Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Big Swinging Dems

Yo Wolfie, you wanna piece ‘o me?

Senate Democrats lit into the Bush administration’s Iraq policies yesterday, using an uncharacteristically contentious hearing on additional war spending to attack the Pentagon’s number two official in personal and bitter terms.

[…]

Warner seemed briefly to lose control of the committee yesterday, faced down by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) over whether Wolfowitz could be questioned on broad matters of Iraq policy or only the narrower issue of additional spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which together are costing about $4.5 billion a month.

When Warner admonished him to keep his questions to the budget issue, Kennedy erupted. “I’ve been on this committee for 24 years, I’ve been in the Senate 42 years, and I have never been denied the opportunity to question any person that’s come before a committee, on what I wanted to ask,” he said. “And I resent it and reject it on a matter of national importance.”

Warner persisted, provoking a formal challenge from Kennedy. “Well, Mr. Chairman, then you’re going to have to rule me out of order, and I’m going to ask for a roll call of whether the committee is going to rule me out of order,” he snapped.

At that point, Warner backed down and said Wolfowitz’s preliminary remarks had invited such broad questioning. “You have opened it up in your opening statement,” Warner told Wolfowitz.

Hooah!

Then they let the dogs out…

After listening to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz testify before the normally stately Armed Services Committee for several hours, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said, “What I’ve heard from you is dissembling and avoidance of answers, lack of knowledge, pleading process — legal process.”

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) then hit Wolfowitz, who is seen as a major architect of the Bush administration’s approach to Iraq, with a virtual indictment. “You come before this committee . . . having seriously undermined your credibility over a number of years now,” she said. “When it comes to making estimates or predictions about what will occur in Iraq, and what will be the costs in lives and money, . . . you have made numerous predictions, time and time again, that have turned out to be untrue and were based on faulty assumptions.”

[…]

Wolfowitz … told her that in disagreeing with Shinseki’s estimates on the troop requirements for postwar Iraq, he was siding with another senior Army general closer to the action — Gen. Tommy R. Franks, then chief of the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for Iraq and the Middle East.

(This is known in Washington as the “Tommy made me do it defense.”)

Wolfowitz did respond directly to Reed’s attack, which followed a heated and confusing exchange on whether U.S. commanders permitted military interrogators to violate the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of military prisoners of war and civilian detainees.

“I’m not dissembling,” he said. He tried to weave his way though the hypothetical questions Reed had posed about the rules of engagement for interrogations in Iraq, saying he had not been told that senior commanders in Iraq had approved questioning techniques that violate the Geneva accords.

Cutting him off, Reed said, “Well, I would suggest, Mr. Secretary, that you’re not doing your job.”

Damn sissies.

Curiouser and Curiouser

When Nicholas Berg took an Oklahoma bus to a remote college campus a few years ago, the American recently beheaded by terrorists allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his laptop computer, according to his father.

Michael Berg said the FBI investigated the matter more than a year ago. He stressed that his son was in no way connected to the terrorists who captured and killed him.

Government sources told CNN that the encounter involved an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui — the only person publicly charged in the United States in connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

According to Berg, his son was taking a course a few years ago at a remote campus of the University of Oklahoma near an airport. He described how on one particular day, his son met “some terrorist people — who no one knew were terrorists at the time.”

At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son asked if he could use Nick’s laptop computer.

‘It turned out this guy was a terrorist and that he, you know, used my son’s e-mail, amongst many other people’s e-mail who he did the same thing to,’ Berg said.

Government sources said Berg gave the man his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.

“Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.” –Jerry Falwell, 1981

Memo To Rumsfeld

TBogg has some excellent advice for how to deal with this little sticky wicket you’ve gotten yourself into:

Henceforth, being strapped to a board and submerged until you think you are drowning will be referred to as Hydro-Therapy. Being forced to simulate sex with fellow prisoners is now called Role Playing. Being made to form a naked pyramid is Job Training for the Upcoming Baghdad Cirque du Soleil. If you are stripped naked and led around on a leash you Living A Day In the Life Of Former Louisiana Congressman Bob Livingston. And if you are actually forced to have sex with a slack-jawed, clueless goober, well, now you know how Karen Santorum feels….

Are there any problems that cannot be solved with a little creative message massage? Heavens, no.

Daddy Dearest

Not that I personally give a damn, nor would I blame the daughters for begging their embarrassing parents to stay away, but I do think this catch by Avedon Carol is too good not to snipe about.

After saying he wouldn’t attend his daughters’ college graduations because he didn’t want people to have to go through security, Junior will be doing at least 3 commencement speeches.

This is a Mean Girl Special if I’ve ever seen one. Junior goes around every day lecturing people lecturing people about how they should love their children. MoDo, Tina Brown, Lisa DePaulo, Wolf, Shep, Kit — your table is ready.

