Maliki & Abizaid talk about...

CentCom Gen. Abizaid put on his best Sunday-go-to-meeting camo fatigues to meet with Iraqi PM Maliki, sit in comical chairs, and discuss... things.


What things? There are two versions. The Iraqi government says the meeting was about how to counter Iranian and Syrian interference in Iraq and to “reaffirm” Bush’s commitment to success in Iraq, something which has to be done every few days because the Iraqis are just that needy and clingy and it doesn’t count if he reaffirms his commitment because they ask, oh no, it has to be “spontaneous,” and could it hurt to bring home some flowers or some nice chocolates every so often, and I see the way you look at that slut Afghanistan and...

Anyway, that was the official story. But other Iraqis leaked that it was for Abizaid to warn Maliki to disband Shiite militias, and ask him for a firm... wait for it... timetable for Iraqi security forces to take control of the country and proof that they’ll be able to handle it. That version of the talks sounds very stern and scoldy.

There is no official American line about what was discussed, which in the context of these Rashomonic competing unreliable narrators, suggests a willingness to have it be thought that Abizaid dressed Maliki down.

What on earth is Ed Meese doing on the Iraq Study Group?

The ideological struggle between extremists and radicals versus people who just simply want to live in peace

For George Bush today, it was all about the people who couldn’t get into his father’s country club: the blacks and the Jews. First he attended the groundbreaking of the Martin Luther King Jr National Memorial. What do you suppose Al Sharpton said to him?


Then he met with Israeli PM Olmert, who he said “cares deeply about securing the peace.” Evidently, the US and Israel are both “involved in an ideological struggle between extremists and radicals versus people who just simply want to live in peace”. Some ideologies are more complicated than other ideologies, I guess.


He explained American politics to Olmert: “You might realize the opposition party won, won the Senate and the House.” Doesn’t that make them no longer the opposition party? “And what’s interesting is, is that they’re beginning to understand that with victory comes responsibilities.” I seem to detect a touch of grim satisfaction that the Dems will now be stuck with the mess he created.

On Iraq, he explained, “I believe it is very important, though, for people making suggestions to recognize that the best military options depend upon the conditions on the ground.” Carl von Clausewitz, he ain’t.

Do not confuse the workings of American democracy with a lack of American will

Bush has said a couple of times this week, including in his weekly radio address, “I have a message for these enemies: Do not confuse the workings of American democracy with a lack of American will.” Now who would have given them the idea that a Democratic win was a sign of a lack of American will?

But what of the workings of Iraqi democracy? Remember how Iraq’s elections were followed by months and months of negotiations to form a government? Maliki thinks it’s time for a cabinet reshuffle.

The neocon retreat from the Iraq war comes with a lesson, according to Kenneth Adelman in that Vanity Fair article: “the idea of using our power for moral good in the world” is dead. Yes, that’s it, we’ve been too idealistic, really just too good and kind and decent for this wicked world, and it’s time to start looking out for number one.

Next time we go to war, we’re gettin’ us some oil, baby!

Happy Veterans Veterans’ Veteran’s Day

This may be a stupid question, but why was Bush celebrating Veterans Day at Arlington? Veterans Day is about living former service members; the dead ones have Memorial Day.



Possibly he went to visit the Tomb of the Unknown Punctuation Mark in which America buried the apostrophe that belongs in “Veterans Day.”

In Britain it’s called Armistice Day, and this is how the Queen spent it.

Awe and reverence

Atrios asks, about Iraq, “Isn’t there a wee contradiction between spreading freedom and democracy and turning a country into a terrorist battlefield?” It’s called multi-tasking.

This is, as you know, the Blog of Record, so occasionally I must risk boring y’all by repeating something every other blog has, in this case Bush saying that “years from now, when America looks out on a democratic Middle East growing in freedom and prosperity, Americans will speak of the battles like Fallujah with the same awe and reverence that we now give to Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima.” The only awe I feel is at the sheer scale of Bush’s assholery in making that comparison. What the hell does he think happened in Fallujah that we’d ever revere?

In that speech, at the dedication of the Marine Corps Museum, he also said that the Japanese on Iwo Jima “had learned from costly battles that they could not defeat American forces. Yet, they believed that by inflicting maximum casualties on our forces, they would demoralize our nation and make America tire of war.” Of course he’s really talking about Iraq. Iwo Jima was in 1945, the Japanese did not think they were going to “demoralize” the United States into cutting and running.

The alliterative Gen. Peter Pace (who should be made to follow Rumsfeld out the door) today defined “winning” downwards yet again, to “provid[ing] governments in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere with enough security capacity to keep the [terrorist] acts below a level at which their governments can function.” Dare to dream, alliterative Peter Pace, dare to dream!

