bustardblog

Retreat is the Only Option

By issuing a partisan attack piece on the morning of the State of the Union Address,The Bush administration reiterates it's position on Iraq: no matter what is said tonight, there will be no real change in strategy or policy. Bush will leave office to crawl back to Crawford with a full complement of troops fighting, and dying in Iraq, and he will do everything within his power to blame the next President for his failures.

Liz Cheney doesn't even bother to make effort to disguise her op-ed in the Washington Post as an analysis.  Instead, she makes it clear what she's about when she begins with a childish smear about Hillary Clinton's ambitions. The following is a slur, not an argument:

Anyone who has watched her [Clinton's] remarkable trajectory can have no doubt that she'll do whatever it takes to win the presidency."

Cheney (fille) then writes a lot of garbage that defies  both historical and current reality in Iraq. One of her more outrageous assertions is that we must stay to protect allies like Pakistan's  Pervez Musharraf. Based on a lot of recent reporting, the N.Y. Times wrote in an editorial today:

Pakistan is now the third-largest recipient of American foreign aid. Yet more than five years after 9/11, the Bush administration has still not been able to secure Pakistan’s active and consistent support against the Taliban. The very least Washington should be demanding of President Musharraf is that he enforce an immediate halt on Pakistani military support for the Taliban insurgents who are crossing the border and killing American troops.

Frankly, I don't want to see a single U.S. soldier die to protect Musharraf, and his "support... for ...insurgents... who are... killing American troops.

Cheney writes that the recent rout of Republicans in Congressional elections did not show that Americans:

want us to allow Iraq to become a base for al-Qaeda to conduct global terrorist operations., They did not say that they would rather fight the terrorists here at home.

They also did not say that they want permanent war. What their votes did prove is that they no longer believe the lies of the Cheney/Bush team, nor do they accept the use by this administration of fear, of terror, as a campaign tool.

Although I have strongly opposed to this war since before it began, I am concerned about our responsibilty to Iraq for the evil we have unleashed in that  benighted land.  I would welcome serious analysis or suggestions on what we should do next - but there is no way that these will come from an administration that relies on Dick Cheney or  Karl Rove.

These guys are poison to our body politic. They insult us by continuing to use slurs, lies and fear in lieu of arguments which would sway us.

(Thanks [?] to memeorandum)

 

Affirmative Action Beneficiary

Michael Barone wrote in the most recent:

U.S. News and World Report  that "Obama has the ability to be a strong candidate. But it's not clear, perhaps not even to himself, whether he has the capacity to be a strong and effective president."

Tragically, no one on the right raised this question about George W. Bush. At least Obama has had personal achievements, unlike Bush whose record was one of failed business after failed business.   Certainly, there are those on the right who will insinuate that Obama, because of his African ancestry on his father's side,  benefitted from affirmative action, and perhaps he did - but no where near to the extent that Bush benefitted from affirmative action. After all it was his ancestry that got him legacy admission to boarding school, college, and Texas politics.

But then fairness is not something that has ever been of interest to Michael Barone.

Whilrling

Pls Double Click to Enlarge

As you could have predicted on opening night, kids totally love the interactive, flowing light show that Target turns on at dusk each day at the Northern Transverse in the Park

These dervishes have nothing, except their spirit, with Atta J. Turk, but after a tough afternoon in the nearby playground, they are really happy that it's still legal to whirl in the U.S.

Find the Farce

There's a lot of silly posturing and illogical punditing in Charles Krauthammer's piece today, "What did the Iraq Study Group tell us?"  There's nothing new in his doing that.

There's also nothing new in his acting as if he is considering all aspects of a situation, but not really doing so.

He writes that there is a "certain conventional wisdom that the war is already lost. And if that were true, we should indeed be retreating." But Krauthammer never actually addresses the point.  Is the war lost?  If not, he must provide some argument or evidence to support his position.  But in his arrogance, he feels no need to respond. By his dismissive suggestion that it's "conventional wisdom," he thinks he's dismissed the argument. But it's not the same.

Similarly, he asks: if Israel were to disappear tomorrow, "Does anyone imagine... that al-Qaeda stops killing Americans?" By demonstrating his disdain, he believes he has answered the question. In fact most Americans know that if Israel did not exist, and no U.S. bases were in Arab countries, Osama bin-Laden would not have led attacks on the U.S. This is not to say that we should close all of our bases or stop supporting Israel. It is to point out the dishonesty of Krauthammer's arguments.

