George W. Bush Is Going To Bomb Iran

George W. Bush is going to bomb Iran. This is the purpose of the "surge". No amount of troops is going to fix Iraq; they couldn't if they tried. If Bush wanted to fix Iraq, he'd give them jobs. People who are employed in decent jobs can figure out how to live with their neighbors. More American troops in the Persian Gulf are not going to quell violence in Iraq any more than the ones already there are.

George W. Bush is going to bomb Iran. And there may be almost nothing we can do to stop it.

Iran has a single trump card - their nuclear program. I share the doubts that Bush can destroy the whole thing. There will be no repeat of Israel's surgical removal of the nuclear ambitions of Saddam Hussein. But Bush can take out enough of Iran's nuclear facilities to knock them back a few more years in the development of a feasible weapon. That is all he needs to bomb - that is, until Iran makes its move.

And that's what the surge is for. Ostensibly, it's about Iraq. Nobody thinks that Iraq needs more American soldiers. And it doesn't today. But Bush is sending them anyway, because he knows what he's about to do, and Iraq is going to need more soldiers when the Shiite forces sympathetic to Iran erupt in violence.

The first attack in this final war against Iran has already occured. You read about it, I'm sure. The White House excised a number of passages from an op-ed in the New York Times that talked about the history of this administration's secret negotiations with Iran. Any mention of Iran's critical help in forming the Afghan government now in place? Gone. Any word of Bush's constant double-dealing with the Iranians over people you may not have heard of, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Mujaheddin-e Khalq? Blacked out. And any mention of Iran's 2003 offer to put everything on the table, including recognition of Israel? The Times and the two authors of the piece, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann, were threatened with criminal prosecution if they were to put words like that into print.

I know about all of this "secret" material, because none of it was secret. Leverett and Mann published their sources, all mainstream media with the exception of a report or two from Leverett's think tank, the Century Foundation. All of the things marked out of this op-ed by the White House are in the public domain. And yet the Bush Administration felt so threatened by this op-ed that they pulled out their little black markers and crossed out any hint of a peace-seeking Iran being played by a cynical America for all it could get.

Why? Because Bush is about to bomb Iran. Any talk of how Iran was making some genuine offers for peace (back before they were spinning any centrifuges) and how Iran was working with the United States to bring stability to the region, all of that is counterproductive. The Bush Administration isn't a slave to reality - it makes reality.

A reality to be ignored: Before 9/11, Iran had built up a large number of contacts among the various Afghan warlords. After 9/11, the Iranians worked those connections above and beyond in cooperation with the United States to stabilize Afghanistan under the interim government. James Dobbins, a participant in that accomplishment, explains:

Two weeks after the fall of Kabul, all the major elements of the Afghan opposition came together at a U.N.-sponsored conference in Bonn. The objective was to create a broadly based successor government to the Taliban. As the U.S. representative at that gathering, I worked both with the Afghan delegations and with the other national representatives who had the greatest influence among them, which is to say the Iranian, Russian and Indian envoys. All these delegations proved helpful. None was more so than the Iranians. On two occasions Iranian representatives made particularly memorable contributions. The original version of the Bonn agreement, drafted by the United Nations and amended by the Afghans who were present, neglected to mention either democracy or the war on terrorism. It was the Iranian representative who spotted these omissions and successfully urged that the newly emerging Afghan government be required to commit to both.

The second was even more decisive. The conference was in its final hours. The German chancellor was due to arrive momentarily for the closing ceremony. Yet we still lacked agreement on the central issue: composition of an interim Afghan government. The Northern Alliance was insisting on 18 of 25 ministerial portfolios, which would have marginalized other opposition groups. From 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. the four key envoys -- those from Washington, Tehran, Moscow and New Delhi -- worked along with the U.N. representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, and our German host to persuade the recalcitrant Northern Alliance delegate to make the necessary compromises.

Two weeks later President Hamid Karzai and his new cabinet were inaugurated in Kabul. The most senior foreign delegation was headed by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, who had stopped in Herat on his way in to pick up the one warlord, Ismail Khan, whose attendance and support for the new government was most in doubt. At the Tokyo donors' conference the following month, Iran pledged $500 million in aid to Afghan reconstruction, by far the largest sum from any neighboring state or developing nation.

(That's from Dobbin's May 2004 op-ed in the Washington Post, by the way. I had to buy a monthly pass to get it, but it's all open source, it's public domain. No classified information was released in the publishing of that article.)

