They would like to have us forget they made the mess in Iraq.

As much as they want to rewrite history, we won't let them.

We were close to war with Iran during President Cheney's reign

But I didn't realize how close.  If this is true, it was going to happen.

Susie Madrak introduces us: This is Gwyneth Todd, former member of President Clinton’s National Security Council and top Middle East advisor. (articles date from 2012.)

Military command of this invasion, to be done without consultation of congress or the United Nations was left to Vice Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff and Admiral Will J. Fallon, both career opportunists with extremist political views, willing to do anything for promotion and the curry favor from the powerful criminal figures in US government. 

Their “cover story” was to sale a frigate up the Shatt al Arab, a disputed waterway between Iraq and Iran, hoping to stimulate a “response” from Iran. 

Their real plan was to create the response themselves, as was done by the Navy during the Tonkin Gulf Incident in 1964 when America “invented” an attack by North Vietnam as a prelude to a 10 year war America eventually lost. 

Their plans were to create phony radio traffic simulating an Iranian attack in order to push America into authorizing hostilities that they, themselves, had perpetrated in as part of a conspiracy.

Apparently there were attempts to follow Gwyneth Todd to Australia.  Juan Cole discusses events.

Memories...

An old post:

Res ipsa loquitur at Rising Hegemon lays it out for us: 

September 11th. Iraq. Katrina. FEMA. The DOJ. The deficit. Walter Reed. Surging rates of teenage pregnancy, soldier suicides, and income disparity. Lurita Ding Dong Doan and the GSA. Bernie Bada Bing Kerik and the DHS. Heckuva Job Brownie and FEMA. Wolfowitz. Rumsfeld. Condi Ferragamo. Megan O'Sullivan. We scream, "Incompetence!" Still think incompetence across virtually every spectrum of government is an accident? 

You're missing the overall. This is incompetence by design. Disdain as a philosophy. Contempt as a core value. You want the bridge to fail? Let me design it. You want the government to fail? Send a twenty-one-year old whose most meaningful job experience has been driving an ice cream truck to Iraq to rebuild Iraq's interior ministry. Let "The Fucking Stupidest Guy on the Face of the Earth" formulate defense policy. Put a schmuck with no disaster management experience in charge of FEMA. 

I've said before that we're going to have to fire virtually every person hired into federal government after January 20, 2001. But we need to go farther. Every time a Republican runs, voters need to be reminded that Republicans should never be permitted to run government again. Ever. They don't believe in it.

And today looking back.

Well, we're certainly NOT.

George W. Bush: 'I'm Comfortable With What I Did'

Har har har....

Go ahead and try it, buster.

Jeb Bush on 2016 run: ‘I don’t think there is any Bush baggage at all’

update:



Update 3/11 from Talking Points Memo, a very insightful piece on the difficulties of the Republican party:

I mean, George Bush as “strong leader?” Really? I was there. I watched it happen. The guy was a potted plant who they imagined into faux greatness by sheer force of Noonanian gibberish and the D.C. establishment’s will to believe it. 

To my mind, that moral and intellectual bankruptcy has been obvious since at least 2005. The failure of the Social Security privatization push, the Schiavo debacle, the disintegration of Iraq into murderous chaos, and the hailing of a financial industry edging ever closer to outright criminality as the Miracle of Markets Creating Wealth and Prosperity for All. 

All of these disasters—political, social and economic—were the consequence of Bush Administration’sapplication of the Reagan realignment policy paradigm to social and economic circumstances that no longer remotely resemble those existing in 1980. Privatization, tax cutting, the embrace of politicized Christian fundamentalist as policy, militaristic interventionism, and deregulation—of course the Bush Administration’s zealous application of those policy principles led to serial disasters for the GOP and the nation. All of the problems—real or perceived—that these policies were implemented to fix had long since been as “fixed” as it was possible for those principles to fix them. And yet they were compelled to keep acting like top marginal rates were at 90%, the Evil Empire had to be rolled back and business was groaning under the weight of oppressive regulation and mired in strangling red tape because the constituencies that were the pillars of the party’s electoral constituencies.

Update: Rotating 360 on immigration.

Update:  What writing his 'book' about immigration actually means.

