For those who have not noticed, the Global War on Terror has morphed into what is now being labeled as "The Long War".
Soon after the neo-cons got their "Pearl Harbor", former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Americans what to expect. "Forget about 'exit strategies, we're looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines."
Donald Rumsfeld is today a discredited and widely reviled figure. Robert Gates, Rumsfeld's successor as Defense secretary, is generally admired for manifesting qualities that Rumsfeld lacked -- a willingness to listen not least among them. Yet on one crucial point, the two see eye to eye: Both believe that the United States has no alternative but to wage a global war likely to last decades.
Speaking at West Point in April of this year, Gates, echoed his predecessor's assessment. "There are no exit strategies." Gates described a "generational campaign" entailing "many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world."
Fellow F.O.O., no wonder I had such a $hitacular day today at work; Groucho Marx died on this date in 1977! Anytime we lose a source of laughter, the world becomes all the more depressing. If you haven't seen Duck Soup yet, you really should. Some of the songs are a little corny, but it's damn funny!
I'm also taking nominations for what flavor the infamous Senator McCentury cone of silence should be. You can never get enough chocolate for me, so I'm all for that - maybe with a scoop of coffee! Yummers!
Enough with the goofy intros! Let's count down with Countdown!
"It's 1938 and Iran is Germany" (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787766.html). Thus spoke Likud boss Benjamin Netanyahu, with a degree of hawkish-ness that most other civilized world leaders dare not attain to. Yet the war-hungry, bloodthirsty Netanyahu is not exactly more than a standard deviation away from the mean on the hawk scale. In fact, we are now living in the age of the warhawk.
I watched No End in Sight again the other day. And the part that angered me the most this time through was the realization of how long Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Powell, and Armitage have been influencing policy. So I did a quick audit of some of the Bush Administration's top Cabinet members and officials. Most of this information was taken from Wikipedia and I checked most of the sources listed. I highlight the total number of years active, but the dates these people were active is also noteworthy.
This diary is going to end what has turned into a three-part (Part I and II) look into how Bush/Cheney pulled from historical precedents, in addition to people from earlier administrations who were involved in numerous scandals and illegal activities, to further their own goals.
With that, follow me for the final look at historical precedents...
Hoping to bolster support for the surge in Iraq, John McCain over the past year has frequently touted the safe streets of Baghdad. In April 2007, McCain boasted of neighborhoods "you and I could walk through." By March 2008, he reminded us that "there's problems in America with safe neighborhoods as we well know." And the solution to urban crime in the U.S., John McCain now tells us, is to bring the surge to the streets of America.
After ranting in this diary about how criminals from previous administrations have come back to haunt us, I decided to do an experiment; just how many historical precedents have come back to haunt us? The findings are disturbing.
If you don't think history is doomed to be repeated if not learned from, well, follow me after the jump...
What on earth do they have to do with with one another, you ask? Well, in her Washington Post op ed entitled Goodlings Amok, Ruth Marcus recognizes the incongruity of connecting them, but she does so in a way that showsw the Village, of which she as a writer at the Post is a key part, has now decided the Boy Emperor has no cloths. Please note the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs, before below the fold I offer a few observations of my own:
You might think that the two of these have nothing in common save the happenstance that both are the subject of devastating new reports: Goodling about the stomach-turning politicization of the Justice Department; the deficit about the stomach-turning state of the federal treasury.
But the linkage goes beyond the adjective. The ousted Goodling and the lingering deficit are twin manifestations of the Bush administration's overarching contempt for government and blind adherence to ideology.
How many of you know that on June 5th, 2008, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that he was appointing a task force to oversee the nation's nuclear arsenal, and the nuclear procurement process?
Didn't know that? Well, it's true. Don't feel bad though. The MSM only reported high level resignations at the air force, and gave sketchy details about some of the lax accountability with regard to nuclear weapons.
But there is far more to the story. And, if you heard Gates' press conference on C-span, and happen to know a little background, you would understand that something a lot bigger than a shake-up of air force leadership is happening.
My Countdown diary has received a wonderful endorsement (of a sort)! How was I fortunate enough to get this "endorsement"? Well, a kind generous F.O.O. got this for me at NN08. If this "copy & paste" works, I'll be "outing" my first name, but that's OK with me. So, cross fingers & toes that this will work; the result will be well worth it!
