Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

We’re not going back!

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

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Final Flight

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If you have the time, check out this Navy Times bit on the last flight of the F-14 Tomcat.

I am not the least bit embarassed to admit that this made me tear up. I know it will make no sense to people who have never been in the military, but it is really hard to describe how attached you get to your equipment. I remember spending hundreds of hours lovingly stripping my M1-A1 turret of all pieces, cleaning everything with a silk brush to remove all dust and particles, repainting, touching up, sleeping in the motor poll as the pieces dried, and then spending another day reinstalling everything. And I would do that 2-3 times a year, only to trash it on maneuvers a week after the paint dried. But I loved that tank, it truly was a modern mavel, and the damned thing was there to keep me alive. Years after I left active duty I saw a picture in the Army Times of the 11th Cav firing Table Eight, and I was immediately able to pick out my tank because of the NATO marker panel on the back.

Good times, and I still miss that tank.

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So Now I Am A Liar…

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Dean Esmay bloviating in his comments section:

A) The administration and military establishment do not “routinely lie,” and
B) Apparently, actual lies and agitprop by terrorist organizations are not worthy of anywhere near as much skepticism in John’s world as the “lies” of an administration he simply disagrees with sometimes.

Whatever.

Whatever, indeed. We won’t go into the ‘lies’ in too much detail, just brush up on a few of them. I guess we could start with the lie about the cost of the Prescription Drug Plan. We could move on to virtually any one of Cheney’s utterances about Iraq over the past few years (if you want to claim he is not ‘lying,’ and just wrong, you then need to articulate why we are continuing to advance policies based on the ‘wrong’ assumptions and ideas advanced by Cheney. Pick your poison.) We were lied to about secret prison camps. We were lied to about ‘just a few bad apples’ at Abu Gharaib, when there is more than ample evidence that the abuses were caused by administration policies. We were fed heapings of lies about stem cell research and the threat of gay marriage.

And those are just a few, off the top of my head. And that does not count the thousands upon thousands of acts of daily spin that take place- bullshit, that when fed to unwitting or willfully ignorant audiences, portrays false impressions designed to ease the passage or acceptance of flawed policies. So maybe Dean Esmay is content being lied to by the people he elected to represent him. Maybe he is just an idiot and really doesn’t realize he is being lied to. Or maybe Dean, after fabricating and slandering for months in regards to the Schiavo affair, is simply incapable of discerning the truth from lies anymore:

I don’t think it’s reasonable to call anyone a liar when you simply disagree with them. I think that degrades discussions considerably. It’s also unnecessarily demeaning.

Furthermore, I stand firmly and staunchly with Austin Bay, Glenn Reynolds, and others. In fact, let me just go ahead and stoop to John’s level:

John Cole’s a liar. He calls people liars when he knows perfectly well they may just disagree with people. So if John Cole will lie like that, why should I not be skeptical of anything John Cole ever says?

***

Really, does that sort of thing to ANYTHING to promote dialogue? One day, Aziz, you’re going to have the wonderful experience of pulling the lever for a man you really like, and see him be elected President, and feel really good about it–and then spend four to eight years having his critics call him a liar and an incompetent non-stop and in almost anything they ever say or do. Then maybe you’ll think back and say, “wow, did I sound that nasty back when Bush was in charge?” And the answer will be: yes.

Otherwise: I prefer a media which is NOT automatically more skeptical of our government than everybody else on the planet when our government is in the middle of a war. I’d prefer a media that’s on our side, and that stopped with the vile, hateful, stupid idea that “our side” means “the administration’s side,” or that our side is best served by being more skeptical of our government than our enemies.

Furthermore, it’s very clear where the media drops the ball to me:

1) By not being skeptical enough of our overseas critics, especially the rent-a-rioters and other anti-American demonstrators.
2) By ignoring most tales of valor and achievement by our troops.

I think they’re four-square guilty of that. Completely.

