Feith, Rove, Just Full Of It

There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance

A planet of play things
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
'The stars aren't aligned
Or the gods are malign...'
Blame is better to give than receive


You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill
Rush ~ Freewill

A tautology for the ages from the master of Teh Stupid:

A lot of poor commentary has framed the Iraq war as a conflict of "choice" rather than of "necessity." In fact, President George W. Bush chose to remove Saddam Hussein from power because he concluded that doing so was necessary.

Heh. Nice word play. Lemme see if I can do as well.

How about this: "In fact, President George W. Bush chose to conclude that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power." See? Easy and I used fewer words too!

After all this time, they're still offering up bullcrap arguments to justify the worst decision in American history. This ain't flying at all, and BooMan does an admirable job of explaining why.

Feith pushes a false narrative on us, but it's a familiar one. We had no reliable intelligence in 2001 that suggested that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons programs. His armed forces were weak, disloyal, ill-paid, ill-equipped, and totally unable to project force towards any of his neighbors. Insofar as the Intelligence Community worked on the issue of Iraq, they were mainly concerned with an international disinformation campaign to heighten the threat from Saddam in order to maintain support for a crumbling sanctions regime. Belief in Iraq's WMD's was nothing more than a convenient case of believing our own hype. How many times did the Bush administration point to misinformation put out by the Clinton administration to bolster their case for war (and to justify their decision after the fact)?

But there is a key difference between the lies of the Clinton administration and the lies of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) of Douglas Feith. Clinton administration lies were intended to keep Saddam Hussein from rearming and/or slaughtering internal dissidents. Bush administration lies were intended to justify actions that have now cost over 4,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives, created over 2 million refugees, and cost a trillion dollars.

That was a choice that George W. Bush made. He chose to lie in the service of a policy that created all this tragedy and waste. And to think that Feith would quote Rumsfeld's concern about the loss of a single pilot as justification for the necessity of doing this! No wonder General Tommy Franks said of Feith, "I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day."

As for Karl "The Math" Rove, well . . . other than still being worshiped by the likes of one of the most self-deluded bloggers in Reich Wing Blogistan, he not only fails completely of offer any analysis in his long-winded and tiresome essay other than how McCain and Obama are spending their money -- cuz it's all about the cash of course -- he can't even get the simple facts right about who's spending what, when.

Honestly I don't know if this is a deliberate fake-out, willfully ignoring the dynamic shifts in the electorate as a direct backlash against the dismal failures of Rove's former boss's administration because of their complete politicalization of public policy due mainly to Rove's own advice and advancement within the White House.

That or maybe Rove is just stupid too.

If You Are Looking To Call Anyone A Crook

And yes, I mean you and you, and anyone else who tries the Chicago Mobster, MuslamoNazi, Terrorist-Jab, linking Obama to someone who knew-a-guy who knows-a-guy whose aunt's babysitter's cousin once dated a lesbian abortion doctor that donated $50 bucks to a charity run by someone who was mentioned in someone else's grand jury testimony -- or so they say -- who didn't wear a lapel pin . . .

There's only one presidential candidate who has broken the campaign finance laws and continues to run his campaign in violation of the law -- and that "crook" bears the same name as the law he's breaking. (In fact, if convicted, the Straight Talker could go straight to jail for five years.)

John Cole lays it out...

I want to return to this subject though because this is not hyperbole or some throw away line. He’s really doing it. McCain opting into public financing, accepted the spending limits and then profited from that opt-in by securing a campaign saving loan. And then he used some clever, but not clever enough lawyering, to opt back out. And the person charged with saying what flies and what doesn’t—the Republican head of the FEC —said he’s not allowed to do that. He can’t opt out unilaterally unless the FEC says he can.

Oh, and as for all those so-called "fiscal conservatives" who deplore unnecessary government spending calling Barack some kind of hypocrite (that's rich) for reneging on a promise he never made (since he only promised to try and reach an agreement with McCain over rules McCain won't honor to this day -- but there was no actual agreement to break contrary to what McCain or the bastards at AP, ABC News and USA Today say) -- bite me.

In other news, Chris Matthews, still a wanker, but no more so than Jake Tapper at ABC who's ridiculous headline that Obama broke a promise he never made started this whole thing. What really is fun is to take a Reichwinger's own words, and interpret them in, you know ... plain English as a means of proving they're wrong. Take Newsbuster's own graphic here.



Even a third grader recognizes a conditional sentence when they see one, even if they don't know what it's called. McCain has clearly not lived up to the conditions Obama laid out in this statement. McCain is NOT abiding by the public financing laws. McCain is in clear violation of McCain Feingold as I write this, and has been for months. Obama is under no obligation to play a fools game, and for not calling McCain a crook who took illegal loans in violation of the law to fund his floundering excuse for a national campaign, Obama also shows what a gentleman he can be ... and keeps his powder dry for the next round of bullcrap.

And one more piece of friendly advice to our friends in Wingnuttistan. If you write for Redstate, and you start out a piece by saying, "If I were a supporter of Barack Obama . . ." just stop. You're not, never will be. You just don't get it, and are mentally incapable of empathy of that sort due to the inundation of authoritarian psychopathology you've been brainwashed with all these years.

Unless you were in the Friday Funnies competition today, in that case, well done. You certainly had me fooled.