No Surge.

No McCain/Lieberman magic pony plan.

No Surge.

No Bush/Cheney oedipal dreams of imperial grandeur.

No more.

If you can call your congresscritters to register your opposition to this latest infernal idiocy (which, by the way, is also a precursor to the likely upcoming naval and air strikes on Iran – this is America, how?). You are not alone and maybe, just maybe, enough voices working together can stop this insanity.

In any event he apparently still has a job with the (worthless) DLC and still writes things and some people choose to read and respond to them. I don’t know why, but that’s beside the point. I don’t link to GOP operatives disguised as Vichy Dems, but Greg Sargent is still trying. Apparently, the useless fucktard recently said this:

To their credit, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman are two additional high-profile Democrats who have put country before partisanship when it comes to foreign policy…And, of course, Joe Lieberman refuses to waver. While many politicians claim not to be guided by polls, Joe truly puts principle first. He is a profile in courage. The scorn of puerile bloggers and assorted lefties should be worn as a badge of honor.

Yes, Lieberman. A profile in courage. As opposed to a self-serving profile in narcissism and pandering. I love how threatened the moose pie is by bloggers, and “lefties”, and actual people. Of course his language is phrased in such a way that any disagreement with him is going to be put in the “partisanship” or “party before country” camp.

Why is it that people who put country before party and were right are deserving of scorn in the moose’s scrotum world, and yet those that put country before party and were absolutely, astoundingly, mindbogglingly wrong (to the cost of tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars) should be proud? Why is it that those whose “country before partisanship” just happens to coincide with the GOP’s partisanship before country are to be given a pat on the head and called “good boy”? Why is it that standing up to dishonest thugs like BushCo to save our country’s citizens and fortunes partisan?

The DLC is filled with people who think like this. Biden, Lieberman, Hilary. People who think the only way to regain power is to keep losing elections. Apparently, they haven’t worked out step 3 of the equation, yet:

1. Act like a Republican
2. Lose elections
3. ?????
4. Profit!

In any event, the “country before party” is a rhetorical gimmick used solely to ensure that the person employing the gimmick wins whatever argument they are discussing. When 49% of the population favors immediate withdrawal from Iraq, it is, in the moose’s ass’ view, caving in to the fringe lefties and rabid radicals to do so. Actually, I think he calls it “caving to the base,” which, you know, is actually the point of the party in power. But if you disagree with half the country and you want to frame the debate so that you are above the fray, you call it “partisanship” to call for withdrawal. There is no principled opposition to your favored course of action, just people looking to their politics, while you look to the good of the country.

The DLC is increasingly so. I’d like to thank Wittman for helping to speed the day when we no longer pay attention to them and Shrum and Emmanuel no longer get their multimillion dollar paydays for being the world’s biggest losers (literally).

Unlike, you know, Osama bin Laden.

Anyway, I didn’t feel I had anything to add on the issue that wasn’t already covered by other bloggers. But The Atlantic just published a wonderful article titled The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that is well worth a look. Even if much of the information is old, it never hurts to repeat the truth when combatting the propaganda.

Of note is not only his background precis:

Everyone I spoke with readily acknowledged that as a teenager al-Zarqawi had been a bully and a thug, a bootlegger and a heavy drinker, and even, allegedly, a pimp in Zarqa’s underworld. He was disruptive, constantly involved in brawls. When he was fifteen (according to his police record, about which I had been briefed in Amman), he participated in a robbery of a relative’s home, during which the relative was killed. Two years later, a year shy of graduation, he had dropped out of school. Then, in 1989, at the age of twenty-three, he traveled to Afghanistan.

What the Jordanians think

“If you want to understand who Zarqawi is,” a former Jordanian intelligence official had told me earlier, “you’ve got to understand the four major turning points in his life: his first trip to Afghanistan; then the prison years [from 1993 to 1999]; then his return to Afghanistan, when he really came into his own; and then Iraq.” He thought for a moment. “And, of course, the creativity of the Americans.”

And, finally, how he was a useful prop for Bush, first as a justification for the illegal, elective war he wanted, then as a bogeyman, and finally as a last, desperate attempt to boost his 33% approval rating (I’m editorializing and rephrasing, of course. Ms. Weaver does not say so directly and in any event it would be outside the scope of the article).

During my time in Jordan, I asked a number of officials what they considered to be the most curious aspect of the relationship between the U.S. and al-Zarqawi, other than the fact that the Bush administration had inflated him.