The problems haven’t gone away

Bush and Cheney met with Senators Harry Reid and Dick Durbin today. Afterwards, Bush said, “The elections are over, the problems haven’t gone away.” Reid and Durbin refrained from saying, “No kidding, dickwad, we just met with two of them.”

Speaking of dickwads, if I announce a caption contest, can I trust you people to refrain from pointing out that both Bush and Reid brought a Dick to the meeting?

Historic

Bush met with Nancy Pelosi, and even used her name, out loud and everything, something he never did when attacking her during the campaign. He noted that she will be the first woman Speaker: “This is historic for our country. And as the father of young women, it is -- I think it’s important.” I like how he’s pretending that the silver cloud in Republo-Thumpin’ 2006 is that it opens doors for Jenna and Not-Jenna to stumble drunkenly through, so it will all have been worth it.

(Conrad) Burns and (George) Allen both conceded today. Say goodnight, Gracie.

I’m sure that joke isn’t original, but it was still satisfying to say.

For more on Robert Gates’s history, see this David Corn article and this one by Robert Parry. Gates is probably the best nominee we could have expected from Bush, but that’s not exactly setting the bar high.

I’m not sure what sort of Iraq exit strategy Gates is supposed to be coming up with. I’ve been seeing a worrying number of people arguing, most recently Thomas Friedman in his column yesterday (Times Select is free this week, by the way, although you needn’t bother with the Friedman) for attempting one big final push before giving it up as a bad job.

Meant to mention a commercial I heard from Florida’s 16th district, where Mark Foley was still on the ballot. It was informing voters that to vote for his replacement, they had to “punch Foley.” I detected a slight hint of glee in the emphasis on “punch.”

America at its best

Some random thoughts:

Holy Joe Lieberman was never going to be named secretary of war. You don’t think the Bushies actually have any respect for their useful idiot, do you?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the “independent” the D’s in the Senate had to court was Bernie Sanders rather than Holy Joe?

In his intelligence and national security posts under the Reagan and Bush I administrations, Gates was responsible for 1) passing intel to aid Saddam in the Iran-Iraq War (and overriding Commerce Dept calls for restrictions on sales of high-tech military hardware to Iraq in 1990), 2) trying to orchestrate the overthrow of Saddam after the Gulf War. Flip flopper.

I’ll be interested to see if Gates’s Iran-Contra role comes up, or whether American amnesia has consigned that sordid chapter to the misty past, like the Thirty Years’ War and the Battle of Hastings.

Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation has a newspaper column entitled, “A Tour of Guantanamo Prison Shows America at its Best.” I’d hate to see America’s worst.

Congress doesn’t just have its first Muslim member, but also its first Buddhists, Hank Johnson, replacing Cynthia McKinney, and Mazie Hirono in Hawaii.

In some sort of web epidemic recently, many bloggers seem to have lost the ability to distinguish between “whose” and “who’s.”

Thank you for playing Posture Play-Off

Care and restraint

Israel shelled a town in Gaza, killing 19, most of them women and children. The White House promptly issues a statement calling for both sides to “act with care and restraint.” I’m pretty sure those dead Palestinians are as “restrained” as they could possibly be.

The most important job Rick Santorum will ever have

So a fellow blogger who may not wish to be named sent me this picture of Rick Santorum and some of his huge creepy family gathered around him as he conceded, much as they once gathered around the corpse of their brother who died a couple of hours after his premature birth and whom the Santorums brought home to meet the family anyway.


At first I didn’t think I could post it because I would feel obligated to make fun of his... emotive 8-year old daughter Sarah with the doll wearing the same ugly dress she is, and like a sport fisher I generally like to throw the little Republicans back so I can mock them when they get bigger. Then I ran across this Santorum campaign ad featuring the Santorum children, and figured they were more or less fair game. Also, looking at some more pictures, I realized... she’s faking it.



If your face looks like that, but there is not a single tear, you are acting (also, you’d turn away from the crowd). Now, whether she figures that’s how she’s supposed to react, or she was given specific instructions to weep for the camera, I cannot say. Her brother, who is just old enough to remember the fetus incident, seems to have no trouble crying on cue.


Last year, Little Ricky published a book called It Takes a Family. Which is actually not a riposte to Hillary Clinton but, I believe, the last part of the old adage, “To err is human, but to really fuck someone up...” In that ad, little Sarah says that Rick always tells them that being their dad is the most important job he’ll ever have. I think we can agree that he’s just as good a dad as he was a senator.

(Update: Bob provides us with the theme song of the altogether ooky Santorum family [though personally I think Rick more resembles Fred Munster].)

Bush press conference: This enemy’s not going away after my presidency

Bush admits the election’s cumulative effect was a “thumpin’” for his side. Thump thump thump thump heh.