By lying about al-Qaeda, he also makes it clear that fighting terrorism is not what this war is about.  In fact, almost no reasonable person believes that there can be long term peace in middle east without resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Krauthammer is wonderfully dismissive of the ISG members - a reminder that when push comes to shove, loyalty is a one-way street to the Bushies.  A recommendation by James Baker is responded to with some nasty sarcasm

"On the basis of what grand unifying vision? On the authority of what superior wisdom?  A10-person commission including such Middle East experts as Sandra Day O'Connor, Alan Simpson, and Vernon Jordan?"

Krauthammer himself is an authority on lots and lots of subjects. (North Korea, Steroids,
Immigration Policy, Failings of our Judicial System, Education and Evolution, History, and of course Polygamy, among others)

And even though Condi Rice had absolutely no Middle East experience when she decided that "Osama determined to Strike in the U.S.' was "historical," I never heard Krauthammer complain about her qualifications.

Krauthammer seeks to make a mockery of the commission's report, calling it a "widely-agreed-upon farce" which "has invited ridicule. Seventy nine- recommendations" echoing his earlier crack that it's a  "mishmash of 79 (no less) recommendations." The truth is that if this administration itself were not such an incompetent "widely-agreed-upon farce", 79 recommendations would not have been required.  It's as if team W had asked MapQuest for directions from the White House to the Capitol, and MapQuest, knowing who was asking, felt the need to begin it's instructions:

1. Open Car Door
2. Get Into Car
3. Insert Key into Ignition
4. Check position of mirrors
5. Check to see if Safety Brake is engaged
6. etc.
7. etc.

Clearly, and correctly, the ISG had no faith in the Bush Administration.  Read the report. Some of the recommendations include:

• That the U.S. stop it's "systematic" underrreporting of  "the violence in Iraq  in order to suit the Bush administration's  policy goals." 
  
  • "The panel pointed to one day last July when

    U.S.

    officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. "Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence," it said.
• "RECOMMENDATION 49: The administration, in full consultation with the relevant committees of Congress, should assess the full future budgetary impact of the war in

  Iraq

  and its potential impact on the future readiness of the force, etc etc

• Metering should be implemented at both ends of the supply line. This step would immediately improve accountability in the oil sector.

A Final Question: If a committee chaired by a longtime friend of the Bush family feels the need to recommend that the adminstration stop lying, start figuirng out the cost of the war, and install some oil meters, which is the "farce?" the adminisitration or the Iraq Study Group?

Hint: you might see if you find any farce in George Bush's leaving the White House to visit Condi at State AND leaving it to visit his boys in the Pentagon - you see, W is seriously reconsidering changing his policy

Glenn V. Rahm, Part Deux

In retrospect, my post on Glenn Greenwald's attack on Rahm Emanuel was a little too flip. Part of a comment that I received yesterday on my post says

I thought Rahm was an oily operative before Greenwald repeated what I already knew to be the truth about Foley.

What Greenwald did in order to attack Emanuel was to muddy the facts - both about what was known "to be the truth about Foley,"" and about the definition of a lie. 

Greenwald is proud to be an accomplished lawyer, yet in his post he wants us to believe, as Talk Left so aptly put it, that he is an "ingenue."

In his post Greenwald points to an interview Emanuel had with Stephanopolous back when the Foley story just broke. In it Emanuel was repeatedly quizzed about his knowledge of the e-mails Foley sent to pages. Emanuel carefully replies that he never saw them.

Greenwald concludes that  "Emanuel was clearly and deliberately misleading," and so is "guilty of the same thing, Exactly the same thing" as Hastert's Chief of Staff who has been "telling" "blatant lies" "ever since this scandal began."

In fact it is Greewald's post which is "deliberately misleading." Here's why:

1. As Talk Left put it "In every meaningful sense of the word, Emanuel ducked the question in order not to lie.  Ducking the question is not lying .... In any meaningful sense Glenn has misstated the meaning of lying."

2. Greenwald is sure that Emanuel lied, because of a CNN report which was based on the word of an un-named campaign committee aide.  Greenwald writes that the report stated that the

"Illinois Democrat was informed in 2005, but never saw the correspondence and did not have enough information to raise concerns. The aide said that Emanuel took no action because his knowledge was "cursory" and little more than 'rumor.'"

This is Greenwald's own description of the report.  In order to conclude that Emanuel is lying, Greenwald has to cherry pick from this uncorroborated report from an un-named source. Greenwald embraces the aide's conclusion that Emanuel was "informed in 2005" but rejects the aide's characterization of the information as "cursory and little more than rumor." And there was plenty of rumor.

