Kristol : Bush Ain't So Bad

NeoCons Are "Breathlessly Idiotic" And More

Chief NeoCon operative, and 'journalist', William "The Bloody" Kristol wants Bush Co. to bomb the living hell out of Iran as one of president's final duties to the NeoCon cabal that got him elected and helped to keep in power through two terms.

As part of the price he must pay to get Bush to complete the current NeoCon agenda, Kristol is required to pay homage to the president, and get the idea out there that Bush really ain't so bad, and history will be much kinder to him than the vast majority of the world's media and more than 70% of Americans, who currently believe the president is a danger to the nation and more incompetent than Homer Simpson hepped up on goofballs.

Kristol wrote a semi-coherent editorial praising Bush, and claiming the War On Iraq is just about to get a whole lot better, but if he published it in NeoCon propaganda bible, The Weekly Standard, only a few thousand people would have read it.

Time Magazine, for whom Kristol miraculously managed to score an editorial gig, despite being wrong on virtually every prediction he's ever made about the War On Iraq and the War On Terror over the past five years, knew a blind, crippled dog of an editorial when they saw it.

Kristol couldn't get his 'Let's Praise Bush Before It's Too Late' piece up on Time, but the Washington Post, naturally, came to his rescue :

I suppose I'll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one.

Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable.

And third, and most important, a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.

Interesting that Kristol counts what he believes to be a turn for the better in Iraq to be far more important than a healthy US economy and the fact that no successful terror attacks have occurred in the homeland since 9/11.

You can read Kristol's turd-polishing on Bush's economic genius and anti-terror fight for yourself, and attempt to comprehend why Kristol sees the stacking of the Supreme Court with conservative judges to be a cornerstone of the Bush double presidency for yourself.

Let's move onto Iraq :

Bush is a war president, and war presidents are judged by whether they win or lose their war. So to be a successful president, Bush has to win in Iraq.

Which I now think we can. Indeed, I think we will. In late 2006, I didn't think we would win, as Bush stuck with the failed Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey strategy of "standing down" as the Iraqis were able to "stand up," based on the mistaken theory that if we had a "small footprint" in Iraq, we'd be more successful. With the new counterinsurgency strategy announced on Jan. 10, backed up by the troop "surge," I think the odds are finally better than 50-50 that we will prevail. We are routing al-Qaeda in Iraq, we are beginning to curb the Iranian-backed sectarian Shiite militias and we are increasingly able to protect more of the Iraqi population.

Al Qaeda didn't not exist as a competent fighting force in Iraq until the country was already deep into a resistance against the coalition's occupying forces and riven with sectarian civil war. Even now, it is widely acknowledged by the CIA and the world's major intelligence agencies that Al Qaeda the smallest of the key agents of terrorism in Iraq, and may only claim a few hundred people, at most, as part of its fighting forces, and most of them are now believed to be from Saudi Arabia, a chief American ally.

As for protecting the Iraqi population - more than 100 Iraqis a day are killing fighting, terror attacks, executions and massacres, with hundreds more wounded.

Back to Kristol :

If we sustain the surge for a year and continue to train Iraqi troops effectively, we can probably begin to draw down in mid- to late 2008. The fact is that military progress on the ground in Iraq in the past few months has been greater than even surge proponents like me expected, and political progress is beginning to follow. Iran is a problem, and we will have to do more to curb Tehran's meddling -- but we can. So if we keep our nerve here at home, we have a good shot at achieving a real, though messy, victory in Iraq.

American forces will begin drawing down in mid-2008 because the US Army missed its recruiting targets for most of 2005 and 2006 and will run out of troops to deploy in the next nine months, even with some soldiers going back for fourth and fifth tours.

Back to "The Bloody" :

But can Bush maintain adequate support at home? Yes. It would help if the administration would make its case more effectively and less apologetically. It would help if Bush had more aides who believed in his policy, who understood that the war is winnable and who didn't desperately want to get back in (or stay in) the good graces of the foreign policy establishment.

But Bush has the good fortune of having finally found his Ulysses S. Grant, or his Creighton Abrams, in Gen. David H. Petraeus. If the president stands with Petraeus and progress continues on the ground, Bush will be able to prevent a sellout in Washington. And then he could leave office with the nation on course to a successful (though painful and difficult) outcome in Iraq. With that, the rest of the Middle East, where so much hangs in the balance, could start to tip in the direction of our friends and away from the jihadists, the mullahs and the dictators.

Following through to secure the victory in Iraq and to extend its benefits to neighboring countries will be the task of the next president. And that brings us to Bush's final test.

The truly successful American presidents tend to find vindication in, and guarantee an extension of their policies through, the election of a successor from their own party. Can Bush hand the presidency off to a Republican who will (broadly) continue along the path of his post-9/11 foreign policy...?

Sure.

Right. So the whole point of the piece was to pump the Republican chances of keeping control of the White House in 2008. That's optimism!

The Kristol formula for ultimate success for Bush is a simple one :

If Petraeus succeeds in Iraq, and a Republican wins in 2008, Bush will be viewed as a successful president.

I like the odds.

You're an idiot of mammothic proportions.

At the end of the Kristol's mind-boggling drivel, the Washington Post invited readers to comment.

As of this posting, more than 2500 readers had lodged their disgust, horror and shock at Kristol's mind-boggling attempt to spit-polish the president' appalling presidential record.

2500 comments is the largest amount of comments we've ever seen attached to any news story or editorial in the Western world media. This is probably not record-breaking, but it's definitely the most widely commented-on pro-Bush piece we've yet seen.

If you want to get an insight into the mind of Americans who read their news online, dip into the calvacade of comments here.

It's surprising just how few positive comments Kristol has attracted, considering part of the NeoCon propaganda campaign for all things Iraq, and Iran, is to get the message out to friends and allies to flood comment pages and message boards with 'On Message' comments.

The pure outrage and disgust that so many express at Kristol's turd-polishing antics is breath-taking, and disturbing. America is angry, and isn't holding back anymore.

Credit to the Washington Post that it allows so many commenters to claim that it is a mouthpiece for the CIA and/or the NeoCons, and that Kristol is a propagandist of the old-school Nazi kind.

No doubt even Kristol is shocked today by the outrage and pure hatred he has stirred up by simply trying to point out what he claims are the positive points of the Bush presidency, and why Bush may not go down in history as America's Worst President, or one of modern history's greatest monster.

Commenter at the Post, Kelletim, wins the award for the most outrageous, but partially truthful, comment we've ever seen posted on any major news site. Ever :

Neocons are all imbecilic, aging, wheezing syphilitic pathological creeps, dirty old men that smoke Cuban cigars and go on child sex slave vacations in third world nations while on oxycontin between snorting viagra and having secret affairs with gay sex workers.

When they're not spouting homophobic bullshit or writing breathlessly idiotic, fact free columns in major newspapers, clinking crystal tumblers brimming with $38,000 a bottle bourbon with the Skull and Bones / AEI classmates at grand elite socials, getting drunk and shooting people in the face, brazenly granting trillion dollar contracts to their former companies, raping teenaged boys in Texas Prisons, chronically sexually harrassing their female employees, they're out doing what they do best: ravaging the life savings of thousands of people and committing genocide.

All this while being ardently fawned over by the liberal media.

These revolting sub-human colostomatic shitbags of filth and perversion should all be in GITMO right now receiving sex changes from Cuban doctors, only to spend the rest of their lives as a drag show touring East African nations.

