Slow, inexorable slide to failure

30 Die in Iraq:

One day after Mr. Maliki predicted that American and British troops would be able to withdraw from all but two provinces by the year's end, Bush administration officials repeatedly tried Tuesday to tamp down expectations that major troop withdrawals could occur quickly.
...
"You can't do it too fast," General Ham said. "We've talked some about rushing to failure, and we've got to be very careful to not do that."

Yes, it gives me great joy (oh, joy!) to see their failure dragged out. Besides, we haven't had enough carnage, yet.

They can do that!?!

Searching the Congressman's Office:

In the Jefferson case, prosecutors reported that they had already videotaped the congressman bagging a $100,000 bribe and had traced most of the money to a food freezer during a search of his home. It remains to be seen what additional evidence they were searching for in a raid so unnerving to Congress. Federal agents insist that they had "filter" specialists on hand to make sure that sensitive official documents were not compromised.
...
The House Republican majority leader, John Boehner, denounced the search as an "invasion" by the executive branch that might very well have to be protested to the Supreme Court. Short of that, however, Congressional leaders — who have been all too lackadaisical in policing corruption on their own — would be wise to work out some ground rules with the Justice Department. Otherwise, they risk further embarrassment as the anticorruption investigations proceed.

Well, well, a little worried are we? All of a sudden we see a Republican criticise the treatment of a corrupt Democrat by the authorities.

Democracy in Iraq.. finally?

Paul McGeough has always had a fair amount of success in making correct calls on Iraq.

He lists three important areas of responsibility, which have yet to be sorted out, as a portent to the future.

Saddam was worse

Iraq War photos.

I wouldn't recommend for anyone to look at the pics at that link. I started and still feel sick to my stomache (it feels like I am very nervous). Judging by their salivating and support of this war, I'd suggest that the hate-filled war supporters will be filled with pride at the results of the invasion, as shown in these pics.

I've placed the link more as an exercise in documenting the destruction brought about by some extremely poor decisions on the part of our elected leaders.

We elected them. This is the result. If/when the time comes, we should have another look at the pics before accepting our pennance.

Old dog, old tricks

So, Ray McGovern manages to make Rumsfeld look like a fool and a liar, then the swift boats attack! Figures. Though I'm sure McGovern knows a trick, or two.

Kurt Nimmo explains why those Neo-cons on the "he's a Commie dupe!", smear angle are a bunch of hypocritical nutjobs:

It is really quite strange to witness former (and in the case of Schwartz, apparently active) Trotskyites slamming Ray McGovern—a former CIA employee who presented morning intelligence briefings at the White House for years—as a commie dupe. McGovern is a distinguished military graduate who served in the US Army from 1962-64 as an intelligence officer, while most if not virtually all of the Straussian neocons are chicken hawks and military service shirkers (recall Cheney had “other priorities” during Vietnam and Rush Limbaugh skipped out due to a pilonidal cyst, an appropriate malady considering his vile personality).

The conservatives are certainly turning on their own. Time for a purge, ay comrades?

The Lying Rodent is going down with the ship

Howard heckled in Washington:

Construction worker Jay Marx, 36, repeatedly shouted "John Howard, get out of Iraq. The Bush administration is a sinking ship" as Howard spoke to waiting Australian journalists outside Blair House, the official residence where he and his wife Janette are guests of US President George W Bush.
...

"Okay, he (Howard) didn't start the war but he supported it from the get-go. So I think anyone who is sending troops is culpable. If no-one but the United States had troops in Iraq, then the facade of international cooperation would end."

Good stuff. I love freedom of speech.

It'd be great to see footage of this. But I doubt Howard's visit would rate the effort to haul a camera crew around.

BTW - 'Marine One'? You wankers.

A polite rebuttal

Roy Edroso! You rude man!

F*ck, he's a funny c*nt.

PJK: Mythbuster

Ken Parish, after watching the Great One (that'd be Keating to you non-believers) on last night's 7:30 Report, reckons he should be drafted back in to the Labor party in order to kick some Liberals-are-supreme-economic-managers-myth butt.

Though I agree with his reasons for, I don't agree with the idea.

