Month: January 2006

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

by digby

Hindquarters writes yesterday:

George W. Bush is Churchill’s heir in our century.

He explains:

Regular readers of this site know that we admire, above all others, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. President Bush’s reference to “victory” as the mandate he gives to his commanders recalls, intentionally, I am sure, Churchill’s great speech upon becoming Prime Minister in May 1940–the speech in which he said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

This is what brought the comparison to mind. First, here’s Junior:

So that was a good question. Thank you. (Applause.)

Let’s see, yes, ma’am. I’m running out of time here. You’re paying me a lot of money, and I’ve got to get back to work. (Laughter.)

First of all, I expect there to be an honest debate about Iraq, and welcome it. People can help, however, by making sure the tone of this debate is respectful and is mindful about what messages out of the country can do to the morale of our troops. (Applause.)

I fully expect in a democracy — I expect and, frankly, welcome the voices of people saying, you know, Mr. President, you shouldn’t have made that decision, or, you know, you should have done it a better way. I understand that. What I don’t like is when somebody said, he lied. Or, they’re in there for oil. Or they’re doing it because of Israel. That’s the kind of debate that basically says the mission and the sacrifice were based on false premise. It’s one thing to have a philosophical difference — and I can understand people being abhorrent about war. War is terrible. But one way people can help as we’re coming down the pike in the 2006 elections, is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm’s way, and the effect that rhetoric can have in emboldening or weakening an enemy.

That “I can understand people being abhorrant about war” passage really sings, doesn’t it? You can easily see why it would bring to mind this passage from Churchill:

You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Bush is complaining about his political opponents pointing out that he’s a lying sack of shit. Churchill is bucking up the British people as they are being bombed mercilessly by the Germans duiring the blitz. Who could fail to be moved by the comparison?

Now that I look at it, I can see another analogy. Bush begging his kool-aid drinkers to come out and vote is necessary to ensure his party’s survival. When we win, it’s going to be a nasty few years for Republican politicians as they face the consequences of their criminal reign.

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Pat Robertson Has High Standards

by tristero

And they’re all green. See, with a 50 million buck Israeli real estate scam deal on the line, Pat now thinks it was “clearly insensitve at the time” to say Sharon’s stroke was divine retribution for the Gaza withdrawal.

It never ceases to amaze me how clearly phony, how greedy, and how cynically irreligious America’s “spiritual leaders” are. And how many people are willing not only to respect their whacked ideas, but actually send them oodles of their hard-earned money. What a racket.

And that is why every day I wake up and pray for The Rapture to come., “Please God, take all these self-righteous clown up to their Final Reward and leave me down here.” I mean, is that too much to ask from a truly merciful Divinity?

Ripper Takes The Fifth

by digby

It looks like General Geoffrey D. Ripper might finally be coming into the crosshairs. It is long overdue. This sadistic piece of rubbish is largely responsible for instituting the war crimes that have contributed to our becoming a pariah state. Junior and the Nixon Retreads loved the guy.

Not that I’m holding my breath, but this article in the WaPo this morning indicates that he’s suddenly taking the fifth now that the notorious Col. Pappas has been granted immunity in return for his testimony:

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, a central figure in the U.S. detainee-abuse scandal, this week invoked his right not to incriminate himself in court-martial proceedings against two soldiers accused of using dogs to intimidate captives at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to lawyers involved in the case.

The move by Miller — who once supervised the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and helped set up operations at Abu Ghraib — is the first time the general has given an indication that he might have information that could implicate him in wrongdoing, according to military lawyers.

Harvey Volzer, an attorney for one of the dog handlers, has been seeking to question Miller to determine whether Miller ordered the use of military working dogs to frighten detainees during interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Volzer has argued that the dog handlers were following orders when the animals were used against detainees.

[…]

Miller’s decision came shortly after Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib, accepted immunity from prosecution this week and was ordered to testify at upcoming courts-martial. Pappas, a military intelligence officer, could be asked to detail high-level policies relating to the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.

He also could shed light on how abusive tactics emerged, who ordered their use and their possible connection to officials in Washington, according to lawyers and human rights advocates who have closely followed the case. Pappas has never spoken publicly. Crawford said Miller was unaware of Pappas’s grant of immunity. “This could be a big break if Pappas testifies as to why those dogs were used and who ordered the dogs to be used,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “It’s a steppingstone going up the chain of command, and that’s positive. It might demonstrate that it wasn’t just a few rotten apples.”