One of them said, “The six times you could have killed Zarqawi, and you didn’t.”

When Powell addressed the United Nations, he discussed the Ansar al-Islam camp near Khurmal, in northern Kurdistan, which he claimed was producing ricin and where al-Zarqawi was then based. On at least three occasions, between mid-2002 and the invasion of Iraq the following March, the Pentagon presented plans to the White House to destroy the Khurmal camp, according to a report published by TheWall Street Journal in October 2004. The White House either declined or simply ignored the request.

More recently, three times during the past year, the Jordanian intelligence service, which has a close liaison relationship with the CIA, provided the United States with information on al-Zarqawi’s whereabouts—first in Mosul, then in Ramadi. Each time, the Americans arrived too late.

As Wolcott says, the Jordanians were practically tearing their rotator cuffs trying to point out where Zarqawi was, and we would not listen.

So the 3rd season of the Al-Zarqawi Show ended with the protagonist being offed, and all I can wonder is … who’s going to be the star of the new show (just don’t mention Osama!)

the news that a committee of scholarly bootlickers has blackballed Juan Cole’s candidacy for a tenured professorship at Yale absolutely refuses to leave me in peace.

This may not seem like particularly noxious news, at least when compared to the stench of putrefying corpses hanging over Haditha, or the Nazi stab-in-the-back myths now being recycled in Right Blogistan, but it’s touched an extremely raw nerve with me – because of what it says about the age of fear and intellectual intimidation that we live in, because of the unadulterated vileness of the self-appointed commissars involved, and, not least, because I consider Juan Cole my friend, and a man who won’t take the time to speak up for a friend who’s being blacklisted is, as the Godfather might put it, less than a man.

Now, I don’t know Juan Cole. He and I aren’t friends, and he probably doesn’t need any defense from me. What I do know is that he is a fair-minded intellectual history professor who is an expert on the Middle East, fluent in the languages of the region. And english. Which is nice, since I don’t know those other languages.

In addition to his other pursuits, Professor Cole maintains a blog, focusing on the news out of Iraq and the region at large, gathered in large part from the news sources of the region and translated by Cole. Because he’s fair-minded, because he speaks the truth about things like Zarqawi and Ahmadinejad and the actual situation on the ground and Israel’s policies and how it affects Palestinians, he has been relentlessly attacked by the mouthbreathing pond scum of the right wing bigotsphere. It’s his view that Palestinians are people too, and whose rights are being infringed, that has brought the thermonuclear righty meltdown (see also, the uproar over the papers about AIPAC’s influence, etc.)

Cole doesn’t need our defense in any substantive way; he’s ably smote all of the fools who challenged him on factual or interpretive grounds (particularly Goldberg, a repeat ass kickee). Cole could probably use some moral and publicly-stated support, however, because you see, the vile, dishonest, cowardly, Stalinist cretins of the right have finally found a way they could hurt him: by working money angles to keep him from getting tenure at Yale. And it worked.

Tenured History Professor is, essentially, the pinnacle of the history professor profession. He is immensely qualified and would be a great addition to that campus. By all objective, reasonable, academic terms, he was a shoe-in.

But the righties have turned their slime machine onto the donor list of Yale. Libelling Cole with accusations of antisemitism and urging jewish donors to contact the school and protest.

In a “highly unusual” move, Cole has been denied tenure.

Cole knows about the conspiracy. In his typical even-handed way, this is what he said on the vote:

Cole, while refusing to comment on the tenure committee’s vote, told The Jewish Week he believes that the concerted press campaign by neoconservatives against me, which was a form of lobbying the higher administration, was inappropriate and a threat to academic integrity.

“The articles published in the Yale Standard, the New York Sun, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and the Washington Times, as part of what was clearly an orchestrated campaign, contained made-up quotes, inaccuracies, and false charges,” he said. “The idea that I am any sort of anti-Jewish racist because I think Israel would be better off without the occupied territories is bizarre, but I fear that a falsehood repeated often enough and in high enough places may begin to lose its air of absurdity.”

This is how you say “this is fucking ridiculous” in academic-speak. And thus, a good, honest man is denied a post for which he is emminently qualified.

So the anti-intellectualism, the closed, ignorant, propaganda arms of the right are in full display. What do they have? Money. Money and no morals or ethics. They can’t win in the war of ideas or in the war of facts, but they can abuse the structures of power and pull levers with their money in a way to make it miserable for the non-authoritarian cultists. Billmon has a decent rundown of the history prior to this nomination. The result is shocking and appalling. McCarthy would be proud. As is every person who fantasizes about the Jewish cabal running the world.