Later on, Iran was asked by Karzai and Washington to keep a particularly nasty anti-American cleric Gulbiddin Hekmatyar in their country. Washington wanted Iran to keep him close, keep him safe. Tehran agreed, but they asked that Washington not accuse them of harboring terrorists. That would be a pretty nasty trick, don't you think? Ask a country to keep a terrorist under the equivalent of house arrest, and then accuse them openly of supporting terrorists?

Bush did so. Not six weeks after the Bonn negotiations, not a month after the Hekmatyar request, Bush declared Iran a member in good standing of the "axis of evil".

Hekmatyar left Iran soon after. As the redacted op-ed says, "the Islamic Republic could not be seen to be harboring terrorists." A year later, Bush got to designate him a terrorist. He's still in Afghanistan, and while he thinks the recent defeat of Republicans is proof that America will be pushed out of Afghanistan like the Soviets, he's endorsing George W. Bush for a third term. Bush is our Brezhnev, he says. He's great for business.

After all, look how Bush handled the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK). MEK is "an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq... that is on a U.S. State Department list of terrorist groups." Saddam used these guys to pull off attacks in Iran. The United States had been meeting regularly with Iran after 9/11, working out day-to-day matters in the region. The Washington Post reports:

At one of the meetings, in early January, the United States signaled that it would target the Iraq-based camps of the Mujaheddin- e Khalq ...After the camps were bombed, the U.S. military arranged a cease-fire with the group, infuriating the Iranians. Some Pentagon officials, impressed by the military discipline and equipment of the thousands of MEK troops, began to envision them as a potential military force for use against Tehran, much like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

We told Tehran we would target a terrorist organization, and then we decided that the terrorists might be able to help us take out Tehran. Let that sink in a minute.

[Richard] Armitage said it was a mistake for the U.S. military to have arranged a cease-fire agreement with the MEK during the war, a decision that alarmed Iran. "We shouldn't have been signing a cease-fire with a foreign terrorist organization," he said.

Wow, Richard. You think?

The United States then told Iran on May 3 that they were going to disarm MEK. We also discussed exchanging prisoners, al-Qaeda members in custody in Iran for MEK prisoners in Iraq. But Armitage "ruled out such a deal":

..."because we can't be sure of the way they'd be treated," referring to the MEK members. He said officials were questioning MEK members to determine who had terrorist connections. "In my understanding, a certain number of those do," he said, adding that they will face charges.

Hold that thought. Hold the thought that Iran had been given our word that we would target the MEK. Hold onto the thought that we'd instead started touting them as a force to help topple Iran. Hold onto the thought that we'd then given our word about disarming these terrorists, although we wouldn't do any prisoner exchanges, not even for al-Qaeda prisoners.

You still don't have the full context, yet:

Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces..., an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.

Everything was on the table. Everything. Peace in the Middle East. George W. Bush had it in his hand.

What did we do? We scolded the Swiss diplomats who had passed it on to us, and then we started making nice with terrorists who hated Iran.

Nine days after the May 3rd meeting in which we promised to disarm MEK, terrorist bombings erupted in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The US blamed Iran, and cut off talks. Some other countries tried to get the United States and Iran back to the table but failed.

Did you go to the link? Because today, it's clear who did those attacks: al-Qaeda. Hekmatyar's compatriots. Osama's army. The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.

Not Iran.

Bush has never wanted peace with Iran. There will be no win-win situation with this president and Iran, because Bush is playing to win on his terms alone, the way that he was able to play Libya's recent capitulation to the West.

But Iran's not doing the Gaddafi shuffle. It's always had more support in the region than Gaddafi ever did. Iran's been a fly in the American ointment since 1979. And now, after being rebuffed repeated in a quest for peace, Iran is back on the nuclear path.

So people, get ready. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can talk all day long about the first hundred hours. We can start considering our options for the 2008 presidential primary. Hey, what are your plans for the New Year?

George W. Bush is going to bomb Iran.

Any references not linked in this piece are to Washington Post articles available only for a price on the web. They are from Leverett and Mann's citations, and are:

“Iran’s Leader Condemns Saudi Attacks,” The Washington Post, May 15, 2003

“Time to Deal With Iran,” The Washington Post, May 6, 2004

“In 2003, U.S. Spurned Iran’s Offer of Dialogue: Some Officials Lament Lost Opportunity,” The Washington Post, June 18, 2006

“U.S. Ready to Resume Talks With Iran, Armitage Says,” The Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2003

“U.S. Eyes Pressing Uprising in Iran: Officials Cite Al Qaeda’s Link, Nuclear Program,” The Washington Post, May 25, 2003

Bureaucracy impedes bomb-detection work

Bureaucracy impedes bomb-detection work

The Bush Administration was getting ready to enable another 9/11, plain and simple. They were getting ready to cripple the kind of preventative work that would have caught a similar plot to that uncovered in Britain recently. How the hell did these guys get the reputation that they are tough on national security??

