How Did He Say This Without His Tongue Bursting Into Flames?

Bush on the immigration reform debate:

“The immigration debate should be conducted in a civil and dignified way,” the president said as the Senate prepared to tackle the hot-button election issue of what to do with the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants this week.

Translation: you guys have to play nice while we sic our attack dogs on you.

Yeharr

What a Coincidence

...that a major new offensive in Iraq starts on the third anniversary of our descent into the rabbit hole.

...that a major new offensive in Iraq starts shortly after this president's poll numbers hit an alltime low.

...that a major new offensive in Iraq starts while a Senator introduces a motion to censure this president.

...that only now, at the height of discontent and dissatisfaction with this president, are documents discovered that allegedly show that Saddam: a) had WMD's that he either destroyed or hid; and b) show ties to terrorists planning attacks against the US.

What a coincidence.

It has to be a coincidence, right? After all, a big part of the Bush apoligentsia's playbook is the phrase "This president doesn't care about poll numbers; he cares about security."

And I'm sure that if you look back at the history of this president, you won't find other instances where announcements, proclamations, or offensives were mounted just as his numbers hit low points. Just as you won't find investigations held up until a later point, when the damage they might cause is limited.

Have you heard about the documents? I predict they'll be the next big piss in the right wing blogosphere. A bunch of documents seized when Baghdad was captured by the US reportedly show that the statements made by Bush at the beginning of the war were right, after all.
Give me a break.

Here are my takes on this:

1. The first place I've seen the allegations is in an online investor's editorial, yet mickey at instapundit is already trimphantly linking to it. Yeah. Great. I always go to an online investment website for definitive answers regarding military invasions. The information has no attribution, and I wasn't able to find any corroboration elsewhere, other than the fact that they're being released. Which to me says either it's an exaggeration, or the ink's not dry on the three year old documents yet.
2. Lemme get this straight--Hussein was able to hide/destroy/export his WMD's but couldn't get rid of the documentation? I can see that. After all, paper is one of the most durable substances known to man. It's not like it burns or anything.
   
3. If Hussein had WMD's, why didn't he use them instead of destroying them? I know, he didn't want to hurt or kill any of his own citizens. After all, he's shown that sort of reluctance in the past.
   
4. So we decided to divert our army from finding the guy who demonstrated the ability to attack and kill thousands in terrorist attacks on the US, and who was actively and openly planning future attacks, in order to get a guy who might have the potential to do what the first guy was already doing?
   
5. What a tremendous lack of imagination from Wingnuttia: First they said we went to Iraq because there were WMD's and ties to terrorists. When that information was effectively disproven, all of a suddend the reason we went to Iraq was to build a democracy. As that country dissolves into civil war, they need to find another reason to justify our foray into the hellhole. And they can't think of anything else, so they're going back to the first argument!
   

Hate is a strong word. I try to limit my usage of it. It's a negative emotion, and I try to avoid those.

But God help me, I hate this president. And all his minions. Call your Senators. Call your Representitives. Let then know you don't want these people destroying our country anymore.

Yeharr

Liberal Media, My Ass...

Cross-posted at The Cranky Yankee Daily Crank

For those of you who are deaf, dumb and ignorant to the fact that the U.S. mainstream media is nothing more than a propaganda piece for the same corporate giants that are running shrubco there are a few bold groups out there like Fairness and Accuracy in Media - FAIR that are willing to stand up to the media and call it what it is. Below are excerpts from a FAIR Media Alert reminding us how badly the U.S. media failed to live up to its responsibility in the run up to the illegal, unwarranted, irresponsible and highly unsuccessful war against Iraq.

In addition to all the evidence below of media failure and malfeasance let us never forget the White House had no less then the "so called" liberal New York Times on its payroll to sell the bogus WMD story through Judith Miller and her yellow journalism based on shrubco lies.

"The Final Word Is Hooray!"
Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

3/15/06

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). "They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas declared (4/16/03): "All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the early days of the Iraq War.

Declaring Victory

"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)

"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"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)

Mission Accomplished?

"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)

"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)

Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)

Nagging the "Naysayers"

"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)

"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, "The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated." Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)

"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)

Cakewalk?

"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)

"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't have them beforehand. Nobody.
(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)

"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)

"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.)"
(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

No matter how you wingnuts out there spin it the shrubco cooked the intelligence toward its own end. They spun it to the willing media and they media lapped it up like the corporate puppy dogs they are. There were a few of us out there who knew it was all bullshit but our protests fell on deaf ears. We were accused of treason and all sorts of unpatriotic epitaphs were heaped upon us.

We were right! We love our country so much that we were willing to stand up to the mainstream, speak the truth and absorb the abuse. To all of you still out there beating the drum that the WMD did exist in the threatening manner shrubco sold them I say, "You are they traitors. All the deaths, military and civilian in Iraq are on your heads. Screw you and I was and still am right."