Now that's a comment. Kelletim's comment appears on page 241 of the Washington Post comments that follow Kristol's editorial. As he type this, the pages just expanded to 248 and counting.

Anything that Kristol wrote in 'Why Bush Will Be A Winner' that might have actually hit home with his critics has been thoroughly drowned in the hurricane of comments, many of which are more coherent, more precise and far more informative and interesting than anything Kristol was paid thousands of dollars to write.

Bush : "We Created...The Propaganda Battle Around The World..."

"And We're Losing It"

Bush knows he's not supposed to admit to the propaganda programs that his government uses all over the world, soaking up billions of dollars every year, trying to shape, buff and knock the rough edges of America's image. The longer the War On Iraq goes on, the harder that job gets.

He's been told not to mention the word "propaganda", but every now and then it slips out :

"...we're not doing a very good job with the propaganda battle around the world. We created it, and we're losing. And that's one thing we've got to spend a lot of time on..."

Bush admits to the United States, or Bush Co. creating propaganda. No great surprised there. But is there something more to that quote?

Bush admits to fighting "the propaganda battle around the world," "We created it," he says, but "we're losing it." Losing the propaganda battle around the world is now something he thinks they have to "spend a lot of time on..."

But how long has this "propaganda battle" around the world been going on? Is he talking of recently? Or is he talking of a century? Or two centuries?

"We created it" - it being propaganda, and the propaganda battles of the world. He's clearly not talking of his administration. But is he talking about the United States in general?

Or his ancient family?

The last time Bush spoke the truth on propaganda, in 2005, almost no-one noticed. The Washington Post referred to the following line, once, and then it all but disappeared.

Which is interesting. Bush admits to using propaganda and the media, the organ that carries Bush propaganda, not only doesn't mention it, it doesn't even seem to generally notice Bush admitting to his strategies of how he makes the propaganda stick :

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)

We particularly like the (applause) after he admits that. Yes, yes, feed us more of your tasty propaganda Mr President.

You may have noticed recently that Bush uses the following grouping of words (in different order) in speeches and interviews. Sometimes as many as 20 t0 25 groupings of these three words in one speech, more often than not grouped together in the same sentence :

"Iraq" "A Qaeda" "9/11"

Your concept of what constitutes truth may not be the same as President Bush's. Or, President Bush knows what the truth is, and he knows what 'truth' he must feed to the public to continue the war, and hold off the eruption of total dissent and anarchy in the homeland.

"The successor to politics will be propaganda. Propaganda, not in the sense of a message or ideology, but as the impact of the whole technology of the times." - Marshall Mcluhan


The Propaganda President

The Roadmap To Iraq War Propaganda

Calling Iraq War Propaganda What It Really Was : A Strategy Of Lies - Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF Ret.)

Bush Makes Up Quotes To Make A Point

On June 28, President Bush gave a speech where he talked about the difference between Iraq's Anbar province in the last quarter of 2006, and Anbar today :

Last September, Anbar was all over the news. It was held up as an example of America's failure in Iraq. The papers cited a leaked intelligence report that was pessimistic about our prospects there. One columnist summed it up this way: "The war is over in Anbar province, and the United States lost."

That's not Bush's summary of a columnist's story or comment. It's published on the White House site as a direct quote, with no source. We've read before that Bush has used quotes claimed to be from "a journalist" or "one writer commented" and that most of them have been complete fiction. The rule is when Bush is trying to spin the situation on the ground in Iraq, and he uses the anonymous journalist, or columnist, to make his point, it's probably fake.

This time we decided to chase down a source for that quote, being the most recent of its kind.

We've used Google, Yahoo, Lexis Nexis and a number of other search engines to find this quote, or even a variation of it. We even tried translating it into a few other languages to see if that would help track down the source.

No dice.

Unless the statement was made in some obscure Iraqi newspaper that doesn't get picked up by Middle East and Iraqi news monitoring websites, a Bush speech writer, or Bush himself, made the quote up.

Why make it up something like that? To try and prove that the media has been wrong about progress in Iraq in the past and continues to be wrong.

More propaganda for the masses.

I Alone Against The World



A short time back, when President Bush needed as much sympathy as he could get, after outraging the nation by commuting the 30 month prison sentence of the treasonous 'Scooter' Libby, the Washington Post published an extended profile that tried to capture the essence of the man inside the West Wing.

The result was a portrait of a president isolated from many of the realities of the America he has ruled for seven years; disconnected from old friends; unable to comprehend the vastness of the tragedy of the Iraq War; cocooned from the anger and frustration felt by most Americans by the careful screening procedures that all but hand select every person he meets or talks to, and a world leader who displays a near psychotic trust in a mythical entity who he relies on to guide him through monumentally important decisions.

The Washington Post profile is sad and shocking. Sad because it finally confirms that Bush is a mere figurehead for a NeoCon power cabal that lets him think he is making decisions on issues they long decided before he even heard about them, and shocking because Bush's apparently rock solid religious beliefs have rendered with a near Buddha-like calm that fogs his ability to understand just what he is doing, and how many suffer from the decisions he makes based on how God, and the NeoCons, choose to guide him.

The story tells us that Bush is a president "looking for answers". But Americans expect him to already know most of the answers to the questions he is asking of a endless stream of philosophers, authors, historians and theologians who tromp into the West Wing like ancient sages before a bedraggled king - one so disconnected from reality, he shows few signs of stress or strain.

Bush, we are told, is still struggling with "the nature of good and evil", like some half-baked wannabe poet in his college dorm, lost in a swirl of dreams of enlightenment and purity of vision still yet to be shunted aside by the every day reality of the world :

What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I'm facing? How will history judge what we've done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?

That Bush is even asking people these questions is mind-quaking.

China, Russia, even India, must look to the US, and the man who wanders the West Wing, and think how easy it would be to decalibrate America's standing as the world's leading global power, if they wanted to. They don't have, to of course, Bush is already doing all this for them.

The same myopic self-absorption that saw him maintain a steady state of alcoholism (and episodic drug abuse) for some two decades has not departed Bush. While the American economy collapses like a tired old man, and the bodies of America's military youth flow steadily back from Iraq, Bush just wants to know if he will get to see some good books written about him before he dies.

The whole profile is worth reading, but the entire piece can be summed up in this one line excerpt :

For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction...

Are we supposed to feel sympathy for the man behind the presidency when we read of how "Bush seems alone, isolated by events beyond his control, with trusted advisers taking their leave and erstwhile friends turning on him"?

It seems a near impossible ask for any American today.

What does Bush really know of the reality tens of millions Americans face now their debt repayments are beyond their ability to pay them? That they cannot afford health care? Or to provide their children a full education? He knows nothing of these realities because he comes from a family of the American elite, royalty with no monarchy. The White House is as removed from the reality of the average American as the Bush family summer home in Maine.

And yet the Washington Post tries ask his fellow Americans to feel sympathy for President Bush because he doesn't get to go out to enough restaurants or to ride his bike where he wants to ride it, and to try and understand how hard it is to be president in the United States, 2007. As though none of the chaos, the carnage, the destruction, the dismay, the horror is of his very own doing. But of course, Bush is responsible for it all. He is the President of the United States. If Americans can't blame the president for the woes of their nation, then who can they blame?

