Can anyone explain to me the Administration's policy on classifying POWs? I mean, Hussein Given P.O.W. Status! I guess the Supreme Court wants the Administration to answer to the same question. I'm sure that whatever the Administration says regarding the policy, it will be simply incomprehensible to mere humans like me.
Speaking of reclassifying prisoners, I heard that the recent prisoner release in Iraq was less than a well planned event. According to the commie pinko public radio station I listen to, both the US soldiers involved and the Iraqis were rather pissed off with the whole chaotic process. One just has to wonder at the scale of incompetence required to piss off everyone in the staged event. And by "staged", I mean "choreographed". After all, this was a "planned" event for the sole purpose of winning hearts n' minds.
Still, even putting a happy face on the whole prisoner release event, one has to really wonder at hearing "Those released appeared to include those loyal to Saddam as well as people who said they were simply in the wrong place when U.S. troops were attacked." And I bring this up because there was much made of the rounding up of the usual suspects after we "got" that hobo Saddam. The idea being that we caused enough damage to the guerrilla organization and consequently the movement would be crippled with morale problems and it would therefore just be a matter of time before we mopped everything up.
Who the heck knows? I mean, what kind of mind thinks that because we captured a hobo living in some hole in the ground that things are going to take a dramatic turn for the better? In any event, I'd really like to know if the prisoners being released were the ones that they were crowing about just a few short weeks ago. I'm sure those statistics would be easy to find.
Discovering statistics from the most sophisticated military IT system on the planet isn't easy. I heard Daniel Zwerling's piece on the number of wounded in Iraq. And by "wounded", we're not talking about someone with a boo-boo on their shin. Daniel's number - about 9,000 - are people who have been evacuated from Iraq because of the seriousness of the injury/sickness/infection/whatever. I was bemused to hear the response of Rumsfeld to Republican Senator Chuck Hagel's formal request for information. Either the famed military IT structure is simply a pile of shit, or they're scared to release the information for political reasons.
And speaking of releasing information for purely political reasons, I was chuckling as I read Colin Powell's latest screed on why he didn't technically play the part of Brer Rabbit in the little morality play put on for the U.S. citizenry culminating in that spectacular scene before the UN when he swore he didn't want to be thrown into the briar patch of Iraq. I guess we should take the man seriously when he says the WMD game is "still unfolding".
I'm simply stunned by the sheer number of former democrats that populate the right wing of American politics. If you want your eyes to bleed, you should read this stinky loaf over at the fair and balanced Tech Central Station. And as if that wasn't enough, it would appear that Godwin's law pretty much has been invoked over at that wacky bastion of well researched information known as TCS. If your eyes aren't bleeding from the first post, give the second one a read.
If the dancing "former democrats"doesn't sway your centrist vote with their kick line and high heels, there's a legion of self proclaimed "reasonable republicans" willing to jump into the fray and tell you all about how the democrats are self destructing by nominating Howard Dean. Or Wesley Clark. Anyone but Lieberman seems to be a losing proposition these days. But the Liberal Oasis had a very good post on why this incoherent bluster on the right about Dean and Clark is likely because they're scared shitless of what's happening with the democrats.
I'm certainly willing to believe the democrats could self destruct with Dean or Clark at the helm. But "Tsk, Tsk, Tsk" as the democratic campaign theme for 2004 just doesn't seem to capture the feeling needed to win an election. Call me an angry liberal, but I just don't think you can win against an incumbent simply by wagging your finger and looking pious. Well, unless Leiberman's strategy is running in the Republican primary.
Regardless of whether the Democratic party self destructs by not choosing Lieberman, it certainly appears that we're laying the ground work for an explosive situation between the Kurds (our friends) and Turkey (also our friends). I'm sure a Kurdish "mini-state" will be well received by all. It's truly a pity that we couldn't have pulled off the "mini-me" Kurdish state in a more reasonable context. I just hope Bush offers Turkey enough money to keep them from blowing their lid and invading Northern Iraq.
I don't know what the heck to make of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's characterization of George Bush: The president "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people". But somehow I get the feeling that this is the smoking gun that explains a lot what has been going on over the past three years. Hey! What about that anemic jobs market? NO PROBLEM. Let's not mention the fact that most people have more credit card debt than they have in the 401Ks. I'll bet that is a frightening, real world statistic for most of America. Not to mention the 48 million of us who don't have health care, or the fact that 15% of our GDP is now spent on health care. We are now officially the stupidest country in the world when it comes to taking care of our most basic needs.
In the end, what I really loathe about Bush n' Company isn't that they are Republicans. Nope, what I really loathe about BushCo is that the Administration seems to be populated entirely with the worst kind of DotCom CEOs, CFOs and COOs. You know, Enron type captains of industry. People who glad hand you while filling their dump trucks up with gold bars newly minted from the previous value of the company they are destroying. They fill up the trucks with every scrap of value they can vacuum out of the place and then trundle off to the Cayman islands when the whole thing collapses.
Sleazy. Stupid. And devastating.
Worse is the mindless corporate hordes of Toadies who worship at their feet in a pseudo religious fervor. They fall in love with the stern father figures and grant them the ability to carry on the raping and pillaging of the place. <sigh> Morons.
Leave a comment