Actual Comments from the Rapture Ready Board

The Love Song of J. Edgar Goldstein

Creek Running North

Let us go then, you and I,
Where my leer is sprawled out upon the thigh
Of the lefty chick that waits upon my table;
Let me binge, in certain half-deserted streets,
With friends with pointed sheets
Through restless nights in Internet tirades
And sawed-off guys in chicken-hawk brigades:
Guys that swallow all my tedious arguments
Pusillanimous stray vents
That prompt in sane folk moral indigestion …
Oh, do not ask my meaning!
Let me get on with my preening.

More, much more, at the link.

Republican Congress Passed Over 750 Unconstitutional Laws

From the wandering hillbilly, I found this article from the Boston Globe. It's a recent report on Specter considering ways to sue the Bush Administration over his signing statements.

Buddy Don quotes this portion:

``Respect for the legislative branch is not shown through [making a] veto," Boardman argued. ``Respect for the legislative branch, when we have a well-crafted bill, the majority of which is constitutional, is shown when the president chooses to construe a particular statement in keeping with the Constitution, as opposed to defeating an entire bill that would serve the nation."

Boardman said the president has the power and responsibility to bypass any statute that conflicts with the Constitution, even in cases ``where the Supreme Court has yet to rule on an issue, but the president has determined that a statutory law violates the Constitution."

I guess I've never heard it put that way before, but it struck me: Bush believes that the Republican-controlled Congress has passed over 750 unconstitutional laws. That is quite a feat for any legislative body, and especially one controlled by the President's own party.

Oh, No! Rush Arrested For Illegals Again

AMERICAblog

Rush was caught smuggling illegal Viagra into the country! I'm so...sad.

With the bad back, why does he need Viagra?

To whom it may concern: I am who I say I am.

If you find yourself puzzled by this remark, pay it no mind.

No, He Didn't

War Room - Salon.com

Ron Suskind, George W. Bush and the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB

Ron Suskind's "The One Percent Doctrine" is out this week, and the Washington Post's Barton Gellman says it's full of "jaw-dropping stories" about the Bush administration's war on terror.

Or lack thereof.

We've known for years now that George W. Bush received a presidential daily briefing on Aug. 6, 2001, in which he was warned: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." We've known for almost as long that Bush went fishing afterward.

What we didn't know is what happened in between the briefing and the fishing, and now Suskind is here to tell us. Bush listened to the briefing, Suskind says, then told the CIA briefer: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

-- Tim Grieve

I thought I couldn't be shocked by the mendacity of these people anymore. Bush's place in history is now clanging shut around him.

Dear God, $1.4 Billion That Halliburton Could Have Had!

BBC NEWS: US storm fraudsters paid $1.4bn

Waste and Abuse in Pentagon Budget

Remember the good old days, when Rumsfeld admitted that he couldn't account for 25% of the Pentagon budget? Getting excited over the chump change spent in New Orleans is really the height of hypocrisy for these wastrels.

al-Zarqawi's Dead!!!

Bob Riley Defeats Roy Moore

al.com: Elections

However, the real story is: Roy Moore got 35% of the vote. I don't know how much that has to do with Democrats crossing over (Alabama lets you vote in either primary), but there couldn't be that many crossover votes.

Meanwhile, Riley will face off against Lucy Baxley. Lots more Democratic voters than Republican voters. Makes you wonder...

Kristol: Bush Will Invade Iran Before His Term Expires

Think Progress

This is why we must impeach him. Until this man is removed from office, he will continue to implement his will like a dictator. He will use this invasion to neuter his lame-duckness. He is a menace to all things American.

Is Barbara Bush The Illegitimate Daughter of Alestair Crowley???

Hell, no.

Okay, now that I've completely declared my bias on the subject, I'll point you to an article recently posted at the Smirking Chimp that goes all conspiratorial about Barbara's mother supposedly hanging out with Crowley nine months before Barbara was born. It is a convoluted route to get her there, and all based on an anonymous source, a sixth-level initiate in something called the Ordo Templi Orientis.

