Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Surge and Splurge

They're a well trained capably led lean mean lean killing--er, fighting--machine, those underarmed, underpaid, undermotivated--unless working for the other side--new Iraqi soldiers are, and they scored a great victory over an obscure but brutal rogue Shia militia calling itself the Soldiers of Heaven, killing 300,400, 500 of them, with support of American Apache attack helicopters outside Najaf, thus providing proof that the Emperor Boy George is a a more brilliant military mind than his collective military brass--or so we were told.

The story smelled from the start, and Marc Santora explains why in today's New York Times--the article is buried on the website, unfortunately. Let's hope that changes. In brief it appears that the Soldiers of Heaven nearly overran the Iraqi attackers, who were saved only by American attack helicopters, F-16s, and ground forces. As to the dead Soldiers of Heaven, they appear to have been shackled at the leg so they could not flee--they could only die. How many Iraqi troops died--25, we're told. We're told lots of this things in this war, including by the Bushies that al Qaeda funded the Soldiers of Heaven, something even the puppet Iraqi government denies. Oh, and guilt by association: the leader of the Soldiers of Heaven was once a student of Moktada al-Sadr's father, before breaking away from him, and possibly had ties to Saddam Hussein. That's pathetic.

What more can we expect than lies revised by more pathetic lies and innuendos?

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Why I'm So Glad

It is truly difficult to describe how thrilled I am to see the Emperor Boy George once more assuming the mantle of "decider" or now "Decision Maker", according to William Branigan and Richard Londono, in the January 26 Washington Post, swaggering and smirking his way into combat with Congress. By now the whole world can tune into his brain waves, as amplified by Dick "Fudge" Cheney: "Ium dah decision maker--that means I decide--an' I decided Ium gonna surge an' splurge an' Texas take down duh terrior sympathizin' cowards who wanna make me quit when Ium duh 'Mander in Chieef, duh Decision-Maker, an' Ium gonna make all over that Italian Baltimoron man-eater an' dem democrates, not to mention yeller dawg repubcans like Chick Hegel, as in that German side kick of Karl duh Marx, an' duh evil doer Eye-Rain-ee-ANNS. That's right, the Emperor Boy has "double dog dared" the world and, especially the Congress, to stop him. Congress should oblige.

In today's New York Times, Maureen Dowd--sorry no link because it's by subscription on line--calls Cheney mad--beyond delusional, while giving the Emperor Boy a pass on the sanity issue. But as nearly as I can determine, th U.S. is now fighting to stay in Iraq for no reason other that the two most powerful men in the world say it must, and the one body--two chambers--powerful enough to stop them won't. Sociopaths rule.

Meanwhile, Garry Wills has a fine op-ed in today's NYT, "At Ease, Mr. President."

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Why I Didn't Listen!

I tried listening to the Emperor Boy George give his state of disunion address, but for this reason and that I picked it up in medias res only to find myself yawning over his dutiful delivery of the laundry list of to-do's he not only cared less than nothing about but also didn't begin to understand. I'll give him a baby star for recognizing that our health insurance system is in free fall and another for finally admitting that human-driven climate change is real--I write that while debating whether to turn on the air conditioner, something we never used to have to do in winter but this year have done far too often. But I take those stars away upon hearing his lame, not even half-ass solutions--tax breaks for people who can't afford to pay in the first place? ethanol? What happened to the bloody hydrogen car? Baby-steps, modest proposals--those are the descriptives of the mainstream media, but they are too generous. The Emperor Boy George, with Caligula Cheney glowering down at him, didn't even get off his knees.

When he floated Dikembe Mutombo out after the usual pabulum about helping Africa and stopping genocide in Darfur, I turned elsewhere. The rich immigrant story, even if he happens to be a 7-foot tall shot blocker, and the moving personal illustration of what I mean, even if he happens to be a 7-foot tall shot blocker who does good deeds off the court, are such hackneyed staples of these pompous exercises in bad rhetoric, vile politics, and unctuous hypocrisy that they should be retired forever. That said, it is telling that our towel-snapping Emperor Boy George chose a jock to celebrate.

I missed the whole bit about failure not being an option in Iraq. Iraq is already a failure. All the Emperor Boy is doing is sacrificing more people so someone else has to pull the plug and take responsibility for his greatest failure in a life of failures. Lt. General David H. Petraeus, the new commander on the ground, might be brilliant, the greatest military mind since George Armstrong Custer, but unless he's willing to commit war crimes and genocide on a scale that will make Darfur look like a school yard rumble, my bet is he'll leave Iraq with his career in tatters. This fiasco was lost before it started--twice--just think of the war-gaming Marine.

James Baker and the Iraq study group nonetheless offered the Emperor Boy George a way out, and he spurned it, deliberately adopted the opposite approach. His current Iraq policy of surge and splurge is no more based on reality than any of his other policies. What's different now is that having rejected the Baker life line, he's demanding that the entire nation save his sorry ass from ignominy, become, in effect, complicit in his crimes. What we need to do, as I've said before, is send him to the Hague to be put on trial for war crimes. And Cheney and everyone who voted for this horror can join him. His--their--greatest contribution to history can thus be to serve as an example that no one is above the law.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Surge Protection

Good computer hygiene dictates that the user have a device in place to absorb those periodic power surges that can fry a mother board. Congress, I suppose, should serve as the world's surge protector against the Bushies disgorgement of 20,000 more troops in Iraq--his vomitus surge that is supposed to zap the opposing forces there, not that he has a clue about who is fighting whom. David E. Sanger lays out this latest "new way forward" in the Sunday New York Times. It is a lunatic pipe dream concocted by the same desktop strategists at the American Enterprise Institute who so vehemently advocated the war of aggression. Like the Bushbucker-in-chief, they would rather kill more people than admit that they were wrong from the start. In addition to seeking to sacrifice more American troops in the sandpit of Ambar Province, these tactical geniuses want to send Kurdish fighters to Baghdad to end fighting between Shias and Sunnis. Well, why not have all three groups fighting it out in the capital?

The Washington Post reports that even the military leadership is skeptical of this plan--not to mention worried about the source of these additional troops, since the services are already maxed out. On that score, I recommend creation of a special "surge brigade," composed of every desktop general and puffed up politician who endorses the Bushies program. It's only proper that they prove their fealty to god, country, emperor, and their own demented schemes by putting their butts in those unarmored Hummers and setting forth to overwhelm the 'insurgency'--shock and all, reprise, we'll call it.

The surge itself can only be seen as further evidence of the Bushy's mental illness, this time manifest in infantilism. Like a willful two-year-old, Bushy resented being told what to do by his father--in the guise of the Iraq Study Group--and so deliberately set out to do the opposite. Sadly, at the end of the day, he'll get his way as the chest-thumping surge protectors in Congress falter in the face of madness--and that's one prediction, I hope is wrong.