I am assuming the most talked about thing today will be the presentation of Bill Moyers Buying the War. I am almost afraid to watch it- I wonder how many bogus arguments I will have advanced here on this blog?
At any rate, make sure you set your dvr’s or whatever it is you kids use to record suff.
Punchy
Fixed. Seriously, he said this:
They just keep recycling this shit, thinking Americans are still circa 2003. I guess they haven’t figured out yet that 70% of the population knows this is crap.
BTW, I love the “especially him” part. Cuz his foreign policy experience is so…well…egregiously absent?
BobJones
When you ask “what will the most talked about thing today be” it depends on who you think is going to be doing the talking. If you mean “the national media” then the most talked about thing is going to be either Rosie O’Donnell leaving a day time TV show, or Alec Baldwin leaving a mean voicemail message for his daughter.
Slide
Lets just hope Moyer’s doesn’t also do a documentry on Katrina because you were equally an administration butt boy for that fiasco.
chopper
i dunno, maybe police states are better at stopping terrorism.
Jimmmm
I don’t get cable, so I’m going to pirate Moyers’ show on my D-V-Arrrrrr.
(Is it Sept. 19 yet?)
Jimmmm
Yeah, I care what Rudy has to say about combatting terrorists. After all, he’s the man who, after the 2/93 WTC bombing, moved NYC’s emergency control center into … the WTC.
Zifnab
Wait, now. I see his point. How many terror attacks happened under his watch as mayor? Seriously, count’m. How many terrorist attacks happened under the current Republican administration? Can you even name one? I can’t think of a single terrorist attack that has happened under President Bush.
Republicans have been doing a heckova job, and their records prove it.
Zombie Santa Claus
Depends on how many Darrell posts your students write, I guess.
Also, is Paul L. in your class? That’s one spoofy motherfucker. But most spoofs get bored after a while, and either come out of the closet or go away. I figure he must be in it for the credit; I can’t imagine he gets paid to write his shit. (If he does, I want in on that gig. I can wingnut circles around that Paul L. fucker, if the price is right.)
Dreggas
I don’t know if I could watch this. I mean it’s like watching a re-run you have memorized you know what’s coming and what’s going to happen. That and since it is on from 9-11 or so it’s probably not a good idea for me to watch it and go to bed pissed off.
Andrew
Whichever student group writes Darrell definitely gets an ‘A’ for effort and content. But whoever is writing Paul L gets a ‘C+’ at best, because that character long ago devolved into posting irrelevant links that aren’t funny.
Krista
Sweet of him to threaten you guys like that…
Zombie Santa Claus
Why did we go to war in Iraq? I mean, most people supported it because of 9-11/fears of Saddam giving Osama WMDs. But why did our government pimp the war? I honestly have no idea. I’ve read a couple books on the subject, and I still can’t figure it out. The neo-cons sound like total jackasses, but beyond that, why?
Oil, okay. Saddam was an asshole, fine. Laurie Mylroie might’ve lured some of the gullible bastards in with her rantings. And Saddam tried to whack the Bush family, so that brings the Prez aboard. But none of that’s very coherent, is it?
In 1996, a committee of neo-cons including Douglas Feith and David Wurmser wrote a paper arguing that reinstating a Hashemite (Jordanian) dynasty in Iraq would improve Israel’s security, create a Sunni monarchy the Iraqi Shiites could rally behind, and create a gap in Jordan that the Palestinians could be forced in to. (Think of it as the “everyone moves East one nation” Middle Eastern strategy.) Richard Perle signed off on this paper despite the fact that, supposedly, he hadn’t even read it. I have no idea how influential this paper was, but it does go to show some of the deluded, irrational thinking that the neo-cons had about the Middle East prior to the invasion.
Was it really all just the belief that America can reshape the world if we set our minds and our military to it? If so, why no postwar planning? The neo-con plan basically involved toppling Saddam and then leaving within 3 months. Why? Were they really just THAT stupid?
I doubt I’ll ever find out the answers to these questions. Maybe none of us will ever know. The sad thing is we’ll probably have at least 5,000 Americans and God-knows-how many Iraqis dead before we manage to extricate ourselves from this fiasco. Then, the civil war can begin in earnest.