In other words, like I said the other day- the problem with Dean Esmay, Glenn Reynolds, and others “isn’t the media coverage, it is that he is not getting to decide what the media is covering.”

And let’s remember, I voted for Bush, too. Twice. I think there are times when he is unfairly attacked for things that he is not responsible for, and I say as much. I also have waged my own guerilla warfare against people who unfairly attack the military for ‘lying’ when they have not- search the archives for ‘white phosphorus.’ So I am not some knee-jerk Bush-hater who simply labels disagreements as ‘lies.’ But, unlike Dean, I don’t feel obligated to defend Bush or his appointees in this administration when they are simply lying at will, even if it means I sound ‘nasty’ when I label someone who lies repeatedly a liar.

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Talabani’s Proposal

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Miclael Stickings’s Joe Gandelman’s coblogger Michael Van der Gallen points to comments by Iraqi president Jalal Talabani supporting a prolonged US presence in Iraq.

“I think we will be in need of American forces for a long time — even two military bases to prevent foreign interference,” Talabani told The Washington Post.

“I don’t ask to have 100,000 American soldiers — 10,000 soldiers and two air bases would be enough.”

[…] “In some places Sunnis want the Americans to stay,” he argued. “Sunnis think the main danger is coming from Iran now.”

Michael links to a somewhat perturbed blogger (note the shortened adjective ‘Democrat,’ a reliable indicator of hackdom) who has a hard time resisting a bit of triumphalism:

This is clearly a refudiation of every democrat talking point on Iraq over the last year. Iraqis are not asking America to leave or redeploy. They are asking for our help to keep their fledgling democracy afloat. The cut-and-run crowd has just been handed a huge foreign policy blow. We need Arab-Muslim support in our war against Al Qaeda and terrorism, and now we have a formal, public request from a country that used to be a sworn enemy of America to be an ally and help them out. Now when a liberal democrat cries “runaway” (in an echo of Monty Python’s Holy Grail) the country can respond “what about what the Iraqis want from us?”.

No doubt many Sunni recognize that a US departure will give the Shi’a even more freedom to exercise harsh, Iran-aligned majoritarian rule and will probably open the doors to a bloody partition that, owing to the geographical quirks that leave Sunni areas largely oil-free, will not do them any strategic favors. However, the US more or less pulled out of Anbar province for a reason. The idea that the red-hot insurgency will welcome the US back into their home territory is beyond ludicrous. Pacifying Iraq’s Sunni heartland would take a force that we simply do not have.

Iraq’s Kurdish president knows full well that an American pullout will lead to a war of partition. First to go will be the effectively independent Kurdish state in the north. Unfortunately the Kurdish dream of independence will last about as long as it takes Turkey and Iran to mobilize their armies massed on the Iraqi border. Both Turkey and Iran deal with constant harassment from Kurdish terrorists who filter back and forth through the porous border with Iraq, and have made no bones about what they will do if a separate Kurdish state appears. Talabani undoubtedly knows that as well as anybody.

Think about the details of Talabani’s plan. Nearly two hundred thousand troops cannot pacify Iraq. Does anybody seriously think that we can head off civil war with 10,000 based over-the-horizon in Kurdistan? No. The plan laid out here clearly shows that Talabani wants the best of both worlds: partition and the bloody war that it entails, and a South Korea-style trigger force of US troops to discourage “interference,” also known as “invasion,” by Iran and Turkey.

Talabani’s proposal does nothing whatsoever to support the stay-the-course right. Quite the contrary, it reflects the more sensible pullout plans in which we allow Iraq to follow its internal inertia while keeping a quick-reaction force in Kurdistan to strike the inevitable al Qaeda training centers as they appear. Conveniently for Talabani our bases will also forestall the negative consequences of independence, notwithstanding the chutzpah that it will take for us to stand in the way of Turkey responding to naked acts of terrorism. Talabani’s throwaway line about the Sunnis tolerating long-term US bases in their territory simply fails the laugh test.