"I don't know how he copes with it," said Donald Burnham Ensenat, a friend for 43 years who just stepped down as State Department protocol officer. Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), another longtime friend who once worked for Bush, said he looks worn down. "It's a marked difference in his physical appearance," Conaway said. "It's an incredibly heavy load. When you ask men and women to take risks, to send them into war knowing they might not come home, that's got to be an incredible burden to have on your shoulders."

Bush is fixated on Iraq, according to friends and advisers. One former aide went to see him recently to discuss various matters, only to find Bush turning the conversation back to Iraq again and again. He recognizes that his presidency hinges on whether Iraq can be turned around in 18 months. "Nothing matters except the war," said one person close to Bush. "That's all that matters. The whole thing rides on that."

"You don't get any feeling of somebody crouching down in the bunker," said Irwin M. Stelzer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who was part of one group of scholars who met with Bush. "This is either extraordinary self-confidence or out of touch with reality. I can't tell you which."

The reality has been daunting by any account. No modern president has experienced such a sustained rejection by the American public. Bush's approval rating slipped below 50 percent in Washington Post-ABC News polls in January 2005 and has not topped that level in the 30 months since. The last president mired under 50 percent so long was Harry S. Truman. Even Richard M. Nixon did not fall below 50 percent until April 1973, 16 months before he resigned.The polls reflect the events of Bush's second term, an unyielding sequence of bad news. Social Security. Hurricane Katrina. Harriet E. Miers. Dubai Ports World. Vice President Cheney's hunting accident. Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay and Mark Foley. The midterm elections. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Alberto R. Gonzales and Paul D. Wolfowitz. Immigration. And overshadowing it all, the Iraq war, now longer than the U.S. fight in World War II.Since winning reelection 2 1/2 years ago, Bush has had few days of good news, and what few he has had rarely lasted. Purple-fingered Iraqis went to the polls to establish a democracy but elected a dysfunctional government riven by sectarian strife. U.S. forces hunted down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, but the violence only worsened. Saddam Hussein was convicted, but his execution was marred by videotaped taunting. Perhaps the only unalloyed major second-term victory for Bush has been the confirmation of two Supreme Court justices who have begun to move the court to the right.

"I find him serene," (Iraq War advisor, Henry) Kissinger said. "I know President Johnson was railing against his fate. That's not the case with Bush. He feels he's doing what he needs to do, and he seems to me at peace with himself."

Bush has virtually given up on winning converts while in office and instead is counting on vindication after he is dead. "He almost has . . . a sense of fatalism," said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), who recently spent a day traveling with Bush. "All he can do is do his best, and 100 years from now people will decide if he was right or wrong. It doesn't seem to be a false, macho pride or living in your own world. I find him to be amazingly calm."
As Bush heads toward the twilight of his presidency, the White House feels increasingly empty. One after another, aides who have stuck with him are heading out the door. Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff for more than five years, stepped down last year. And now counselor Dan Bartlett, an aide for 14 years, is leaving.Bush seeks solace in his oldest friends from Texas and Yale University, hosting an annual summer picnic and a Christmas party. He invites friends to the White House or the ranch in Crawford. But those experiences are strangely impersonal. "It can be kind of clinical," said a friend who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. "You're in there and in that event it's all very controlled -- you come in for drinks at 7, you have dinner at 7:30 and by 9 you're back at your hotel."

"There isn't any doubt that he is totally and completely aware of all the existing circumstances around him," said a close friend. "There's not anything that he's not aware of -- how he's perceived, how his people are perceived, the problems his people have. He is the furthest thing from oblivious. . . . Somewhere in the back of his mind there's a pretty complete autopsy."

The extended Washington Post profile bears some strong similarities to what is undoubtedly the most important profile of George W. Bush ever written : 'The Accidental Candidate' by Gail Sheedy from October 2000. The Bush in both stories are all but the same, which is bizarre indeed, seeing as the stories are separated by seven years of presidency, the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War.

Some people never change. It may never have been more true than it is for George W. Bush.

Bush : Don't Try And Dictate War Policy To Me

The Al Qaeda In Iraq Reality That Only Exists In Bush's Mind

President Bush took questions from the White House media for an hour, following the devastating report of consistent and neglegent failure from Iraq's Maliki government to successfully meet the 18 benchmarks set down by the Congress, as a condition of increased funding for the war, months ago.

Bush reacted aggressively to some questions. To others he smirked, smiled, giggled, seemingly oblivious to the rising tide of fury, disbelief and dangerous anger spreading through the country, and infesting Capitol Hill.

Don't try and dictate war policy, he told the media, aiming his threat at both the Congress and the journalists stepping over the line between asking questions and making bold statements, some of which examplify the emotions of tens of millions of Americans today.

Congress, Bush said, had no right, and no business, trying to manage the war. Bush consistently, infuriatingly, portrayed the war in Iraq as some kind of showdown with Al Qaeda, even though Republican senators, the CIA, think tanks, serving generals and numerous branches of American intelligence agencies repeatedly state that while Al Qaeda is a dangerous force in Iraq, it is not the primary force of even much of the violence and chaos. But Bush ignores them all. Al Qaeda as the new Nazis is the only hand he has left to play.

The spin is well and truly in :

Hours later, the Democratic-controlled House responded by voting almost totally along party lines to require that the United States withdraw most combat troops from Iraq by April 1.

The 223-to-201 House vote, in which just four Republicans broke with their party, came as the White House continued its intense effort to stem a growing tide of Republican defections on the war. Officials from the White House — beginning with the president himself — have been reaching out to party members all week, trying to persuade them to wait until September to pass judgment on Mr. Bush’s current military strategy of sending more troops to quell the sectarian fighting and pursue insurgents.

The Senate has so far fallen well short of the 60 votes needed to approve a troop withdrawal, but more votes are expected there next week.

At a morning news conference where he released a mixed progress report on his troop buildup, Mr. Bush repeatedly invoked the threat of Al Qaeda as a reason to stick with his strategy, saying the group he referred to as Al Qaeda in Iraq “has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden.”

The president acknowledged that public opinion might be against him — he said that “sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don’t enable you to be loved” — but suggested that Congress was overstepping its constitutional role by trying to force a change of policy on him.

“I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,” Mr. Bush said. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.”

It is the first time since the Vietnam War that the legislative and executive branches have fought so bitterly over the president’s authority as commander in chief. Around the Capitol on Thursday morning, televisions were tuned into the White House news conference, as lawmakers and their aides passed around the White House’s status report on Iraq.

Lawmakers in both parties bristled at the president’s suggestion that Congress was overstepping its role in the war debate.

Mr. Bush wants Congress to wait until September, when the top military commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the top civilian official, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, deliver a fuller assessment of progress of the troop buildup. But the president also said he was not “going to speculate on what my frame of mind will be,” at that time, and he would not say how he might react if the September report is as mixed as the one delivered Thursday.

Mr. Bush himself offered only lukewarm support for Mr. Maliki at Thursday’s news conference, declining to echo the praise he put forth in Jordan last November, when he proclaimed Mr. Maliki “the right guy for Iraq.” Asked if he still felt that way, the president responded, “I believe that he understands that there needs to be serious reconciliation, and they need to get law passed.”

At the news conference, Mr. Bush was asked why — after failing to anticipate the sectarian divisions that would tear the country apart after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government — Americans should believe he has the vision for victory in Iraq. The president responded by appearing to lay blame for mistakes in the war directly on one of his military commanders at the beginning of the war, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who led the invasion more than four years ago.