But what’s really bizarre about this business is the massive propaganda firepower being trained on one mild-mannered Middle East specialist with a blog. Just the thought of Juan Cole at Yale was enough to send the Rubins and the Mowbrays and the Powerliars into a full-blown conniption fit – like the lady elephants in Dumbo once the mouse shows up. This reaction reeks of fear, in much the same way as the panicked response to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s recent paper on the Israel Lobby. It’s totally out of proportion to the political threat these Ivory Tower types would seem to pose to the great and powerful Oz.

But this is not, as some would have it, simply another petty academic quarrel. As Cole himself as noted in the past, the U.S. scholarly community is under relentless pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and its camp followers, who are determined to purge Middle Eastern Studies departments of anything and anyone who contradicts the party line. The goal, quite simply, is to choke off any possible source of independent information and analysis that might contradict the steady stream of distortions issuing from the right’s favorite think tanks and from propaganda artists like Mowbray and Rubin.

But this is not, as some would have it, simply another petty academic quarrel. As Cole himself as noted in the past, the U.S. scholarly community is under relentless pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and its camp followers, who are determined to purge Middle Eastern Studies departments of anything and anyone who contradicts the party line. The goal, quite simply, is to choke off any possible source of independent information and analysis that might contradict the steady stream of distortions issuing from the right’s favorite think tanks and from propaganda artists like Mowbray and Rubin.

So if you get the chance, drop Professor Cole a note saying you support him. The forces of evil, ignorance, and darkness have won. Again. I’m tired of this shit.

This Haditha story, this Haditha incident, whatever, this is it folks, this is the final big push on behalf of the Democratic Party, the American left, and the Drive-By Media to destroy our effort to win the war in Iraq. That’s what Haditha represents – and they are going about it gleefully. They are ecstatic about it- Folks, let me just put it in graphic terms. It is going to be a gang rape. There is going to be a gang rape by the Democratic Party, the American left and the Drive-By Media, to finally take us out in the war against Iraq. Make no bones about it.

Ecstatic… gang rape… Yeah, and we’re the fever swamp.

Just think, our government pays to broadcast this guy every day across Armed Forces Radio.

Yet again, Senate Democrats show that they have no more concern for the rule of law and for the excesses of this administration than Senate Republicans do. Due to their really pitiful passivity, they are every bit as much to blame for the excesses and abuses of the administration as the compliant Republicans are.

Even acknowledging their minority status, they have done a pathetic job as a minority party; acting more like sycophants or the fawning courtiers of the media than an actual legislative body.

Outside of Feingold, they’ve rolled over on every important decision in the past 6 years and they deserve all of the scorn you can give them. Bankruptcy, Iraq, the Supreme Court, wiretapping, Iraq, Guantanimo and Abu Ghraib, Iraq, confirmation hearings, Iraq. The sole win for them in the past half decade was Social Security. That’s it. GOP – 3 million, Dems -1.

Pathetic and shameful. When the history of the downfall of the United States into a theocratic despotism is written (written after the downfall of the despotism, of course… or by furriners), the complicity and credulity of the media and the complacency and cowardice of the one and only opposition party will take up many chapters.

Vichy. Quisling. 21st century Democratic party.

The only thing saving these sad sacks is that we don’t have a parliamentary system. That’s it. I don’t think “we’re not as bad as those assholes” makes for a good campaign slogan or a solid foundation of support, though. Do you?

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines “killed innocent civilians in cold blood,” a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. “The Americans came into the room where my father was praying,” she said, “and shot him.”

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps’ own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.

I thought Abu Ghraib would be the My Lai of Iraq. Turns out, it’s probably more along the lines of the mining of Haiphong or bombing Cambodia. I don’t know if there was a Tet offensive that shattered public opinion against the war (we seem to have dripped over the line rather than jumped). Turns out, I didn’t need to search for a metaphorical My Lai in Iraq because we had a direct replication. The hooded-on-a-box guy will be the image that remains, like the screaming naked Vietnamese girl running from the napalm.

“This one is ugly,” one official told NBC News.

