General Patsy builds his dream house

Reflecting on the latest bombing of the al-Askari mosque, Washington Post reporter (and author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq) Thomas Ricks looks at America’s position in Iraq and is reminded of a cautionary allegory told to him by Warren Buffett:

If you’ve been playing poker for half an hour and you don’t know who the patsy at the table is—you are the patsy.

If you don’t think that rings chillingly true all by its lonesome, have a gander at the words of General David Petraeus, Commander of US forces in Iraq, as he begins his long Summer’s spin toward the September assessment of the Bush war escalation (assembled from three sources):

If you drive around Baghdad, you'll find astonishing signs of normalcy in perhaps half to two-thirds of the city. I’m talking about professional soccer leagues with real grass field stadiums, several amusement parks — big ones, markets that are very vibrant. . . .

The Iraqi army has, in general, done quite well in the face of some really serious challenges. In certain areas it really is very heartening to see what it has done. . . .

In fact, the car bomb numbers have come down fairly steadily as well until just a couple of days ago, and we'll see if we can get those coming down again. . . .

There's a real vibrancy in certain parts of Iraq, and in others obviously there is continued fighting and a sectarian cycle of violence underway. Obviously, there is damage, a need to … help them stitch back the fabric of society that was torn during the height of the sectarian violence.

Many have jumped all over the “soccer leagues” reference as a good example of how either out-of-touch or untrustworthy Petraeus is, but what jumped out at me was that last line, the one that refers to the height of sectarian violence in the past tense (was torn).

The General made his comments on the same day as the minaret bombings in Samarra, and before Thursday’s retaliatory attacks on numerous Sunni mosques, but after the release of a Pentagon report that showed how very much in the thick of sectarian violence Iraq and its occupiers are right now.

Spencer Ackerman and Think Progress have more on the specific absurdities in the Petraeus assessment, but even a casual observer of the situation knows that, in the darkest terms, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

And, if it is the case that General Petraeus is not just another Bush apologist, if it is the case that he actually believes that things are vibrant, or getting better, or that the peak sectarian violence is behind us, well, then, you really ain’t seen the worst.

As Ricks, evaluating the latest round of miscalculations and Pollyanna pronouncements, says, paraphrasing legendary military strategist Carl von Clausewitz:

The first and really only task of the top commander is to understand the nature of conflict in which he is engaged.

If von Clausewitz were around to play cards with today’s global leaders, he probably wouldn’t need the full half hour to fix his gaze firmly on the US command. Isn’t it about time for General Petraeus, and the civilian leadership to which he must answer, to take a good look around the table—and a sincere look at the entire house of cards that is Iraq?


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

ape man

Friends of George W. Bush and the less than friendly all over the vast interwebtubes are all duly alarmed by reports of the President’s less than balanced behavior as reported Thursday by Georgie Ann Geyer in the Dallas Morning News:

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!”

This story corroborates another recent report of W’s Nixonian freak-outs:

[S]ome big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be OK…etc., etc. This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

Of course, we all should be appalled, if not overly surprised. It is scary to think of the putative “leader of the free world” behaving like petulant toddler—at best—or a wounded animal—at worst—but it is not hard to imagine. Who among you now reading this can honestly say that you have trouble instantly picturing the Boy King pounding his chest and making claims as to his perceived proper place in the world?

I thought so.

But as disturbing and easy as those images are, the far more distressing part of the Geyer piece is this:

He [Bush] also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”

Isn’t that the bigger story here? George Bush, with his talk of a democracy and freedom, of surges and new ways forward, of liberty and strategy, is aping “leadership” while purposefully scuttling our ship of state, purposefully dragging us deeper into his filthy quagmire, so that “our country’s destiny”—read, “Bush’s legacy”—cannot be brought back to the reality-based world after he leaves office.

Screw the facts, screw the Constitution, screw the will of the American people, screw the lives of the soldiers and marines, and screw all of the people in the Middle East, Dead End George wants things his way, so that’s how it’s going to be. This, more than his whining and chest thumping, is what makes George W. Bush a menace. This is what makes it time for him to go.