“Those are all legitimate question that I’m sure historians will analyze,” he said, adding that he had asked at the outset of the war whether his military commanders needed more troops. “My primary question to General Franks was: ‘Do you have what it takes to succeed, and do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein?’ And his answer was, ‘Yeah.’ ”

On how Bush distorts the links between Al Qaeda and the Iraq insurgency, Al Qaeda and the majority of the violence and chaos in Iraq, and Bush claims that Al Qaeda in Iraq were "the same" people who attacked the US on 9/11 :

In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.

But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.

There is no question that the group is one of the most dangerous in Iraq. But Mr. Bush’s critics argue that he has overstated the Qaeda connection in an attempt to exploit the same kinds of post-Sept. 11 emotions that helped him win support for the invasion in the first place.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

“The president wants to play on Al Qaeda because he thinks Americans understand the threat Al Qaeda poses,” said Bruce Riedel, an expert at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a former C.I.A. official. “But I don’t think he demonstrates that fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq precludes Al Qaeda from attacking America here tomorrow. Al Qaeda, both in Iraq and globally, thrives on the American occupation.”

The precise size of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is not known. Estimates are that it may have from a few thousand to 5,000 fighters and perhaps twice as many supporters. While the membership of the group is mostly Iraqi, the role that foreigners play is crucial.

At first, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia received financing from the broader Qaeda organization, American intelligence agencies have concluded. Now, however, the Iraq-based group sustains itself through kidnapping, smuggling and criminal activities and some foreign contributions.

The heated debate over Iraq has spilled over to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as well. Mr. Bush has played up the group, talking about it as if it is on a par with the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks. War critics have often played down the significance of the group despite its gruesome record of suicide attacks and its widely suspected role in destroying a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that set Iraq on the road to civil war.

Mike Carleton : Cowboy President Rides On, But The Mob Is Getting Restless

Bush Press Conference, After The First "Surge Report Shows Dismal Failures Of The Iraq Government : "This Is An Ugly War....It's Affecting Our Psychology..."

US Troops Now Fighting Iraqi Police In East Baghdad - Six Police Killed

GOP Senators Tell Bush To Start Planning For Withdrawals

House Rebuffs Bush Pleas For More Time On Iraq Troop Surge Plans

ChinaConfidential : Are Desperate Republicans Plotting To Force Cheney, Then Bush To Quit The White House?

Crawford, Texas Goes The Way Of Its Most Famous Resident

The Texas town that President Bush is dying like his presidency, slowly, but surely. Quite sad, really. Bush inflicted himself upon Crawford, back in the late 1990s, when Karl Rove decided he needed to be seen pottering about on a 'farm', cutting grass and driving a pick-up.

Bush was good for Crawford for a few years. No doubt some of the locals cleaned up on all that Bush memorabilia, but the last big rush of cashed-up customers the few remaining stores in Crawford saw were the Cindy Sheehan protest crowd.

Crawford might be wishing they'd come back to protest Bush, real soon.

When the Houston Chronicle visited Crawford, they only found one visitor wandering the main street, and he'd been dragged there by his wife :

Shuttered storefronts and eroding retail sales figures show tourism and the Bush memorabilia business are slumping in this once-sleepy farm-and-ranch town of 732 residents.

A for-sale sign is the only thing in the smudged window of the turn-of-the-century, two-story brick building that once housed the Crawford Country Style store. "The numbers just weren't working," said Norma Nelson Crow, who closed the shop at the beginning of the year.

Traffic and sales of shirts, caps, refrigerator magnets and other presidential curios began slowing in 2005, she said. By the summer of 2006, Crow said, her hopes for a turnaround in the business faded. "It was my baby and I loved that little store, but I had to face the facts," she said.

Retail sales figures kept by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts document the slide. In 2004, gross retail sales in Crawford totaled $2.6 million. They fell to $2 million in 2006, down by more than 20 percent.

Nobody is saying things have improved at all this year. "It's pretty slow, slower than last summer," Jamie Burgess, manager of the Red Bull gift shop, said last week.

Only a handful of customers came in during the day to browse her collection of Bush curios and homespun decorative items sold on consignment.

Bill Johnson, owner of the Yellow Rose, Crawford's largest gift shop, said he has been stocking more Texana and Americana items in response to the drop-off in sales of Bush merchandise. "We're changing our mix," Johnson said. "As a business we have to do what we have to do to be successful."

Crawford today is home to a bank, an antique store, two gas stations and some grain silos.

Everyone agrees that 2004 was the high-water mark for Crawford's tourist trade.

"We had a 'Bush 2004' banner across the front of the store, about 11-foot-by-5-foot, white with red lettering," recalled Crow. "People would come in thinking it was Republican headquarters."

Burgess said the president's sagging popularity is at least partly to blame for the slump in visitors. The latest Newsweek poll conducted last month put the president's approval rating at 26 percent, a record low for his presidency.

In Crawford, merchants say they are waiting to see what will happen when Bush's presidency ends 18 months from now.

Burgess said it was "a big disappointment" that Bush is moving toward building his library and museum in Dallas, more than 100 miles away, rather than 18 miles east in Waco.

"We knew this wouldn't last forever, but we expected it would last longer than this," said Burgess....

I will keep troops in Iraq for years to come and thousand more will probably die, but you will think it's a good idea. You will think it's a good idea. You will think it's a good idea....

"Right Now, I Could Kill President Bush"

Not the sort of thing you'd normally expect to hear out of the mouth of a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but then, these are not normal times :

Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams came from Ireland to Texas to declare that President Bush should be impeached.

In a keynote speech at the International Women's Peace Conference on Wednesday night, Ms. Williams told a crowd of about 1,000 that the Bush administration has been treacherous and wrong and acted unconstitutionally.

"Right now, I could kill George Bush," she said at the Adam's Mark Hotel and Conference Center in Dallas. "No, I don't mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that."

About half the crowd gave her a standing ovation after she called for Mr. Bush's removal from power.

"The Muslim world right now is suffering beyond belief," she said.

"Unless the president of the United States is held responsible for what he's doing and what he has done, there's no one in the Muslim world who will forgive him."

When an audience member told Ms. Williams that Vice President Dick Cheney would become president if George Bush were impeached, she said, "Can't you impeach them both?"

"It's twisted. It's all wrong," she said. "There are so many lies being told. It's hard to be an American and go out into the world right now."

Interesting. Betty Williams wants to kill the president, but wants to find a non-violent way of accomplishing her goal.

Williams prefaced her speech with a call for everyone in the audience "to huge everyone around them."

Of course she did.

Williams won the Nobel Prize in 1976 after she formed committees that led to the start of peace talks in Northern Ireland.

Winning the Nobel Peace Prize...does that explain her desire to kill the president, without the use of violence?

The Bush Edit On The Free Press



President Bush made a few edits to a recent speech.

A stupid joke about the new media room in the White House gets the big X.

But the more interesting edit is the second one.

With a scrawl of his pen, President Bush decided that a free press is no longer "one of the cornerstones of our democracy."

So now you know.

When Bush Handed Libby A Get Out Of Jail Free Card : The Inside Story

Clearly the following (excerpted) story from Newsweek doesn't tell the full tale of how and why President Bush came to decide to commute the 30 month jail sentence for convicted perjurist, and former chief of staff for the Vice President, 'Scooter' Libby, but it must come close.