He said he’d offered to give Nancy Pelosi the name of some Republican interior decorators. I’m not even sure how to unpack the homophobia from that one, and I’m not gonna try.

Like all losers, he insisted that the lesson of the election was that the American people want politicians to set aside partisan differences.

He also accused the electorate of ignorance saying more in sorrow than in anger (I’m using my own scribbled notes, there isn’t a transcript available yet) (update: transcript) that he had “thought the people would understand the importance of taxes and the importance of security.” Once again, we have disappointed him.

On the other hand he dismissed his own campaign comments that if the Republicans lose the terrorists win as mere politics (“What’s changed today is the election’s over”), which everyone should forget now.

The relationship between politics and foreign policy was a major theme of the press conference. Bush told several conflicting versions of the decision to fire Rumsfeld, so it’s hard for me to know which one I should express indignation about. Before he spoke, I was planning to write that the decision to replace Rummy mere hours after the polls closed suggested that it was based entirely on politics and did not reflect any new thinking or change of strategy, that he was in fact doing what he said he would never do (although he does it every day), subordinate Iraq policy to American domestic politics.

In the presser, he did admit that the electorate voted to “register displeasure with the lack of progress being made” in Iraq. Although he didn’t take any personal responsibility for that lack of progress, the admission by itself was kind of stunning. Later, he said that “Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.” I hope he kept the receipt.

On Rumsfeld, he admitted having lied last week about keeping him in office until 2009, that he had already made the decision to get “fresh eyes,” but didn’t want to “inject the matter into the election.” This version of the story involves a theory of politics that the way to depoliticize important issues is to lie about how you intend to handle them. I’m pretty sure that was in the Federalist Papers somewhere. He also said that it would be a bad signal to the troops that he was “constantly adjusting tactics and decisions based on politics” (he temporarily forgot that constantly changing is now a good thing).

Still later, he said that he didn’t lie last week, that he hadn’t made a final decision and hadn’t even talked to Robert Gates yet. It’s so ingrained to his way of governing that Bush didn’t consider that you could announce a resignation before a replacement has been decided upon. It’s not like a smooth transition would be disrupted: Rummy will be a lame duck for weeks of hearings and voting on Gates, a few extra days would make no difference. The decision to announce both Rummy’s ouster and Gates’ nomination at the same time was another sign of Bush’s commitment to opacity – an important choice made entirely in secret, without public input, without Congressional consultation, and presented as a fait accompli. The choice fits in with that, Gates having been up to his eyeballs in Iran-Contra and especially the coverup of Iran-Contra.

He said something how great it was that Eisenhower continued Truman’s wars, both Cold and Korea, because “This enemy’s not going away after my presidency.” Just as long as you do, George, just as long as you do.

Deciding Bush’s potency

Unfortunate AP headline: “Voter Results Will Decide Bush’s Potency.”

With Rick Santorum out of the Senate, who will protect our dogs’ anuses?

Honestly, I will miss Little Ricky, who provided all of us with so much blog-fodder and who made his side look bad every time he opened his mouth. His replacement, Bob Casey Jr., is no friendlier to homosexual (or reproductive) rights than Santorum, but he’ll undercut them quietly, without that hilarious gay panic: the “man on dog” comment, the blaming of sexual abuse by Catholic priests on the permissiveness of Boston (“If you have a world view that... affirms alternative views of sexuality, that can lead to a lot of people taking it the wrong way.”). So yeah, I’ll miss the neckless one; his idiocy was actually a service to the republic.

Katherine Harris is less of a loss in that sense, because mostly when she spoke she only made herself look like a jackass.

Would have been nice to knock out George Allen, but it was, after all, Virginia (state motto: “Sic Semper Macacas”). (Update: sorry, this one is now too close to call. Got a little confused there.)

The prospect of Joe Lieberman even more smugly self-righteous is not a pleasant one.

Chimpy Votes!

The notoriously susceptible George W. Bush casts his vote...




...for Dr. Pepper.

Hey, I understand there’s an election of some sort today....

Why couldn’t somebody have called me up to inform me of that fact? They could even have used some sort of robotic calling machine.

And as you go to the polls, remember, we’re at war

Unclear on the concept: hundreds of applicants to join the police in Uttar Pradesh, India rioted to protest an application test they considered too hard.

In a rally in Florida, Bush appeared with his brother Jeb, who he pretended to hug, while swiping his wallet. What, like your family dynamic isn’t complicated?