Seriously, how can you negotiate with a man who is sworn to fuck you over? I mean, we already knew he didn’t bargain in good faith, but here is all the proof you need that it is something beyond all that—he doesn’t respect anyone else, he barely acknowledges your rights to a future of your choosing. He doesn’t care if you live or die, as long as he gets his way and gratifies his ego.

So, I give that to you, voters and leaders—beyond the crazy behavior, look at the truly mad goal. Let us all move with a sense of urgency to take the reigns of power out of this ape-man’s hands.


And, why did I know that I would have no trouble finding something like this:

Terry outs himself—"only on Nightline"

I wish I had it on tape. I wish ABC would get with the 21st century and actually make a real webcast of an entire Nightline available instead of pawning off the painfully hipified “Nightline Webcast” as their e-presence.

But, I don’t, and they don’t, so, unless you TiVo Terry, Cynthia, and Martin (you poor, poor soul), you are going to have to take my word on this one.

On Monday night’s edition of Nightline, Terry Moran introduced an interview with Assault on Reason author (and, oh yeah, former Vice President) Al Gore by—well, not by talking about what’s in the new book, but by talking about what ABC had been pushing since Good Morning America, namely (yawn), will Gore run for president.

Of course, this is exactly the sort of thing that Gore complains about in his book. Rather than addressing a real issue at hand, establishment media news divisions focus on speculation, celebrity, and fluff. They search for sizzle devoid of steak, afraid that the vast nation of media eaters has gone strictly vegetarian.

The tabloidization of TV news, that self-fulfilling prophesy, was made infuriatingly clear on ABC’s Good Morning America. There, producers plastered a “Will he run?” banner across the bottom of the live interview while a tedious Diane Sawyer time and again said something like: I will get to the other stuff, but when are you going to tell us whether you are running for president?

It was utterly awful, but that awfulness, at least, you can watch, both on the ABC site, and over at Think Progress.

Nightline’s piece, however, is e-MIA. Not that you need to watch Terry Moran try to give us some “fireworks” (as is promised in the “webcast”). He, too, dwells on the will he or won’t he of the ’08 race, and tries to get Gore to say “Bush = Satan” or some permutation thereof, all the while refusing to address the thesis of Gore’s book.

But the part I wanted to mention—the part I set out to tell you about all those paragraphs ago—was in Terry’s intro to the annoyingly edited tape piece where he talks about Gore’s persistent popularity in presidential preference polls. Moran says that “you Democrats” want him to run.

“You Democrats.”

As opposed to?

What we know, because we have seen it revealed in his reporting at least since the 2000 race, and because I have had it confirmed by folks inside the Mouse, is that Terry’s “we” breaks solidly to the right. The wingnut right, I am told.

But don’t take my word for it—there it is. . . though you kind of have to take my word for it because I don’t have a link. . . to Terry Moran, Democrats are “you,” Democrats are the other.

Liberal media my eye/ass/nut—choose whatever part you like.

Or, to put it a much funnier way—watch this other thing I can’t believe I didn’t tape.


Update: Nightline has now posted a web version of last night’s segment; the Moran intro has clearly been re-taped for this edition (he mentions that it’s a webcast). In the online version, Terry replaces “you Democrats” with the rather awkward “leaned Democrats”—a reference, I suppose, to a poll number that comes from pressing respondents that originally answered a preference question as “undecided.” Which makes the 17% pro-Gore number Moran cites even more dodgy, and makes ABC’s trope even more trite and strained.

credit where credit is due (gray lady edition)

Back in January, I read a piece on Radar Online (!) about the contrasting fortunes of pundits and reporters who weighed in on the Iraqi incursion before its start. The results of the survey, as written up by Jebidiah Reed are, quite frankly, disheartening: those that were pro-war and predicted easy success were richly rewarded and continue to thrive, while those that dared to raise questions or predict trouble have been marginalized. It is a trend that sadly seems to have continued mostly unabated through four-plus years of bloody and brutal failure. . .

Until yesterday.

Regular consumers of my spleen know that I have a healthy portion reserved for the establishment media, their indiscriminant noblesse oblige inside the beltway, their unwarranted hostility to new media, and their regular inability to grasp just how terribly wrong things have gone in the last six years. So, let me step up and take note, extend a laurel and hardy handshake, and congratulate the most established of the establishment, the “gray lady,” “the paper of record”—The New York Times got this one right.