Our nation is morally and financially bankrupt, our military will take 15-20 years to rebuild, and we’ll probably never even understand why our Frat Boy in Chief decided to undertake this “preventive” invasion in the first place. Maybe it really was simple hubris. “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
Dreggas
O/T but Rahm layeth The Smacketh Down
Zombie Santa Claus
The Darrell student’s been kinda slacking lately. Or maybe he’s studying for his exams or something. At least the Paul L. guy is still trying. I’d give him a B-.
Zombie Santa Claus
Here’s the paper I was talking about. It’s all fucking insane. I forgot to mention Chalabi, America’s favorite Iranian secret agent.
Tommy Franks was right. Douglas Feith HAS to be the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the planet. With the exception of George Bush, of course.
Zifnab
War and reconstruction are big money. I’m still not convinced everything (minus the complete political meltdown) is going exactly according to plan. What a deal for Halliburton? Build a pipeline, watch it get blown up, build it again, watch it get blown up, bill the government a few extra times – because, you know, who’s counting? – and go home with you pockets lined to bursting.
Zombie Santa Claus
I guess that’s part of the plan too, isn’t it? Take the money and run. Cash and carry government. A kleptocracy partnered with a theocracy masquerading as an oligarchy pretending to be a republic often misconstrued as a democracy. Still, you have to wonder what nation these guys plan on moving to once America goes down in flames. Switzerland? Costa Rica? I pity that country, wherever it is. America may recover in a century or so; a nation in which the plutocrat refugees constitute the moneyed elite will not do so.
That thought frightens me, too: if they don’t flee like thieves in the night, if they stay here with the money they reaped from the blood of dead Iraqis and maimed or murdered American soldiers, it means our grandchildren could wind up as neo-feudal serfs toiling on the aristocrats’ manors a century from now, deluded into imagining themselves “free” by the religious edicts they receive in schools in lieu of the teaching of science, history, and literature.
Ho ho ho, bitches!
Dreggas
Zombie,
Actually I think Iraq was a culmination of all of those things. Bush had a hard-on for going after Saddam from day one, 9/11 gave him the opportunity as did those who enabled him (the neo-cons). Add to that the greed involved with regards to Oil, add more into that the neo-cons belief in American Empire. There are many ingredients in the recipe that is Iraq, some held more sway than others. In it all the press did it’s jack-boot wearing job of trumpeting the ingredients and this is what we wound up with.
Tsulagi
Rudy’s just trying to shore up his support in the 28%er base. He knows it’s a two-step process.
First, you make them piss all over themselves. Rudy is going the tried and true 9/11 route because he can’t use something like “They’ll abort your daughters and make your sons marry Bruce.” Since Brownback can’t get any traction, I look for Multiple Choice Mitt the Mormon Varmint Hunter to snap up that approach.
Step two, get them mad about their pissing on themselves. Blame someone else. “The Democrats are worse” is always a crowd pleaser. Doesn’t take any thinking. I would have thought Rudy could be more original, but he knows his 28%ers.
mrmobi
Yep. This pooch has been so thoroughly screwed that she may never walk again.
I’m with Bill Odoms. Get out now. Nothing we can do will make this any better. Lots of people are going to die no matter what we do. How about let’s not have it be our people? What a concept!
And all this because a drunken frat-boy wanted to outdo daddy. We have truly elected a moron to be POTUS.
jg
I agree with Mrs Guliani. A democratic president will end the war and get our boys out of a never ending middle east engagement. this is unacceptable to al qaeda. They will hit us again to get us back over there peeking under veils and storming mosques. It took OBL 9 years to get us there he won’t let us leave until we’re done doing whatever the hell it is he wants us to do.
Bustout. There was a episode of The Sopranos that covered this whole thing. They have completely reversed the ‘income reditribution’ that their army of proles have been bitching about.
LITBMueller
You can criticize Rudy all you want, but he has a helmet that allows him to see terrorist attacks…before they are launched!
Seriously.
tBone
We haven’t suffered another 9-11 since 9-11, moonbat. That seems pretty preventive to me.
Typical of you leftards to ignore all of the good news coming out of the War on Terror. Why don’t we ever hear about all of the Middle Eastern countries that we haven’t invaded and plunged into civil war? And what about all of the branches of the military that haven’t been strained to the breaking point? The Coast Guard is doing just fine, not that you troop-haters would know that.
Jimmmm
And nobody talks about the 81 US Attorneys who weren’t fired in a party purge, or about the internal organs in Cheney’s body that aren’t diseased.
Why is the glass always half-empty in moonbatica?
