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Tin Foil Government

In the comments section of the post below about postponing the elections, Rodger Payne alerts me to a disturbing article in the Atlantic called The Armageddon Plan.

While it doesn’t specifically mention postponing elections, the Reagan administration evidently began a series of rather bizarre exercises to practice contingency plans in case of a nuclear attack. Even more disturbing is that Cheney and Rumsfeld, neither of whom were actually in the administration at the time, were intimately involved in the elaborate planning and gaming:

At least once a year during the 1980s Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld vanished. Cheney was working diligently on Capitol Hill, as a congressman rising through the ranks of the Republican leadership. Rumsfeld, who had served as Gerald Ford’s Secretary of Defense, was a hard-driving business executive in the Chicago area—where, as the head of G. D. Searle & Co., he dedicated time and energy to the success of such commercial products as Nutra-Sweet, Equal, and Metamucil. Yet for periods of three or four days at a time no one in Congress knew where Cheney was, nor could anyone at Searle locate Rumsfeld. Even their wives were in the dark; they were handed only a mysterious Washington phone number to use in case of emergency.

After leaving their day jobs Cheney and Rumsfeld usually made their way to Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington. From there, in the middle of the night, each man—joined by a team of forty to sixty federal officials and one member of Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet—slipped away to some remote location in the United States, such as a disused military base or an underground bunker. A convoy of lead-lined trucks carrying sophisticated communications equipment and other gear would head to each of the locations.

Rumsfeld and Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new “President” and his staff. The idea was to concentrate on speed, to preserve “continuity of government,” and to avoid cumbersome procedures; the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the rest of Congress would play a greatly diminished role.

The inspiration for this program came from within the Administration itself, not from Cheney or Rumsfeld; except for a brief stint Rumsfeld served as Middle East envoy, neither of them ever held office in the Reagan Administration. Nevertheless, they were leading figures in the program.

[…]

The U.S. government considered the possibility of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union more seriously during the early Reagan years than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Reagan had spoken in his 1980 campaign about the need for civil-defense programs to help the United States survive a nuclear exchange, and once in office he not only moved to boost civil defense but also approved a new defense-policy document that included plans for waging a protracted nuclear war against the Soviet Union. The exercises in which Cheney and Rumsfeld participated were a hidden component of these more public efforts to prepare for nuclear war.

The premise of the secret exercises was that in case of a nuclear attack on Washington, the United States needed to act swiftly to avoid “decapitation”—that is, a break in civilian leadership. A core element of the Reagan Administration’s strategy for fighting a nuclear war would be to decapitate the Soviet leadership by striking at top political and military officials and their communications lines; the Administration wanted to make sure that the Soviets couldn’t do to America what U.S. nuclear strategists were planning to do to the Soviet Union.

[…]

The outline of the plan was simple. Once the United States was (or believed itself about to be) under nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to three different locations around the United States. Each team would be prepared to assume leadership of the country, and would include a Cabinet member who was prepared to become President. If the Soviet Union were somehow to locate one of the teams and hit it with a nuclear weapon, the second team or, if necessary, the third could take over.

This was not some abstract textbook plan; it was practiced in concrete and elaborate detail. Each team was named for a color—”red” or “blue,” for example—and each had an experienced executive who could operate as a new White House chief of staff. The obvious candidates were people who had served at high levels in the executive branch, preferably with the national-security apparatus. Cheney and Rumsfeld had each served as White House chief of staff in the Ford Administration. Other team leaders over the years included James Woolsey, later the director of the CIA, and Kenneth Duberstein, who served for a time as Reagan’s actual White House chief of staff.

[…]

Ronald Reagan established the continuity-of-government program with a secret executive order. According to Robert McFarlane, who served for a time as Reagan’s National Security Adviser, the President himself made the final decision about who would head each of the three teams. Within Reagan’s National Security Council the “action officer” for the secret program was Oliver North, later the central figure in the Iran-contra scandal. Vice President George H.W. Bush was given the authority to supervise some of these efforts, which were run by a new government agency with a bland name: the National Program Office. It had its own building in the Washington area, run by a two-star general, and a secret budget adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Much of this money was spent on advanced communications equipment that would enable the teams to have secure conversations with U.S. military commanders. In fact, the few details that have previously come to light about the secret program, primarily from a 1991 CNN investigative report, stemmed from allegations of waste and abuses in awarding contracts to private companies, and claims that this equipment malfunctioned.

