Sweep it clean.
Posted by onar at March 9, 2008 05:39 PMIt's great to know about these endless Bushco scandals, but basically only the intellectual class of BushAmerica ever sets eyes on these outrages.
Here we have a sourced, irrefutable story about Bushco malfeasance, failure, folly and skullduggery, which has resulted in greater failure, chaos, civil war and instability in the ME, and the MSM simply does not say a word about it, doesn't ask a single question about it.
Why doesn't this become an actual national story, so that citizens become aware of what Bushco/neo-con insanity and incompetence has wrought? Because the MSM is not independent and its purpose is no longer to inform citizens what their (Repub) government has actually done, but to propagate (Repub) propaganda.
Posted by euzoius at March 9, 2008 05:58 PMdon't worry, Dear Leader has at least one more fuck-up left in him
Posted by gay veteran at March 9, 2008 06:11 PMThe latest rumor is that Bush is unhappy with Centcom Kommander Fallon and is going to have Gates fire him a year early this summer. Apparently they miscalculated with Fallon's willingness to attack Iran and he has to go.
If McOld wins the election, then Bushco will let him handle the Iran attack. If the Dems win, then Bush will fulfill his personal "promise" and lay waste to Iran before he and Deadeye clear out.
Just like his Daddy dragged us into Somalia as he was heading out the door, Bush will start the Iran War as he leaves office. Like father, like (demented) son.
Posted by euzoius at March 9, 2008 06:20 PMto me this is yet another story of how government approaches to other cultures, aka, foreign policy,
can be royally screwed up by clandestine activity.
if i had three wishes about an incoming president,
one of those would be to completely dissemble ALL american intelligence/counter intelligence agencies, especially the historically bumbling cia,
and reassemble that often wrong, bureaucratically incompetent, often irresponsible group of organizations (cia, dia, nsa, etc) into a set of organizations that truly can meet the needs of the nation for timely information and,
only on rare occasions,
for all the james bond crap (and rambo and the terminator crap -
"rambo" being merely a working class version of james bond,
and "the terminator" being merely a knock off of rambo -
and both being no more than living cartoon characters.)
like torture,
covert action seems tempting in the near-term
but always ending up biting us in the ass in the far term.
its always instructive to observe what happens when a nation facilitates other folks solving their own problems, rather than trying to manipulate those people and problems.
Posted by orionATL at March 9, 2008 06:36 PMThose tales of Hamas using pre-fabricated Iranian "Grad" rockets are probably a load of crap like much of the other "intelligence" which has come out of Israel recently:
According to Abed, the rockets that struck Askhelon were not the Soviet-designed Katyusha or Grad rockets spoken of in the Israeli media (there is, in fact, no such thing as a Grad missile) but were designed and built by himself and other militant artificers. "The new rockets are neither Grads nor Katyushas - they are home-made," he claims. "I myself am producing a 17km rocket and I'm working on one that will go 45km The real trouble is the cost. The new 45km rockets will cost $7000 each (£3500) to build. They'll need equipment and chemicals for the fuel that are hard to get. The ones that hit Ashkelon only cost about 2500 shekels (£350)."
BTW, I think you will find that Grad refers to the launcher system and not the missile - I suspect the Israelis would have spotted one of these entering Gaza. If they can't then they are idiots.
Posted by blowback at March 9, 2008 06:51 PMThanks, Mary!
Every once in a while, it's good to forget the pathetically simple minded conflict of the primaries and pay attention to what's REALLY demanding our attention. Bomb.,bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran,
Can we FINALLY stop with the stupid obsession of campaign minutia and focus on what's real?
Posted by DeminNewJ at March 9, 2008 07:07 PMNeocon critics of the administration—who until last year were inside it—blame an old State Department vice: the rush to anoint a strongman instead of solving problems directly.
Oh yaaas, if only those two nimrods Bush & Rice had taken the sage advice of Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, David Wurmser, et al. instead of those cookie pushing, Foggy Bottom pilgrims, this catastrophe would never have happened. Right. It was the neoconservatives, operating out of (Vice) President Cheney's office, all along who advocated respecting the January '06 Palestinian legislative elections and constructively engaging Hamas.
What a load of unadulterated horseshit.
Fellas, everyone's getting wise to you. This is just another in a series from those wonderful, stinktank, US/Israeli fuckups who gave us Operations Peace for Galilee, Iraqi Freedom, Summer Rains, Changed Direction, etc. and of whom Abrams, Bolton, Wurmser, et al. are eminently emblematic.
Talk to Hamas about ceasefire and captives.
Posted by Pvt. Keepout at March 9, 2008 07:59 PMInstant peace in the Middle East ---Just stop giving our economic colony Israel, money and dismantle it. It is not our friend and spies on the US more than any other country. There is no historical justification, whatsoever, for its existence. --- Read "The Bible Unearthed" by Finkelstein (Director of Archeology at Tel Aviv University,) and Silberman. Even the name "Israel" is BS --- the original was an ordered society of Palestinians before the Hebrews existed!
Posted by maunga at March 10, 2008 06:45 AM"...After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs...."
jebus, these people could screw up a 2 car parade
Posted by Gay Veteran at March 10, 2008 10:53 AM