He began by predicting, “We’re going to win because we have a hopeful, optimistic agenda” – and then launched into the usual fear-baiting crap. The first person plural in that sentence obviously refers to the Republican party. We’re so used to this that it may need pointing out: for every moment of the election campaign, the president of the United States spoke as a Republican, to Republicans. He made no attempt to persuade his audiences because he never spoke to a group of just-plain citizens. This may be how things are done these days, but it is not healthy for a democracy, and it is not okay.

Bush described the Dems’ strategy thus: “They don’t have a plan, but they’ve got a principle around which they’re organized, which is, it’s too tough, get out before the job is done.” He also deployed his ability to express complex political philosophies in insultingly simple terms when he spoke about “a brutal enemy that has an ideology, an ideology so backwards that many of our citizens can’t possibly comprehend it.” And yet he gamely attempted to make it comprehensible for them: “See, we believe in basic freedoms; they don’t.”

He ended with this advice: “And as you go to the polls, remember, we’re at war.”

It is hard to plot and plan America when you’re hiding

Another Bush rally, woe is me, in Nebraska. Which sort of explains the corn stalks.


And the corn hats.



Incidentally, all these events have the word victory in the title, Nebraska Victory 2006 Rally, Montana Victory 2006 Rally, etc. Which is also the word Bush uses over and over in relation to Iraq: “And we got one goal in Iraq, and that is victory”, “We got a strategy for victory that will work”, Dems “have no plan for victory,” and so on. A coincidental wording, you say? Maybe, but it’s not the only place he borrows rhetoric from his war speeches. At this rally he said, “You know if you’re wondering what -- where the Democrats stand on a major issue, there’s an easy formula to figure it out: No matter what the issue, if the Republicans are for it, they’re against it.” And how does he describe the Enemy in The War Against Terror, just a couple of minutes later? “They believe the exact opposite of what we believe.”

Which is so not the case. He and Osama both believe, loudly, that God is on their side. Here’s a paragraph he’s used in every recent speech, which creeps me out every time: “You know when nearly 12 million Iraqis voted, I was pleased, but I was not surprised, and I’ll tell you why I wasn’t surprised. I believe there is an Almighty. I believe a great gift of the Almighty to every man, woman, and child on Earth is the desire to be free. And so when the Iraqis said we want to be free, it is part of my belief in the universality of freedom.” That either creeps you out too, or it doesn’t, I suppose.

I’m almost getting bored with the mangled Bushisms, but what the hell:

“the Democrats believe they can spend their money better than you can.”

“It is hard to plot and plan America when you’re hiding.”

Ain’t it the truth.

That says to them that their strategy is working

We’ve now got the transcript of Cheney’s ABC interview, bits of which I commented on yesterday. As ever, I’m amazed what he’s able to get away with unchallenged. For three months, the Bushies have been using the word “purged” to describe Lieberman’s defeat on August 8th, which I seem to recall involved 146,587 people voting for another candidate and not, say, a Moscow show trial. In the interview, Cheney uses that purge as an example of exactly the sort of thing the terrorists are trying to influence the American voters to do. “That says to them that their strategy is working.”

Another thing they’re always allowed to get away with is the “I haven’t read that article/report, so I can’t comment on it.” This was not a live interview, it was taped days ago, so why couldn’t Stephanopoulos have said, “Oh, well I happen to have a copy of Vanity Fair right here, why don’t we stop the cameras while you read it, and resume when you’re ready”?

Cheney says if a Democratic Congressional committee subpoenas him, he will refuse to testify.

Cheney, by the way, will be spending election day hunting. There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere.

The martyrs of Iraq now have the right to smile

Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead dead dead. PM Maliki says, “The martyrs of Iraq now have the right to smile,” adding, “Maybe this will help alleviate the pain of the widows and the orphans, and those who have been ordered to bury their loved ones in secrecy, and those who have been forced to suppress their feelings and suffering, and those who have paid at the hands of torturers.” Yes, thank god those days are long behind us.

Protecting you and your cowboy hat

In Colorado, Bush used his “it’s good to be in country where the cowboy hats outnumber the ties” line in the third state this week (Nevada, Montana). Yippee ki yay.

He keeps pushing the twin messages of taxes and terror, which sort of point in opposite directions. He presents tax cuts as increasing personal freedom, but combines it with the deeply disempowering, not to say infantilizing, argument that the government and its “professionals” need all sorts of augmented powers in order “to protect you” (a phrase that he used seventeen times in this speech).

This time, he had the audience chant “What’s your plan?”, directed at the Democrats, who he is accusing of being unclear on their “plan for victory.” Bush, of course, is the master of clarity:

I can’t look at the mothers and fathers and husbands and wives of those who wear our uniform who may be in Iraq, and say, it’s noble, but not think I can -- we can win the -- the only way we can win is if we leave before the job is -- I mean, the only way we can lose is if we leave before the job is done. That’s the only way.