3. Greenwald again tries to play the ingenue when he writes that "Any reasonable person would have come away from the interview (as I know I did) with the strong impression that Emanuel... had no reason to know anything was amiss with Foley until ABC broke the story." Accusations had started to float around Washington in 2003 and 2004 about Foley's behavior. Greenwald is far too smart not to know that such rumors fly around Washington at the speed of light.  There is no way any sentient Congressman had no suspicion that there might be something "amiss with Foley." In March 2005 one D.C. Blogger warned about Foley "If he cruises you in the bathrooms of Congress, Ignore him!". He also wrote in a headline:  "Read about how Mark Foley hit on men less than half his age at the Republican Convention." In another post; "A source has confirmed with blogACTIVE that Foley lives a practically out lifestyle at his Florida residence, often seen entertaining gay men, some of who the source described as "close to underage." This is not some obscure blogger: GQ magazine has done a piece on him, and Glenn Greenwald himself  has written extensively about him on his own blog. Even my commenter, with whose quote I started this piece, 'already knew the truth about Foley.' Somehow, Greenwald didn't, and neither, he implies, did the rest of Congress.

Near the conclusion of his piece, Greenwald writes about Emanuel:

"he sat there on ABC and adopted this melodramatically concerned, earnest voice, as he expressed righteous outrage."

If you substitute "he sat there on ABC..." with "he opined on his blog..." you've done a pretty good job of describing the sanctimonious Glenn Greenwald.

 

Thomas Edsall

Reading Thomas Edsall's op-pieces during his current tenure as a guest columnist at The New York Times is sort of  a tense experience for me.  The same kind of anxiety was provoked when I saw a Tennessee Williams play this summer in Williamstown, MA.  As the show begins everyone on stage has a perfect southern accent, but starting in the second act you're anxiously waiting for them to lose it and their true voice to emerge.

Edsall is still in his first act; and I can feel him striving to appear reasonable. But if he gets a permanent slot, how long before we discover that he's as much a wing-nut as  Safire, without even that hint of charm from being a word smith?

In today's piece he paints a picture of a Republican Party that should never have been allowed behind the wheel of a car.  It's a completely accurate and damning portrait that we mustn't forget when we need to define just who it is that we oppose.

The G.O.P. is the party of risk, aggression, military assertion and dominance - an approach that led to the implosion in Iraq and the Republican's defeat in November...

While inflicting destruction on the Iraqis, Bush multiplied America's enemies and endangered this nation's military, economic health and international stature. Courting risk without managing it, Bush repeatedly and remorselessly failed to accurately evaluate the consequences of his actions.

The embroilment in Iraq is not an aberration. It stems from core party principles equally evident on the domestic front. For a quarter-century, the Republican temper - its reckless drive to jettison the social safety net; its support of violence in law enforcement and in national defense; its advocacy of regressive taxation, environmental hazard and pro-business deregulation; its 'remoralizing' of the pursuit of wealth - has been judged by many voters as essential to America's position in the world,. producing more benefit than cost...

In November, voters concluded that the Bush administration had run one risk too many.

So let's hope that I'm wrong about this Edsall guy, and that  he's not actually the wolf in sheeps clothing.

 

Bush, Lies.

Yesterday, our honest leader was asked whether or not he consults with his father, the former President. His answer:

"No ... He understands what I know, that the level of information I have relative to the level of information most other people have, including himself, is significant and that he trusts me to make decisions."

On November 10, 2005 speaking in Tobyhanna, PA:

"more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power." Giving a preview of Bush's speech, Hadley had said that "we all looked at the same intelligence."

Is our President telling us that a former President of the United States, former Director of the C.I.A., has a lower security clearance than Congressman Jerry Nadler from the Upper West Side of Manhattan?

Or, maybe, just maybe, the President lied to us.

 

Last Light on the Park

This was taken at about 4:00 P.M.:
the last light of the day hitting Union Square Park

Please double click to enlarge.

Cabbage

Seasonal Stuff in the Square

Pease Double Click to Enlarge.

Emmet Kelly Jr.

Next time some wing nut tries to argue that the N.Y Times is a liberal paper, just remember today's Obit Page.

The designer and manufacturer of large stinkpots for rich people, is higher on the page and deserving of more than twice as much space as Emmet Kelly Jr. (Tom Fexas= 16 inches above the fold.  Emmet Kelly Jr 4-3/4 inches, most of them below the fold)

Clearly the Times concluded that a guy, probably a very nice guy, who devoted his life to motor boats, was far more important than an enormously talented clown devoted to giving a little happiness to others. Mr Kelly "went on to entertain at more than 2,800 hospitals."

I know, it's a values thing, and as a leftie I don't understand values.