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You are here: Home / z-Retired Categories / Site Maintenance / Open Thread

Open Thread

by John Cole|  January 9, 200711:12 am| 18 Comments

This post is in: Site Maintenance

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Because I am busy and it looks like Tim and Tom are as well.

Feel free to fill me in on what I have missed.

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Previous Post: « Your Government At Work
Next Post: Enemy of the State »

Reader Interactions

18Comments

  1. 1.

    Zifnab

    January 9, 2007 at 11:20 am

    Free the Pinata!

  2. 2.

    mrmobi

    January 9, 2007 at 11:25 am

    Oh, goody! More rats jumping from the sinking ship of war. From RawStory:

    “Bush is like Hitler,” Paul Craig Roberts writes in a column entitled The Surge: Political Cover or Escalation?. “He blames defeats on his military commanders, not on his own insane policy.”

    “Like Hitler, he protects himself from reality with delusion,” Roberts continues. “In his last hours, Hitler was ordering non-existent German armies to drive the Russians from Berlin.”

    According to his Wikipedia entry, Roberts is “considered a Reagan conservative.”

    Excerpts from column:

    The new year began on the hopeful note that Bush’s illegal war in Iraq would soon be ended. The repudiation of Bush and the Republicans in the November congressional election, the Iraq Study Group’s unanimous conclusion that the US needs to remove its troops from the sectarian strife Bush set in motion by invading Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld’s removal as defense secretary and his replacement by Iraqi Study Group member Robert Gates, the thumbs down given by America’s top military commanders to the neoconservatives’ plan to send more US troops to Iraq, and new polls of the US military that reveal that only a minority supports Bush’s Iraq policy, thus giving new meaning to “support the troops,” are all indications that Americans have shed the stupor that has given carte blanche to George W. Bush.

    When word leaked that Bush was inclined toward the “surge option” of committing more troops by keeping existing troops deployed in Iraq after their replacements had arrived, NBC News reported that an administration official “admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one.” It is a clear sign of exasperation with Bush when an administration official admits that Bush is willing to sacrifice American troops and Iraqi civilians in order to protect his own delusions.

    The American establishment, concerned by Bush’s egregious mismanagement, moved to take control of Iraq policy away from him. However, recent news reports and analysis suggest that Bush has turned his back to the American establishment and his military advisers and is throwing in his lot with the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby. This will further isolate Bush and make him more vulnerable to impeachment.

    Emphasis mine. Everybody ready for the colossal collision of the Executive and the Legislative?

  3. 3.

    ThymeZone

    January 9, 2007 at 11:54 am

    Everybody ready for the colossal collision of the Executive and the Legislative?

    Bring it.

  4. 4.

    Paul L.

    January 9, 2007 at 12:11 pm

    Everybody ready for the colossal collision of the Executive and the Legislative?

    Bring it.

    Here you go.

    Subpoena showndown looms for Duke Cunningham inquiry

    A showdown is coming between the Democratic House leadership and the Justice Department on what information can be subpoenaed in a federal investigation, according to a report in today’s edition of Roll Call.

    BTW, John is it still too early to criticize the Democrats?
    Jumping the Gun

    I didn’t vote for the Democrats because I like their agenda, and I am under no illusion that the Demcorats are the party for me. But I intend to at least wait until they take office to start blaming them for things they have or have not done.

  5. 5.

    Cyrus

    January 9, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    Tom’s still here?

  6. 6.

    ThymeZone

    January 9, 2007 at 12:31 pm

    Shorter PaulL:

    Now that my team is irrelevant, I need to sound more relevant.

  7. 7.

    RSA

    January 9, 2007 at 12:34 pm

    Aides to both Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Friday that the House’s legal response was still unclear.

    The hell with that. Lack of transparency (aside from Republican corruption) is what led to this situation in the first place.

  8. 8.

    Pb

    January 9, 2007 at 12:38 pm

    All hell is breaking loose in Iraq. Still.

  9. 9.

    Jonathan

    January 9, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    Apparently Rumsfeld said that he would fire anyone who dared to even mention planning for the occupation of Iraq.

    Today, via Orin Kerr, comes a remarkable interview with Brigadier General Mark Scheid, chief of the Logistics War Plans Division after 9/11, and one of the people with primary responsibility for war planning. Shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, he says, Donald Rumsfeld told his team to start planning for war in Iraq, but not to bother planning for a long stay:

    “The secretary of defense continued to push on us … that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we’re going to take out the regime, and then we’re going to leave,” Scheid said. “We won’t stay.”

    Scheid said the planners continued to try “to write what was called Phase 4,” or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.