Ugly? No. Abominable. Inhuman. Unforgiveable. Executing a woman who is leaning over in prayer is not ugly, it is depraved. It may be a symptom of people stretched past their breaking point, given impossible tasks in impossible conditions, and I hold everyone from the soldiers who did it up to the C-in-C responsible. These soldiers, unlike the loser rabble that went on a rampage at My Lai, were considered the best of the best. Hand picked volunteers. And they snapped.

I’m sure the 101st Fighting Keyboarders will accentuate the “rogue unit” angle and the small number of executed. Even so, they will be accepting the un

exceptional nature of the United States (it’s a paradox for their worldview, and I predict they will ignore it rather than go insane trying to reconcile our unexceptional exceptionalism). In any event, this is a war crime. Something you see in Darfur or Serbia or … Iraq.
]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/05/18/just-when-you-thought-it-couldnt-get-any-worse/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/05/17/dead-enders/ http://cmoore.com/2006/05/17/dead-enders/#comments Thu, 18 May 2006 05:35:37 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/05/17/dead-enders/ There are only 3 states with positive approval ratings for duhbya right now. Billmon calls them ‘Rump States’. I call them dead enders.

President Bush . . . has a positive job approval in just three of the 50 United States. This according to 50 separate but concurrent statewide public opinion polls conducted by SurveyUSA for its media clients across the country. Only residents of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho view the president favorably.



I’m amazed there are enough morons still around in any state to give him a majority approval anymore. You know, after the massive die-off from eating the bad batch of Goldstein paste.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/05/17/dead-enders/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/05/15/the-face-of-fascism/ http://cmoore.com/2006/05/15/the-face-of-fascism/#comments Tue, 16 May 2006 05:15:37 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/05/15/the-face-of-fascism/
Hi there! I’m a bigot with eschatonian delusions of the rapture! Also, I hate brown people.

The latest righty ragegasm is immigration. You probably noticed this already. And what better thing to perfect your onanism with than immigrants? Particularly now that we’ve solved terrrrrism and brought democracy to Iraq.

Every now and then, these cowardly fear addicts go overboard. Like, oh, when they explicitly call for the use of Nazi Germany as the model for how to deal with our immigrant “problem.”

And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: “Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it’s just not going to work.”

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Note the word usage, “rid themselves.”

Rid. Themselves.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/05/15/the-face-of-fascism/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/05/08/krugman-on-conspiracies/ http://cmoore.com/2006/05/08/krugman-on-conspiracies/#comments Mon, 08 May 2006 18:43:15 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/05/08/krugman-on-conspiracies/ Who’s Crazy Now?

But now those harsh critics have been vindicated. And it turns out that many of the administration supporters can’t handle the truth. They won’t admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public.

Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left — which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe — the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences. And we can safely predict that these people will never concede that they were wrong. When the Iraq venture comes to a bad end, they won’t blame those who led us into the quagmire; they’ll claim that it was all the fault of the liberal media, which stabbed our troops in the back.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/05/08/krugman-on-conspiracies/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/03/30/no-this-isnt-troubling-at-all/ http://cmoore.com/2006/03/30/no-this-isnt-troubling-at-all/#comments Thu, 30 Mar 2006 15:48:35 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/03/30/no-this-isnt-troubling-at-all/ Hunter-killer drones and remote CIA assassinations coming to a town near you

Unmanned aerial vehicles have soared the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq for years, spotting enemy encampments, protecting military bases, and even launching missile attacks against suspected terrorists.

Now UAVs may be landing in the United States.

A House of Representatives panel on Wednesday heard testimony from police agencies that envision using UAVs for everything from border security to domestic surveillance high above American cities. Private companies also hope to use UAVs for tasks such as aerial photography and pipeline monitoring.
Click for photos

“We need additional technology to supplement manned aircraft surveillance and current ground assets to ensure more effective monitoring of United States territory,” Michael Kostelnik, assistant commissioner at Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection Bureau, told the House Transportation subcommittee.

This is Hoover’s America, not mine.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/03/30/no-this-isnt-troubling-at-all/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/03/29/gop-culture-of-corruption/ http://cmoore.com/2006/03/29/gop-culture-of-corruption/#comments Wed, 29 Mar 2006 18:22:00 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/03/29/gop-culture-of-corruption/ is also the culture of lies.

Howard Kaloogian is a GOP candidate running for office in California. He put up this bit picture on his website showing a photo from his “trip to Iraq” of “downtown Baghdad,” purporting to show how peaceful the whole thing is and how the MSM just wasn’t showing all the good news coming out of Iraq (JMM’s original post):



One problem: it wasn’t a picture of Iraq. It was a picture of Bakirkoy, a suburb of Istanbul. That’s Turkey to members of the reality based community.

