September, 2007 archive

From the Republican debate:

Republican presidential contenders voiced support last night for the Iraq war, while antiwar candidate Ron Paul warned that they risked dragging the party down to defeat in 2008.

“Even if we lose elections, we should not lose our honor,” said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, “and that is more important to the Republican Party.“

Let us look at this critically.

Let us say that, for example and for instance, like, you know, that I started driving the wrong way down a one-way street three or four years ago. Just for grins and giggles, let’s say it was in spring 2003.

After several years and thousands of vehicles run off the road trying to avoid me, their drivers and passengers dead, an occifer of the law pulls me over.

“Turn around,” says he, “Drive the right way on this one-way road.”

“I can’t,” say I. “It’s a matter of honor. I have driven this road the wrong way for three years. I can’t stop now.”

There is no honor in doing wrong.

There is no honor in persisting in wrong.

There is only shame.

Addendum, Oh So Quick:

Dick Polman:

But the award for creative tiptoeing surely went to Mike Huckabee, who is currently enjoying his post-Iowa straw poll boomlet, and who offered this rationale for staying the course in Iraq:

“We have to continue the surge, and let me explain why, Chris. When I was a little kid, if I went into a store with my mother, she had a simple rule for me: If I picked something off the shelf at the store and I broke it, I bought it. I learned I don’t pick something off the shelf I can’t afford to buy. Well, what we did in Iraq, we essentially broke it. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can to try to fix it before we just turn away. Because something is a stake….whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion the historians can have, but we’re there.
We bought it because we broke it.”

Where have I heard that one before…Oh yes. That’s what Colin Powell reportedly said to Bush, when the first-term Secretary of State tried to warn the president about the potential downside of invading Iraq: “You break it, you own it.”

Which means that Huckabee was being quite daring, in a way. Last night he was essentially arguing that we should stay the course with the surge not because it is working, but because we have screwed things up so badly in Iraq that we have no choice except to make amends by persevering.

And that’s basically what passes for dissent these days within the Republican presidential field.

[EDITORIAL MODE ON]

Words fail me. Men and women die for the ambitions of liars.

And the liars persist in their lies.

Those old enough to remember the travesty of the Viet Namese War (and, please note, that term is no reflection on those who served; it is a reflection on those who sent them to serve) remember “body counts.”

As it became clearer that the United States was winning neither territory nor “hearts and minds” (to use the phrase of the time), the United States military was reduced to keeping score by comparing the number of Viet Cong (and reputed Viet Cong and civilians and what have you) with the number of American and South Viet Namese dead.

The body counts were often counts of convenience and frequently slanted to support the favorite U. S.military strategy of the day.

And, as has been frequently noted, the continuing travesty in Iraq has reduced the U. S military to the same strategy, attempting to keep score in Iraq the same way score is kept in PacMan–by the number of dead.

Because, frankly, there are no other signs of progress.

And, as before, the numbers coming from the Current Federal Administration are slanted and shaded to support the favorite U. S military strategy of the day, in the case, the s(pl)urge.

This morning, in a detailed report scathing in its dispassionate factual analysis, NPR’s Morning Edition deconstructed the statistics and revealed how they are being slanted and twisted.

Here’s an excerpt. The full story is worth everyone’s while.

Sometime around February 2004, a top military official in Iraq estimated that there were about 15,000 total insurgents. About a year later, U.S. military leaders in Iraq announced that 15,000 insurgents had been killed or captured in the previous year.

In private, a skeptical military adviser pointed out to commanders that the numbers didn’t make sense. “If all the insurgents were killed,” he asked, “why are they fighting harder than ever?”

Addendum, Later That Same Day:

Atrios has more.

This hath Bush wrought.

Subtitle: From Pariah to Laughingstock.

Once again, Republicans defy imagination. This beats Wilbur Mills jumping in the reflecting pool by two light years and a parsec.

Not satisfied with a mug shot of himself having been arrested for soliciting sex in an airport bathroom, Craig has now produced a voice mail message intended for his lawyer, Billy Martin, but accidentally left on someone else’s answering machine (I am not making this up!). In the recording, Craig announces his PR plan for stonewalling calls for his resignation. Roll Call has the scoop, but just to make sure it doesn’t vanish–we have the mp3, too.

Once again, to beat a position to death:

It ain’t the sex.

It’s the hypocrisy.

Via Kos.

Here.

It don’t, but, if it do, Gene Robinson draws some valid parallels:

George W. Bush wants us to remember Vietnam? Fine, then let’s remember those iconic images — the Viet Cong prisoner being executed in cold blood with a pistol shot to the temple, the little girl running naked and screaming from a napalm attack. Let’s remember how little we really understood about Vietnamese society. Let’s remember how wrong the domino theory proved to be. Let’s remember how much damage prolonging an unpopular war did to our armed forces and our nation, and how long it took us to recover.

