Democracy, Yeah, That’s The Ticket

Bu$hCo fucked again. Ha.

Pakistanis dealt a crushing defeat to President Pervez Musharraf in parliamentary elections Monday, in what government and opposition politicians said was a firm rejection of his policies since 2001 and those of his close ally, the United States.
....
The results were interpreted here as a repudiation of Mr. Musharraf as well as the Bush administration, which has staunchly backed Mr. Musharraf for eight years....

Good Job Bu$hCo

Things aren't working out very well in Pakistan, are they?

The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated near the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday. Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto, who was appearing at a political rally, was fired upon by a gunman at close range, quickly followed by a blast that the government said was caused by a suicide attacker.

Well, Well

It's getting so bad for the war-mongering bastards are finally telling the truth.

Tony Blankley let the cat out of the bag, however, when he said that the US will be in Iraq for 20 years. When challenged about the difference between American combat troops on the ground an an American "presence" he (angrily)said this:

The fact is that when the oil is challenged in the Saudi oil fields and the Straights of Hormuz are closed, we'll be fighting even by your definition.

Idiot Of The First Degree

Joe Lieberman is such a dick. It's no longer surprises me, sadly, when he makes completely dumbass statements. The people of CT got taken for a big ride. The good news is that he is turning into Mr. Irrelevancy. More here. & here.

Lieberman:…that there be some kind of attempt to resolve this pivotal moment with a compromise among factions in American politics and in the American Congress rather than doing what is right and has the highest prospect of succeeding in Iraq—in other words this moment cries out for the kind of courageous leadership that does what can succeed and win in Iraq—not what will command the largest number of political supporters in Congress….we need to support the President as he goes forward, hopefully with exactly that kind of new initiative in Iraq.

Via Crooks & Liars.

Democracy In Latin America

More good news from south of the border.

Partial returns from Sunday's voting showed that Rafael Correa - who has worried Washington with calls to limit foreign debt payments - would join left-leaning leaders in Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela, where he is friends with anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez.
....
...Correa, who has called President Bush "dimwitted,"....

Change?

& our moron President renominated (it's not going to happen) Bolton. So much for a change in our foreign policy. I know, I know, it's only been 4 days, but I expect quick results. I mean, we have computers & stuff.

But Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, said the fact that the council allowed the draft to go to a vote showed the world's frustration with the U.S. not involving other members of the so-called Quartet of Mideast mediators in recent decisions on Israel. The other members are the U.N., the European Union and Russia.

A Bit Late

But my prediction of several years ago appears to be coming true this year.

As Daniel Ortega makes his fourth attempt to win back Nicaragua's presidency in elections Sunday, citizens across this war-battered nation are grappling with the very real possibility that the former Marxist revolutionary could finally succeed.

Good news for Nicaragua & good news for the world

Dumbass Alert

For crying out loud. Via The Raw Story.

Well, Sure

NYT Editorial.

The Iraq war and President Bush’s with-us-or-against-us war on terrorism was supposed to frighten the bad guys so much that they wouldn’t dare cross the United States. But the opposite has happened. President Bush has squandered so much of America’s moral authority — not to mention our military resources — that efforts to shame or bully the right behavior from adversaries (and allies) sound hollow.

We're Winning

Here's a pic of the United States' Secretary of State arriving in Bagdhad, Iraq, for a meeting with the Iraqi leadership. Notice the flak jacket she's wearing. I thought thinks were going so swimmingly in Bu$hCo's vanity war? WTF?


According to this report, she was also wearing a helmet.

Wearing a helmet and a flak jacket and flanked by machine-gun-toting bodyguards to defend against insurgents, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came here Thursday, insisting that there were new signs of progress in Iraq and that the Bush administration had never sugarcoated its news about the American occupation.

Now Wait Just A Minute

I thought that we are fighting a global war on terror? Right? & that we need to defeat the enemy of freedom, namely the radical Islamists. Right? Like a lot of progressives, I support(ed) our efforts in Afganistan, after all, they provided sanctuary to al Qaeda & Osama bin Laden. Boy, was I ever wrong & apparently stupid. Here's what Senator Doctor Bill Frist had to say while visiting Afghanistan:

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Islamic militia and its supporters into the Afghan government.
....
"We're going to need to stay here a long time," Frist said.

The senator said he was warned to expect attacks to increase. There appears to be an "unlimited flow" of Afghans and foreigners "willing to pick up arms and integrate themselves with the Taliban," he said.

He said the only way to win in places like the volatile southern part of the country is to "assimilate people who call themselves Taliban into a larger, more representative government."

"Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer," Frist said. "Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn't sound like it can be won. It sounds to me ... that the Taliban is everywhere."