Romney is Bush

Nobody has learned anything.  And the neocons need jobs.  Because somebody needs to attack Iran.  It's on the to-do list that didn't get completed during Georgie's time.

I'll say it now. If Romney becomes president, we will be at war with Iran within two years.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Life, wind and fuck ups.

Why it's worth it to live.

A US wind map.

The Koch brothers very bad no good week.

Georgia.  Yet another state I will not visit nor support if I am able.

The Supreme Court fucks up again.

Women need to recognize verbal sabotage and manipulation.

Curveball.  The excuse created by the neocons to attack Iraq.

Birds and bees

Mandatory bird.

Phila of Bouphonia's Friday Hope.

I guess the Koch brothers didn't buy the right scientist...

Koch-Funded Berkeley Temperature Study Does “Confirm the Reality of Global Warming”

Honeybees and bumblebees. And lighting their hives on fire.

How Japan cleans up after a disaster.

Now they've pissed off the nurses...

Outraged by the arrest of two nurses and a union organizer volunteering at the Occupy Chicago protest over the weekend, National Nurses United is planning a protest at Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office today.

The group, the nation's largest union of registered nurses, is calling on its membership in Chicago to picket City Hall this morning to demand that misdemeanor trespassing charges against the nurses and all of the protesters be dropped.

Do you think they've learned anything? The Iraq war is finally over. And it marks a complete neocon defeat

About time:

Regulator throws lifeline to underwater borrowers

and

'We can't wait': Obama to use executive authority to boost economy as Republicans dither on jobs

And magic! There is no more poverty!

Bullshit

Bush: 'I Was A Dissenting Voice' On Iraq War

We knew this from the very beginning.

From the moment Bush was selected to be president, some of us bet we'd be at war with Iraq in two years. The neocons had been begging Clinton for years to take out Saddam, and now they had the power and ability to do so themselves.

The Bush administration was obviously prepping for war while theatrically pretending to be weighing the decision until the last minute. It was so very clear to us what they intended to do but the media just bizarrely ate up each declaration from Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush as the truth and asked no questions. It's what made me give up on the mainstream media in disgust and go hunting for those who actually reported the truth.

I really think the neocons felt they had all bases covered. The churches had been bought off with the 'faith-based initiatives', the allies were ready to get the oil, the military brass got a new shiny war with really big bombs, the media had been seduced with quail eggs and special interviews.... The Bush administration just didn't plan on those pesky bloggers with their damned facts and discomforting questions.

The truth refuses to die even though you thought you put out a hit, Mr. Cheney. And now the facts are slowly working back to the surface. Even though we knew what the truth was, it's nice to prove it.

Newly Declassified Documents Show Bush Administration Looked For Excuse To Start War In Iraq In Nov. 2001

The mask slips

And the monster is revealed. The true GOP.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times:

For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness. All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy. As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich.

This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has called President Obama a “racist” and asserted that he “has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has said of Mr. Obama’s economic policies: “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”

The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship.

This is ugliness that was unleashed by the bizarre witch hunt of the Clintons, unleashed by the neocon agenda in the Bush terms, whipped on by the McCain/Palin speeches. The neocons and the Republicans realized that if you goad people into a frenzy, they will attack those who protest against wars, try to stand up against hate speech, attempt to have a public discussion. The easily distracted ignorant and stupid became their minions which freed them up to pursue their own agendas.

They took off the leash for the Bush years and cannot now rein them in. Watch them as they try to pretend these monsters aren't their own. They are already trying desperately to buff Bush's image, rewrite history, lie outright .... and when they find that won't change the rampaging wingnuts and teabaggers, try to indicate Bush was actually a liberal.

Bush's policies were the Republican policies taken further and more completely than any other president has ever taken them. Take a look at the wreckage and realize that this is what the Republican party stands for. The GOP OWNS the Bush debacle and the ensuing ugliness, and no amount of buffing, rewriting nor lying will change that.

Update: Krugman has more:

And let’s be clear: the campaign of fear hasn’t been carried out by a radical fringe, unconnected to the Republican establishment. On the contrary, that establishment has been involved and approving all the way. Politicians like Sarah Palin — who was, let us remember, the G.O.P.’s vice-presidential candidate — eagerly spread the death panel lie, and supposedly reasonable, moderate politicians like Senator Chuck Grassley refused to say that it was untrue. On the eve of the big vote, Republican members of Congress warned that “freedom dies a little bit today” and accused Democrats of “totalitarian tactics,” which I believe means the process known as “voting.”