Tsulagi
While your defense of the president is admirable, soldier, don’t forget his magic touch reaches all things. Including the Coast Guard.
Dreggas
Fixed.
tBone
It’s just who they are.
There you lefties go again, making mountains out of molehills. So there’s a little corruption in the top ranks; big deal. The important thing is this: the Coast Guard rank and file stand ready to serve. They are warm bodies in uniform who can be shipped to Iraq on a moment’s notice to perform their duty (like driving trucks or guarding prisoners).
Dreggas
Isn’t that a bit to close to “Fish out of water” territory?
Rome Again
Brilliant description!
Ummm… Paraguay perhaps?
Andrew
I thought the rumor was that the Bush clan was going to take their war profiteering dollars to a mega-ranch in Paraguay.
Andrew
Well, I’m only 28 minutes late on that one…
cleek
and the last al-Q attack on the US before that was in 1993. so, we should expect another one in … 2009.
behold the predictive power of a two-point data set!
tBone
Only if we elect a Democrat instead of Guiliani, moonbat.
El Cruzado
Makes one feel like Giuliani won’t take losing well…
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Shit, that’s perfect! They can move in right next to the Bormanns. Joseph Mengele used to live right around the corner, too, didn’t he? Also, those nice CIA guys who used to work with the Stoessner government during Operation Condor. Also, that nice Escobar gentleman used to have some business dealings around there, right? Shame about him getting shot and all. So it goes.
Seriously, you couldn’t script a fucking creepier place for the Bush clan to emigrate to. This even tops Switzerland for post-war Nazi collaborating, and the CIA/cocaine angle makes me think those Illuminati nuts might be on to something after all. If this is true, it’s insane.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
If we DO get a terrorist attack on President Giuliani’s watch, though, it’s Clinton’s fault. Trust me on this one.
Zifnab
Yeah, because his original strategy – lure us out into Afganistan where he could beat us like he beat the Russians – worked really well. Except it didn’t. The Taliban was stomped inside three months. Complete route.
The “Let’s Invade Iraq Too!” strategy was all the neo-con’s brainchild, something they would have tried to roll out with or without 9/11. And while the US might have changed dramatically since 911, Iraq really hadn’t. We’d have invaded the country and face-planted into Vietnam Redux just like we did the last time.
The big joke in it all is that 9/11 changed absolutely nothing. It didn’t make our leaders more concerned about public safety. It didn’t change their plans or their business models (Dems were whimpering cowards and Republicans were John Wayne shoot-first-at-your-feet-ask-questions-when-you’re-dead lugnuts before the century even started). They just barely changed their ad campaigns, sticking Bin Laden’s face up as a posterboy of evil alongside Saddam, Nancy Pelosi, and Barbara Striessan.
Dreggas
For a brief, very brief period, 9-11 did change my perception of my fellow countrymen. Unfortunately that perception switched back to the original far too soon…
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Bush had a bipartisan mandate for a very brief spell. He’s the only President in my lifetime to ever get one. He then squandered it by using it a) as a tool to advance the neo-con agenda, and b) as a means of bashing the Democrats upside the head in the 2002 election DESPITE the fact that they went along with everything he asked.
I’m vaguely reminded of this story about a frog and a scorpion, but I’m not sure it’s apropos. After the scorpion stung the frog mid-stream, he was a lot more honest than Bush has been.
metalgrid
So like Bush talks to ‘God’, Guiliani talks to terrorists? He must be awfully chummy with those terrorists if he can be so sure of foiling all their attacks. Then again, the Republicans are pretty tight with the Saudis, so I guess its no surprise that they can call off the terrorist attacks whenever they want.
Dreggas
Oh I never said my opinion of Bush really changed, I always looked at him as a halfwit propped up by Daddy’s cronies. I meant my perception of the rest of my countrymen as not being self absorbed and caring about everyone and all the emotion shown, you know it felt like one country not a collection of 50 states. That all went to hell courtesy of the shitheads in this administration and you are right, rather than using this to unite America he used it to beat us all upside the heads and tried to turn us all into sheeple.
p.lukasiak
If you mean “the national media” then the most talked about thing is going to be either Rosie O’Donnell leaving a day time TV show, or Alec Baldwin leaving a mean voicemail message for his daughter.
of course, the best part is that Baldwin called Rosie, and she scheduled him to be a guest on Friday….