Emphasis added.

What the fuck? Who's in charge? Who's on Frist? Or is it first? The ReThugs have clearly lost what little minds they had left. I'm going to eat a big Polish sausage with some hot & sweet honey mustard. Oh, & what are we going to do about Senator Doctor Bill Frist aiding & abetting the enemy?

No Surprise

I, & many others, told you so. But you know, that doesn't make me feel any better. It just makes by sad & mad.

That Other Country

The result of the United States' world leadership. Pathetic. I guess Bu$hCo doesn't mind that Poland offered just 10 soldiers, yes, 10, since they allowed use of their soil for the CIA's secret prisons, used for the torture of people.

...an inquiry by the 46-member Council of Europe in June singled out Poland, which is a member of the European Union, and especially Romania, which is due to join the EU in two years, as the two most likely locales for secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

But Bu$hCo can't convince our allies to do more in Afganistan, where the real battle against terrorism is continuing, & not very well, by the way.

More than a week after NATO's top leaders publicly demanded reinforcements for their embattled mission in southern Afghanistan, only one member of the 26-nation alliance has offered more troops, raising questions about NATO's largest military operation ever outside of Europe and the goal of expanding its global reach.

The plea for more soldiers and equipment to fight resurgent Taliban insurgents comes as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's forces are suffering the highest casualty rates of the nearly five-year-long conflict in Afghanistan, and as European governments are feeling stretched by the demands for troops there and in Iraq, Lebanon, the Balkans and in several African countries.

Who, Among Us, Would Have Ever Thought

That torture, the legalizing of torture, would ever be debated in any division of our, government Of the United States of America? This is such a disgusting fucking spectacle, that I just don't have the energy to get really pissed off. The historical legacy Bu$hCo so sorely wants will be nothing but toture, vaniety wars, & absolutely no accountability. I hope the spoiled brat is happy. I agree with this assessment, as well.

I am beyond being able to assess the political implications, one way or the other, of this spectacle. Regardless of which version of the bill finally passes, this debate is a black mark on the soul of the nation. Of course passage of a pro-torture bill will diminish U.S. standing internationally and jeopardize the safety and well-being of U.S. servicemen in future engagements. But merely having this debate has already accomplished that. Does anyone honestly believe that if Congress rebuffs the President in every respect that the rule of law and the inviolability of human rights will have been vindicated? Of course not.

The Republicans have defined deviancy down for the whole world, including every two-bit dictator and wild-eyed terrorist.

Feeling safer?

September 11

I was watching MSNBC the morning that two planes flew into the World Trade Center's two buildings. On live teevee, I saw the second plane crash into the building. This became the third live teevee tragedy I witnessed. The first was in 1963 with Jack Ruby murdering Lee Harvey Oswald. I was sick that Oswald would not face justice. I was a freshman in high school when that happened. I won't go into the whole JFK beacon of true light generation, that soon faded with Viet Nam, but many of us felt great possibility with America back then, things have clearly changed. The second tragedy involved boxing. I watched as Boom Boom Mancini murdered Duk Koo Kim on a November day. I use the word murder purposely & it reflects on Mancini as it was his fists that caused the death of another person. We have so many words that deflect true meaning - execution, harvest, etc., that ought to offend everyone, but we are generally gentle creatures who like our tea weak, & in the process avoid the truth. OK, back to 9/11. I hate the term - 9/11 - since the ReThugs keep using as a whip to scare people. That's all these people have in their bag - fear. Scare the devil out of America & we'll get reelected, who cares about the proper way to govern a country? So, while reading James Wolcott this a.m., I came across this analysis of the on going 9/11 grief fest, blame fest. Simon Jenkins writes for the GuardianUlimited Network. This makes a person think & nod their head in agreement, sorrow, horror, & a fierce determination to change things.

Even if The Path to 9/11 were politically pure, its raison d'etre would be suspect. How many times and how many ways must the adrenaline be pumped, the tragedy replayed, and the suffering exploited? The fall of the towers has become a ritual fetish, an annual haunting, that doesn't exorcise fear, but replenishes it.

"What has changed, grotesquely, is the aftershock," Simon Jenkins writes in The Guardian, delivering a splash of cold reality. "Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people. It is this that puts global terror into the bang. While we take ever more extravagant steps to ward off the bangs, we do the opposite with the terrorist aftershock. We turn up its volume. We seem to wallow in fear.

"Were I to take my life in my hands this weekend and visit Osama bin Laden's hideout in Wherever-istan, the interview would go something like this. I would ask how things have been for him since 9/11. His reply would be that he had worried at first that America would capitalise on the global revulsion, even among Muslims, and isolate him as a lone fanatic...