    Even if the troops didn’t stay, “at least we have to plan for it,” Scheid said.

    “I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that,” Scheid said. “We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

    “He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war.”

    ….”In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time with it because we were also thinking we can’t do this. Once you tear up a country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging.”

    Couldn’t that be like, indictable or something?

  10. 10.

    Jonathan

    January 9, 2007 at 1:08 pm

    Everybody ready for the colossal collision of the Executive and the Legislative?

    But the Judicial is the coat pocket of the Executive. That’s how the Executive got there in the first place.

    This is going to be interesting.

    May you live in interesting times. -John F Kennedy

  11. 11.

    Zifnab

    January 9, 2007 at 1:27 pm

    May you live in interesting times. –John F Kennedyancient chinese curse

    I believe the blessing goes something like…

    May you live through interesting times

  12. 12.

    Paul L.

    January 9, 2007 at 1:56 pm

    Via Ed Driscoll

    Power Line’s John Hinderaker describes the horrific plight of Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi, a 16-year old girl living in Iran and sentenced to death:

    According to her account, Nazanin was with her sixteen-yeare-old niece and their two boyfriends when they were approached by three men who tried to rape them. The boyfriends fled, and Nazanin defended herself with a knife she carried in her purse. She stabbed one of the men, who later died. So far, at least, I haven’t seen any version of the facts that differs materially from Nazanin’s account.

    Nazanin was prosecuted for murder and sentenced to hang. The verdict was apparently set aside by an ayatollah, and she is due to be retried tomorrow, January 10.

    Hinderaker and Gates of Vienna wonder why newly elected Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) and CAIR are strangely silent regarding her plight. Hinderaker writes:

    One would think that just about anyone, in this country, anyway, would oppose a teenaged girl’s being hanged for an act of self-defense. Yet, among those who raised a hue and cry about Saddam Hussein being “taunted” before being hanged for the murders of thousands, there has been a strange silence about Nazanin’s case. It is a bit troubling that so far, all of the liberals who have weighed in at the Forum have been hostile to the idea of asking Ellison and CAIR to use their influence on Nazanin’s behalf. Why is this, exactly?

    More proof that Powerline is evil. Exploiting that girl to bash Keith Ellison. The fact that the Duke Lacrosse case proves that the right believes that all rape victims are liars shows the true depth of their evil.

  13. 13.

    TenguPhule

    January 9, 2007 at 2:15 pm

    Shorter Paul L: Bush Admin trying to preempt subpoenas on itself by demanding subpoenas from Democrats for documents under the control of *REPUBLICANS* in the 109th is a sign that the Democrats are evil corrupt commie-mutant traitors.

    Even Shorter Paul L: I like Bush up my Ass.

  14. 14.

    TenguPhule

    January 9, 2007 at 2:18 pm

    It is a bit troubling that so far, all of the liberals who have weighed in at the Forum have been hostile to the idea of asking Ellison and CAIR to use their influence on Nazanin’s behalf. Why is this, exactly?
    blockquote>

    Probably because US intervention on her behalf will only result in a worse death sentence. It’s not like the Bush admin has done anything to build any positive diplomatic chits we could cash in with Iran, now have they?

  15. 15.

    Punchy

    January 9, 2007 at 2:24 pm

    This is going to be interesting.

    Anyone seen the comments by Tony Snow? Here’s the money shot:

    “The President has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way.”

    Link to full article…Wow, it can’t get much more unconstitutional that this, eh?

  16. 16.

    Paul L.

    January 9, 2007 at 3:21 pm

    Probably because US intervention on her behalf will only result in a worse death sentence. It’s not like the Bush admin has done anything to build any positive diplomatic chits we could cash in with Iran, now have they?

    Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows the Democrats like Ellison do not support or agree with Bush’s foreign policy. Heck, he used the anti-war/democrat talking points in his letter to the American people and his last speech to the UN.

  17. 17.

    TenguPhule

    January 9, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows the Democrats like Ellison do not support or agree with Bush’s foreign policy.

    So? That doesn’t translate into being friendly, that’s using your opponents words for domestic capital. Again, we have no positive diplomatic chips to cash in with Iran since our word is mud there. Trying to interfere would only make things worse for the party we’d try to help.

  18. 18.

    Jake

    January 9, 2007 at 6:01 pm

    Power Line’s John Hinderaker describes the horrific plight of Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi, a 16-year old girl living in Iran and sentenced to death:

    Is this the same Hindscraper who declared war on the commie-pinko-lefty-baby-killing-queer-terrorists who hacked his site and then it turned out to be a friend?

    Mwahahaha! Hey John, how do you know Fatehi wasn’t made up by the AP? Whahahaa!

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