[…]

Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington expert in military law, said that Miller’s decision is “consistent with his being concerned that he may have some exposure to worry about.” Fidell added: “It’s very unusual for senior officers to invoke their Article 31 rights. The culture in the military tends to encourage cooperation rather than the opposite.”

Miller has long been in the spotlight of the Abu Ghraib abuse investigations, largely because he was sent to the Iraq prison in August and September 2003 with the goal of streamlining its intelligence-gathering operations, using Guantanamo Bay, commonly called “Gitmo,” as a model. Officers at Abu Ghraib have said that Miller wanted to “Gitmo-ize” the facility, and that harsh tactics migrated from the Cuba facility via “Tiger Teams” that Miller sent to Iraq as trainers.

[…]

In an interview with defense attorneys for those MPs in August 2004, Miller said he never told Pappas to use dogs in questioning detainees. Photos of the dog handlers scaring detainees at Abu Ghraib were among the most notorious to emerge from the prison. Dogs were also used at Guantanamo Bay.

“At no time did we discuss the use of dogs in interrogations,” Miller said, according to a transcript.

Volzer, who represents Sgt. Santos A. Cardona, one of the military dog handlers charged with abuse, said he believes the grant of immunity to Pappas will essentially clear his client, because Pappas already has admitted in administrative hearings that he improperly ordered the use of dogs. Volzer said he believes that Pappas was taking direction from Miller, and that Miller was acting on instructions from Defense Department officials. Cardona and Sgt. Michael J. Smith are scheduled to be tried in separate courts-martial in February and March.

“I think the command is hiding something, and I think what they’re hiding is material that is exculpatory that says the interrogation techniques were approved by powers above General Miller,” Volzer said. “Having Pappas available to testify may have given Miller the impression that he is next to be accused of doing something inappropriate or giving inappropriate orders.”

No kidding. Miller was an artillery officer who replaced the original Gitmo Commandant who was accused of being too soft on the prisoners and not getting enough intelligence. Miller fixed that. He got reams and reams of “intelligence” with his methods. The only problem was that it was all bullshit. But they liked his bullshit so much they sent him to Iraq to torture even more bullshit out of the Iraqis.

This was during the period when Cambone, Rumsfeld and Rice were leaning heavily on the military to provide them with piles of paper to prove how well we were doing — “in-box metrics.” No bin Laden, no WMD. But lots and lots of reports.

Miller was the best brown-nosing sadist they could find to generate a flurry of paperwork based on coercive techniques virtually designed to gain false intelligence. Sadly, as a result of these ineffective and immoral methods bin Laden is still at large and we managed to create a violent anti-American opposition in Iraq. Oh yes, and we have also lost all the moral authority we built up over the course of our history. Excellent work all around.

He is a war criminal. And so are his bosses.

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Always Alert

by digby

I know everybody loves a Nixonian Republican named Martha who cries, but would it be too much for the press to actually report the backround on this little kabuki today?

TIME wrote last night:

The always-alert Creative Response Concepts, a conservative public relations firm, sent this bulletin: “Former Alito clerk Gary Rubman witnessed Mrs. Alito leaving her husband’s confirmation in tears and is available for interviews, along with other former Alito clerks who know her personally and are very upset about this development.”

In case that was too much trouble for the journalists, the firm also e-mailed out a statement from the Judicial Confirmation Network calling “for the abuse to stop.”

This was all spontaneous, of course. Any resemblance to Clarence Thomas’ “high tech lynchings” or Lynn Cheney’s “this is not a gooood man” is purely coincidental.

I think it’s time for Ted Kennedy to haul some little girls who were strip searched in to testify. You wanna play? Bring it.

And it’s also time for Democrats to see this as the gift it is. For once the snivellers are the Republicans, playing against type. But that means we’re playing against type also. It’s not often that the country sees us as “too tough.” We should play like Pat Fitzgerald and say “we’re just doing our jobs, ma’am. This is important business.” Let Huckleberry and the boys whimper like little old ladies.

Via Talk Left’s fine analysis of yesterday’s hearings

Update: Rending his garments and speaking in tongues, Roger L. Simon hits a new low.

Update II: Uncomfortable with being seen as the delicate Ashley and Melanie’s they are, there’s this:

And I think Mrs. Alito was crying because she couldn’t jump out of her seat and beat the living hell out of those arrogant condescending bastards who were making those false and scurrilous implications about her husband.

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Wedge Politics

by digby

David Neiwert’s got a must read piece up on immigration, the Minutemen and the Australian race riots. Nobody does this difficult subject better than he does. Get ready. it’s going to be one of the big topcis coming up in this next year whether we like it or not.

