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You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / Retro Day At The Pentagon

Retro Day At The Pentagon

by Tim F|  July 19, 20077:12 pm| 16 Comments

This post is in: Republican Stupidity

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Apparently nostalgic for the giant sucking credibility hole that was Don Rumsfeld’s tenure at DoD, SecDef Gates’s team has decided once again that contradicting the president endangers our precious bodily fluids. Great. I thought by now we had grown out of the Dear Leader stuff.

Next week: an Iranian defector nicknamed “knuckleball” whispers to Judy Miller Michael Gordon that Iran has nuclear-tipped box kites that can fly across the Atlantic and land on your dog.

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16Comments

  1. 1.

    jg

    July 19, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    Why do you hate my dog?

  2. 2.

    Rome Again

    July 19, 2007 at 7:21 pm

    Iran, Iran…. how many times did Lieberman mention Iran the other night during the Republican filibuster? I counted like 5 at least.

    If we aren’t at war with Iran by the time election 2008 rolls around, it will truly be a miracle.

  3. 3.

    sab

    July 19, 2007 at 7:45 pm

    I was struck by how many times Fran Townsend mentionned defending “the Homeland” in her press conference. Since when did we stop being “America” or “the United States” and start being “the Homeland.” Creepy, creepy terminology if you ask me.

  4. 4.

    demimondian

    July 19, 2007 at 8:01 pm

    I was struck by how many times Fran Townsend mentionned defending “the Homeland” in her press conference. Since when did we stop being “America” or “the United States” and start being “the Homeland.” Creepy, creepy terminology if you ask me.

    It’s only creepy once it’s fully God-win-able. As long as we stay this side of “The Fatherland”, I think we’re fine.

  5. 5.

    cleek

    July 19, 2007 at 8:33 pm

    Politics sometimes manages to muddle the obvious. The war in Iraq, authorized by three-quarters of the Senate, was launched in response to Saddam Hussein’s refusal to abide by 17 United Nations resolutions — and by the fact that Saddam clearly supported terror movements around the world. We never argued that he played a role 9/11; political opponents manufactured the claim to question the president’s integrity.

    The Last Honest Man

  6. 6.

    UnkyT

    July 19, 2007 at 9:10 pm

    cleek Says:

    Politics sometimes manages to muddle the obvious. The war in Iraq, authorized by three-quarters of the Senate, was launched in response to Saddam Hussein’s refusal to abide by 17 United Nations resolutions — and by the fact that Saddam clearly supported terror movements around the world. We never argued that he played a role 9/11; political opponents manufactured the claim to question the president’s integrity.

    Does anybody actually listen to what Tony Snow says. There could not be anybody in the history of mankind that has spewed forth more bullshit.

  7. 7.

    AkaDad

    July 19, 2007 at 10:04 pm

    Forgive my subtlety, but I think it’s pretty clear, if you vote for a Democrat you will die in the most horrific way imaginable…

  8. 8.

    craigie

    July 19, 2007 at 11:28 pm

    My dog can kick your kite’s ass, man.

  9. 9.

    craigie

    July 19, 2007 at 11:40 pm

    “Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia,” Edelman wrote.

    Yes, because the helicopters on the roof of the embassy in Saigon were just, you know, perception. Just like we didn’t actually leave Lebanon, we just stopped staying there.

    Conservaloonies, meet reality. You two have a lot of catching up to do.

  10. 10.

    rachel

    July 20, 2007 at 12:54 am

    UnkyT Says:

    Does anybody actually listen to what Tony Snow says. There could not be anybody in the history of mankind that has spewed forth more bullshit.

    You’d think a man as gravely ill as he has been would give more thought to what will happen after he passes; that he’d at least worry for the sake of his legacy if not for his soul. The denial is very strong with this one.

  11. 11.

    sab

    July 20, 2007 at 3:45 am

    Which dog. I have many dogs.

  12. 12.

    VidaLoca

    July 20, 2007 at 7:07 am

    Tim,

    From the article you linked:

    In a stinging rebuke to a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman responded to questions Clinton raised in May in which she urged the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of American forces.

    OOOh-kay. Let’s read up on Eric Edelman:

    Eric S. Edelman is a career diplomat who served as an adviser on national security to Vice President Dick Cheney during the lead up to the war in Iraq. President George W. Bush gave Edelman a recess appointment as undersecretary of defense for policy on August 9, 2005, replacing Douglas Feith, the controversial aide to Donald Rumsfeld who resigned at the end of Bush’s first term.

    [snip]

    Edelman also served under Cheney during the administration of George Bush Senior. At that time, he became part of a “shop” within the Pentagon that was set up by then-Defense Secretary Cheney “to think about American foreign policy after the Cold War, at the grand strategic level,” wrote Nicholas Lehman in the New Yorker (April 1, 2002).

    The work of this shop, which was headed by Paul Wolfowitz, eventually led to the drafting of the now-notorious 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance, a document that was meant to serve as a post-Cold War framework for U.S. military strategy. Others working on the guidance were Zalmay Khalilzad and I. Lewis Libby. According to Lehman, the guidance team was “generally speaking, a cohesive group of conservatives who regard themselves as bigger-thinking, tougher-minded, and intellectually bolder than most other people in Washington.” Their guidance, however, which called for actively promoting U.S. predominance throughout much of the world, proved too ambitious for Bush Senior and congressional Democrats. Although the initial draft was immediately retracted after it was leaked to the press, it would go on to serve as a framework for neoconservative advocacy during the 1990s, and many of its ideas would resurface in President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 national security strategy.

    During the Clinton administration, Edelman moved back to the State Department. As ambassador-at-large and special adviser to the secretary of State on the Newly Independent States, Edelman oversaw defense, security, and space issues.

    Vice President Cheney brought Edelman back under his wing as principal deputy assistant for national security affairs. As an assistant to Cheney, he was part of the foreign policy network that hurriedly established the “intelligence” rationales for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Edelman, who is reportedly close to a number high profile neoconservatives like Richard Perle, has frequently been identified as being part of an informal policy network of like-minded ideologues that was based mainly at the Pentagon and Cheney’s office, but which also included key figures in the State Department, the various intelligence agencies, and the National Security Council (CounterPunch, February 27, 2003; American Prospect, April 17, 2006).

    Yeah, he goes way back.

  13. 13.

    Walker

    July 20, 2007 at 7:44 am

    This is interesting:

    In an unusual challenge to a Defense Secretary from a sitting Senator, Hillary Clinton has just written a sharply worded letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, demanding that he personally account for a Pentagon official’s assertion yesterday that Clinton’s public questions about the U.S.’s troop withdrawal plans were aiding the enemy.

    As Sully says, the WH just gave her the perfect platform to grandstand. Maybe someone there has decided to start campaigning for Clinton.

  14. 14.

    Tim F.

    July 20, 2007 at 8:39 am

    Which dog. I have many dogs.

    Your favorite dog. Even if you don’t know which one is your favorite, the kite knows.

  15. 15.

    timb

    July 20, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    Tim, not to be too much of a sycophant, but that was a helluva post. Thanks for the laughter.

  16. 16.

    Power Kites Guy

    May 21, 2009 at 10:25 am

    Interesting post and thanks for sharing. Some things in here I have not thought about before.
    I’m going to bookmark this page so I can return and keep reading.

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