More cracks in Bush castle

Anybody who's read a front page or watched/heard a news program today already knows what Bush's own intelligence people have delivered to The Decider: Occupied Iraq is the "cause celebre" for Jihadists around the world, and it is helping them to recruit new fighters (surely including new suicide bombers.)

Of course countless people, at home and abroad, have been convinced of this for a long time. They also know that Al Qaeda is only a relatively small part of the picture in Iraq. Most of the insurgents are Iraqis, not "outsiders," and the percentage of Iraqi Sunnis who support the insurgents has now risen to 75%.

And as if the daily body counts were not enough, Frank Rich (NY Times) reported on Sunday that the Bushites' $22 billion reconstruction effort is "an orgy of corruption and waste."

The emperor has neither clothes nor a shred of credibility.

I shudda known better...

Ummm, that last blog of mine...mentioning the impossibility of Bush getting away with amending the Geneva Convention on torture...

As I suppose everybody knows by now, Senator McCain came out after that great torture debate and said all was well and the Convention would not be messed with.

But the great "compromise" turned out to be just one more win for the Unitary President. Interpretation of the convention is declared to be in the hands of the president.

In other words, torture's green light is still green. (Waterboarding, folks, waterboarding. And who will know what else?)

What on earth was I thinking? McCain et al. did their big "differing Republican" thing. And then they caved. Bush gets away with it again.

And I think I will never again say "it just can't get worse." Two years and three months could well be like an eternity of worse.

Question of the day

OK, right to it:

With 5,106 Iraqi civilians murdered (often after the worst torture) in Baghdad just during July and August, was The Waterboarding President trying to distract voters from his horrible Iraq morass by means of his drawn-out harping against McCain, Graham, Warner and Powell? Surely Bush knew his proposed amending of the Geneva Convention on Torture was not going to fly. But he distracted, oh did he ever distract.

Nevertheless, it seems that one can only squeeze so much distraction out of one episode. And distraction is even more necessary today. The BBC has just reported that "torture may be worse now in Iraq than under former leader Saddam Hussein." They quote Manfred Nowak, the UN's chief anti-torture expert, as saying that the situation in Iraq is "out of control", with abuses being committed by security forces, militia groups and anti-US insurgents.

So how can W. get the distraction machine going again?

Maybe he will blame the Democrats for the poisonous spinach.

How can it be?

How can 44% of Americans still stand behind George Bush? 44% is his favorable rating as of today, the highest it has been in a year. And these numbers come out at a time when Bush and his cronies STILL blather on about a Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. When this "unitary president" is continuing to try to pass himself off as the savior of Iraq. When this supremely arrogant man is stridently trying to undo the Geneva Convention on torture (while some of the pillars of his own party are refusing to go along.)

Bush's blooody boondoggle, Bush's Iraq. Where as of today, 2,552 US troops have died since he told the world that his mission was accomplished (on May 1, 2003). Where a total of 2,689 US troops have been killed since that insane day (March 19, 2003) when he unleashed his "shock and awe." Where as many as 48,100 US troops have been wounded. Where, according to the strictest documentation rules that probably do not count half the Iraqi deaths, up to 43,289 Iraqis have been killed. Where a civil war -- and we are witnessing just that by any honest historian's definition -- is begetting constant kidnappings, sometimes of as many as 30 people at the same time (as reported by CNN's Anderson Cooper.) Where dead bodies appear in the streets every day, sometimes (also reported by Cooper) with holes drilled into them from head to foot.

Meanwhile, the war profiteers continue to get richer across Iraq, corruption is rampant, the new Iraqi police is thoroughly infiltrated by militia types and everybody lives in fear.

The whole blessed world knows who lit this ruinous fire. Except, apparently, 44% of Americans.