It’s happening everywhere — in the Northwest, in California, in the Midwest, in the South, even in pockets in the Northeast. What’s important to understand is that much of this agitation is taking place under the radar, by well-financed organizations who operate through focus groups and “think tanks.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick Coleman described just such an operation taking place recently in Minnesota under less-than-upfront circumstances:

The woman moderator, who said she was from Maryland, wanted very much to talk about immigrants. The participants already had discussed any issues they were concerned about, except the war in Iraq. There would be no talk about Iraq, the woman said. But up to that point, no one had mentioned immigration, much to the annoyance of the moderator. So she prodded the group to complain about immigrants.

“I haven’t heard anybody talk about immigration,” Peoples, an independent, recalls her saying. “Anybody have a problem with the illegal aliens coming in?”

The group’s response to the question was “a deafening silence,” Peoples says. But the woman pushed harder, listing some of the complaints she said she had heard in other states where she had conducted focus groups. Still, no one obliged her. Instead, Peoples mentioned the immigrant workers in a nearby town, praising them for how hard they seem to work.

Not the correct answer. Someone was paying money for this. They wanted problems.

“She shut me off,” Peoples recalls. “Then she said, ‘Aren’t you having problems here?’ “

The state Republican and DFL parties each deny having sponsored the mystery focus group, as does the Republican congressman for the area, Gil Gutknecht, and his DFL challenger, Tim Walz. Also in denial mode was the office of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who recently poured gasoline on the immigrant issue with the release of a crudely overstated report designed to inflame opinion and make immigration into a wedge issue.

That last bit was opinion. But this is fact: Anti-immigration forces are working hard to raise resentment and to exploit immigration for political gain, cozying up to politicians who will help them fence the borders.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the big picture: the anti-immigrant push really represents a significant incursion of right-wing extremism into mainstream conservatism. Each is busy empowering the other, with the end result being an American right pushed even farther to the right.

I’m not looking forward to fighting this battle. Some fair minded good people are getting caught up in it because they don’t understand that it is a manufactured political wedge issue. It’s going to be unpleasant.

If Democrats can muster the self discipline keep our poweder dry on this, it will work as a much deeper wedge into the GOP. If we don’t, we’ll be split by it too.

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Proverbs For Bloggers

by tristero

1. A blogger who knows not irony, knows not a lot:

The headline reads A Plea for Civility. And the lede begins:

After the Democrats’ thuggish behavior yesterday…

Update: Tx to kc and cleek in comments for reminding me that John Hinderaker once provided a fellow blogger with an exceptionally clear object lesson in civility.

You Go Girl!

by digby

We Democrats have a penchant for calling our party spineless and complaining that they never challenge the Republicans.

Well, get a load of this:

Bush said the war’s critics should stop questioning the motives that led him to launch the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

“The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it…. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right,” Bush said.

“I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy — not comfort to our adversaries,” Bush said.

[…]

Karen Finney, the Democratic National Committee’s communications director, said “the Bush administration’s attack, distract and distort tactics reflect a Nixonian paranoia that is un-American.”

Of course, saying things like this might make Laura cry and cause lil’ Huckleberry Graham to clutch his opera length pearls and purse his purdy lips together in a pout, but, you know, fuck it. This is not a goooood man.

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Sniffling Kabuki

by digby

Following up my post below, is there anyone besides me who thinks that Huckleberry Graham’s grandmotherly lecture and the teary Mrs Alito’s exit seemed just a bit too pat?

Huckleberry, after all, served as Stripsearch Sammy’s coach for the hearings. I’m just saying…

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Miss Manners

by digby

Does anybody but me get tired of listeing to Huckleberry Graham constantly lecture the senators about their manners? Every damned time he gets in one of these situations he pulls his Andy Taylor talking to Opie voice and drones on and on about good people not wanting to be in government because Democrats are so rude.

Wring your little lace hankie someplace else, Lindsay. This is important shit. Give a little weekly lecture to your thuggish Republican colleagues why don’t you? They could use a little Miss Manners.

Jayzuz. This cornpone sanctimony makes me want to hurl.

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First Things First

by digby

There is some discussion about whether the Democrats should concentrate on accusing the Republicans of criminal behavior or putting forth a competing reform plan, which might imply that the system itself is at fault for the Republican abuses. I’m not sure that we have to choose so starkly, but I do think that tactically we need to make sure that this scandal is clearly framed as a Republican scandal before we produce any larger reforms. Right now the public is just starting to get a sense of what this scandal is about and we have an opportunity to exploit some existing images and archetypes to paint the Republicans as the criminals they are before we launch a national campaign to clean up the mess.