Once again, we have a perfect example of today’s GOP in action: there is no self-serving action that is not worth lying, cheating, stealing, slandering, libelling, or breaking the rules for.

Update: more on Kaloogian and who exactly has their hands shoved up his mannequin hole. Short answer: Move America Forward

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/03/29/gop-culture-of-corruption/feed/ 1 http://cmoore.com/2006/03/26/immigrants-are-people-too/ http://cmoore.com/2006/03/26/immigrants-are-people-too/#comments Sun, 26 Mar 2006 19:55:28 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/03/26/immigrants-are-people-too/ Given the GOP’s nationalist, jingoist, reactionary, racist proposed bill this week that would make helping an 80 year old across the street illegal if she were an undocumented alien. This unamerican, unchristian, inhuman bill is one of the biggest disgraces of our recent congressional history.

Well, the immigrants and libs heard about it too.

Joining what some are calling the nation’s largest mobilization of immigrants ever, hundreds of thousands of people boisterously marched in downtown Los Angeles Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall on the U.S. southern border. Spirited crowds representing labor, religious groups, civil-rights advocates and ordinary immigrants stretched over 26 blocks of downtown Los Angeles from Adams Blvd. along Spring Street and Broadway to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting “Si se puede!” (Yes we can!). The crowd, estimated by police at more than 500.000, represented one of the largest protest marches in Los Angeles history, surpassing Vietnam War demonstrations and the 70,000 who rallied downtown against Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that denied public benefits to undocumented migrants.

Given our gilded age, I’m sure this will have as much effect as the worldwide demonstrations against the Iraq invasion. Don’t these GOoPers know who provides all the essential services they rely upon? They cook their meals, they drive the ambulances. They connect our calls. They guard us while we sleep. Do not… fuck with them.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/03/26/immigrants-are-people-too/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/03/22/you-want-the-joementum/ http://cmoore.com/2006/03/22/you-want-the-joementum/#comments Thu, 23 Mar 2006 05:01:15 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/03/22/you-want-the-joementum/ You can’t handle the Joementum!

McEnroe: You probably know that I wrote in the Currant last Sunday that if I had to vote in the primary right now I would, with some sorrow vote for Ned Lamont simply because you have kind of drifted so far towards the Bush Administration whose policies I don’t approve of very much. Tell me why I’m wrong, tell me why I should vote for you.

Lieberman: Well I…I think that your statement just then was as ridiculous and unfair as your column was. I was really upset by it. I don’t get to hear you a lot because I’m in Washington but if you’re saying that on the air really I hope your listeners are taking it with a grain of salt.

First off let me go to something that really bothered me. You have this line saying that I’ve come to a point where I’m saying that those who do not parrot my support of the war are unpatriotic and then you take TOTALLY out of context something that I said in a speech that I gave last December when I came back from Iraq and I urge you to go back and look at that whole speech.

McEnroe: Okay, tell me why…

Lieberman: Let me just finish this!

There’s more. Lieberman’s cracking and Ned Lamont’s going to beat him in the primary. Good. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving prick. The audio, for now, can be found on the WTIC site.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/03/22/you-want-the-joementum/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/03/18/holding-them-accountable/ http://cmoore.com/2006/03/18/holding-them-accountable/#comments Sat, 18 Mar 2006 21:35:54 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/03/18/holding-them-accountable/ FAIR recently did some yeoman work in collecting the quotes of the chickenhawk brigade and busheviks regarding the invasion of Iraq. You know, those cheeto-stained basement bloggers, pundits, and drunken catholigayhiv+ fucktards who classified everyone, such as yours truly, who opposed the war for any reason. They even went so far as to call anti-Iraq war opponents as traitors, a fifth column, cowards, appeasers, and idiots.

Am I angry? Oh… a tad.

Well, bitches, you reap what you sow. I was right, for all the right reasons, and everything I predicted has come to pass. Quagmire, civil war, making us weaker, making us a pariah nation, strengthening the terrorists, and making us more vulnerable. It’s actually been worse than I predicted, since I never countenanced that we would have a government that actively supports torture and the destruction of the Constitution. My bad.

The blood of thousands upon thousands of people is at least partially on the hand of people like the entire Faux “news” staff, Andrew Sullivan, the knuckledraggers at the Corner, the NYT, the Washington Post, and the rest of the high-income punditocracy.

