by the Bush campaign. I'm in no way defending Rumsfeld, who I do believe will go down as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history, but it cracks me up (and enrages me) that McCain is emptying rounds from his political machine gun into the dead carcass of Donald Rumsfeld NOW, four months after his resignation.

Now that takes real political courage.



I have to once more bring you one of my favorite videos in this embryonic 2008 presidential campaign - McCain vs. McCain. It's quality stuff.

Top picture graphic from JG
Third photo from top from AP