There's a fleet of stories, and no doubt more a few pieces of disinformation, bouncing up against each other over this appalling breach by Bush of the trust he should hold with the American people to abide by, and recognise, the laws and sentences handed down by the nation's courts. He usually does. He pardoned all but a handful of Americans facing the death sentence when he was governor of Texas, and he has been positively frugal in commuting the sentences of other criminals during his time as president.

But Libby, of course was an insider, part of the American elite, a committed NeoCon from the late 1990s Project For The New American Century thinktank, and an alleged Mossad agent.

Libby was also part of the gang that harassed CIA desk jockeys when they could find no proof that Saddam Hussein had a viable weapons of mass destruction program back in 2002, and forced them to come up with something, anything, when there was clearly nothing to be found.

Libby had to be spared. If only for his work on making the War On Iraq into a reality.

The members of the king's court do not go to jail like the common folk. No doubt the fact that Libby might have decided to start singing after a few weeks in jail, to get a shorter sentence, about what Cheney instructed him to do when it came to the leaking of the name of a covert CIA agent, must have factored heavily into the decision-making process of Bush's brain. Or the shared Bush-Cheney-Rove brain.

From Newsweek :

As is often the case in the Bush White House, it was a decision made swiftly, and with stealth.

For weeks, allies of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby had aggressively lobbied the president to pardon Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. Libby's powerful supporters—including major GOP fund-raisers like Florida developer Melvin Sembler, the chairman of his legal-defense trust—argued that Libby's conviction in March in the CIA leak case was a miscarriage of justice. Libby's allies pressed their argument with White House aides but got nowhere. George W. Bush's senior staff was under strict instructions: listen politely, but give away nothing about what the president might ultimately do.

Behind the scenes, Bush was intensely focused on the matter, say two White House advisers who were briefed on the deliberations, but who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters.

Bush asked Fred Fielding, his discreet White House counsel, to collect information on the case.

Fielding, anticipating the Libby issue would be on his plate, had been gathering material for some time, including key trial transcripts.

Uncharacteristically, Bush himself delved into the details. He was especially keen to know if there was compelling evidence that might contradict the jury's verdict that Libby had lied to a federal grand jury about when—and from whom—he learned the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, wife of Iraq War critic Joe Wilson.

But Fielding...reluctantly concluded that the jury had reached a reasonable verdict: the evidence was strong that Libby testified falsely about his role in the leak.

The president was conflicted. He hated the idea that a loyal aide would serve time. Hanging over his deliberations was Cheney, who had said he was "very disappointed" with the jury's verdict.

Cheney did not directly weigh in with Fielding, but nobody involved had any doubt where he stood.

"I'm not sure Bush had a choice," says one of the advisers. "If he didn't act, it would have caused a fracture with the vice president."

Bush didn't have a choice? So who is the real Decider In Chief then?

Cheney, of course. Bush is allowed to think he s making the decisions for himself, but Cheney and Rove manipulate him, with rare skill. When Bush gets suspicious, or reads for himself that Cheney and Rove are pulling his strings, such suspicions can be written off as nasty disinformation tactics by the Democrats.

But did Bush have a much more sly, Karl Rove-conspired, reason for commuting Libby's jail time, but keeping the conviction?

In part, Bush may have stopped short of a full pardon precisely to keep Libby and other White House aides away from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Investigators in Congress are eager to call Libby to testify about the Plame case and prewar Iraq intel—an invitation Libby can continue to resist by claiming he can't talk as long as his appeal remains alive in the courts.

The White House has used the same line to shield itself from questions about the case.

They sure have.

No doubt Libby's appeals will not be completed, or resolved, after well after President Bush leaves office in January, 2009.

And then, well, the Democrats will be in charge of the White House, and nobody is likely to care all too much about 'Scooter' Libby, or Karl Rove, or President Bush, by then.

The Bush Briefs


President Bush has celebrated his 61st birthday, but few noticed. Bush took in a Chicago Cubs game and caught up with his twin daughters, and some golfer buddies, back at the White House, before heading to Camp David. The 387th day Bush has spent there during his presidency.


Bush is amazed to be 61, "60 is old!" He may have the heart rate and health of an athlete, but he bears the face of a much older man.


Will the president enter the last year of his presidency fronting a trade war against China? A growing number of financial experts and economic analysts think so. The Chinese save their money, the Americans spend all their money and more, thanks to the credit they get from China. But China is starting to sell American debt. It looks bound to get ugly.


Republican Party stalwarts and conservative senators continue to desert President Bush over the Iraq War. Two more have joined the resistance.


Why has President Bush given an obscure government office stunning new powers to control regulation over the environment and worker health and safety? Because he can.


How low can Bush go in the polls? He's now at 30% job approval rating. But he's unlikely to sink much lower. 30% represents the absolute die-hard Republican Party support base. Unless, of course, he really starts to piss all them off as well.


An editorial from the Daily Star argues that President Bush's "duplicitous nature" has reduced the war on terror to a battle between moderate and extremist Muslims. Why did Bush so enthusiastically support democratic elections in Palestine and yet deny the results of democracy when Hamas won the majority vote? Many in the Middle East, and particularly Palestine, are still wondering.


Paul Krugman in the New York Times argues that the 'Bushies' like starting fights, but don't pay any of the costs. In Bush world, says Krugman, it's only the little people who are made to make all the sacrifices. Well, what does Krugman expect, the Bush's are, after all, the closest thing America has to a royal family.


American conservatives were very excited when France elected a right-wing president recently. They might not be so excited to learn that a key official in the Sarkosky cabinet, Christine Boutin, the minister for housing and urban development, has been raising questions about whether the Bush administration were involved, as in involved, in the 9/11 terror attacks.


Has President Bush been abusing his Executive Privilege during his seven years in the White House? But of course. However, the Democratic-heavy Congress is now moving to curtail the president's "campaign to trample all legal and constitutional restraints on his power".


President's Bush Independence Day speech, before US service men and women, has stirred all sorts of controversy, and we'll come back to it in a future post, but this CBS News columnist calls it "incredible"....but not in a good way. Bizarrely, Bush stated in his the Independence Day speech that he actually believes there is still a military victory to be found in the Iraq War. Yes, really.

Impeach! Impeach! Impeach!

Almost Half Of All Americans Favor Impeachment Of Bush And Cheney

A new poll reveals at least 45 percent of Americans support the impeachment of President Bush. But when it comes to Vice President Cheney, the numbers rises to 54 percent in favor :

The White House declined to comment on the poll, the latest bad news for a president who has seen his public opinion standings dragged to record lows by the unpopular war in Iraq.

The US Constitution says presidents and vice presidents can be impeached -- that is, formally charged by the House -- for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors" by a simple majority vote.

Conviction by the Senate, which requires a two-thirds majority, means removal from office.

Just two US presidents have been impeached: Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 and acquitted in 1999; Andrew Johnson was impeached and acquitted in 1868. Disgraced president Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 when a House impeachment vote appeared likely.

An impeachment resolution is before the House, and has nine co-sponsors, so far. But Democratic leaders, including Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who allowed her grassroots activists to drum up 'unofficial' support for impeachment of the president during last year's mid-term elections, is now opposed to impeachment proceedings going ahead.

Iraq War Like American Revolutionary War, Says Bush

For the third year in a row, President Bush has tried to draw parallels between American forces fighting in Iraq, and the American War of Independence that ended British rule over the then New World colonies.