Anyway here are pictures of Barbara, her father, and Alestair:



To my eye, Barbara looks too much like Marvin in a white wig to be anyone but his daughter. I would do anything for Bush hatred, but I won't do that.

Update: Fixed the title, since this post has been linked to by Jeff Rense. Welcome, welcome, one and all. Boy, of all the people who would link to me, I never thought it would be Rense.com. It's a wild wild world.

Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Rolling Stone

Go read this article. And then find me a reporter who will ask George Bush this question: "Wouldn't it feel nice to win an election on your own merits just once?"

That Explains Why Sinclair's Not There, Either

Power Line

Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then...
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.
Ma Joad: I don't understand it, Tom.
Tom Joad: Me, neither, Ma, but - just somethin' I been thinkin' about.

Tom Joad may be there, but he won't be in Powerline's list of the greatest American novels. They said, "Politics and sociology were ignored" when making out the list. Someone wrote in and advocated for Grapes of Wrath. Hindrocket said: "No socialist realism for us, thank you!"

Powerline: we can't help but lie, even about a silly literature poll.

Rove 2.0

US News

The man behind Dick Cheney's unusual influence in the Bush Administration got a big US News & World Reports article about him: David Addington. He's the driving force behind the "unitary executive" policy that runs like cancer through this organization, and it's his hand that has been guiding the signing statements Bush uses to remold or set aside over 750 laws passed by Congress. And US News hints at more:

The effort to discredit a former ambassador who publicly dismissed the Niger claim as baseless, by disclosing the name of his wife, a covert CIA officer? Addington was right in the middle of that, too, though he has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Not yet, anyway. Fitzmas may yet hinge on driving a wedge between this man and Dick Cheney, and that looks very unlikely...

In January 2001, he became Cheney's legal counsel and, according to former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the vice president's "eyes, ears, and voice." Cheney implicitly trusts Addington on judgment calls because they are, in the words of adviser Matalin, "the same kind of person--Addington was always the first among equals when the vice president sought advice. And he has always been the final voice and analysis on what we were discussing." Cheney and his aide are so close, says Nancy Dorn, an Addington colleague from the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush years, that they "hardly even have to communicate with words."

Addington, his colleagues say, is modest, courtly, and family oriented. He commutes to the White House by Metro when he could easily command a government car, usually eats at the staff table at the White House mess, and spends weekends cheering at his daughters' soccer games. "There are a lot of transactional people in Washington," says Matalin. "He's not one of them. He's a good soul."

According to critics, the reason Addington is such an effective bureaucratic infighter is that he's an intellectual bully. "David can be less than civilized," one official says. "He can be extremely unpleasant." Others say it's because Addington is a superb lawyer and a skilled debater who arms himself with a mind-numbing command of the facts and the law. Still others attribute Addington's power to the outsize influence of Cheney. "Addington does a very good job," says a former justice official who has observed him, "of harnessing the power of the vice president."

But it's a subtle kind of harnessing. Addington, according to current and former colleagues, rarely if ever invokes Cheney's name. An administration official says that it's sometimes unclear whether Addington is even consulting the vice president. But Cheney is always the elephant in the room. "People perceive that this is the real power center," says attorney Scott Horton, who has written two major studies on interrogation of terrorism suspects for the New York City Bar Association, "and if you cross them, they will destroy you."

Addington is up to his eyeballs in the Valerie Plame affair.

Frist Puff Piece: "Reeking of Silverback Testosterone"

Washington Post

That Laura Blumenfeld gives good copy.

[Frist] pressed his stethoscope to the gorilla's chest and narrowed his eyes. Kuja, a silverback patriarch, was breathing isofluorine. He was the Senate majority leader of the gorillas, who negotiated disputes, back-slapped the ape boys and owned exclusive mating rights with the females. When Kuja started to stir, a veterinarian injected more anesthesia. One backhanded swipe could break Frist's neck.

Frist listened to the heart; the gorilla's lub-dub sounded human. "When you're this close, you feel this kind of oneness with them," Frist said. The stink of ape sweat and gorilla testosterone soaked his hair and clothes. "Gorillas, people, men. You look at the people here, a symphonic flow of people pitching in. It's the oneness of humanity."

This kind of oneness does not come easily to Frist. Though devoted to matters of the heart, Frist acknowledges that he is aloof, something he traces back to the day he refused to attend kindergarten. He calls it "the Great Wall," an emotional barrier that has kept him from having close friends. It is a wall that could block his connection with voters, some say, and his way to the White House.