Without question, the campaign of fear was effective: health reform went from being highly popular to wide disapproval, although the numbers have been improving lately. But the question was, would it actually be enough to block reform?

And the answer is no. The Democrats have done it. The House has passed the Senate version of health reform, and an improved version will be achieved through reconciliation.

This is, of course, a political victory for President Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out.

Because the president is God.

Yoo: 'Sure,' The President Could Order A Village Of Civilians Massacred

Tell us again why Yoo is teaching at UC Berkeley? That he is even allowed to have access to students? That he won't be prosecuted for aiding and abetting war crimes?

That was close....

Too close.

A President McCain, following obediently in Bush's footsteps and standing by the country of Georgia would have put us straight into yet another war...

Book: Cheney pushed for military conflict with Russia.

A new book suggests Vice President Dick Cheney pushed for the US to engage militarily with Russia when Russia invaded the US-allied Georgian republic in 2008. A Little War that Shook the World, published last month, says that in August 2008, as the South Ossetia War between Russia and Georgia was raging, the White House looked at the possibility of taking military action to prevent Georgian forces from being routed by Russian troops.

Georgia's leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, was seen as an ally of Washington and had pushed for NATO membership for his country. "The sheer scale of the Russian attack did lead several senior White House staffers to push for at least some consideration of limited military options to stem the Russian advance," Asmus wrote. "The menu of options under discussion foresaw the possibility of bombardment and sealing of the Roki Tunnel as well as other surgical strikes to reduce Russian military pressure on the Georgian government."

Is total war all these guys understand? They are still talking about attacking Iran fer gawd's sake!

I read the news today

Oh boy...

Justice for Sale. (Bill Moyers talks about the perversion of our judicial system, from small courtrooms to the Supreme Court.)

Rowling’s being sued for plagiarism again. (Apparently every thought she ever had is owned exclusively by weird self-published authors lurking in basements...)

Your Worst Nightmare; Conservative Success (Reminding conservatives that Georgie Bush did exactly what Republicans have been dreaming about for years... observe the wreckage.)

The NYT's mystery Op-Ed writer. (Glenn Greenwald puzzles over the bloodthirsty Op-Ed writer.)

Santorum Suggest Military Was 'Indoctrinated' Into Supporting DADT Repeal. (Because if we accept gays into the military and lose the fear of the gay, there goes most of Santorum's platform to run for president...)

Schwarzenegger says Obama's stimulus created jobs. (Ahnold steps outta line... clearly he's been too Hollywooded to be a real Republican. This headline demands this short skit. I can't stand the Gropenator, but this made me laugh.)

And in the distance, we can still hear the shrill voices of the neocons....

Bomb Iran!

Bolton seems to believe that everything in the world can be fixed by nuking Iran .... economy, environment, jobs, acne, .....

Really, why on earth did we develop the A bomb if we weren't going to use it and show the world we're total badasses?

Because that was their intent all along... Iraq was supposed to be easy. They were going to pop out Hussein and pop in Chalabi and then be sitting pretty to start a real war with Iran.

And they're making sure the next crop of neocons gets the message:

And even some non-neocons seem to think nuking Iran would fix everything.

They're already planning to blame Obama for everything that goes wrong because he DIDN'T nuke Iran when he had the chance.

Let them talk

And then do just the opposite:

A group of conservative foreign policy advocates—including a bevy of neoconservatives—this week sent President Barack Obama a letter urging him to stand firm in Afghanistan and vowing their support for him (on Afghanistan) if he did so. The letter was organized by the Foreign Policy Initiative, a think tank put together by leading neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and signers included the pair and such neocon stalwarts as David Frum, Max Boot, Robert Kagan, John Podhoretz, Clifford May, Danielle Pletka, Randy Scheunemann, Dan Senor, and Gary Schmitt. But two high-profile right-wingers also added their names: Sarah Palin and Karl Rove.