As with previous years, the spin failed to connect with most Americans, hundreds of whom were openly hostile on radio talk back and online news comment boards about Bush's speech, and took offense at such a rationale for American troops to stay fighting such a deeply unpopular war :

Reading aloud from an article about the first Fourth of July celebration, in Philadelphia in 1777, and its “grand exhibition of fireworks,” Mr. Bush told the audience of Air National Guard members and their families at the base here, “Our first Independence Day celebration took place in a midst of a war — a bloody and difficult struggle that would not end for six more years before America finally secured her freedom.”

Addressing National Guard members with the 167th Airlift Wing who were gathered in a cavernous airplane hangar here, he said, “Like those early patriots, you’re fighting a new and unprecedented war — pledging your lives and honor to defend our freedom and way of life.”

After nearly six years of war, beginning with the war in Afghanistan, such Fourth of July speeches have become routine for Mr. Bush. On Independence Day last year, Mr. Bush went to Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, to argue against Democratic calls to withdraw from Iraq.

Then, with Congress in Republican hands and no real attempts by it to force a withdrawal legislatively, his argument seemed tailored for that year’s Congressional elections above anything else. Now, with Congress under the control of Democrats, many of whom won with promises to force an end to the war, the threat to his plans from Congress is real.

Mr. Bush said if the United States were to leave Iraq now, Al Qaeda “would be able to establish their safe haven from which to do two things: to further spread their ideology and to plan and plot attacks against the United States.”

Victory, he said, “will require more patience, more courage, and more sacrifice.”

As usual, President Bush was unprepared to disclose to Americans how much more patience and sacrifice would be required, now that the Iraq War, which was originally to have ended with the deposing of Saddam Hussein and the securing of the non-existent WMD, has cost the country more than $500 billion and the lives of almost 3600 American service men and women.

There would be no sacrifice on the president's part, however, or on the part of the vast majority of the senators who continue to back continued involvement in the Iraq War. They continue to live in a realm of privilege, luxury and elitism increasingly distant and removed from the vast majority of the American people.

Bush told the audience of service men and women that he was going back to the White House for July 4 celebrations. His wife Laura couldn't be with them all, but she "sends her love - she would be with me, but I told her to fire up the grill."

The silence from the crowd at this line was almost deafening.

Bush Capital Runs Out



After he won the 2004 election, President Bush boasted, credibly, "I have political capital and I intend to spend it."

But what has he spent it on? The Iraq War remains a disaster, sucking up more a billion dollars a day. The US, and NATO, appear to be sinking quickly into the kind of prolonged, demoralising and civilian heavy conflict that helped destroy the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Compassionate conservatism lies rotting in the sun as a political theory, and practicality. His cherished Immigration bill is gone, it being the last grand policy of his presidency. The Bush dream of using democracy to supposedly bring freedom to people crushed by dictatorships, cruel regimes and despots has failed, monumentally, and sadly.

His political capital has all been spent, the US Treasury is growing chillingly bare, and tens of millions of American people are sinking under horrendous levels of personal debt, as they watch the value of their homes, for many their only real asset, blow away like dust on the wind.

It's a shocking state of affairs for the leader of the free world, and even the most optimistic of right wing American columnists and opinion makers see nothing between now and the end of the Bush presidency, that will transform any of these monumental failures back into gold.

Or even capital.

Bush is being steadily, systematically, abandoned by his own party. Bush is the Titanic, but the passengers can see the iceberg, and they're getting off now.

From the New York Times :

After a string of Republican defections this week — on Iraq, immigration and domestic eavesdropping — President Bush enters the final 18 months of his presidency in danger of losing control over a party that once marched in lockstep with him.

First, two prominent Republican senators broke with the president on Iraq. Then, Mr. Bush’s party abandoned him in droves on the immigration bill, sending the measure to its death in the Senate, despite the president’s fervent lobbying for it.

And when Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to issue subpoenas to the White House for documents related to its domestic eavesdropping program, three Republicans, including a longtime loyalist, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, joined them, and another three did not take a position.

With the nation turning its attention to who will succeed Mr. Bush — and Republican presidential candidates increasingly distancing themselves from him — even allies say it could become increasingly difficult for the president to assert himself over his party, much less force the Democratic majority in Congress to bend to his will.

...for a president who once had almost absolute control over his own party and a proclivity to employ his power expansively if not audaciously, the last week was a reminder of how much things have changed. Republicans who came to office brimming with optimism just a few short years ago now sound as if they fear a long slog ahead.

....Republican support for Mr. Bush (is) dwindling across the party spectrum. Among moderate and liberal Republicans, 52 percent currently approve of Mr. Bush’s job performance, down from 63 percent in April, he said. Among conservatives, his job approval stood at 74 percent this month, down from 86 percent in April.

With 2008 looking like a tough year for Republicans, Mr. Jillson said lawmakers would look back to their districts, rather than to Washington and the White House, for guidance on how to vote. That was abundantly clear on immigration, when even Mr. Bush’s closest Republican allies — including two Texans, Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison — openly opposed him.

“When John Cornyn defects from the president,” Mr. Jillson said, “you know the president’s mojo is completely gone.”

For Republicans who want to want to keep their seats in Congress, and for those who think they've still got a chance at winning the White House in 2008, pulling as far away from Bush as possible is now seen as a good, and solid, strategy.

Nearly all the Republican presidential candidates in recent debates did not not even mention their president. It was as though they feared that even saying the word "Bush" out loud would cast them immediately into a poll dungeon.

Bush is on his way to becoming the invisible president.


The Policies That Now Lie Buried With Bush

Bush Showing All Of His 61 Years, Despite The Bike Rides

Most Americans See Bush-Cheney Regime As Absolute Disaster

You Go To Jail, Bush Co. Boys Don't

And The President Said, "Be Free"

Bush Commutes Sentence For "The Most Insidious Of Traitors"

Cannot understand why so many Americans are so cynical about Bush Co. and Washington and the laws that govern their nation.

If you're the president and you cannot keep one of your operatives out of jail, then what's the point of being president?

Sure 'Scooter' Libby was an odious fucking traitor, and yes he was sentenced to 30 months jail, but he was once a key member of Dick Cheney's staff, goddammit, and he took a fall to protect the office of the Vice President and the White House. The FBI and a grand jury wanted to get to the truth, and Libby's lies stopped that from happening.

Surely you didn't really think he was going to spend two and a half years in jail for doing what the White House needed him to do?

And yes, it is true, that there are hundreds of thousands of Americans in jail for smoking joints when they had previously been busted a few times before for smoking joints, but this has nothing to do with ordinary people.

Bush Co. looks after its own. And when one of their own takes a fall for Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, well, then they really get looked after.

A short recap :

Mr. Libby was convicted of lying to federal agents investigating the leak of the name of a covert C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. Mrs. Wilson's husband, Joseph Wilson, was asked to investigate a central claim in Mr. Bush's drive to war with Iraq whether Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Africa. Mr. Wilson concluded that Iraq had not done that and had the temerity to share those conclusions with the American public.

It seems clear from the record that Vice President Dick Cheney organized a campaign to discredit Mr. Wilson. And Mr. Libby, who was Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, was willing to lie to protect his boss.

'Scooter' Libby obstructed justice. Libby lied to both the FBI and a grand jury to hide the truth, and to protect his bosses. He was sentenced to 30 months jail for his crimes. President Bush has now commuted the sentence, and will surely grant Libby a full pardon in the last weeks of his presidency.