...At 9:30 a.m., Frist opened the Senate, gripping the corners of the lectern, as he had the operating table. Across the city, rolling in a bed of hay, Kuja opened his eyes and grunted. The gorilla kept touching his tongue to his tooth. Something had changed inside of the beast while he slept. Frist smiled and spoke unremarkably from the lectern, reeking of silverback testosterone.

Ew.

This is supposed to be a puff piece - something that makes Frist look better, you know? All these "drenched in gorilla testosterone" lines are just grossing me out. He still stank of the surgery as he went to the Senate? Isn't that unsanitary?

Maybe Blumenfeld is reaching here, so please you God. The man took home cats to play with a couple of days and then dissect, he worked so much that he felt like an intruder in his own house, and now we get stories of him "reeking of silverback testosterone" on the Senate floor. This is taking anti-socialism to an unhealthy extreme!

And by the way, let's get this straight: when you have drugged an animal past its ability to tear you inside out, it's impossible to establish a feeling of oneness with them. If "oneness" means anything, it is a mutual act. What Frist was doing is getting in touch with the tempting sensation of possession. He covets, Clarice, and we covet the things we see every day. Frist covets advancement and power. He seeks an exalted place in this world. And that's something that shines through this creepy little article.

Bolo Does Really Lame Comics

stripcreator

Very cool little site here. It lets you make and save your own comic strips. Mine are rather lame to start out with, but who knows? With practice, I might attain the dizzying heights of mildly crappy.

The Benefit of the Doubt

Townhall.com: Chuck Colson

In his latest pious article published at Townhall, Colson decries all things Michael Schiavo. In Michael's world:

...the "survival of the fittest" is taken to a whole new level - [it is] a place where a badly brain-damaged woman should have her food and water taken away simply because she is badly brain-damaged and her husband says she would not want to live that way.

...he, and so many of his partisans in the media and the public, do not want to give the benefit of the doubt to a comatose person. Now, I admit that many people today think well of Michael and less of those of us who defended Terri Schiavo since the autopsy showed that she had been brain-dead when she was in a comatose state. But thatÂ’s beside the point. Our concern was with safeguarding the process and giving her the benefit of the doubt. After all, you canÂ’t do an autopsy until the person is dead, and then it is too late to correct mistakes.

Mr. Colson, Terri Schiavo was not a brain-damaged person. Doctor after doctor diagnosed her as suffering from a permanent vegetative state. The autopsy confirmed this diagnosis - her brain was not damaged, it was atrophied. Terri Schiavo was gone. She had checked out of her mortal body years before.

There was no benefit of the doubt to give Mrs. Schiavo, because there was no doubt.

Michael has now written a book, and this is what has gotten Colson's dander up. Michael is making the book rounds, and any reservation he had for calling his critics out is now over. Colson sniffs at Michael's "lucrative business", even though Colson himself used his own book tour to lob a few choice comments Mark Felt's way. Judge not, Mr. Colson?

This is just more flag-waving to keep the faithful aroused and voting. Terri became a great fetus substitute for their cause, one that didn't involve shoving bloody pictures and jars into the faces of frightened women. Why, Terri could moan and move her head from side to side. And the wicked Michael just wanted the insurance money and to make an honest woman out of the skank ho he was living with, while he was still married to Terri. This, for Chuck, is social Darwinism writ large (yes, Colson's big on intelligent design). In Michael's world, you best not slow down to catch your breath, because some enterprising member of your family might knock you in the head, leave you to die, and spend all your money.

Wouldn't it be better in Chuck Colson's world?

Colson is a backbone in the Religious Right's grip on secular power in America, and the Schiavo case was one of many examples of how effective this religio-political movement is. Colson's present power has been the result of a long way back for him. He started in prison, and organized a prison ministry after he got out. This ministry grew, and it helped bind together church and state so naturally. After all, they had to hit the churches for funds on one hand, while working with and helping out the state officials running the prisons on the other.

Whenever you see a group of the big Christian political theocrats, Colson's name is on the list. He was a founding board member of the extremely conservative American Alliance of Jews and Christians. He was a co-signer of the Land Letter, the multimedia evangelical's dispensation for Bush to invade Iraq. His prison ministry is the model for Bush's "faith-based" initiatives. And when the Arlington Group was hogtied on how best to get gay marriage banned in the Constitution, "Colson played a key role in hammering out a compromise."
It's no wonder that he was the one of the few felons whom Jeb Bush made sure was able to vote in the Florida 2000 presidential elections.