The letter is reminiscent of the neocons' efforts before the Iraq War to whip up support for US military action against Saddam Hussein, an effort promoted by Kristol's think tank of the time—the Project for a New American Century.

We've had eight years of the neocon agenda and look what a mess they've left our country and the world in! So WHY ON EARTH are we giving Bill Kristol and these doofuses air time? Why? They are absolutely the LAST PEOPLE in the world to be taking advice from!

You have got to be kidding me.

There's no way. No way at all Jeb! Bush can run for President. One of the original signers of the PNAC? A Neocon through and through? A BUSH?

Are they fucking serious? The rubble hasn't even finished smoking from the last idiot son of Poppy and Bar, and they're talking about JEB!???

Just remember. Jeb! has the same DNA as this guy:



Update: John Aravosis of AMERICAblog doesn't know if Jeb Bush was a child molester and asks for a definition.

crossposted at American Street

Eliminate! Eliminate!

I didn't John Bolton of the Walrus Mustache of Hate was a Dalek...



But he sure sounds like one...




The Los Angeles Times prints Bolton's cry for Regime Change! Not diplomacy! Regime Change!

To date at least, the Obama administration's answer remains a resounding no. Obama wants negotiations with Tehran, not regime change. Given that the Revolutionary Guard and the hard-line mullahs -- and not the people -- are increasingly likely to be the short-term winners of the current Battle for Iran, supporters of regime change must now make longer-term plans.

We have missed a huge opportunity because of Obama's error (and that of his predecessors), but the continuing threat of Iranian nuclear weapons and support for international terrorism make the imperative of regime change no less compelling. The Iranian people will continue their opposition no matter how inconvenient it is for Obama's hoped-for negotiations. We should support them, and not just by rhetoric.

um... Mr. Bolton? With what? Support them with what? You and your Neocon buddies in the Bush administration broke the military. You now want to bomb and invade Iran too? Haven't you Neocons done enough damage, caused enough wreckage, destroyed enough lives and property to content you? Is that all you guys can think of? The world will worship in shock and awe the US because we're the biggest baddest bullies nuked up and willing to use them?

Well, invading Afghanistan AND Iraq kinda blew a hole in your plans for world domination, didn't it? Things looked really good on paper: kick Saddam out, pop Chalabi in, and then you're wedged in tight right in the middle of the biggest oil fields of them all. Then you could threaten and harass Iran and maybe even bomb them into submission, right?

But Afghanistan did what it always does when invaded, changed hats to the invaders colors and waited to see what promises were kept. Which turned out to be very little, because you guys were in such a hurry to invade Iraq. Strangely, Iraq didn't like being invaded and getting rid of Saddam started a veritable bloodbath of epic proportions.

The wreckage you have caused in these two countries will never be fixed. You have stained the ground with blood, depleted uranium, destroyed infrastructure, lies, and broken promises. No one will trust the US ever again. And we owe this all to you.

Just why are you being given print space anyway?

Grover Norquist's work on Ronald Reagan's legacy

From Crooks and Liars:

One of the more down-to-earth tributes was written by Norquist, who said: “Every conservative knows that we will win radical tax reform and reduction as soon as we elect a president who will sign the bill. The flow of history is with us. Our victories can be delayed, but not denied. This is the change wrought by Ronald Reagan.” Norquist all but revealed one of his missions in the coming two years — finding a presidential candidate who would assume the Reagan mantle in a way that neither Bush 41 nor Dole ever could — but not the other. His second big push was practically a guerrilla marketing campaign to make sure that the less-engaged Middle America would get the message that Reagan belonged in the pantheon of all-time greats right next to Lincoln, Washington and FDR. Norquist had learned the lessons of Normandy and of the Brandenburg Gate, which was that powerful symbols can mean a lot more than words (especially in a little-read policy journal), that a motorist under the big Sunbelt sky of Ronald Reagan Boulevard will absorb the message of the Gipper’s greatness without ever pondering if ketchup should be a vegetable in federally funded school lunches or if “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers” in Central America were drug-dealing thugs, the kind of stubborn things that popped up in those newspaper articles ranking the presidents.

I've never understood the 'worship' of Saint Ronnie, but now I can see who was force feeding the public the load of tripe about him.