A statement from Bush :

Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting…

Be in no doubt about what has happened here. President Bush decided that the sentence was too harsh, and so he got rid of it.

It's almost cliched to say it, but it remains true : there is one rule of law for them, and another rule of law for you. You go to jail for breaking the law, they don't.

Here's what Bush father, George HW Bush thinks of traitors to the nation like Libby :

“I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”

To help cope with all the expressions of support from the American people for the Bush decision to override justice, the White House turned off their phone lines.

A statement from the office of the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald :

It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.

Although the President’s decision eliminates Mr. Libby’s sentence of imprisonment, Mr. Libby remains convicted by a jury of serious felonies, and we will continue to seek to preserve those convictions through the appeals process.

More from Crooks And Liars here and here.

A good summary of the events, and Bush's full statement, from Raw Story.

An extremely thorough round-up of comments from American senators from Think Progress.

The New York Times knows exactly what Bush's intervention was for - to stop Libby spilling his guts once he was in jail :

Mr. Bush's assertion that he respected the verdict but considered the sentence excessive only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it's committed by common folk. As governor of Texas, he was infamous for joking about the impending execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row. As president, he has repeatedly put himself and his team, especially Mr. Cheney, above the law.

Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

This will be an extremely unpopular decision with the American people. Various polls have shown that 70-80% of Americans believe Libby should serve his full sentence, and not be pardoned.

But what the fuck do they know? They're just the American people.

This is Bush Co. And don't you ever forget it.


Raw Story : Scooter Libby Gets Out Of Jail Free - The Full Statement From Bush

Hilary Clinton : "Cronyism And Ideology Trump Competence And Justice"

More Reactions From American Senators And Presidential Candidates

Americans 3 To 1 Against A Libby Pardon

"Bring Them On" Four Years Later

Bush publicly apologised for inviting Iraqi insurgents to take their best shot against American troops, but his words refuse to die. Out of all the off-message, inciting and repellent things the president has said throughout the years of this war, he has never been able to live this July 2, 2003, quote down :

There are some who feel like -- that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on.

He can't live it down for one good reason. The slaughter of American troops since that invitation has been appalling, more than 3300 in total.

Churchill will be remembered for "We'll fight them on the beaches..." Bush will probably be remembered for "Bring Them On."

(Tip o' the hat to Daily Kos)

Bush And Winston Churchill : The Only Thing They Have In Common Is The 'W'

It's no exaggeration to state that President Bush is all but obsessed with how history will view his presidency, but more importantly, how historians will write him up, in his words, as "a war fighting president."

He admires Winston Churchill, who used the power of a good speech and the then current media monolith that was radio, to rally a nation not only into fighting in Europe in World War 2, but fighting back on the homefront when it seemed, under the onslaught of Hitler's air raids and rocket attacks, that all hope was lost.

Bush did make some good speeches before the Iraq War, and in the first few weeks, as lose with the truth as they were, and he can be credited with rallying the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but the world, and history, is far more cynical today than it was in Churchill's days.

Even if the Iraq War ended tomorrow, with a democratically elected government in place that could provide security for the people and open up the country to global trade and new money,
many historians will pound Bush for dragging the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and Japan, primarily, into such a deeply unpopular, and civilian-death heavy, war.

He will not be remembered as fondly, or as vitally, as his hero. Bush will go down in history as a reckless troublemaker, who ignored the will of the world, at large, and threw hand grenades into the already churning chaos of the Middle East.

A column from the Washington Post argues that the debate and discussion should not be about drawing parallels between Bush and Churchill, but between Bush and Churchill's predecessor as British PM, the now nefariously, notoriously viewed "Hitler appeaser" Neville Chamberlain :

The president admires the wartime British prime minister so much that he keeps what he calls "a stern-looking bust" of Churchill in the Oval Office. "He watches my every move," Bush jokes. These days, Churchill would probably not care for much of what he sees.

I've spent a great deal of time thinking about Churchill while working on my book "Troublesome Young Men," a history of the small group of Conservative members of Parliament who defied British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler, forced Chamberlain to resign in May 1940 and helped make Churchill his successor.

...I think Bush's hero would be bemused, to say the least, by the president's wrapping himself in the Churchillian cloak. Indeed, the more you understand the historical record, the more the parallels leap out -- but they're between Bush and Chamberlain, not Bush and Churchill.

Like Bush and unlike Churchill, Chamberlain came to office with almost no understanding of foreign affairs or experience in dealing with international leaders. Nonetheless, he was convinced that he alone could bring Hitler and Benito Mussolini to heel. He surrounded himself with like-minded advisers and refused to heed anyone who told him otherwise.

In the months leading up to World War II, Chamberlain and his men saw little need to build up a strong coalition of European allies with which to confront Nazi Germany -- ignoring appeals from Churchill and others to fashion a "Grand Alliance" of nations to thwart the threat that Hitler posed to the continent.

Unlike Bush and Chamberlain, Churchill was never in favor of his country going it alone. Throughout the 1930s, while urging Britain to rearm, he also strongly supported using the newborn League of Nations -- the forerunner to today's United Nations -- to provide one-for-all-and-all-for-one security to smaller countries. After the League failed to stop fascism's march, Churchill was adamant that, to beat Hitler, Britain must form a true partnership with France and even reach agreement with the despised Soviet Union, neither of which Chamberlain was willing to do.

Like Bush, Chamberlain also laid claim to unprecedented executive authority, evading the checks and balances that are supposed to constrain the office of prime minister.

...Churchill almost certainly would look askance at the Bush administration's years-long campaign to shut down public debate over the "war on terror" and the conflict in Iraq -- tactics markedly similar to Chamberlain's attempts to quiet his opponents.

Like Bush and his aides, Chamberlain badgered and intimidated the press, restricted journalists' access to sources and claimed that anyone who dared criticize the government was guilty of disloyalty and damaging the national interest. Just as Bush has done, Chamberlain authorized the wiretapping of citizens without court authorization; Churchill was among those whose phones were tapped by the prime minister's subordinates.

Churchill, by contrast, believed firmly in the sanctity of individual liberties and the need to protect them from government encroachment.

The president no doubt has his own Churchill. "He was resolute," Bush has remarked. "He was tough. He knew what he believed." But Churchill would snort, I believe, at the administration's equation of "Islamofascism," an amorphous, ill-defined movement of killers forced to resort to terrorism by their lack of military might, to Nazi Germany, a global power that had already conquered several countries before Churchill took office in 1940. Still, key members of the Bush administration have compared critics of the wars on terrorism and in Iraq to the appeasers of the 1930s, thus implicitly equating their boss and themselves to Churchill and the "troublesome young men" who helped bring him to power. During bleak days in Iraq, the administration's hawks can be forgiven for hoping that history will show them to be as far-sighted about a gathering storm as Churchill was in the 1930s.

But history has its own ways, and we cannot make the long-dead titans we admire give us their modern blessing. As the world's two most prominent and powerful democracies, the United States and Britain had a responsibility to serve as exemplars of democracy for the rest of the world, Churchill believed. But to be fitting role models, he argued, both countries had to do their best to ensure that the "title deeds of freedom" were strongly safeguarded within their own boundaries. "Let us preach what we practice," he declared in his 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Mo. "But let us also practice what we preach."