***

In a related note, Gregory Djerejian recently asked whether we should classify Iraq as a failure or an impossibility. That is to say, could reasonable leaders with a grounding in counterinsurgeny have succeeded where arrogant incompetence has plainly failed?

My simple answer is that reasonable leaders recognized that winning an insurgency war would take more troops than America could possibly send. You cannot just invent magic pony scenarios where the Pentagon waves a wand and makes needed divisions appear out of the aether, so I would answer that reasonable people with relevant experience would not invade Iraq. At least, they would not do so without a multinational force several times the size of what we had (see, magic pony). The act of invasion was a strategically irresponsible act that would not have been repeated by people who knew what they were doing.

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Worse

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The headline speaks for itself:

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

To use the knuckle-chewing language that permeates rightwing commentary I could say that people who rooted for the Iraq war were rooting for America to lose in the war on terror. But I am not that stupid. I think that people who supported the Iraq war supported it for any of a thousand reasons, most of them perfectly well-intentioned. Some beileved in the 9/11 connection, not necessarily through any fault of their own but rather the intentionally manipulative language of Dick Cheney and similarly derelict leaders. Many bought the threat argument and some believed that invading Iraq very well could make the middle east a safer, freer place.

Those are fine motives. People who genuinely believed any of those things have every reason to feel disappointed and not, a priori, blame themselves for what has happened. In all seriousness nobody could have anticipated an operation as feckless and self-gratifyingly incompetent as Rumsfeld’s occupation authority. Recent books such as George Packer’s excellent and non-partisan Assassin’s Gate describe a vacuum of leadership that makes the most jaded cynic feel inadequate.

However, and despite every repulsive slur tossed at opponents of the Iraq war, most of us opposed the war because we felt that it would distract from the more pressing threat. When Iraq preparations started America had not yet finished its engagement with active elements of the people who attacked us, as shown by the reassignment of bin Laden’s personal Special Forces team to Iraq and his escape from Tora Bora. Some have called the new war a violation of international law, an intentional act of deception, whatever. I call it doing a half-assed job.

The people who called Iraq war opponents objectively pro-terrorist, anti-semitic (that came up frequently vis a vis the neocons), pro-Saddam and anti-American have not stopped and likely never will. Call it a voluntary stupid badge. Most who opposed the war did so because we thought that precisely what did happen, could happen, and in that case at least it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to be right.

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They Got Rolled

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The WaPo sums up the general consensus, in a post titled The Abuse Can Continue:

THE GOOD NEWS about the agreement reached yesterday between the Bush administration and Republican senators on the detention, interrogation and trial of accused terrorists is that Congress will not — as President Bush had demanded — pass legislation that formally reinterprets U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions. Nor will the Senate explicitly endorse the administration’s use of interrogation techniques that most of the world regards as cruel and inhumane, if not as outright torture. Trials of accused terrorists will be fairer than the commission system outlawed in June by the Supreme Court.

The bad news is that Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects. He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation. Under the compromise agreed to yesterday, Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to U.S. courts. The bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes.

In short, it’s hard to credit the statement by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) yesterday that “there’s no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.” In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress’s tacit assent. If they do, America’s standing in the world will continue to suffer, as will the fight against terrorism.

It is hard to think of this as a compromise, unless your idea of a compromise is being asked by your child for a million dollars, telling them no, and then agreeing to give them $998,000. Remember this week when, in a few years, our boys andgirls are overseas facing ‘tough interrogation methods’ and jackasses like the loudmouth pro-torture lobby in the right-wing blogosphere are blubbering about human rights and the Geneva Convention. No wonder they are, in many cases, the same folks who want to proselytize in the military- our servicemembers are going to have hell to pay in the future and will need someone to pray to as they are being waterboarded, beaten (but it doesn’t leave marks!), and dipped in vats of icy cold water after days/weeks with no sleep and no access to counsel.