The exercises were usually scheduled during a congressional recess, so that Cheney would miss as little work on Capitol Hill as possible. Although Cheney, Rumsfeld, and one other team leader took part in each exercise, the Cabinet members changed depending on who was available at a particular time. (Once, Attorney General Ed Meese participated in an exercise that departed from Andrews in the pre-dawn hours of June 18, 1986—the day after Chief Justice Warren Burger resigned. One official remembers looking at Meese and thinking, “First a Supreme Court resignation, and now America’s in a nuclear war. You’re having a bad day.”)

[…]

The exercises were designed to be stressful. Participants gathered in haste, moved and worked in the early-morning hours, lived in Army-base conditions, and dined on early, particularly unappetizing versions of the military’s dry, mass-produced MREs (meals ready to eat). An entire exercise lasted close to two weeks, but each team took part for only three or four days. One team would leave Washington, run through its drills, and then—as if it were on the verge of being “nuked”—hand off to the next team.

[…]

When George H.W. Bush was elected President, in 1988, members of the secret Reagan program rejoiced; having been closely involved with the effort from the start, Bush wouldn’t need to be initiated into its intricacies and probably wouldn’t re-evaluate it. In fact, despite dramatically improved relations with Moscow, Bush did continue the exercises, with some minor modifications. Cheney was appointed Secretary of Defense and dropped out as a team leader.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet collapse, the rationale for the exercises changed. A Soviet nuclear attack was obviously no longer plausible—but what if terrorists carrying nuclear weapons attacked the United States and killed the President and the Vice President? Finally, during the early Clinton years, it was decided that this scenario was farfetched and outdated, a mere legacy of the Cold War. It seemed that no enemy in the world was still capable of decapitating America’s leadership, and the program was abandoned.

There things stood until September 11, 2001, when Cheney and Rumsfeld suddenly began to act out parts of a script they had rehearsed years before. Operating from the underground shelter beneath the White House, called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, Cheney told Bush to delay a planned flight back from Florida to Washington. At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld instructed a reluctant Wolfowitz to get out of town to the safety of one of the underground bunkers, which had been built to survive nuclear attack. Cheney also ordered House Speaker Dennis Hastert, other congressional leaders, and several Cabinet members (including Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton) evacuated to one of these secure facilities away from the capital. Explaining these actions a few days later, Cheney vaguely told NBC’s Tim Russert, “We did a lot of planning during the Cold War with respect to the possibility of a nuclear incident.” He did not mention the Reagan Administration program or the secret drills in which he and Rumsfeld had regularly practiced running the country.

Their participation in the extra-constitutional continuity-of-government exercises, remarkable in its own right, also demonstrates a broad, underlying truth about these two men. For three decades, from the Ford Administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never far away. They stayed in touch with defense, military, and intelligence officials, who regularly called upon them. They were, in a sense, a part of the permanent hidden national-security apparatus of the United States—inhabitants of a world in which Presidents come and go, but America keeps on fighting.

What a huge mistake it ever was to let these paranoid wierdos have any control of the US Government. No wonder they all bought Myleroie’s nutball theories.

If this is any guide at all, there is absolutely no reason to believe that they would hesitate to suspend elections, institute martial law and stage a coup. Indeed, it appears they’ve been training to do just that for more than 20 years.

Romance Heroes

The Fighting Hellmice of the 101st Keyboarders have a new dreamboat to fantasize about:

Some of us first met “Jack” in 2001, when the Taliban had retreated from Kabul, victorious Northern Alliance fighters were parading in the streets, and US and British forces were pouring into Bagram airbase. A dapper man in a black T-shirt and combat trousers, a Glock pistol strapped in his shoulder holster, Idema gave a graphic account of his supposed experiences as a former US army Green Beret who had trained with the SAS and, as an adviser to the Tajik and Uzbek militias, had helped plan the operation to take the Afghan capital.