"In the event Bin Laden need not have worried. He would agree, as did the CIA's al-Qaida analyst in Peter Taylor's recent documentary, that the Americans have done his job for him. They panicked. They drove the Taliban back into the mountains, restoring the latter's credibility in the Arab street and turning al-Qaida into heroes. They persecuted Muslims across America. They occupied Iraq and declared Iran a sworn enemy. They backed an Israeli war against Lebanon's Shias. Soon every tinpot Muslim malcontent was citing al-Qaida as his inspiration. Bin Laden's tiny organisation, which might have been starved of funds and friends in 2001, had become a worldwide jihadist phenomenon.

"I would ask Bin Laden whether he had something special up his sleeve for the fifth anniversary. Why waste money, he would reply. The western media were obligingly re-enacting the destruction and the screaming, turning the base metal of violence into the gold of terror. They would replay the tapes and rerun the footage ad nauseam, and thus remind the world of his awesome power. Americans are more afraid of jihadists this year than last. In a Transatlantic Trends survey, the number of them describing international terrorism as an 'extremely important threat' went up from 72% to 79%...

"Bin Laden might boast that he had achieved terrorism's equivalent of an atomic chain reaction: a self-regenerating cycle of outrage and foreign-policy overkill, aided by anniversary journalism and fuelled by the grim scenarios of security lobbyists. He now had only to drop an occasional CD into the offices of al-Jazeera, and Washington and London quaked with fear. The authorities could be reduced to million-dollar hysterics by a phial of nail varnish, a copy of the Qur'an, or a dark-skinned person displaying a watch and a mobile phone."

I'll be in Cape May this 9/11, as I was on the 9/11 of 2001, and the ones before and since. I don't intend to watch any of the memorial coverage, listen to the radio, or pore over the newspaper supplements. It'll be a day for going to the beach and listening to the underlying bass of the sloshing tide, for birding in the meadow or at the hawk watch, a day for tuning out the too-talkative world. The vapor trails of jets flying overhead will be all the reminder one needs of that September morning.

Sunday Morning

Atrios wonders why we invaded Iraq, so do I, I also wonder why we invaded Afganistan, particularly if we didn't plan to fix it after we won it. Things are not better in the world, no matter what Bu$hCo says. The facts just do not support the b.s. foaming from his mouth. I live in the woods, far from the urban life, the large targets, the close proximity to packed subways. & yet, it's clear that I will not, in the rest of my sorry lifetime, be able to go to places that I've thought about since I was a kid - the general Middle East, for one area. Now, I'm not wealthy, so it could be argued that I wouldn't have gone anyway, but for me, the possibility was what made some days bearable, some daydreams interesting. Being reality based, however, even with that brief incident a while back, means that facts have meaning, meaning that can't be twisted for politcal gain. Yet, we have Joanne Weintraub, entertainment writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel give a glowing review of ABC's atrocity of a film, The Path To 9/11. She mentions, barely, the fact that the film has serious factual problems. But that's OK she says, just enjoy it as a drama, a piece of fluff to help with boredom, with the Packer's season. But she fits right in with Bu$hCo's view of the world. The Los Angeles Times does its job a bit differently. In this story Doyle McManus discusses what the supporters of war won't - that it's way more complicated than starting a vanity war in Iraq.

• Al Qaeda, the initial focus of the "global war on terror," has been disrupted and dispersed. But it has been succeeded by a looser network of affiliates and homegrown terrorists — like those who carried out bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005 — who could grow to be just as dangerous.

• The war in Iraq has become a training ground for Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia and other countries, and some have returned home with expertise in urban warfare and explosives. Some experts fear the Persian Gulf's oil terminals could be among their next targets.

• Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon have damaged the image of the U.S. in much of the Muslim world and made it easier for terrorist organizations to win recruits. The wars and controversies over U.S. treatment of detainees also have made it more difficult for allied governments to cooperate with American counterterrorism programs, diplomats say.

• When Foreign Policy magazine surveyed more than 100 experts earlier this year, 84% said they did not believe the United States was winning the war on terrorism. In a Los Angeles Times poll, fewer than one-fourth of Americans said they believed the nation was "winning"; more than half said it was too soon to tell.

Rumsfeld The Appeaser

Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussien. & Rumsfeld has the gall to accuse those of us who oppose(d) Bu$hCo's vanity war of being appeasers? What a fucking hypocrite.

What If...

...Bu$hCo would not have begun his vanity war in Iraq? Would Afganistan be on the road to recovery, rather than in need of more NATO troops? It's too bad for Afganistan, it's not secure & it's producing a lot more opium.

