Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

In my day, never was longer.

He really is that stupid.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Republicans in disarray!

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Not all heroes wear capes.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Let there be snark.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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The Usual Suspects

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Regarding the Berger pilfer, an interview with Wolf Blitzer and Berger’s lawyer:

BLITZER: All right. The notes are one thing. Much more serious is the classified document. This is a highly sensitive document. I don’t know what — if it’s code word or top secret or a compartmental, secure — whatever the classification is, he knew he should not take that document out of that room.

BREUER: Well, let’s talk about that document. That’s a document that Dick Clarke authored because Sandy Berger asked him to do it.

BLITZER: Dick Clarke was the White House counterterrorism czar, if you will.

BREUER: Exactly. And at the time of the millennium in 2000, if you remember, there were lots of threats about terrorism. And the White House and the United States addressed those concerns. And most people look at the time of January 1, 2000 as a time that we can be proud of. We thwarted terrorist cells. Berger was the national security adviser and he was very proud of what they did. But he didn’t just rest on his laurels. He said to Clarke, “I want you to take a hard look. Tell us what we did right and tell us what we didn’t do right.” And to Clarke’s credit, he did it. To Berger’s credit he asked him to do it.

Now with respect to what this document is about, it is widely known. Its existence is widely known. It’s written about in books and in magazines.

BLITZER: So why did he have to take it out of that room?

BREUER: That he did it inadvertently.

BLITZER: What is inadvertently?

BREUER: Let me tell you what happened.

BLITZER: Sandy Berger doesn’t do things inadvertently.

It appears that the Democrat spin machine is losing its wheels- all the usual suspects are here. Sandy Berger pilfering highly classified after-action reports authored by Richard Clarke. How interesting. Is there a Joe Wilson in the congregation?

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Balance

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Why the Washington Post has become the national paper of record:

What is to be learned from these findings? Not necessarily that Mr. Bush and his top aides are innocent of distorting the facts on Iraq. As we have said, we believe the record shows that they sometimes exaggerated intelligence reports that were themselves flawed. A case against Saddam Hussein could have been made without such hyperbole; by indulging in it, the Bush administration damaged its credibility and undermined support for the Iraq mission. But, as both the new reports underlined, no evidence has been presented that intelligence on Iraq was deliberately falsified for political purposes. In the intelligence community, analysts struggled to make sense of fragmentary and inconclusive reports, sometimes drawing varied and shifting conclusions. In the case of Niger, some chose to emphasize the evidence that Iraq explored the possibility of purchasing uranium. Others focused on the seemingly low probability that such a deal had been concluded or could have been carried out without detection.

Mr. Wilson chose to emphasize the latter point, that no deal was likely — but that does not negate the one Mr. Bush made in his speech, which was that Iraq was looking for bomb material. This suggests another caution: Some of those who now fairly condemn the administration’s “slam-dunk” approach to judging the intelligence about Iraq risk making the same error themselves. The failure to find significant stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons or an active nuclear program in Iraq has caused some war opponents to claim that Iraq was never much to worry about. The Niger story indicates otherwise. Like the reporting of postwar weapons investigator David Kay, it suggests that Saddam Hussein never gave up his intention to develop weapons of mass destruction and continued clandestine programs he would have accelerated when U.N. sanctions were lifted. No, the evidence is not conclusive. But neither did President Bush invent it.

Common sense from the press. It is sickening that this feels so refreshing to read.

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Comments

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If you commented inthelast 48 hours, chances are it was deleted. My apologies- I got hit with spammers, and the only way I could find them all was to delete serious comments to get to the bad ones. This should be fixed by mid-week.

Specifically- Kimmitt, Slart, Andrew, etc. A lot of yours got nuked. I am really sorry about this, guys.

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Insert Santayana Quote Here

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Alaa writes:

Regarding “hearts and minds”; have you ever stopped to consider why the attack against the Iraqi people, their livelihood, and their infrastructure is by far more ferocious and spiteful than the assault on American and allied forces. Why is that necessary, if the population was really seething with hatred and animosity against the “occupiers.” Why indeed are they attacking the Iraqi people with such cruelty? Just think about that. Such thing has precedence neither in Vietnam nor any other conflict, including the WWII. I mean the Germans were never known to attack their own people, nor did that happen in Japan or Vietnam.

Actually, there was a precedent in Germany after World War II. The Democrats and the press in the United States have been so eager to portray Iraq as a failure that they have forgotten how very difficult it was to rebuild Germany after fighting ceased. A quick rundown of the Wehrwolf movement can be found here:

Wehrwolf (also spelled Wehrwolfe with unlauts over the ‘o’ or Werwolf) was a Nazi conspiracy that was developed to fight against the victorious powers using guerilla tactics after the defeat of the Nazi government at the end of World War II. It was named after werewolves, shape-shifting monsters.

The original plan for Werwolf was to act as a guerilla force to harry the logistic trains of Allied armies preparing to assault the Nazi’s “Alpine National Redoubt”. It originally had about 5,000 members recruited from the SS and Hitler Youth, and specially trained in guerilla tactics. It even went so far as to establish front companies to ensure continued funding after occupation (all were discovered and shut down within eight months). However as it became increasingly clear that the Alpine Redoubt was yet another grandiose delusion, Werwolf was converted first into a terrorist organisation, and then largely dismantled by Heinrich Himmler and Wilhelm Keitel in the last few weeks of the war. On 23 March 1945 gave a speech, known as the “Werwolf speech”, in which he urged every German to fight to the death. The partial dismantling of the organised Werwolf, combined with the effects of the “Werwolf” speech caused considerable confusion about which subsequent attacks were actual Werwolf attacks, as against solo acts by fanatical Nazis or small groups of SS.

Typical Werwolf tactics included sniping attacks, arson, sabotage, and assassination although in Poland they also carried out massacres of civilians, and a few substantial attacks against Soviet troops. Their most costly single attack in the western zones of occupation was a bombing which killed 44 persons. Their most prominent victims were Dr. Franz Oppenhoff (the new anti-Nazi mayor of Aachen and most prominent democratic politician left in Germany), Major John Poston (Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s liaison officer) and (possibly) General Berzarin (Soviet commandant of Berlin). (Their radio propaganda also claimed the assassination of General Maurice Rose (the most senior Jewish US officer), though it is more likely his killers were ordinary soldiers who had no idea who he was).

One often overlooked aspect of Werwolf is that the Hitler Youth component was also responsible for developing a new political youth movement which was intended to outlast the war, and which was called “neo-Nazism”. Some current German neo-Nazi groups refer to themselves as Werwolf, although the association is probably fanciful.

On 25th August 2003, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld compared the problems faced by US troops then in Iraq, to those faced by US troops in post-World War II Germany. In particular, they mentioned Wehrwolf. Subsequently former Clinton staffer Daniel Benjamin wrote an essay where he attacked these remarks and claimed “Werwolf amounted to next to nothing.” Although widely quoted in the media, Benjamin’s views have been rejected by several historians of the period. The more conventional view is that while Werwolf was too disorganised to provide any significant military impediment to the occupiers, it delayed economic reconstruction and democritisation by three or four years.

The above text was riddled with hyperlinks- if you want to learn more about the Wehrwolf movement, click the link and follow all the links provided.

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