It pays to keep in mind that the 1994 Republicans didn’t put out their “Contract On America” until six weeks before the election. They’ve pretended that it won them the election but that’s a joke. (They did use bogus polling to give that impression.) What won that election was relentless criticism over the course of many months leading up to it. They built upon a reserve of discontent about a slow economic recovery by placing the blame for everything squarely on the “liberals” and the Democratic party. Their “positive” agenda was just gilding the lilly.

Whatever 10 point reform plans we produce, and we should produce them, the message has to be simple and straightforward: “The Republicans are crooks and we have to clean house to make sure they can’t do it again”

Newtie and Noonan and others have been out there furiously trying to convince the media that the problem is big government (and we know who loves Big Govmint, don’t we?) This is no accident. They use every opportunity, even when they are under the gun, to advance negative images against the other side and boldly use that negativitity to advance themselves. They are positioning themselves for a reform message that blames a Democratic value (government) for the Republicans’ problems in Washington. “Don’t blame us, the Big Government made us do it.”

They are saying this because they know very well that the most dangerous negative meme that haunts Republicans is the image of abuse of power and criminal behavior: there are words and phrases that bring this right to the surface like “slush funds,” “illegal wiretapping” and “bribery.” It’s all connected to a certain type of governance —- that we happen to be witnessing in real time. Again. Nixonian Republicanism.

The GOP has understood for years that they can gain great traction by piggybacking every criticism on existing negative images of Democrats (usually some version of effeminate, undisciplined cowards.) Here we have one of the most vivid negative examples of the Republican archetypes. The greedy little man on the Monopoly Box. We are fools if we don’t come at them with everything we have, focusing our fire on the corrupt political machine and the arrogant imperial presidency. In the wake of the faux GOP outrage at the trivial Clinton scandals, which are even fresher in people’s memories than Nixon, this could cripple them for a good long while if we handle it correctly.

I realize that some Democrats are feeding at the trough. We need to deal with that. But first things first. This is about a complex criminal political enterprise and there is simply no comparison between it and the rather workaday corruption of politicians generally, including Democrats. Their purpose was to build a permanent majority using whatever illegal and legal means at their disposal. And they planned to create an executive branch that operates entirely independently and is answerable only to an “accountability moment” every four years.

I think it’s a big mistake to treat this as just another in a long line of reforms that become necessary every few years. It simply was not business as usual.

Here’s a rather amusing example of GOP think on this from a commenter, who offered it up apparently without irony:

allow me to explain why the Abramoff scandal, like so many others before it, will prove to be more devestating to the Dems then it could possibly be to the GOP, much less conservatives.

The Dems bleat daily that they are the “minority” party. That they are the “loyal opposition.” Yet who actually does something when a scandal arises? Who opened the investigation into the Plame non-leak? Who is pursuing the leak of an NSA program that threatens national security and possibly civil liberties? Who addressed possible torture at Abu Ghraib? Who is set to clean house over the Abramoff tempest in a teapot that threatens to implicate some of the biggest names in the Republican Party, perhaps the very culture of Republican politics?

Not the “loyal opposition” … but rather the Bush Administration.

Teh public knows this. Or is growing to know this with each passing day. They, the voting public, will be left to wonder, if the “loyal opposition” cannot even muster the courage to bring such scandals to the light of day, then for what are they good for?

Americans are already starting to realize that if a “loyal opposition” cannot even do its job of defeating the party in powers’ corruption and misgovernance (examples of which are legion, apparently), then how can we possibly entrust them with the real job of governing the nation?

Rather, American voters will know they would be wiser to turn to the REpublican Party, which has made some partisan, ideological and hubristic missteps, yes – even engaged in a pattern of criminal behavior it would seem. All those sins, yes, but still the GOP is not so grossly incompetent or lacking in power that it would allow what it has done over the past few years to pass, if it had been the Democrats who had done it.

Truly, the Dems attack the Abramoff scandal at their peril.

William G. Henders |

It’s hard to know if he’s serious. But he could be. It’s a twisted Rovian view in the extreme. No matter what, attack the Dems for being chickenshit. Works like a charm.

I think that we can all agree that ten point plans don’t win elections. We have to bring to the surface people’s almost palpable discomfort with Republican governance, as measured in the president’s approval rating, the right track/wrong track numbers and everything else. We have to make people willing to admit to themselves what they already know and we need to do it in clear no nonsense terms — or that fellow’s mind boggling strategy might just work.

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