D. Mason
It’s well beyond insane regardless of how right or wrong the tin foil hat brigade is.
Zombie Santa Claus
I was toying with the idea of moving my toy shop to Paraguay, back in the early ’80s. There was plenty of snow to go around in that place, although Mrs. Claus was worried about me and Rudolph getting our hands on a little bit too much of it. Mind you, that was before my stint at the Betty Ford clinic. Back in those days, if you were involved in a Colombian drug cartel, you damn well knew what you’d better leave by the milk and the cookies if you really wanted that gold-plated Uzi for Christmas.
Nowadays, of course, I’m undead. I could give a fuck less about the yayo and the elven strippers. I’m only in it for the brains.
Ho ho ho, bitches!
Chad N. Freude
Umm … Except for Deepwater.
Chad N. Freude
On the other hand, if Rudy is elected, he will bring Bernie Kerik back into government, maybe in the DHS post he was so unfairly deprived of, or maybe … Secretary of Defense. That’s Rudy’s plan to ensure our safety from another terrorist attack.
tBone
So? They won’t need boats in Iraq.
sebrendan
Re: Presidents and a bi-partisan mandate.
Real quick, the actual idea of bi-partisanship is sort of mythical, if you ask me. It runs counter to the two party system that’s established in the USA.
With that said, during Regan’s first couple of years in office, Rupblicans and Democrats did work very well with each other. Especially in the senate. One could certainly argue that after the ’84 election Regan held a very similar mandate. Parellels to Lyndon’s victory in ’64 could be drawn as well.
I often think calls for bi-partinship is akin to grumbling about “the good old days” that never existed…. but considering the current political climate, I think people really want a return to the Capitol of the 80’s. A time I would call not good, certainly old, and probably better than what we have now.
bago
Well at the point where 8/10 of the bill of rights are up for grabs, almost ANY post 1776 time is better than now.
ET
I watched.
I yelled at the TV.
I occassionally had to turn the channel or risk throwing something at said TV.
I was left with the feeling that I was glad I didn’t/don’t listen or read the blowhards, fools, and brain dead that populate the political yak-fests and op-ed pages.
Buck
Goebbels once said “”Think of the press as a giant keyboard on which the government can play.”
Buying the War allowed us to watch the concert.
Everybody gives this administration hell for being stupid, incompetent and moronic.
But when it comes to propaganda I think Goebbels would give them the World Music Award.
Wasn’t it sobering to watch even Oprah Winfrey hop on the war train?
I just can’t see how anybody could watch Buying The War and still complain about the liberal mainstream media.
Moyers did one hell of a job.
gex
Kevin K.
If Rudy is elected President, we can look forward to having him set up his Command Center in the middle of a market in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad.
He’s all anti-terror and stuff that way.
Fledermaus
John C,
So any thoughts? As I was watching it last night I wondered how it would appear to people like you who supported the war originally. Was it like a whole new world that you never noticed or did you remember the events and arguments (‘Oil revenues will pay for everything’ was my favorite) and think “why didn’t this raise any red flags for me”
Fledermaus
I think that it can be traced to two things: 1) The people in government at the time really, really like war. 2) Conservative adoration of all things military (unless it’s a democrat veteran running for office) led them to overestimate how much the military can actually accomplish. 3) They all share an overly simplistic view of how the world works, I mean most of the high level people in the WH didn’t even know about Sunni vs. Shia and their history. 4) $$$$$$$
Finally I think that #1 is the most important and predisposed them to sign on for every wildly optimistic prediction they came across. After all these are “serious people” from the left (Friedman, Beinart) and the right (too many to list).
Meanwhile anyone who didn’t toe the line became persona non-grata as far as the media was concerned. The real question is when did the press become a bunch of chickenshits? Bumiller who states that she was scared during the war press conference. Jesus these people need to grow a pair.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
You listed 4 things.
Ignorance- check.
Greed- check.
Bush’s Oedipal complex- check.
Laurie Mylroie/Ahmed Chalabi seducing gullible neo-cons- check.
It’s hard to pick one single reason, though. Probably, all the major criminals had their own individual motives for signing on to this particular caper. Time will tell, hopefully.
Jackson
The only mainstream media voice who ended up joining the antiwar movement before the war took place was Oprah.