Clinton Slams Bush "Culture Of Cronyism, Corruption And Incompetence"

But Then Her Words Go Missing

Hilary Clinton gave a speech yesterday where she cut loose on the Bush administration and told some very harsh truths. She said if she wins the 2008 presidential elections, a"clean sweep" would need to be made of the White House, to get rid of the institutionalised cronyism and corruption :

"After eight years of the Bush administration, we are going to be shocked by what we find," the New York senator and former first lady said. "Somebody said to me the other day if there was ever a time for a woman president it's now because we're going to have to do a lot of cleaning."

The women, many of who brought their daughters to the $100 per plate "Women for Hillary" breakfast, applauded wildly.

"Grab your buckets, grab your brooms," Clinton said. "We're going to have to do a clean sweep because there has been a culture of cronyism, corruption and incompetence."

At least, that's how the Associated Press wire story appeared on the Forbes site.

Somebody at the Huffington Post liked the line "there has been a culture of cronyism, corruption and incompetence" so much they used it as a headline :

Clinton Rails Against Bush "Culture Of Cronyism, Corruption And Incompetence"

But when you clicked the link you were taken to an updated version of the same Associated Press story that did not contain the killer Clinton quotes that appeared in the earlier version posted on the Forbes site. The very quotes that caused her audience to "applaud wildly." But the rest of the AP text remained, virtually unaltered.

Did Hilary say something she wasn't supposed to? Did she cross 'the line'?

Why did AP decide to issue a second version of the story, a few minutes after the first - the one that appeared on the Forbes site - with the Clinton comments cut?

Searching the line "there has been a culture of cronyism, corruption and incompetence" on Google News brings up a link to the Washington Post. But the Post also ran the version of the AP story that had cut the Clinton quotes. As did a number of other media sites carrying the AP story.

By the time you read this, the Washington Post may have already updated their story to the version which includes the Clinton quotes about Bush Co. "cronyism, corruption and incompetence", as the Google News search results says it should be there.

Then again, maybe they won't.

Bush doesn't need to enforce censorship on the media, they are censoring themselves, particularly when someone as high profile as Hilary Clinton gets too close to telling the truth about what has been happening in the White House over the past eight years.

Bush Co. Told To Come Clean On Spying On Americans

Subpoenas Target White House, Cheney

The Democrats have so far failed to deliver on their pre-midterm election promises of bringing US troops home from Iraq.

Which is perhaps one of the key reasons why they're now going after Bush Co. so hard on the still controversial wiretapping and general Spying On Americans programs, covertly launched by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks.

The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday issued subpoenas to Dick Cheney's officer, the Justice Department and the White House. The committee's chairman Patrick J. Leahy said Bush Co.'s refusal to hand over documents as requested was "stonewalling of the worst kind." Obviously not to be confused with "stonewalling of the best kind."

The White House has now invoked "executive privilege", for only the second time, to try and avoid handing over the paper and electronic documents.

Senate Democrats are heading towards a showdown with Bush Co. and it's likely to come within the next three weeks. The deadline to hand over the subpoenaed documents is July 18.

I can already hear the excuses : "Rove ate the papers."

The subpoenas are apparently to access documents that :

...could shed light on the legal basis used by the administration to justify the wiretapping, as well as on disputes within the government over its legality.

In addition, the panel is seeking materials on issues related to the wiretapping, including those concerning the relationship between the Bush administration and several unidentified telecommunications companies that aided the N.S.A. eavesdropping program.

The panel’s action was the most aggressive move yet by lawmakers to investigate the N.S.A. program since the Democrats gained control of Congress this year.

No response yet from Cheney's office, the White House of the Justice Department on whether or not they will co-operate. But Bush's spokesman Tony Snow said it was "unfortunate" that Senate Democrats chose to go for a confrontational approach over this issue.

Well, yeah. Because asking nicely got them absolutely nowhere.

It's hilarious to hear Snow, on behalf of the White House, complaining about politicians acting in a "confrontational" manner. Unlike Vice President Cheney, of course, who is also sweet and mild and is always willing to help judiciaries with their investigations and always says "please" and "thank you" and...oh yeah, "fuck you" and "fuck off."

More on this from the New York Times :

....the White House had largely been able to fend off aggressive oversight of the N.S.A. wiretapping program since it was first disclosed in December 2005. The Republican-controlled Congress held a series of hearings last year, and even considered several legislative proposals to curb the scope of the eavesdropping. But Mr. Cheney repeatedly pressured Republican Congressional leaders to pull back without forcing the administration’s hand.

When the Democrats won the 2006 midterm elections, many political analysts predicted that the N.S.A. program — which a federal judge declared unconstitutional — would be one of the first Bush administration operations to undergo new scrutiny. But in January, administration officials announced that it was placing the program under the legal framework of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a move it had previously refused to consider.

The wiretapping is just one of several legal issues on which Congress and the administration are squaring off. For example, the White House is under pressure to respond to subpoenas issued two weeks ago by the House and Senate judiciary committees for witnesses and documents related to the dismissal of federal prosecutors. Thursday is the deadline for the White House to turn over documents linked to Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel and Sara M. Taylor, the former political director.

If the White House fails to produce the material, the House and Senate could begin a process leading to contempt resolutions to force compliance. Meanwhile, Mr. Cheney is in a separate standoff with Congress and the National Archive over his office’s refusal to follow an executive order concerning the handling of classified documents by his office.

The Washington Post claims that lawmakers only want to "understand and reconstruct" the timeline and detail of the ongoing debate within the Bush administration over the legality of the wiretapping and Spying On Americans programs :

The White House offered no word on whether it will turn over the documents by the July 18 deadline. "We're aware of the committee's action, and will respond appropriately," spokesman Tony Fratto said. "It's unfortunate that congressional Democrats continue to choose the route of confrontation."

Bush secretly launched the eavesdropping program after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to Bush's eventual public description, the program allowed monitoring without a warrant of telephone calls, e-mails and other communication into or out of the Unitd States when one of the parties was suspected of terrorist ties.

The existence of the classified program was revealed in media reports in December 2005, angering lawmakers who called the program an infringement of civil liberties. The Bush administration has defended it as crucial to protecting the nation from further attacks.

Congressional interest in the program was stoked by testimony last month by former deputy attorney general James B. Comey that in 2004, Gonzales, then White House counsel, tried to pressure then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft to recertify a controversial part of the program while Ashcroft was recovering from gallbladder surgery.

Ashcroft refused to abandon his objections, which have not been disclosed, and the White House initially recertified the part of the program at issue without obtaining a routine affirmation of its legality from the Justice Department. Bush backed down, however, when Ashcroft, Comey and other Justice officials threatened to resign, and some changes were made to obtain the Justice Department's approval.

"After we learned from Jim Comey about the late-night hospital visit to John Ashcroft's bedside, it was even more imperative that we find out the who, what, how and why surrounding the wiretapping of Americans without warrants," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

But it's not the Dems who are going for Bush Co.'s collective throat over the deeply unpopular Spying On Americans programs. Republicans are getting in on the action as well :

"The bipartisan support for issuing these subpoenas demonstrates that both Democrats and Republicans are fed up with the misleading statements from the attorney general and the administration about this illegal program," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a member of the committee.

Fun times.


White House Rejects Subpoenas, Invokes Executive Privilege

Bush Told He Must Explain Why Invoking Executive Privilege Is Justified