Recently, there were rumors that the position of Public Editor at the Times would disappear when the tenure of current PE Byron “Barney” Calame ended later this month. Instead, Times’ Executive Editor Bill Keller announced Thursday that starting May 14, Clark Hoyt will take over as the Times’ new Public Editor. In Keller’s words:

Clark has spent 38 years with Knight Ridder newspapers as a reporter, editor and executive. As a reporter, he shared a Pulitzer, and as an editor he earned a reputation as a reporter's editor. Until the sale of Knight Ridder last year, he was, for seven years, the Knight Ridder Washington Editor. In that role he presided over a body of aggressive reporting in the runup to the war in Iraq -- journalism that has been widely praised for sometimes being more skeptical about the pre-war intelligence than bigger news organizations, including our own.

That’s right, Hoyt, as Washington Editor for Knight Ridder, presided over some of the only establishment reportage that doubted Bush Administration claims of Saddam-al Qaeda connections and smoking guns in forms resembling cremini cumulous. As recently featured in a Bill Moyers documentary for PBS, Knight Ridder’s work lays waste to the protestations of so many that they had little choice but to support the Iraqi expedition back in 2002-03 because all of the information available at the time was so convincing.

Hoyt wasn’t convinced, and now his skepticism has been rewarded. And I might actually start looking forward to reading the Public Editor column again. That’s two plusses, and here are three cheers for the gray lady: hip hip hooray.


(h/t Think Progress)

(cross-posted to capitoilette and Daily Kos)

Rice eats Bush

A forthcoming biography of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, excerpted in Newsweek (and linked to by Think Progress) includes the following, um, tasty tidbits. . . .

. . . Rice was drawn to Bush. "First of all, I thought he was wonderful to be around," she recalled, sitting on the couch in her State Department office. "He was warm and funny and easy to be around. I thought he had just an incredibly inquisitive mind ... You could barely finish an explanation before he was digging into it."

Digging into what? Huh? [cough] Sorry. OK. . . .

Bush was also a bad boy. And Rice, according to friends and family, had a thing for bad boys. . . .

Boy? Bush is a “bad boy” you say? More like a petulant child. . . .

Rice's friends insisted the attraction to Bush was platonic, but Brenda Hamberry-Green, her Palo Alto hairdresser, who had spent years commiserating with Rice over how hard it was for successful black women to find a good man, noticed a change when Rice started working for Bush. "He fills that need," Hamberry-Green decided. "Bush is her feed.”

Wha-a-a-a. . . I think I just swallowed some of my own vomit. I guess that’s how she keeps her girlish figure (remember: Bush “feed” is part of a balanced lifestyle that includes diet and exercise. . . and lying for your husband boss.)

[Says Rice’s] stepmother Clara Rice: "she just can't say no to that man."

(This) White House sex scandal aside, the issue that has Rice steamed this week concerns the release of a book by former CIA chief George Tenet where he accuses the then-National Security Adviser of dismissing his urgent warnings, back in the Summer of 2001, about an imminent attack on the US by al Qaeda terrorists. Specifically, Tenet says he told Rice, “We need to consider immediate action inside Afghanistan now. We need to move to the offensive.”

When confronted with that quote this weekend on CBS’s Face the Nation, Rice gets quite hot and bothered, and her response is really something wild:

The idea of launching preemptive strikes into Afghanistan in July of 2001, this is a new fact. I don’t know what we were supposed to preemptively strike in Afghanistan. Perhaps somebody can ask that.

So many things to parse, so little time. . . . Last first: What you were supposed to strike? Uh, I think his name sounds something like OSAMA BIN LADEN! Second, Rice seems taken aback by the suggestion that they launch a preemptive strike. . . because she has some sort of deep-seated opposition to preemptive force?

But the thing that really pricks my ears: “this is a new fact.” What a strange construction. Rice doesn’t say, “Tenet is lying,” she doesn’t say, “That’s not true,” or, “That didn’t happen,” she says Tenet’s revelation is a “new fact.” True. . . but new.

New to whom?

Worth “digging into,” don’t you think?


(By the way, Happy “Law Day.”)