Here are a few choice quotes:

“The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war.”
(Fox News Channel’s Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

“Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we’d seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking.”
(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation–Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)

“The war winds down, politics heats up…. Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.”
(PBS’s Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech)

“Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?”
(Fox News Channel’s Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)

“I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks.”
(MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)

“This will be no war — there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention…. The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling…. It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on.”
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate– cited in the Observer, 3/30/03)

“Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate could ignore it.”
(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)

Mmmm… I love the smell of crow in the morning.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/03/18/holding-them-accountable/feed/ 1 http://cmoore.com/2006/03/16/no-weapons-of-mass-destruction3-months-before-invasion/ http://cmoore.com/2006/03/16/no-weapons-of-mass-destruction3-months-before-invasion/#comments Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:59:43 +0000 KeithS http://cmoore.com/2006/03/16/no-weapons-of-mass-destruction3-months-before-invasion/ According to an article published in the New York Times , Saddam Hussein took steps to avoid war with the United States, including divesting himself of WMDs and scrubbing the country clean of all evidence of past production so that it would not be found and thought to be current.

The article says that Iraq’s senior military leaders told their U.S. captors that they were stunned when Saddam called them together 3 months before the war and told them not to base their military planning on the use of any unconventional weapons, such as nuclear, biological or chemical weapons because Iraq did not possess them. The overall strategy was to convince the United Nations that they had complied but to leave some doubt so that neighbors such as Iran would still be detered by the possibility that Iraq had nonconvential weapons to use in case of an invasion.

It appears that in the final analysis that the very steps the Iraqi government took to comply with Bush’s demands were ironically the things that the Bush administration used to jusify the war. Hussein’s efforts to sanitize his old weapon production sites were presented as evidence that he was attempting to hide the evidence. As it turns out, it was the Bush administration’s need to rush into hostilities, that caused mistakes to made. Had he listened to the team of inspectors and allowed them to do their job to determine if an invasion was actually necessary, we wouldn’t be bogged down in Iraq now.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/03/16/no-weapons-of-mass-destruction3-months-before-invasion/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/03/16/good-news/ http://cmoore.com/2006/03/16/good-news/#comments Thu, 16 Mar 2006 13:28:55 +0000 KeithS http://cmoore.com/2006/03/16/good-news/ Well we are still 8 months out from the midterm elections but maybe there is good news coming in. I sat down at my desk this morning, switched on my slingbox to listen to the news while I did my morning reports, and NBC was reporting that for the first time since they have been taking congressional polls, one of the parties is favored by 50% to be in control of congress.

At 50% the Democrats are favored as the party to be in charge and as usual, they are favored in every catagory except national security. (Those GOP guys have done such a wonderful job…lost the Twin Towers, bogged us down in Iraq…but they got swagger).

I’m hopeful, but have images in my head of electronic voting machines turning in results that don’t come close to matching the polls.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/03/16/good-news/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/03/14/how-can-you-tell-when-the-preznit-has-a-34-approval-rating/ http://cmoore.com/2006/03/14/how-can-you-tell-when-the-preznit-has-a-34-approval-rating/#comments Tue, 14 Mar 2006 21:44:28 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/03/14/how-can-you-tell-when-the-preznit-has-a-34-approval-rating/ When he starts having photo ops with autistic high school basketball players who are the feelgood hit of the winter (you can watch the video if you missed it the first time. Hmm… thought I had blogged on this, but now I can’t find it).

Don’t get me wrong, I hope that this raises the profile of autism, treatment, and the people who suffer from it… but we all know that’s not going to happen. 34%… one percentage point lower and Bush’ll start kissing babies and meeting with brown people. Two percentage points and he’ll meet with poor ones. Three percentage points and Rove has McCain lop Bush’s head off and declare martial law.

My, my, my look how far the Rove machine has fallen from “Mission Accomplished” codpiece day.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/03/14/how-can-you-tell-when-the-preznit-has-a-34-approval-rating/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/03/06/military-controlled-by-right-wingers/ http://cmoore.com/2006/03/06/military-controlled-by-right-wingers/#comments Tue, 07 Mar 2006 05:35:08 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/03/06/military-controlled-by-right-wingers/ The brass and other REMFs, at least. If 72% of the troops want out of Iraq right now, imagine how many more there would be if the military was not censoring non-right wing news sites.