Beyond Hubris

Tom Brokaw says that HUBRIS, the just-published book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, "is a bold and provocative book that will quickly become an explosive part of the national debate on how we got involved in Iraq." But apparently not even Isikoff and Corn have been able to bring themselves to call the Bush cabal liars. So what is with the hesitation? The Bush circle had significant intelligence information that precluded an attack on Iraq. They brushed aside that information and unleashed their senseless and devastating war. Right up to the present, they have continued to mouth absurdities, especially the one about a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11/01. That is not just hubris. It is arrogant looniness.
And the beat goes on, very loudly. Bush spokesman Tony Snow has just announced that democracy "is gaining a footing in Afghanistan and Iraq." What is gaining a footing in Afghanistan right now is a Taleban resurgence and a burgeoning heroin trade that is killing people from Afghanistan to New York and beyond. (And the profits are funding the Taleban.) What is gaining a footing -- well, more a permanence than a footing -- in Iraq right now is civil war, death squads and probably a three-way partitioning of the country.
Behold what George has wrought.
This surely ain't a time for optimism.

Bush & Cheney's biggest con job

The most recent poll I know about (I'm pretty sure it was CNN) said that about 40% of Americans STILL believed there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda leading up to September 11, 2001. Utterly, utterly mind-boggling.

Well, let us hope that the Senate Intelligence Committee report released today (on a Friday as usual for this kind of thing) finally wakes up all those sleeping beauties out there. Millions among the other 60% have been saying all along that Bush and Cheney were lying to us from day one on this. The fact is that Al Qaeda was Saddam's enemy, not his friend. Attacking Iraq was senseless.

What is perhaps most amazing is that just a few days ago Bush was STILL (this is an important day for capital letters) trying to hawk this BS to the nation.

It is time for the WHOLE country to recognize what the rest of the world (except Tony Blair) has known for a long time. The Bush-Cheney duopoly dominates the US manure market. The metaphor is fitting; the result is the death of tens of thousands of Iraqis and more American troops killed in Iraq than Americans killed on 9/11.

The ever-diversionary W.

King George is running amok, trying again to get the nation's mind off of Iraq. (Right, George, good luck. It might work for a few days, but your monstrous debacle is now burnt into the national consciousness like a Texas cattle brand.)

Yesterday His Majesty The Decider gave a speech for 40 minutes and mentioned Osama Bin Laden 18 times. Today he forgot all about Bin Laden and talked about the secret overseas prisons that the CIA has been running. Its top terrorist prisoners are being moved to Guantanamo to be tried, due to the Supreme Court's decision against the Royal Court. But Bush is not stepping back. He is proposing a trial procedure that would allow hearsay evidence. Even some of the most influential Republican legislators, including John McCain, are against that. But the Rovian Prince Karl must believe that the imminent debate over these trial procedures can mark the Democrats once more as being soft on terrorism. Even if that plan does not work, the debate might provide days of distraction...from, of course, Iraq.

My favorites

Some of my favorite bumper stickers:

PRACTICE COMPASSIONATE IMPEACHMENT

BUSH LIED, AND YOU KNOW IT

CORPORATE MEDIA: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION

NAFTA + CAFTA = SHAFTA

VISUALIZE IMPEACHMENT

CORPORATE MEDIA = MASS MIND CONTROL

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS; IMPEACH BUSH

DON'T CONFUSE DYING FOR OIL WITH FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM - Thomas Jefferson

Rumsfeld's mouth

The Secretary of Offense would not last 30 seconds in a Trappist monastery. Indeed, one has to wonder if he has taken a vow of perpetual unsilence. Yesterday he did his political thesaurus thing to tear into the 61% of us U.S. citizens who stand against the Bush war and occupation. Apparently Rumsfeld thinks we are all Fascist sympathizers, Nazi sympathizers, Communist sympathizers and perhaps Abominable Snowman sympathizers.

And now the Pentagon has issued a report that flies in Rumsfeld's face (and a fortiori in the face of the twin Commanders-in-Chief, George and Dick.) Though the report claims the ongoing Iraq civil war is not yet a civil war, it paints a realistic picture of the growing sectarian violence and the overall bloody chaos that 300,000,000,000 U.S. dollars have not been able to prevent. Speaking of sectarian violence, the Bushite rants about hitting 'em there so they don't hit us here become more and more irrelevant as more and more people learn that at least 90% of the violence in Iraq comes not from Al Qaeda but from home grown sectarian power struggles.

Just zip it, Rummy.