James Jones, the top Nato commander in Europe and a US Marine general, said he wanted about 2,000 to 2,500 more alliance troops to expand the roughly 18,500 troops currently deployed in Afghanistan, as well as attack helicopters and transport aircrafts.

No Mustacheboy

The U.N. won't be getting an official dickwad who gives all walruses a bad name.

Arianna writes:

Speculation: Lincoln Chafee wouldn’t play nice and was ready to vote no, meaning Bolton’s nomination would have to be sent to the full Senate without the committee’s endorsement, so the GOP opted for delay rather than defeat. Story Behind the Story: I’m hearing that the White House put a lot of pressure on Lugar to put all the business of the Foreign Relations Committee on hold so that it didn’t look like the only thing being delayed was the Bolton vote, but that Lugar, in one more illustration of the weakened state of the White House, refused to go along with the ruse.

Result: Today’s postponement, coupled with Chris Dodd’s promise of a Democratic filibuster, means Bolton’s chances of getting another go-round at the UN are looking Nicole Richie slim.

Go read all of Crooks & Liars. You'll like it.

How Tough?

Wolcott.

....
One of my favorite verbal showdowns occurred on 14th Street one rainy day when two non-pugilists kept up the trash talk until one of them said, "You're carrying an umbrella, motherfucker--how tough can you be?" Which I must say got quite a chortle from us idle bystanders.

Now what has this to do with the posings of our militaristic muscle mouths?

This: It is an index of the frustration and impotence they're experiencing at not getting their way. They're waging rhetorical escalation because de-escalation is the unacknowledged order of the day, and there's nothing they can do about it.

Steve Clemons published a dispatch from the Nelson Report indicating that despite all of the Cheneyesque bluster, the Bush administration is pursuing the diplomatic route with Iran. To the dismay of the hard nosers, Bush is also reeling back his use of "Islamic fascists", which will be interpreted as a capitulation to political correctness. You even have Rumself whining that his recent appeasement slur was taken "out of context," and calling for "constructive" dialogue regarding the situation in Iraq. And then there's the happy novelty of Rudy Giuliani blowing the whistle and calling a foul on "partisan bickering", which will not endear him to the more strident dickheads in his party.

There has been a major shift in the mood climate, one which the War Party and its bloggers are resisting at the top of their lungs. But resistance is futile. As John Robb writes in an important post at Global Guerrillas, "Playing at War", we're not going to the get the grand, conclusive World War III (or IV) that same neocon ideologues crave. Conflict is being ratcheted down, dispersed. Here's what's in the cards ahead:

"Operations of low lethality. Western militaries do not have the desire, nor the sanction, to conduct the high casualty operations typically associated with real wars. Technology has been leveraged to increase the precision of attacks to limit collateral damage and save the lives of soldiers. The corollary to this is that western militaries are also fiercely protective of the lives of their soldiers. Warfare, increasingly, is supposed to be costless. What this means is that we will not see Sherman's 'March to the Sea' or Hama in the near future - and - the loss of a hundred soldiers in southern Lebanon will be enough to stop the Israeli army."

[snip]

"Muddled objectives. Given the lack of the cohesive and singular reason for war -- the survival of the state and its people through the elimination of its enemies -- the reasons for warfare will drift. This translates into a constantly shifting landscape of military objectives, where current objectives recede in favor of replacements before they can be reached. The result is confusion, mission creep, and conflict escalation.

"The upshot of this diminishment of warfare is that wars will become increasingly difficult to win."

Therefore:

"Ultimately, western societies will need to learn to live within the limits of this new framework. It is not possible for us to reverse the clock on this trend. Any mass mobilization for war that lifts existing limitations will be severely punished by both global markets and opinion (both domestically and abroad) if it ever was attempted."

This understanding seems to be slowly filtering into the visors of those in Washington, but adjusting to this new reality will deprive the most stubborn members of the War Party with the dramatic satisfaction of the final reckoning--the High Noon showdown--the climactic clash of civilizations--that they crave.

Robb:

"Given an inability to resolve conflicts through nation-building and state collapse, western states should endeavor to deescalate conflicts rather than ignite them. Escalation is a false God that promises a return of the motivational clarity found in the wars of the 20th Century. It cannot deliver this."

What we're hearing from pundits, bloggers, and likeminded belligerents this August is a baying to a false God, a nostalgic need for motivational clarity and a macho yearning for deliverance that the facts on the ground will deny them. Their commando belts tied up in knots, their umbrellas unfolded, they can turn on Bush, or on Condi Rice (as Richard Perle has done), but who can they turn to? Nobody. That's why they're egging each other on, flexing their biceps, and clinging to Mark Steyn for warmth. It's the only way to hold on to their fading relevance.

Emphasis mine. Let's hope it's true.