You really should spend some time over at his organizations' websites. The Wilberforce Forum is the place to start. It calls itself a division of Prison Fellowship (Colson's original group), but links through the pages to "Prison Fellowship" go straight to wilberforce.org, so which is the umbrella organization now is easy to see. Under Wilberforce are two other interesting organizations. Breakpoint helps get the word out about Jesus, sorta - it's the media arm. Justice Fellowship is the lobbying arm - their mission is "to reform the criminal justice system to reflect biblically based principles of restorative justice for America's criminal justice system." That means, turn the prisons into Christian factories. Republican Christian factories, that is.

Chuck sure has done well for himself since he got out of prison for his illegal actions to put and keep Republicans in power. Jesus is the Way - he's the one that said to visit people in prison. Is he a wolf in sheep's clothing?

Is there any doubt?

Bush Will Just Have The Supreme Court Overrule Global Warming

Los Angeles Times

President Bush nixed the idea of his seeing Al Gore's new movie.

In my judgment we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time protect the enviroment.

Because talking about causation opens up questions of liability, and there's never been an American administration more willing to dodge liability than George W. Bush's.

In The End, It Wasn't Their Responsibility

AlterNet: The 9/11 Story That Got Away

Judy Miller was told about an al-Qaeda intercept in July 2001 that talked about an operation so big that America couldn't avoid response. She went to her editor. Between them, they decided that there wasn't enough information for a story. Judy tried to shake loose more information, but it wasn't forthcoming, and it turned into August, and August turned into September.

But it wasn't their responsibility to say something. The counter terrorism people were regarded as extremists the way Judy saw it. And after nothing happened on July 4, everybody wrote al-Qaeda off. Even the Cole bombing the October before had been a very loosely organized affair. Al-Qaeda was regarded as a bunch of chumps.

It was the responsibility of the higher-ups to listen. And this intercept, just aired today, was by no means the worst of it. There was the Phoenix memo. There was the August 6 PDB. There was plenty of information and warnings out there. And they were ignored by this incompetent bunch of numbskulls, who were more concerned with their own political agenda than our national security.

You've Quit Working For Fox - Right, Tony?

Crooks and Liars

MR. SNOW: Well, as I pointed out -- I mentioned this yesterday, and for -- let me see if I can find my quote, because I pulled it out. Chuck Hagel, as you may recall, made a fair amount of news over the weekend when he first said that -- let's see -- "Well, I want to listen to the details and I want to listen to the President," said Senator Hagel -- he said this on "This Week" on a competing network.

O'Reilly and The Race Card

Bill O'Reilly has taken the phrase "xenophobic demagogue" to new heights:

Now in 1986, President Reagan thought he could solve the [immigration] problem by granting about 3 million illegal aliens amnesty. The New York Times was in heaven, editorializing back then, quote, "The new law won't work miracles but it will induce most employers to pay attention, to turn off the magnets, to slow the tide." Of course, just the opposite happened. But the Times hasn't learned a thing. That's because the newspaper and many far-left thinkers believe the white power structure that controls America is bad, so a drastic change is needed.

According to the lefty zealots, the white Christians who hold power must be swept out by a new multicultural tide, a rainbow coalition, if you will. This can only happen if demographics change in America.

An open-border policy and the legalization of millions of Hispanic illegal aliens would deeply affect the political landscape in America. That's what The New York Times and many others on the left want. They might get it. And that's the "Memo."

I guess this is what to expect from here on out. November sweeps is all about the war on Christmas, and May is all about the war on brown people. Jeez Louise...

Give Them An Inch...

New York Times

James Dobson is hop, hop, hopping mad. Bush hasn't put that ban against gays marrying in the Constitution yet. The Republicans haven't outlawed minors crossing state lines to get abortions. And obsenity fines haven't been raised on broadcasters yet.

Plus, gays got covered in a hate-crimes bill, and embryonic stem cell research was extended as well. He is fit to be tied.

"There's just very, very little to show for what has happened," Dr. Dobson said, "and I think there's going to be some trouble down the road if they don't get on the ball."

He's threatening to keep his people at home if the Republicans don't start kowtowing to his political ends. The flecks of spittle are just flying from his sputtering lips.

Well, good. The Bush Administration has lived by the Christianist vote and it shall die by it as well. Dobsonstilskin can just stomp on the floor all the way to Hell as far as I'm concerned. Good riddance to them both.