The meeting took place at the Mustafa Hotel, then being built in the city centre. It was another example of the seemingly endless carpetbagging opportunities then on offer. The owners were, and continue to be, a family of Afghan expatriates from New Jersey, the hotel named after one of three brothers. Sipping whiskey, then retailing at $140 a bottle at the Chelsi supermarket off Chicken Street, Idema offered to organise a convoy to Tora Bora, where the Taliban and al-Qa’ida were making what was thought to be their last stand and where, the Americans were confident, Osama bin Laden was trapped.

After making a few checks with the British military, some of us decided to decline his offer. Those who went were robbed at gunpoint a quarter of the way through the journey by their “guards” and made their way, bedraggled, back to Kabul. Jack professed to be outraged. He would take the matter up immediately with his “good friends” General Quononi, the new Defence Minister, and Abdul Rashid Dostum, the warlord, and the bandits would be summarily executed.

After that Idema would regularly turn up at the Intercontinental Hotel, where most of the foreign journalists were staying, attempting to sell videos and photographs purporting to show Taliban and al-Qa’ida terrorists training for assassinations and rehearsing gas attacks using dogs.

Some of these were bought for large sums of money, and one tape was shown on American network TV. However, Idema later declared he was going to sue over alleged breach of contract, and also threatened to “punch out” Geraldo Rivera and a Fox TV presenter in a dispute over the recordings.

This is the real story of the GWOT and it would be funny if it weren’t so embarrassing. But what do we expect? We have a president who evokes Wyatt Earp dimestore novel dialog and we have a bunch of washed up losers hanging around the Mustafa hotel pretending to be glamour boys in a cheap airport thriller.

This war calls for Joseph Heller and Graham Greene and all we’ve got is Louis L’Amour and Frederick Forsythe.

And lets not forget Doug Upland, who reader James Woodyat reminds me is the “writer” who posts fun wingnut fantasies at Free Republic.

Just yesterday he wrote this one, which I’m sure gave the Fighting Hellmice extreme discomfort in their groin areas when they read it:

The target date was Thursday, September 2. On primetime television, the President would accept his nomination as the party standard bearer. They would prove that, no matter how good the security, they could hit where they want and when they want.

In June, 2004 they had made a dry run with three of the planes in the California desert about two hours east of Los Angeles. The chips and GPS system worked perfectly. The planes were very, very fast and performed exactly as programmed.

All of the planes were put together in their rooms a week before the convention. The deadly cargo would be installed a few hours before showtime.

It was a tense four days in New York. A hundred thousand protestors were causing mischief in the streets and did considerable amount of damage to vehicles and store fronts. The usual suspects were there — Earth First, free Mumia, A.N.S.W.E.R., N.O.W., PETA, Mothers against Guns, No More Florida 2000, No Blood for Oil Coalition, Berkeley Peace and Justice Center, Legalize Hemp, Blind Women Who Want to Have Michael Moore’s Baby, and hundreds of other Democrat groups of whiners who were bused in, many at taxpayer expense.

Michael Berg was scheduled to be a featured speaker at one of the protest rallies, but he was unfortunately accidentally hit in the face by a rock thrown by one of his leftist pals that missed the police officer at whom it was thrown. Berg returned the next day, but with his jaw wired shut, his statement had to be read by Whoopi Goldberg. Whoopi blamed FreeRepublic for the rock that hit Berg. When he had his fling with her some years before, Ted Danson proved not only that white men can’t jump, but sometimes white men can’t see.

It was a stifling hot September day and, since most of the leftists don’t bathe very often, the stench in the streets was almost overwhelming.

They wanted to kill and injure as many people as possible. Their goal was for a casualty count in the thousands. To them, it didn’t matter whether they killed delegates and support staff or the leftists in the street who actually were their pals. They hoped to get high ranking officials including, of course, the President.

Since the heroic Jumpin’ Jack Idema is languishing in a Kabul jail, maybe the stateside hellmice could get together and form a perimeter around Madison Square Garden to protect the prez from the unwashed leftists and their allies al-Qaeda.