Oprah did a whole series of antiwar shows in the few months before the war. Michael Moore even endorsed her for president and praised her on page 87 of DUDE WHERE’S MY COUNTRY for showing footage of Donald Rumsfeld embracing Saddam no other major media would dare show. Here’s an excellent article about a two-day antiwar show she did from Academics for Justice:
Understanding What Just Happened on The Oprah Winfrey Show :
Today, Oprah Winfrey started a two-part series focusing on the impending U.S. war on Iraq. About halfway through the show the broadcast was pre-empted by coverage of Pres. George Bush, with Colin Powell at his side, reading a prepared statement on Iraq. The coincidental timing of this pre-emptive press statement raised immediate questions about the motives of the White House war strategists. Students of the Civil Rights Movement will recall an incident in 1964 when activist Fannie Lou Hamer sat before a live television audience and gave a riveting account of the oppression she and other Blacks faced in the South. President Lyndon Johnson was so convinced of the power of her appeal to undermine his own political/racial agenda, that he hastily called a press conference to pull cameras away from Hamer’s impassioned revelations. Though the networks pre- empted Hamer’s testimony to cover the president, the newscasts later showed her entire presentation.
The pre-emption of Winfrey’s show today should be seen in the same light. Oprah’s audience is a vast and powerful—but largely apolitical—force of middle-class white women. It is likely that most did not watch Colin Powell’s live testimony at the U.N. yesterday. In fact, it is likely that this huge audience was being oriented to the issues of the Iraq war for the first time. It is unlikely that they treated this show with anything but intense propaganda interest.
The first 30 minutes of the show was decidedly anti-war and highlighted not only worldwide unanimity in opposition to the war but presented many of the heretofore unheard voices of ordinary people speaking forcefully against Bush’s motives. CNN assisted the Oprah Show by presenting overseas confirmation of this from Great Britain and Iraq. For instance, the British correspondent said at one point that it was hard to find anyone in Britain EXCEPT TONY BLAIR that supported the war. Other voices repeated their conclusion that the war is “for oil,” not “against terrorism.” Those familiar with the Bush administration’s network cheerleaders at ABC, NBC, and CBS would, no doubt, view this expose’ with raised eyebrows. Then, without warning or introduction, Bush is seen at the podium reiterating Powell’s statement at the U.N. yesterday! One immediately had to assume that Bush was actually declaring war on Iraq, given the urgency of this interruption. Soon, however, it became clear that OPRAH herself was the target of this sabre-rattling and not Saddam Hussein. Bush simply summarized Powell’s presentation for Oprah’s audience, hitting key emotional points for this afternoon women’s gathering. He said nothing more of any import at all. Returning to the show, 15 or so minutes later, found still more impassioned, but reasoned, anti-war input from members of Oprah’s audience. There was indeed a balance of pro-war input but the net effect of the show—in spite of Bush’s strategic Johnsonian interruption—was to embolden the anti-war voices and to make opposition to the war as “patriotic” a position as that of the warmongers. What we just saw was a replay of an old propaganda ploy of an ol’ Texas politician, Lyndon Baines Johnson, against the scarecropper’s daughter from Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer. In 1964, enough of Hamer’s message was heard to force Johnson into acting against his own political desires. Bush’s ploy in 2003 may have backfired as well.
Here’s an article about yet another antiwar show Oprah did right before the war. The one written by a war supporter critical of Oprah:
The Oprah schnook club
By Ben Shapiro
http://www.townhall.com/ columnis…ah_schnook_club
Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in America. She decides what makes the New York Times best-seller lists. Her touchy-feely style sucks in audiences at the rate of 14 million viewers per day. But Oprah is far more than a cultural force — she’s a dangerous political force as well, a woman with unpredictable and mercurial attitudes toward the major issues of the day. Her ignorant views and wacky reasoning shape the views of millions.
Oprah’s latest target: the war in Iraq. In what previews described as an eye-opening hour, Oprah used her bully pulpit on March 18 to slam the United States and George W. Bush. Her guests were anti-war Fawaz Gergez, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, and “pro-war” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Of course, both Gergez and Friedman were anti-Bush.
Oprah also showed part of Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine,” which lambastes American foreign policy. “It resonated with a lot of people, me included,” she sweetly informed. When Friedman (remember, he’s supposed to provide balance) stated that “the Bush administration is going to have to have an attitude lobotomy,” Oprah laughed out loud. After showing a clip of young Muslim man ripping America, Oprah noted: “What he said sounded like what I’ve heard from people of color all over the world.”