Keating can do as much damage to the Libs by popping up in the media, as he has been doing. What the Labor party could do is associate themselves with him (and Hawke) a little more. Instead of attempting to distance themselves from his legacy, demonstrate a bit of pride and when they do it, point out why.

Sure, Labor could do this with Keating back in the fold, but he'd turn off plenty of folk, too. Labor need the legacy, not the man.

A cock-eyed idealist, with unbridled enthusiasm

This one one received my vote for the most outrageous quote of the week:

"Smear merchants never prosper" - Bill O'Reilly, The O'Reilly Factor, 5/5/06.

Oh, the hypocrisy!

Clayton's martyr

Al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui shouted "America, you lost, I won," and clapped his hands after a jury in a Virginia court rejected a death sentence against him over the September 11 attacks in the United States.

The jury ordered life in prison without the chance of parole for Moussaoui...

Yeah, sure, life in prison, a big win.

Initially, the guy wanted to be executed, his attorney's then suggested he was nuts and it seems the jury may agree, to a certain point, but have still locked him up for good.

What a circus.

The drunken warmonger pretext

Juan Cole - Christopher Hitchens owes me a big apology:

The precise reason for Hitchens' theft and publication of my private mail is that I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel's Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people.

But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.

Great post (rant). Worth a read.

Traitorous traits of a traitor

Scott Ritter on Iran and the Return of a Draft:

Scott Ritter: I was supposed to address the International Foreign Correspondents Association, and we delayed it so that we could see Colin Powell's presentation. And I watched it, and without even having to sit down [and research it], I just went up and gave a presentation that debunked Colin Powell point by point by point. And I thought for sure that the world would see through this thing, but you read the editorials the next day, and it's all "brilliant," "slam dunk," "home run." It's an embarrassment.

CD: Do you think the media bears a lot of the burden for the invasion of Iraq?

SR: I think they're culpable. And Judith Miller, Bob Woodward, and others represent the worst manifestation of the disease that affects the media. One of the big problems with the media, especially the Washington, D.C. aspect of it, is you become addicted to your sources of information. In Washington, D.C., the sources are government, so you pretty much become an extension of the government. So nobody is willing to trade their access in exchange for telling the truth. Now [sometimes] the government is so egregious in what it does that the media has no choice [but to report the truth]. But as we saw with Iraq, the media made no effort to credibly go after the Bush administration's case. And in the case of the New York Times, the newspaper of record, you have the media allowing this woman, Judy Miller, to write front-page stories that were dictated to her by the White House? The violation of journalistic ethics also extended not just to her, but the whole New York Times that allowed her to do this without challenging her. The New York Times became basically a cheerleader for war. CNN was a cheerleader for war. Every news service was a cheerleader for war.

Ritter's opinions on Iraq are always worth taking note of and I believe it is worth supporting his position, considering the hammering he received when the warmongers were screaming for Iraqi blood in the lead up to the invasion.

Incidentally, Ritter doesn't see a draft coming, he suggests that in the event that the U.S Military is overly stressed, Nuclear weapons will be utilised.

Does Father Fitzmas exist?

truthout has the good goss on the turdbloss-om:

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, was informed via a target letter that Fitzgerald is prepared to charge Rove for perjury and lying to investigators during Rove’s appearances before the grand jury in 2004 and in interviews with investigators in 2003 when he was asked how and when he discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA, and whether he shared that information with the media.

We've been waiting a long time for this, with a few false starts and an egg or two being counted as a chicken. Now, apparently, Fitz has built it and the game is ready to begin.

It will happen (please, their god, please).

Via Shakespeare's Sister.

Snake like, turns and bites the holder

From the Crikey email:

P.P. McGuinness, editor of Quadrant, writes:
Guy Rundle is very quick to try and smear Quadrant. Even if once upon a time Quadrant did in some way receive CIA funding, at least the CIA was the agent of a democratic government working for political liberty, whatever its faults. Arena in its early days, and other publications of the Communist Left, were receiving subsidies from the Soviet dictatorship. We accept Australia Council money to assist in publishing Australian creative writing, and to be able to employ (on derisorily low pay) as our literary editor Australia's greatest living poet, Les Murray. Let those without sin cast the stones. They do not include the propagandists of the Left.

Whatever its faults.. *cough*