Of course, you know what the real problem with all this mayhem would be:

If al-Qaida deliberately kills leftist protesters, it would send the loony left into a conspiratorial tizzy (against Republicans, of course). Politics in this country would get VERY ugly; there would be plenty of revenge attacks by loony leftists (against Republicans, not al-Qaida). It would be very , very bad. Hopefully they aren’t smart enough for that.

Conspiratorial tizzy, indeed.

Covering Their Bases

Tom Ridge wants John Ashcroft to look into the possibility of postponing the election in case of a terrorist attack. Considering that Ashcroft and company have believed that the GWOT justifies everything from unlimited detention to torture it’s going to be very surprising if they don’t back the idea that doing so would be constitutional.

But constitutionality aside, why would there be any need to do this? We lived under the threat of nuclear war for decades — real weapons of mass destruction pointed at all of our major cities — and nobody ever contemplated suspending elections and devised no plans to do so. We have held elections during every war, including the civil war, and didn’t contemplate suspending them in case of an attack.

This is absurd. Unless the terrorists are somehow able to prevent large numbers of people from exercising their right to vote by bombing individual polling places there can be absolutely no reason to postpone this election.

Besides, if I recall correctly, the Bush administration made quite a case a few years back that there should be no changing of the rules, even when certain rules are contradictory, in election procedures. I remember that deadlines, particularly, were sacrosanct. Indeed, the dates surrounding election laws were seen as written in stone.

Somehow, I have to believe that if terrorists attack us around the election, Americans will crawl out of the rubble on their hands and knees to vote. But then, that’s obviously what they’re really afraid of, isn’t it?

thanks to John Gorlewski for the tip

Oh Please

The thrust of the SSIC report is that the CIA greatly overestimated the threat of Saddam Hussein and led our unsuspecting Dear Leader to invade Iraq on false pretenses. Imagine that. And one of the main documents cited in the SSIC report as proof of that claim was the October 2002 NIE report (that, incidentally, had to be specifically requested by Senators on the committee.)

Today’s LA Times notes that the SSIC report points to the fact that key revisions were made to the public version of this NIE, which is interesting because nobody knows who did it. Evidently, the public NIE was phrased in language that was much less ambiguous than the original CIA document:

During a briefing before the report was released, one committee aide said the Senate panel had asked Tenet and Stu Cohen — who, as acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council, oversaw production of the NIE — who was responsible for inserting those words into the unclassified document.

“They did not know and could not explain,” said the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A similar degree of mystery surrounds the larger question of exactly how the classified NIE morphed into its unclassified version.

According to the committee report, the intelligence community began preparing an unclassified white paper on Iraq’s banned weapons in May 2002, at the request of the National Security Council.

Months later, as the administration began to make its public case for war, Congress requested an official NIE. Officials at the National Intelligence Council decided to merge the white paper with declassified elements of the NIE to produce the official unclassified version.

Yes, it’s quite a mystery as to who revised that NIE. One clue might be the fact that a month before the NIE was completed, the White House had released a “background paper” called “A Decade of Deception and Defiance” which very unambiguously laid out the case that Iraq was swimming in bio and chem weapons and could make a nuclear bomb in a matter of months. (Interestingly, this very same backround paper has recently been revealed to have used Judith Miller’s Chalabi-fed reporting over the CIA’s in at least one case.)

Now, this proves nothing about whether the White House “sexed up” the NIE but it’s a fact that the White House released a backround report in September of 2002 that made sweeping claims about Saddam’s WMD and terrorist ties. It is also a fact that the CIA created a classified National Intelligence Estimate a month or so later that was riddled with caveats and ambiguities about the Iraq threat. And it is now known that someone altered this classified NIE’s language for public consumption to reflect the unambiguous assertions set forth in the earlier White House backround paper.

“The fact that the NIE changed so dramatically from its classified to its unclassified form and broke all in one direction, toward a more dangerous scenario … I think was highly significant,” the committee’s vice chairman, Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), said Friday.

No kidding.

As The Yellowcake Turns

An interesting deconstruction of Steno Sue Schmidt’s article in today’s Wapo by Josh Marshall. Typically, Schmidt spins the GOP case against Joe Wilson and it’s the usual mix of innuendo, bad legal reasoning and inside baseball she’s known for. And it will undoubtedly take its toll on Wilson’s reputation among the kewl kidz as Schmidt’s special brand of whorish writing usually does.

