I Hate What You Just Said

Sorry for the rather blunt title. But each day he seems to find a new way to prove it. In his column today, he takes on the new MoveOn.org ad.

He summarizes the ad this way:

The ad is simple. A mother speaks as she holds her baby boy:

“Hi, John McCain. This is Alex. And he’s my first. So far his talents include trying any new food and chasing after our dog. That, and making my heart pound every time I look at him. And so, John McCain, when you say you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can’t have him.”

Predictably, Kristol is offended by the idea of a mother not wanting her son to die in a phony war of choice, built on lies, mismanaged calamitously, and seemingly with no end in sight. I mean - the gall! How dare she?!

An example of the extreme dickitude:

Now it might be pedantic to point out that John McCain isn’t counting on Alex to serve in Iraq, because little Alex will only be 9 years old when President McCain leaves office after two terms.

Pedantic? You think?

Then he repeats this crap:

And it might be picky to remark that when McCain was asked whether U.S. troops might have to remain in Iraq for as long as 50 years, he replied, “Maybe 100” — explaining, “As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, it’s fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world. …”

In other words, McCain is open to an extended military presence in Iraq, similar to ones we’ve had in Germany, Japan or Kuwait. He does not wish for, nor does he anticipate, a 100-year war in Iraq.

And the crescendo of dickness continues with this:

But it is surely relevant to point out that the United States has an all-volunteer Army. Alex won’t be drafted, and his mommy can’t enlist him. He can decide when he’s an adult whether he wants to serve. And, of course, McCain supports the volunteer army.

Right. Because that’s how that works, Bill. You dick.

In one brief column, Bill has reaffirmed that his views on the Iraq war completely disconnected from reality, that he is a snotty bastard, and that he believes (or more likely, is willing to pretend) that America has no class system. From Bill’s point of view, since there is no class system to worry about, and economic opportunities are open to all, the concept of an all-volunteer army is perfectly democratic and lovely.

I officially endorse the draft - of William Kristol.

And I stand by the title of this post.

Just when it seemed that Gordon Brown’s troubles couldn’t get much worse, he received the ultimate kiss of death.

From the Guardian:

George Bush yesterday heaped praise on Gordon Brown as the prime minister announced that Britain would intensify sanctions against Iranian banks, dispatch 230 extra troops to southern Afghanistan and keep British troops in southern Iraq until the build-up of Iraqi security forces justified a withdrawal.

Big cuts in British troop levels in Iraq were not expected until next year, military sources said as the US president insisted there was no difference between British and American policy in Iraq.

Bush said he appreciated the prime minister being “tough on terror”, saying that Brown understood that the spread of freedom was transformative, and it was wrong to think that “only white guy Methodists” wanted self-government. He branded such thinking as the ultimate form of political elitism.

The last thing a guy with these poll numbers needs is an endorsement from, er, this guy.

The right wing freakout over the recent Supreme Court decision to permit habeas petitions for Gitmo detainees reached a skull-splitting crescendo today. Mike “gamecock” DeVine, so-called “Legal Editor” for the site Minority Report, posted the most laughably insane and transparently stupid argument ever crafted with a keyboard.

Today’s infamous 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court granting terrorists the right to an O.J. trial in U.S. civilian courts cries out for the present Chief Executive to so paraphrase Old Hickory’s similar defiance of John Marshall 176 years ago with respect to removal of the Cherokee from Georgia.

“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

The nation survived President Andrew Jackson’s defense of his constitutional executive powers against the first Judicial Oligarch. Should President Bush succumb to Justice Kennedy’s attempted coup to assume the role of Commander in Chief, it will be much harder for our nation to survive, much less thrive, as it has since 1832.

Beyond the fascistic, mindlessly authoritarian vision DeVine articulates for our country, I can only hope that he failed history class. Otherwise, he’s seriously advocating the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears as positive models for presidential behavior. That story is one of the darkest stains on the fabric of American history.

I suppose it’s only fitting that someone use it to justify unlimited, unchecked, and arbitrary executive detention — probably the most un-American and un-democratic thing that I can imagine.

Nobody can deny the rhetorical potency of a pithy bumper sticker:

A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says.

Run by psychological warfare experts at the U.S. Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The military wants to fight the information war against al-Qaeda through newspapers, websites, radio, television and “novelty items” such as T-shirts and bumper stickers.

You can laugh, but somebody has to combat those seductively hilarious “I Brake for Jihad” messages.

Glenn Greenwald just eviscerated David Broder over at Salon–exposing him as as the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the Washington media.

In a Washington Post “chat,” a citizen from Crestwood, NY wrote in with a fine point about the “Phase II” Senate investigation into pre-war intelligence:

So the Senate report — supported by two Republicans — supports the conclusion that we all reached several years ago, that Bush and Cheney used propaganda and ginned up intelligence to trick the country into war. If this is not an impeachable offense, what do you define as one? And if an impeachable offense is committed, isn’t it the height of irresponsibility for the Democrats to put possible harm to their electoral chances (negligible, in my opinion) ahead of their oaths to the Constitution? How will history look back at this disgraceful chapter in both the executive and legislative branches?

Broder’s response:

You’ll have to forgive me, but I am reluctant to see every big policy dispute turned into a criminal or impeachable affair. There needs to be accountability but there also needs to be proportionality. This country is engaged in two wars and has serious, serious domestic problems. To stop everything and attempt to impeach and remove a president who has less than a year to serve would not strike me as the best use of our energy. And for what? So Dick Cheney can be president?

Greenwald’s response was blistering, but I’ll only quote a portion:

The only news made by that Senate report is that, in our country, a report like this — documenting that the Government lied us into a war — is no longer news at all. Extraordinary conduct of that type has been converted by the David Broders of the world into commonplace “policy disputes.”

And:

When Scott McClellan used the term “complicit enablers” to describe our press corps, this is the face of that: soothingly assuring the public that there is nothing at all unusual or radical about what’s going on in our Government, that everything from torture to warrantless, illegal spying to process-less detentions and the abolition of habeas corpus and even lying our country into war are just standard “policy disputes” that should be resolved in a gentlemanly manner through respectful and civil discourse, not by excessive and mean-spirited weapons such as investigations and prosecutions. As Broder said, the notion that there should be a “sense of urgency” is for people who “get carried away by their own rhetoric.”

Read the whole post. Greenwald is the best, most insightful, and important voice speaking in the twilight of the Bush regime.

Check out all of David Rees’ Get Your War On cartoons.

In 10 years everyone will wax nostalgic over the good ol’ days of the Cold War:

WaPo

At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America have recently approached U.N. officials . . . to signal interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations.

At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium, according to U.S. and international nuclear officials and arms-control experts.

Much of the new interest is driven by economic considerations, particularly the soaring cost of fossil fuels. But for some Middle Eastern states with ready access to huge stocks of oil or natural gas, such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the investment in nuclear power appears to be linked partly to concerns about a future regional arms race stoked in part by Iran’s alleged interest in such an arsenal, the officials said.