O’Reilly – OK
Air America – blocked
Limbaugh – OK
Al Franken – blocked
G. Gordon Liddy – OK
Wonkette – blocked
ABC’s “The Note” – OK

… sensing a trend?

Remember, our tax dollars are also hard at work broadcasting Bloated Drug Addict Limbaugh over Armed Forces Radio while there is no comparable left or center program.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/03/06/military-controlled-by-right-wingers/feed/ 3 http://cmoore.com/2006/02/24/no-they-are-not-kidding/ http://cmoore.com/2006/02/24/no-they-are-not-kidding/#comments Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:00:54 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/02/24/no-they-are-not-kidding/ Could Faux news possibly become any more Stalinistic?

Fox News featured two onscreen captions during a segment on escalating violence in Iraq that read: ” ‘Upside’ To Civil War?” and “All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?”

Other upcoming segments:

• Leg amputations: good for walking?
• Ice pick in the eye: does improved ventilation to the brain increase intelligence?
• The Holocaust: where to find those second home bargains!
]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/02/24/no-they-are-not-kidding/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/02/17/dead-eye-dick-as-a-metaphor-of-the-bush-administration/ http://cmoore.com/2006/02/17/dead-eye-dick-as-a-metaphor-of-the-bush-administration/#comments Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:47:59 +0000 KeithS http://cmoore.com/2006/02/17/dead-eye-dick-as-a-metaphor-of-the-bush-administration/ There are lots of people on the conservative side moaning that the left side is using a “tragic accident” as a metaphor for all that is wrong with Bush Administration and scoring “cheap political points”. Personally I think a story about the VPOTUS carelessly shooting his friend in the face tells us a lot more about the people in power. It certainly tells a lot more than a story about the erotic use of a cigar in the oval office.

I think that it is more than relevant to point out that a man who puts his fingerprints all over administration decisions to use our armed forces has demonstrated that he excercises poor judgement even in the use of a personal firearm for recreational purposes. In the report issued Monday by the Texas Park and Wildlife Department the main contributing factor leading to the accident was listed as “hunter’s judgment factor”. I realize that it isn’t news to many of us that Bush and Cheney exercise poor judgement but it is nice to see it written in an official report. Do American’s want poor judgement a heartbeat away from the nuclear trigger?

The Faux hunt that Cheney and his friends participated in, really shows something about the Bush/Cheney administration that I think a lot of people miss. These uppercrust schmucks don’t even have a clue as to what real life is like for the poor. I have continually heard that “get a job” or “get an extra job” attitude expressed by the right wing when they flippantly dismiss the plight of the poor. How can they possible understand real life for the average American let alone poor Americans. I would point out, that these lazy rich bastards don’t even have a personal understanding of how hard something like hunting really is because their money makes everything easy for them. These jerks just pay their money, and everything is done for them. All they have to do is get out of the truck and pull the trigger. How can people like that understand or appreciate what it is like to have to get out of bed every day, go to work performing manual labor at minimum wage, and be able to provide your family with food, a roof over their heads, medical insurance, and clothing. It is the Faux hunt mentality that causes these morons to see diverting Social Security funds into their private accounts as a solution to the coming crunch in funding for SS.

Its not our fault. It shouldn’t have even been mentioned that Wittingdon came back into his place in line without announcing himself. It is always the responsiblilty of the hunter to know what he is shooting at and where his hunting companions are before pulling the trigger. These dorks have blamed every thing that happens in their administration on somone else. 9/11 was Clinton’s fault, the invasion of Iraq was the CIA’s fault, the FEMA response to Katrina was the fault of local officials, Abu Ghraib was not their fault, Plame’s outing was not their fault, the bad economy is not their fault. The buck stops over there. Hey Harry. You should have let me know you were standing over there where you were suppossed to be before you weren’t there. I’m really sorry that I shot you though. Worst day of my life. How is your day going, Harry?

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/02/17/dead-eye-dick-as-a-metaphor-of-the-bush-administration/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/02/09/cheney-the-felon/ http://cmoore.com/2006/02/09/cheney-the-felon/#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2006 02:33:13 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/02/09/cheney-the-felon/ Word has it that Libby is saying that Cheney ‘authorized’ him to leak classified intelligence during the run-up to the preemptive war. Now, absent an executive order declassifying material – read: explicit Bush authorization, in writing, with records of this decision – Cheney is committing treason.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been “authorized” by Cheney and other White House “superiors” in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

If there’s some exception in the US Code that allows for this declassification at the whim of a zombie the Vice President or an unelected troll named Rove can someone please explain to me how Cheney is not in jail at this moment? Because the Vice President under Article II of the Constitution… is not the President. You’ll have to excuse the tautology here.