When you cut through all the suggestive blather, the main theme seems to be that Wilson lied about his wife recommending him for the job, which even non-kewl kid Kevin Drum believes shoots Wilson’s credibility all to hell.

Now, I realize that Robert Novak and the rest will be crowing about this as if they’ve just uncovered the Rosetta Stone, but I don’t get it and I never did. From the beginning, the main thrust of the Rove/Novak item (which for some reason the White House thought would blow Wilson out of the water) was that Plame got Wilson the unpaid assignment which was apparently evidence that he’s whipped by his macho secret agent wife and therefore can’t be believed. It never made any sense, but I can see that it’s going to be trotted out again as the ultimate gotcha and that everybody’s going to be running around chasing this story when it has nothing to do with anything and never did. What would her recommendation, (whether Wilson later lied about it or not) have to do with his report?

I thought Hollywood was bad with the infighting and obsession with gossip and juvenile power games. But, DC media take the cake. If the Democrats want to get with the program they’d better learn to feed the media tittilating gossip and silly trivia to keep them running in circles. Frame any situation as soap opera and you can get your version of events into the mainstream.

Big Problem

I think we are all going to have to begin to come to grips with the fact that there is something terribly wrong with our military. It’s not just that the Bush administration opened the floodgates to any and all kinds of barbaric behavior. They lost all perspective and fanned the flames of a counterproductive bloodlust for their own purposes and we’ll be dealing with that for a generation at a minimum.

But, there is also something deeply amiss when a supposedly disciplined organization can deteriorate into utter chaos and depravity in the short time it took Abu Ghraib to become a hell on earth. And people knew. Lots of people knew, but it continued for months until one lowly soldier armed with irrefutable evidence finally blew the whistle.

U.S. News obtains all classified annexes to the Taguba report on Abu Ghraib:

The most comprehensive view yet of what went wrong at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, based on a review of all 106 classified annexes to the report of Major General Antonio Taguba, shows abuses were facilitated–and likely encouraged–by a chaotic and dangerous environment made worse by constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence from detainees.

Daily life at Abu Ghraib, the documents show, included riots, prisoner escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards, filthy conditions, sexual misbehavior, bug-infested food, prisoner beatings and humiliations, and almost-daily mortar shellings from Iraqi insurgents. Troubles inside the prison were made worse still by a military command structure that was hopelessly broken.

[…]

Col. Henry Nelson, an Air Force psychiatrist who prepared a report for Taguba on Abu Ghraib, described it as a “new psychological battlefield,” and detailed the nature of the challenge faced by the Americans working in the overcrowded prison. “These detainees are male and female, young and old,” Nelson wrote; “they may be innocent, may have high intelligence value, or may be terrorists or criminals. No matter who they are, if they are at Abu Ghraib, they are remanded in deplorable, dangerous living conditions, as are soldiers.”

[…]

As the top commanders battled it out, soldiers at Abu Ghraib were confused over who was in charge, the documents show. Weak leadership in the prison meant soldiers couldn?t accomplish basic tasks, like feed their detainees, much less find someone to prosecute abuse. And without a clear chain of authority, some soldiers just ran wild. “One of the tower guards was shooting prisoners with lead balls and slingshot,” a company commander testified. Soldiers ran around wearing civilian clothes, and covered latrines with so much graffiti that a commander had them painted black, and then threatened to post a guard at each location. An Army captain allegedly secretly photographed female subordinates while they were showering in outside stalls.

The most serious riot, at Camp Vigilant, took place on the night of November 23 when guards shot and killed four detainees. “The prisoners were marching and yelling, ‘Down with Bush,’ and ‘Bush is bad,'” another Army review said. “They became violent and started throwing rocks at the guards, both in the towers and at the rovers around the wire…” Guards feared for their lives “the sky was black with rocks,” the report saidand a mass breakout appeared imminent. The review of the November riot cited the failure of guard commanders to post rules of engagement for dealing with insurrections. Soldiers were hesitant to shoot, and when they did shoot, they often didn?t know whether they were using lethal or non-lethal ammunition because they had mixed the ammo in their shotguns.