That’s The Way Your Hard Core Terrorist Works

I can no longer sit back and allow terrorist infiltration, terrorist indoctrination, terrorist subversion, and the international terrorist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

General Geoffrey D. Ripper took Guantnamo Rules to Iraq for Handling of Prisoners:

According to information from a classified interview with the senior military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib prison, General Miller’s recommendations prompted a shift in the interrogation and detention procedures there. Military intelligence officers were given greater authority in the prison, and military police guards were asked to help gather information about the detainees.

Whether those changes contributed to the abuse of prisoners that grew horrifically more serious last fall is now at the center of the widening prison scandal.

[…]

By the time he took over in Cuba, most of the detainees there had been in custody for nearly a year. Still, General Miller was credited by Pentagon officials with using interrogations there to produce a valuable historical account of the workings and financing of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, among other subjects, officials said.

His hard-charging attitude has also raised questions that go beyond interrogation methods. He was the official most responsible for pressing a case last year against a Muslim chaplain at the base, Capt. James J. Yee, that was initially billed as a major episode of espionage. In March, the military announced that it would drop all charges.

Last, and possibly most important, I want all privately owned computers to be immediately impounded. They might be used to issue instructions to saboteurs. As I have previously arranged, Air Police will have lists of all owners and I want every single one of them collected without exception.

Women… women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, but I do deny them my essence

An Army general on Wednesday dismissed the convictions in the case of a Muslim chaplain who was initially suspected of espionage at the Guantánamo Bay prison for terror suspects but was found guilty only on lesser charges of adultery and downloading pornography.

The appellate decision by Gen. James Hill, the Army Southern Command chief who oversees military operations at Guantánamo, wiped the slate clean for Capt. James J. Yee, who ministered for 10 months to foreign terrorism detainees at the United States naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“This means there will be no official mention of it in his military record,” General Hill said.

The decision ended what one of Captain Yee’s lawyers, Eugene Fidell, called a “hoax” case. Mr. Fidell said that Captain Yee was “obviously very pleased” at the decision but that the military owed him an apology.

Captain Yee, 36, was found guilty in March of noncriminal charges of committing adultery and storing pornography on a government computer. He was arrested on suspicion of espionage in September and faced six criminal charges that included mishandling classified information at Guantánamo. Court documents accused him of spying, mutiny, sedition and aiding the enemy, and he was held in solitary confinement in a military brig for 76 days.

The military dropped all the criminal charges in March, citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of evidence against him.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller of the Army, who at the time commanded the task force running the Guantánamo prison, then found Captain Yee, who is married, guilty of administrative charges of committing adultery and storing pornography on a government computer, and issued a written reprimand.

Captain Yee appealed the decision.

God willing, we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all.

Another Normal American

*NOTE: This editorial was delivered by [news anchor] David Wittman after 19 Action News aired a very much edited version of the video showing American Nick Berg being held by his Iraqi captors before he was beheaded.

Well, if there is anything that’s going to make us forget those photos from the prison, you just saw it. But it wasn’t just what we saw, it’s what we heard.

These cowards have the gall to read a political statement before killing one of our kids. The only word I understood: Islam.

As they brought out the knife, they screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ — God is great.

That’s not our God.

There has been a lot written and said about our failure to understand the culture of the Middle East. We understand barbarism. We understand evil. We understand a perverted belief system that celebrates death. We can understand an enemy that quite frankly wants to kill us all.

Our God may forgive them. Just now, tonight, I can’t. Can you?”

Notice it’s no longer “terrorists,” or even “Iraqis.” It’s the “Middle east” and “Islam.” A pretty big chunk of the planet is now our enemy.

Then again, it is May Sweeps.

Thanks to Tim Carroll for the link.

Good News

Election Panel Won’t Impose New Spending Limits on Groups

We need al the help we can get. Bush is spending like a sailor and there’s always more where that came from. He’s a very sound investment for people with money.

Sowing The Seeds Of Our own Demise

I honestly don’t know what to say about this asshole. Media Matters is now transcribing the vitamin hustler Michael Savage’s show. Read the whole thing an e-mail it to your relatives who think that the liberal media is biased and that you are exaggerating the level of hate and violence that comes from right wing radio.

Savage is heard by six million people every day:

Savage on what should be done to the Iraqi prisoners:

And I think there should be no mercy shown to these sub-humans. I believe that a thousand of them should be killed tomorrow. I think a thousand of them held in the Iraqi prison should be given 24 hour — a trial and executed. I think they need to be shown that we are not going to roll over to them. It won’t happen. It won’t happen because of the CBS Communists. It won’t happen because of the CNN traitors. I won’t happen because of the MSNBC empty heads. And we the people are the ones who are going to suffer today. …

Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices and they should be dropped from airplanes. How’s that? You like that one? Go call somebody that you want to report me to, see if I care. They should put dynamite in their behinds and drop them from 35,000 feet, the whole pack of scum out of that jail. Thank you CBS. Thank you New Yorker. Thank you Carl Levin. Thank you Ted Kennedy. Thank you Hillary Clinton. I’m sure that Mr. Berg’s parents appreciate what you’ve done for them. I’ll be right back.