And that only scratches the surface of what this ‘compromise’ is going to do. No worries- we can beat ‘suspected’ terrorists into submission, and they will tell us of their plots to use dirty bombs on the Omaha American Legion ahead of time. Red State America is safe, and even if we were wrong about the terrorists and tortured the wrong person and they only confessed to non-existent plots after hours of abuse, we have made sure they can’t do anything about it, so we won’t have to hear about the messy details anyway. Self-governance and responsibility are, apparently, much like parts of the Geneva Conventions, ‘quaint ideas.’ I am sure you all are as thrilled as I am that we can now rely on the judgement of our current President when it comes to important matters such as this.

The only upside to this ‘compromise’ is that I no longer have to listen to the catcalls of degenerate fools claiming my opposition to torture and rewriting/ignoring the Geneva Conventions is simply an attempt to achieve moral superiority. Apparently these hubristic louts think that opposition to acts that violate basic human decency somehow makes me ‘morally superior.’ I thought it made me ‘normal’ and ‘sane’ and, until the past few years, ‘American.’ Given the brazen cheerleading of the pro-torture crowd in the past few years, it appears I was wrong. Wanting a nation that does not officially condone and engage in wanton acts of violence and torture apparently does make me morally superior. That is a shame.

So, in closing, it is torture they wanted, and it is torture they will get. Given the current domination in Washington of what I have now come to realize (too late to do much about it, I regret) is the ignorance party, there is little we can do about it. I do, however, intend to engage in a little recreational torture myself- I plan to waterboard these jerks at the polls in 2006, again in 2008, and for as long as I can see until there are some basic and systemic changes to the way our government and the now morally bankrupt Republican party operate. And if I am wrong about my choices at the polls, I will just have to take solace in the fact that I, like the President, will remain unaccountable for my mistakes. I can just roll my eyes, feign ignorance, and state that ‘No one ever expected that the Democrats would be worse.’

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Saddam 2.0

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If you took a snapshot of the last two months, Iraqis are unquestionably worse off than before the invasion.

GENEVA – Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, made the remarks as he was presenting a report on detainee conditions at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay as well as to brief the U.N. Human Rights Council, the global body’s top rights watchdog, on torture worldwide.

Reports from Iraq indicate that torture “is totally out of hand,” he said. “The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein.”

[…] A report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq’s Human Rights office cited worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in “honor killings” of women.

[…] According to the U.N. report, the number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit 6,599, a record-high that is far greater than initial estimates suggested, the U.N. report said Wednesday.

It attributed many of the deaths to rising sectarian tensions that have pushed Iraq toward civil war.

Let’s think for a minute about what it really means to be better or worse off. If you count the number of innocent Iraqi dead under Saddam at around 400,000 (a generous estimate based on various sources) and spread it over his thirty-year term the death toll comes to about 1,100 innocent dead per month. Let’s call that number the ‘Saddam line.’ Average monthly death tolls passed the Saddam Line a long time ago, often compounded by torture so the average quality-of-death (to coun a phrase) should be roughly the same. On a strictly numerical basis our current occupation actually manages to look worse than Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

One could counter that with the intangible and somewhat-less-tangible differences. Can anybody point to a credible claim that general quality-of-life issues, say electricity, sanitation, healthcare and general safety, are better off now than before? Women might miss the days when they could drive, go about uncovered and unaccompanied by a male family member. I could imagine an argument that things are going through a bad spell right now, just like I could imagine arguing that space aliens will have pity on us and relieve the 2nd Marine Regiment in Fallujah. Things can get better and they can get worse. Hypothetical arguments can go both ways. Right now things look pretty bad and no reason in the world exists to think that they cannot get worse.

Obviously any sane person would find this situation intolerable. If we do nothing then civil war seems like an inevitability at this point, but preparedness limits put a strict cap our ability to do any more than we are doing right now. Shuffling troops around (the ‘inkblot’ strategy’) sounds great except that is what we tried during August, one of the two bloodiest months on record. More success like that is something that we don’t need. It looks at this point like a descent into civil war will happen with or without us. I don’t know about anybody else, but given the choice I would pick without.

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