Another classified annex reported that the prison complex was seriously overcrowded, with detainees often held for months without ever being interrogated. Detainees walked around in knee-deep mud, “defecating and urinating all over the compounds,” said Capt. James Jones, commander of the 229th MP Battalion. “I don’t know how there’s not rioting every day,” he testified.

Among the more shocking exchanges revealed in the Taguba classified annexes are a series of E-mails sent by Major David Dinenna of the 320th MP Battalion. The E-mails, sent in October and November to Major William Green of the 800th MP Brigade, and copied to the higher chain of command, show a quixotic attempt to simply get the detainees at Abu Graib edible food. Dinenna pressed repeatedly for food that wouldn’t make prisoners vomit. He criticized the private food contractor for shorting the facility on hundreds of meals a day, and for providing food containing bugs, rats, and dirt.

“As each day goes by tension within the prison population increases,” Dinenna wrote. “…Simple fixes, food, would help tremendously.” Instead of getting help, Major Green scolded him. “Who is making the charges that there is dirt, bugs or what ever in the food?,” Major Green replied in an E-mail. “If it is the prisoners I would take it with a grain of salt.” Dinenna shot back: “Our MPs, Medics and field surgeon can easily identify bugs, rats, and dirt, and they did.” Ultimately, the food contract was not renewed, an Army spokeswoman says, although the contractor holds other contracts with the military.

There is no excuse for this callous attitude by officers in the American military in Iraq — a country we were ostensibly liberating. The insurgency was and is difficult. But, this complete institutional breakdown within just a few short months is shocking. We have a problem.

Much of the blame, of course, must be laid at the top. I’m reminded again of this letter from Josh Marshall’s friend in Iraq who wrote:

About the Army – Man, it hurts my heart to write this about an institution I dearly love but this army is completely dysfunctional, angry and is near losing its honor. We are back to the Army of 1968. I knew we were finished when I had a soldier point his Squad Automatic Weapons at me and my bodyguard detail for driving down the street when he decided he would cross the street in the middle of rush hour traffic (which was moving at about 70 MPH) … He made it clear to any and all that he was preparing to shoot drivers who did not stop for his jaunt because speeding cars are “threats.”

I also once had a soldier from a squad of Florida National Guard reservists raise weapons and kick the door panel of a clearly marked CPA security vehicle (big American flag in the windshield of a $150,000 armored Land Cruiser) because they wanted us to back away from them so they could change a tire … as far as they were concerned WE (non-soldiers) were equally the enemy as any Iraqi.

Unlike the wars of the past 20 years where the Army encouraged (needed) soldiers, NGOs, allies and civil organizations to work together to resolve matters and return to normal society, the US Forces only trust themselves here and that means they set their own limits and tolerances. Abu Ghuraib are good examples of that limit. I told a Journalist the other day that these kids here are being told that they are chasing Al Qaeda in the War on Terrorism so they think everyone at Abu Ghuraib had something to do with 9/11. So they were encouraged to make them pay. These kids thought they were going to be honored for hunting terrorists.

Since Bush came into office it seems as if he has made it his purpose to corrupt every single institution in the United States. From the Supreme Court to the press to the SEC to the US Military there is nothing left of us but the bare bones of the constitution and the hope that we at least have one more free election.

Neither anarchists or terrorists have ever been so efficient.

Spooky

The General has a scoop on Secret Agent Man and freelance prison warden, Keith Idema.

This is the shocker:

Well, the one identified as Jonathan Idema, appears to be “Jonathan “Keith” Idema,” a fine patriotic paintball enthusiast, former Green Beret, ex-con, “father” of a someday-to-be-cloned dog (I’m not making any of this up), a “civilian” military advisor to the Northern Alliance and the “finder” of all those Al Qaeda videotapes liberated from an Afghan house awhile back.

Yes, this is the patriot who provided one of the greatest intelligence successes of the Afghan War, or at least one of the greatest public relations successes of the war–remember, under Our Leader, perception is at least as, if not more, important than reality. Of course, our government has to distance itself from him now, but there’s little doubt that he served as a CIA contractor in the early stages of the war–It was a CIA operation.