Thanks for the reminder, Mr. President. When you talk about “victory” in Iraq and the Petraeus report discerns a light at the end of the tunnel, we’ll think of Vietnam.

(So often, the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be the reflection at the bottom of the well.)

I really can’t add anything to what Mr. Robinson said.

The Viet Namese War was a fraud and a waste.

So to is Bush’s adventure in Iraq.

And we are all poorer for the both of them.

Attempting to bust myths apparently implants them.

The psychological insights yielded by the research, which has been confirmed in a number of peer-reviewed laboratory experiments, have broad implications for public policy. The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.

This phenomenon may help explain why large numbers of Americans incorrectly think that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in planning the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi. While these beliefs likely arose because Bush administration officials have repeatedly tried to connect Iraq with Sept. 11, the experiments suggest that intelligence reports and other efforts to debunk this account may in fact help keep it alive.

Which, I guess, explains why so many persons continue to think that the Republican Party knows what it is doing. From Dan Froomkin:

Bush then lapsed back into his familiar scare tactics: “Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States. . . . The American people have got to understand that what happens in Iraq matters in the streets. And so therefore I would hope that people would, you know, listen to the facts and remember that the security of the country is at stake. “

A lie repeated often enough becomes a truth.

At least for folks who refuse to think critically.

Sad, ain’t it?

Here.

Coming soon at a location near you. A new, new, new fraudulent war.

Will Bunch on marketing.

It doesn’t get any wierder than this.

Well, yeah. It probably does, but this still takes a cake or two.

Addendum, Later That Same Evening:

Upyernoz.

This is my third fifth edition of What Digby Said.

Posturing, strutting, lying, and all the while in a fantasy world.

Apparently, I know enough to keep hosting my website on the server in the next room:

Two views:

Mr. Ex-Governor McGreevey (D-NJ).

Mrs. Ex-Governor McGreevey (Deceived-NJ).

These were taken on the stretch from Ashvile to N. C. State Rout 215. (If you like mountain driving, give N. C. 215 a try. It took us about 3 1/2 hours to get from the Parkway to Dillard, Georgia.)

The first picture shows the French Broad River, but I was unable to find out who the French Broad was . . . .

That’s me wearing my favorite baseball cap.

And, once again, here’s the reason for the trip:

Waste of Newsprint has still not fulminated over Senator Thompson’s duty to spend his remaining years with his family.

Jeez, I can’t even read his stuff any more. He’s Fred Flintstone with a typewriter.

I seldom agree with Jonathan Last, but I usually find his columns interesting and thought-provoking. In today’s local rag, he muses on Empire and the Loss of Fortitude. Among other things, he considers whether the end of the British Empire started, not in World War II, but in the Battle of the Somme in World War I.

Every drop of American blood is a precious treasure; our 3,732 dead (since March 20, 2003) should be revered. But that number is small by historical standards. People are generally familiar with the big wars: 405,399 American dead in World War II; 116,516 dead in World War I; 58,209 dead in Vietnam. But 36,574 of our soldiers died in Korea, and 13,283 died in the Mexican War. Two other wars, the War of 1812 and the Spanish-American War accumulated significant casualties (2,260 and 2,446 dead, respectively) despite involving military forces less than a tenth of the size of our current one. Between 1899 and 1902, 4,324 American soldiers died in the Philippine-American War. Perhaps they no longer teach these things in school.

It’s a stern tally, 3,732 dead – but what number would be acceptable? 2,000? 500? 40? As Leon de Winter recently observed, around 170,000 Americans died in traffic accidents during the last four years. It is strange that we shrug this loss off – no one is demanding we ban the automobile – yet the casualties in Iraq are used to argue that the project must be abandoned with no further consideration.

One of the many dispiriting exhibitions of the last four years has been the American public’s amnesia concerning the nature of war. Countries that shoulder the load of global leadership must, from time to time, fight wars, and wars are unpleasant things. Poor leaders, such as Gen. Haig (or Donald Rumsfeld), often make matters worse. And in wars soldiers die. The cost of Iraq has been great. But in the context of the rest of America’s wars, it has been, comparatively, less horrible.

There are honorable, perhaps persuasive, reasons to think our Iraq project wrong-headed, counterproductive, or even deeply, conceptually flawed. But if the public’s sole reason for turning on the war is the cost in lives – as much of the criticism suggests – then America has already fought its Somme, and our fortitude is on the wane.

Of course, what he leaves out in his musings is whether or not the dead die in a just war.

But we don’t have one of those going on right now, do we?

Well, maybe one, but it’s in Afghanistan, where First Son serves, not in Iraq, where our sons and daughters are being sacrificed for lies.

Bush loves war and death.

Don’t believe me?

Read this.