Six. Million. Listeners. A. Day.

Update:

Via Atrios, I see that Yglesias has posted about one of those six million, apparently, a writer for tech central station:

Many Americans simply wish the Arabs would go away; others wish to blow them away — and wish to blow them away not because they see this step as inevitable and tragic, but because they rejoice at the prospect of getting them back for what they have done to us. Most normal Americans today just don’t care any more about the Arabs and their welfare, or about their humiliation, or about their historical grievances, simply because all the images that come to us from their world horrify and appall us, including the disturbing images of Americans doing things that no normal American would ever dream of doing to other people back at home, if only because they would never be given the opportunity.

This is how most normal Americans now feel, but they dare not express it in public. But make no mistake, this feeling will be expressed — somehow, somewhere: a fact of which our leaders and the world must be made aware before it occurs.

“The arabs.” “Normal people.” “Most.”

This tracks with one of Limbaugh’s recent whines where he claims that everybody in America feels the same way he does but political correctness prevents them from expressing it. There is nobody more ugly than a violent wing nut embracing his victimhood.

Atrios explains the psychology of the “101st Fighting keyboarders:

I’m not sure who “most normal Americans” are supposed to be, presumably that means “most other members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders.” But, yes, the transformation from “Saddam is an evil omnipotent overlord who will kill us all” to “we are there to save the poor Iraqi people” to simply “they’re the enemy” is all going according to schedule.

The sad thing, of course, is this basic bloodlust is mostly because they invested themselves emotionally in this, somehow feel responsible for it, and all along the MO has been to turn the big guns on anyone who disagreed. Well, now the people they went to liberate disagree, so the guns will be turned on them.

And it certainly helped their delusion to have a cartoon character president who strutted around with a 560 lb codpiece pretending that he could shoot lightning bolts from his fingertips in the name of loving yer neighbor like you’d love to be loved yerself.

Matt concludes:

I’m foreseeing an ugly future. Kerry wins the election and begins the slow, painful process of rebuilding the American military, American alliances, and American global credibility. Meanwhile, on the right a new “stab in the back” theory has already emerged and the forces of resentment are growing. “We came to help them and they turned on us — now they must pay!”

That will be just one element of the wild-eyed fury on the Right when they lose the election. Their sanity is obviously hanging by a thread as it is. See, that’s what Democrats were talking about when they said they were glad Al gore wasn’t president on 9/11. Trumped up GOP impeachment hearings would have definitely interfered with the immediate needs of the victims and the response to terrorism. Don’t think they won’t do it in 2005.

Wing-Nut Confusion

Oh fer gawd’s sake. Roger Ailes reports that the Fighting 101st Keyboarders (thanks TBOGG) have their sans-a-belt-Dockers in a wad because the media refuses to show the entire Berg video on television on a loop.

I’m telling you, this is the sickest damned thing I’ve ever heard. Maybe people who have sat through The Passion more than 50 times are inured to this kind of thing, but most of us aren’t. This is a video of an actual brutal murder in living color. Still pictures don’t have 1/100th of the power of these scenes. It is a horrible, horrible sight to see.

The mainstream media aren’t showing the pictures of the bloody leg of the prisoner who was tortured with police dogs, nor will they likely show the video of the prisoners being raped when it eventually comes out (and it will.) They should not. Berg’s killing is horrible documentary footage that should not be seen by children or anyone else who doesn’t make a special effort to see it and who knows what they are going to see. It gave me nightmares and I’m a middle aged cynic. I can’t imagine what it would do to a kid who happened to be watching TV unsupervised.

This is not political in any way. I don’t think the video should be suppressed. People can access it on the internet and if my “search” traffic stats are any measure, a hell of a lot of people are. It’s not being censored.

Jayzuz. These people are very confused. On the radio Rush can talk his eliminationist trash from dawn to dusk, but if Stern talks about sex he’s dirty and must be suppressed. The still pictures of sadistic sexual humiliation should have been withheld from the media but an actual filmed death should be widely seen. Pictures of American soldiers torturing prisoners are wrong only to the extent they are shown on television. In reality they show a needed “emotional release” like hazing initiations at a frat party. Janet Jackson’s nipple is cause for outrage.

The vaunted moral clarity of the right wing is looking more and more like presidential pretzel logic every day.

There has always been a unique conflation of sexual and violent imagery among fascists. It would appear that those who lean Right just have some problems in this area.

The Little Handful

Via wood s lot, from America’s greatest writer of all time, Mark Twain:

“I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not think they were.

‘Still, it is true, lamb,’ said Satan. ‘Look at you in war, what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!’

‘In war? How?’

‘There has never been a just one, never an honorable one on the part of the instigator of the war.

I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful as usual will shout for the war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously object at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, ‘It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.’ Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers as earlier but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation pulpit and all will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

Thanks to Stephen Duncan for the link.