Not that he was really working for the CIA or anything, but if he was, (hypothetically mind you) would hanging Afghans upside down by their feet be considered the equivalent of pain on the scale of organ failure? I don’t think so. No harm no foul.

Read the rest of the General’s post for more. This is war planned by the Farrelly Brothers.

Lick Bush and Dick in ’04

And, why does the New York Times think this is worth not just one, but two stories?

This year was Whoopi Goldberg’s turn. In her rambling monologue she made lewd jokes related to the president’s surname, which President Bush’s supporters pounced on as evidence of Democrats’ “sickness.”

[…]

The Bush campaign, however, immediately scolded Mr. Kerry for reportedly enjoying the show and demanded that his campaign release a video of the event to the public.

“At this event, there was a great deal of extreme venom and vitriol that spewed forth,” said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign. ‘Both John Kerry and John Edwards lacked the leadership to stand up and say this kind of rhetoric is wrong and it demeans our civic discourse. The fact that John Kerry said these people represent the heart and soul of America shows just how far outside the mainstream John Kerry truly is.”

Oh my goodness, let’s see a fine example of mainstream Republican rhetoric, shall we? And it only went out to 30 million people or so, so it’s not as if it demeans our civic discourse.

During an appearance on last night’s “Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” comedian Dennis Miller unleashed a torrent of political humor aimed at Democrats who he says “are going to hell in a handbasket.”

[…]

“Those are frightening affairs. That is such an empty-headed scrum those Democratic debates. I tune in, you see all nine of them together, it’s like a Pez-dispenser séance.”

“You know all the Democrats are going to hell in a handbasket. Now they got [California’s] Nancy Pelosi. … You ever see she has that pop-eyed look all the time? I always thought she might be hyper-thyroid, but then I heard her speak a couple times. She’s stupid! The reason her eyes are so wide is that she’s as shocked as we are that she made it that high!”

“Robert Byrd, this guy stands there and lectures Bush in the well of the Senate. He was in the Ku Klux Klan! He’s demented. You know this guy’s burning the cross at both ends! And you know something, if Robert Byrd were your grandfather and he came to Thanksgiving dinner and went off one of these demented screeds, everybody would sit there smiling at him, and as soon as he left the room, somebody’d say, ‘Hey, what the hell are we gonna do about grandpa?'”

“And the Clintons won’t shut up. If that marriage were any more about convenience, they’d have to install a Slim-Jim rack and a Slurpee machine at the base of the bed. [Hillary] jumps on every opportunity to take a shot at Bush. They have a blackout in New York, she starts blaming it on Bush. You know, this woman doesn’t miss a trick – unless it’s the one her old man’s with on any given night.”

I don’t recall the Democrats calling a press conference and whining like a bunch of blubbering little sissies over that, but I could be mistaken.

These articles today are yet another perfect example of the press being useful idiots and conscious tools for the RNC. Limbaugh and his gang of thugs are on the air five days a week reaching tens of millions of people every single day, claiming that Democrats are filthy, traitorous enemies of America. (Not to mention his little S&M fantasies about torture to “blow off steam.”) But none of that is worthy of mention in two separate articles in the same paper discussing the problems of alleged “hate-filled” rhetoric at a Democratic fundraiser, which the Republicans are blatently flogging as an example of Kerry being outside the mainstream of America.

This must be what they mean by context, balance and objectivity at the NY Times. Very impressive. I know that Bush has Saddam’s pistol in the Oval Office, but I wonder if Rove has Pfc Lyndie Raines’ famous leash sitting on his desk in the White House? It’s such a perfect metaphor for his relationship with the press.

Life on Mars:

“I want Bush in there, because the other guy is like sending a boy to do a man’s job,” said Glenn Foldessy, 45, of Streetsboro, Ohio, outside Cleveland.

Back on planet Earth:

Dear Ken,

One of the sad things about old friends is that they seem to be getting older — just like you!

55 years old. Wow! That is really old.

Thank goodness you have such a young beautiful wife.

Laura and I value our friendship with you. Best wishes to Linda, your family and friends.

Your younger friend,

George W. Bush

Come And Get It, Little Heathers

Ok. I thought the Drudge “John-John” item was funny and I even posted about it. And it is. But if anyone thinks it’s just some sort of one-off joke, think again.