On Thursday, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama will cap his European tour with an address in Berlin to an audience whose numbers may approach one million. But while the media will focus on Obama's call to strengthen America's trans-Atlantic alliance with France and Germany, lost no doubt will be John McCain's essential role in undermining it. As it turns out, back in 2003 John McCain stood shoulder to shoulder with the Berlin-bashers and Paris-hating purveyors of "freedom fries" and "old Europe."
I was sixteen years old on September 11th, 2001. I found out about the attacks when I walked into school, on the Air Force Academy base in Colorado Springs. I'm sure you all remember the moment you heard.
At that moment, our nation was thrust into an age of maybes.
Maybe this wasn't the only attack. Maybe the State Department was bombed. Maybe there were as many as a dozen planes hijacked. Maybe this isn't over - maybe it's just the beginning.
Over at the McCain website, campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb posts the transcript of a McCain radio interview conducted today in Denver.
ROSEN: One more question and then we’ll let you go. I understood that you only had about 10 minutes with us. As I said earlier, Barack Obama is already modifying his absolute position calling for an immediate pull out from Iraq, if he’s elected. Given the success in Iraq, following our change in strategy, what’s your appraisal of the situation in Iraq, and what would be your approach to it, if elected President.
SEN. MCCAIN: Well, I think you know that I opposed the failed strategy of the Bush administration. I argued for the strategy that is succeeding.
Really John McCain? You opposed George Bush's failed strategy? Unfortunately for Michael Goldfarb and John McCain the truth tends to not just disappear. Here are some select quotes from John McCain singing the same tune as the Bush administration.
Down in the bowels of Fox News lurks Ambush Central, the sacred room where the real decisions are made. Here the Fox News brain-trusts gather for their regular 5:30 am meeting. Seated at a large oval table are Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson, Brian Kilmeade, Fred Barnes, Brit Hume, Mort Kondracke, Mara Liasson, Bill O’Reilly, Alisyn Camerota, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, Juan Williams, James P. Pinkerton, Neil Cavuto, Liz Trotta. Hovering over the table are the Ghosts of Joseph McCarthy, Ronald Reagan, George W Bush (brainless), Karl Rove (heartless), Dick Cheney (soulless), Donald Rumsfeld (gutless), and Christmas Past (joyless). At the head of the table sits Roger Ailes.
For dumb reasons, all of this dumbness enabled by dumb legislators, as well as being fought in a dumb way, resulting in a dumb, stupid civil war which is being further enabled by another bunch of dumb, stupid legislators, creating the biggest and dumbest deficit and indebtedness ever in the whole damned world and history, as well as featuring dumb, stupid and stupidly arrogant torturers, clunks, dumoxes and asses... and it's my birthday and I get to call everyone dumb, every damn, dumb person who ever did anything to create or enable the unending continuation of damn dumb stupidity.
The second in a series of Iraq war studies has been released by the Army's Combined Arms Center. The study concludes that "planning" for post-Saddam Iraq was ". . . not well thought out, planned for, and prepared for before it began."
"Additionally, the assumptions about the nature of post-Saddam Iraq on which the transition was planned proved to be largely incorrect."
Remember: The Republicans are supposed to be the experts in national security and John McSame wants another 100 years of this nonsense.
So why did they bury the story as part of the Friday evening news dump? First off, because SETTLING the case is not the same as SOLVING the case.
The anthrax case they settled was brought by Steven Hatfill. He's the guy Ashcroft identified as a "person of interest" when people were agitating for a real investigation. Turns out Hatfill was innocent. That means the government wasted millions of dollars harrassing him, and now they have to pay millions of dollars more to settle the lawsuit he filed for invading his privacy and ruining his life. Heckuva job Ashcroft!
That is the legacy of this administration when it comes to terrorism. They don't catch the guys. They can't even find the guys. And they blow tons of money pissing people off in the process. That's all bad, but here's something worse. The guy who did this is still out there. And there is a very good case to be made for who the likely suspect really is. If you think that is important, read on ...
Every once in a while, I like to find out what the wingnuts are saying. I used to put on Limbaugh once in a while if I drove to get lunch, or Hannity on the way home for work now and again. It helps because I when I engage a wing-nut (aka visit my dad) I know what the arguements will be before he opens his mouth, and I have my answers already worked out.
The anthrax case they settled was brought by Steven Hatfill. He's the guy Ashcroft identified as a "person of interest" when people were agitating for a real investigation. Turns out Hatfill was innocent. That means the government wasted millions of dollars harrassing him, and now they have to pay millions of dollars more to settle the lawsuit he filed for invading his privacy and ruining his life. Heckuva job Ashcroft!