I suppose it’s probable that Cheney is on the list of people with Original Classification Authority, but if so, there has to be a written record of this declassification. Why would loyal lapdog Libby try to use this as a defense tactic if it weren’t true? He’s implicating his boss here, when all he has to do is stonewall until Bush gives him a pardon in 2 years.

How, exactly, were the GOP able to message themselves as the party concerned about national security again?

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/02/09/cheney-the-felon/feed/ 1 http://cmoore.com/2006/02/07/the-budget/ http://cmoore.com/2006/02/07/the-budget/#comments Wed, 08 Feb 2006 03:22:29 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/02/07/the-budget/ What to do if you’re Bush and you need a budget that shows you cutting the deficit while not hurting your base or making any concessions towards the preemptive invasion of Iraq? Why, you lie, of course.

The budget plan for fiscal 2007 underscores what budget analysts of all political stripes have been saying for years: The goals of balancing the budget, waging a global fight against terrorism and making Bush’s first-term tax cuts permanent may be fundamentally at odds. . . .

“Those factors led Goldman Sachs economists to tell clients yesterday that the deficit forecasts are ‘unrealistic.’ . . .

“‘This budget is not going to happen,’ said Stanley E. Collender, a federal budget analyst at Financial Dynamics Business Communications. ‘Of all the budgets I’ve seen recently, this is the one going nowhere the fastest.’

See, that’s one of the reasons why I could never be a GOoPer – I have a sense of shame.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/02/07/the-budget/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/02/04/corruption-in-iraqi-government-fueling-insurgents/ http://cmoore.com/2006/02/04/corruption-in-iraqi-government-fueling-insurgents/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2006 02:14:38 +0000 Chris http://cmoore.com/2006/02/04/corruption-in-iraqi-government-fueling-insurgents/ You don’t say?

Iraqi and American officials say they are seeing a troubling pattern of government corruption enabling the flow of oil money and other funds to the insurgency and threatening to undermine Iraq’s struggling economy.

You know who’s in charge of the Iraqi oil ministry, right? Ahmed fuckin Chalabi, that’s who.

Heckuva a job you’re doing there, Bushie.

]]> http://cmoore.com/2006/02/04/corruption-in-iraqi-government-fueling-insurgents/feed/ 0 http://cmoore.com/2006/01/31/the-state-of-the-unionit-totally-sucks/ http://cmoore.com/2006/01/31/the-state-of-the-unionit-totally-sucks/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2006 04:56:09 +0000 KeithS http://cmoore.com/2006/01/31/the-state-of-the-unionit-totally-sucks/ I didn’t get that from listening to the Despot who is running our country. I had better things to do than listen to lying a scum bag tell us about the great job he thinks he has done. I spent my evening listing to the Pitt/Connecticut game. Even with a loss for my alma mater the evening was more fulfilling that listening to that windbag receive applause from his mindless minions.

I didn’t have to listen to George II to know what the state of the Union is. Look around.

Today 42 Senators in a meaningless gesture voted “NO” on Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. That’s 42 Seantors who could have stopped this confirmation by voting “NO” on cloture if they really didn’t want this man to sit on the nation’s highest court. Some of those 42 Senators deserve the blame when Thomas, Alito, Scalia, and Roberts start rolling back the rights the court has staked out over the last half century and start dialing in dicatorial powers for the Preznit.


Today Cindy Sheehan was arrested in the Gallery of the House of Representatives, not for threatening any of our government officials, not for disrupting the proceeding or for heckling the President, but because she wore a shirt with an anti-war message on it. The asshole at the podium was allowed to spout his pro-war, anti-citizen message without interuption while one of the people he is supposed to work for, wasn’t even allowed to sit quietly and exercise her right to expression through a simple written protest. She was led out of the House in handcuffs while the real criminal received standing ovations from the elected representatives of the ruling class.

Today, the 100th British Soldier died in the Iraq conflict. Our Union has 100 soldiers die in Iraq approximately every six weeks.

Today, warrantless searches and Extraordinary Rendition reportedly had Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington spinning in their graves.

Screw you George Bush. Screw your Party. Screw your religous beliefs and screw your despotic administration.

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