From Wes “wish I was in the land of cotton” Pruden, editor of the Washington Times:

The two Johns lock eyes frequently in deep contact and stop barely short of demonstrating what great kissers they may be. Monsieur Kerry might yet give us a demonstration of French kissing but, if he does, Mr. Edwards, a good ol’ Carolina boy after all, will be entitled to slap his face. (Secret Service bodyguards, take note.)

Over the past two days, since Monsieur Kerry introduced his running mate at his wife’s estate near Pittsburgh, “candidate handling,” in the description of the Drudge Report, “has become the top buzz on the trail.”

“I’ve been covering Washington and politics for 30 years [said one wire-service photographer]. I can say I’ve never seen this much touching between two men, publicly.” Indeed, editors determined to preserve the appearance of a little presidential dignity and campaign decorum on “the trail” are frustrated in their search for photographs suitable for a respectable mainstream newspaper. The photographers, keen competitors for the most startling shot of the day, naturally love it.

The candidates are giving the term “Johns,” heretofore familiar only in certain neighborhoods illuminated by the glow of dim red lights, an entirely new meaning. These buff and manly Johns are only following instructions to demonstrate warmth — cuddly warmth though it may be — to contrast with the chilly Republican images projected by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who keep their legs crossed and their hands to themselves at all times. No one imagines George W. inspecting Dick Cheney’s cheek for razor burn in anticipation of a friendly kiss to greet the day. The president, after all, is the scion of generations of reserved and genteel WASP breeding, and the veep is a man from Wyoming, where the wrong kind of familiarity can invite a swift and fatal case of lead poisoning.

Besides, says a Kerry spokesperson, “I think we’re just seeing genuine affection between them.” But he adds nervously, “I hope we do not see them wearing matching outfits when they ride bikes together this weekend.” No one suggests that Monsieur Kerry, who sent the Viet Cong fleeing into wild retreat into Cambodia and Laos after serving just four months in Vietnam, is any less a man than John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. John Edwards’ smile makes even a feminist’s heart throb with erotic speculation. The carefully calculated “candidate handling” is merely a pose to reassure voters that Monsieur Kerry does, too, have a pulse. All that’s expected of John Edwards is that he learn to hug (but not kiss) in French. The rest of us will just have to grin and bear it, but from a distance. November is only five months away.

This theme is one of those snotty, RNC-fed bitch items designed to thrill the little mediawhores and make them subconsciously further the image of Democrats as “soft.” And, it’s about making the little tarts mindlessly portray Junior and Gepetto as the “real men” instead of the empty codpiece and the flaccid chickenhawk they are.

They are very clever with this stuff. The tone is nasty elitist, both frat-boy macho and cheerleader exclusive, the greater purpose being to plant the seed in the minds of Wolfie, MoDo, Timmy and the other Heathers, which is best accomplished by using this patented high school form of ridicule.

As the incomparable Sommerby wrote today:

Our modern press is itself a high elite; despite pious tales about Buffalo boyhoods, its opinion leaders are all multimillionaires, and even hard-charging young elite scribes know they’re on the millionaire track—and they’re careful not to blow it by getting outside the narrow confines of their elders’ world view. Most of these upscale scribes have little class perspective to suppress in the first place. But beyond that, they have no incentive to challenge their group’s perspectives, and that helps explain the nasty treatment Moore’s film has received in the press. After all, is there any elite more phony and fake than the one that is currently trashing Moore’s film? And make no mistake—these overpaid and pampered poodles tend to identify, not with Moore, but with the powdered phonies he mocks.

Republicans understand them because their lives have been shaped by the image of spoiled rich adolescence as well — an immature elitism, born of social climbing and emotional sado-masochism. They are of the same tribe.

The John-John thing is a joke, to be sure. But, there’s a message and they are confident that the mediaqueens will take the bait. They may not pass it on verbatim, but every time they get together they’ll be mentioning it with hushed giggles and raised eyebrows. No doubt everyone at The Note just howled when they read Pruden’s little screed this morning. He’s such a delicious little bitch, isn’t he? Pass it on.