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Friday, December 1. 2006

Representative-Elect Keith Ellison (D-MN)

Just when you think you can be a slacker for a bit, news happens. Come January, when the new Congress is sworn in, for the first time in our nation’s history someone will be swearing the oath on the Qu’ran. Well, not really. No religious text is actually used in the swearing in ceremony, but some members do pose for pictures with their hand on the Bible.

If you watch Faux News or listen to the radio righties, you’d think Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) committed treason when he told reporters he would take the oath on the text of his religion. And of course, Faux News and all those other righties with their eyes bulging out in rage won’t tell you religious books are not used in the actual ceremony.

If that wasn’t enough to get the righties all in a wedgie, Danny DeVito was on The View

Danny Devito

earlier this week — drunk — making jokes about the president. It was pretty funny! Comics have been making fun of Dubya since the Supreme Court made him president. Why was DeVito’s rant different? Who knows really. The rationale the righties give for nearly any position they take these days generally has nothing to do with reality. But let me guess: The View features Rosie O’Donnell so it is therefore a big (pardon the pun) piece of the leftist media.

So, on Billo’s program yesterday, The O’Reilly Factor, he starts his broadcast with the usual rant that the leftist media, which is everyone but Faux News, is looking for Bush to be humiliated in Iraq. Huh? He offers no evidence, no anecdotal examples to illustrate that point, but that wasn’t the point he wanted to splash on the screen.

In recent weeks Billo was a guest on The Late Show with David Letterman and The View. He asked the stupid question, “Do you want the United States to win in Iraq?”

Okay, let’s back up a moment and explain why it’s a stupid question. Number one, the number of U.S. citizens who are actually rooting for our troops to lose in Iraq could be corralled in a cow pasture in New York City, so asking that question is irrelevant. No one wants the U.S., the troops, to lose in Iraq.

Number Two, define victory? What’s victory? An end to the current civil war? Military experts say that will continue regardless of what the U.S. does. Well, let’s look back then at what the president defined as the endgame in Iraq … okay, he didn’t really do that although he said the goal was for a democratic government in Iraq that was an ally in the war on terror.

Okay.

General Barry McCaffrey
U.S. Army (retired)

General Barry McCaffrey, in an article that appeared in the Army Times, said we are “stuck” in Iraq and that the U.S. Army and National Guard were on the verge of being broken due to the sustained fighting in Iraq, while at the same time, McCaffrey said, pulling any troops from Iraq would be disastrous.

McCaffrey isn’t a Johnny-come-lately to this debate. In 2003, before the president started this war, McCaffrey warned anyone who would listen — unfortunately no one wanted to listen to the likes of McCaffrey — that Donald Rumsfeld’s plan for Iraq would lead to the very situation we have today. The White House and Pentagon went on the offensive and publicly denounced McCaffrey and the other like-minded generals for under-mining the war effort.

So, back to the question, define “win in Iraq.” I was in danger of going so far off the topic, which is Billo, that there was no coming back.

The point is, no one, not the politicians, not the generals, not the pundits, believe we can “win,” at least militarily, in Iraq. Okay, one pundit believes that: the unindicted criminal Oliver North.

North was on Billo’s program as a military analyst. He still thinks it’s winnable in Iraq and even lifted much of McCaffrey’s analysis and used it as his own to support a view somewhat divergent from McCaffrey’s conclusions. Surprisingly, not even Billo was buying North’s opinion.

Really? Billo doesn’t think the Iraqis in power — read al-Maliki — are able to deliver what President Bush wants and that the real power brokers in Iraq — read anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — are going to get the Iraq they want, closely aligned with Iran, which will continue the civil war because the Sunnis will not become subjects of the Shia.

And of course the Kurds will breakaway and start a country of their own, which will mobilize Turkey to war, and of course Sunni-dominated countries like Saudi Arabia will be mobilized to war to keep Iran from asserting its power in the Persian Gulf and to protect their Sunni brethren in Iraq from Shia retaliation.

David Letterman entertaining the troops in Baghdad.

Which now begs the question, does Billo want the U.S. to win in Iraq? You see, Billo’s “talking points” were centered on those Billo claimed were “rooting” for the U.S. to lose in Iraq; David Letterman and Rosie O’Donnell in particular. As Billo so wonderfully illustrated on his own program, his question isn’t the right question to ask.

When the situation in Iraq is analyzed, as the Iraq Study Group has done, “winning” as defined by “a democratic government in Iraq that is an ally in the war on terror,” is no longer a viable option. At the moment, the Iraqi government doesn’t have the will or the power to make that happen.

Which means there are no “good” solutions for Iraq, no “graceful exits.” No matter, the president has made clear his opinion of the opinion of the ISG: “I know there’s a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there’s going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq. This business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever.”

The president is still on “stay the course.”

Patrick Ryan McCaffrey and Andre Demetrius Tyson

 Just a brief tangent: does anyone remember the story of the two Army soldiers, killed June 22, 2004, by the very Iraqi soldiers they were training? No one would remember that, except the loved ones of the two soldiers, Patrick Ryan McCaffrey and Andre Demetrius Tyson. Now, two-and-a-half years after the deaths, the Pentagon is giving the families some answers as to what happened.

This had to be posted today, just so I could compare my analysis of Billo to that of Keith Olbermann (MSNBC). My guess is, Olbermann will have moved on. He’s got a much larger staff than what’s situated here at my desk in my bedroom.

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Norah O’Donnell and David Shuster

Here’s my question to MSNBC: Are David Shuster and Norah O’Donnell the real hardballers on Hardball? Shuster took over the anchor chair Thursday, as he did Wednesday and started the program with an interview with Iraq’s Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations. A pit bull with his questions, the ambassador said at one point, “I understand this is a rough and tumble show.” No matter.

Thursday’s program also featured an interview of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice with NBC News Anchor Brian Williams. Just so much of it was … instructive. Rice, of course, kept with the White House spin about the al-Maliki’s snub of the president yesterday.

What really galls me though is that Rice tried to paint a rosy picture of the Middle East: Things are so much better between Israel and the Palestinians, it’s coming up roses are red in Lebanon and most egregious of all, Iraq is on the road to a stable democracy.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!

But that’s not even the worst of her deception. Rice also described the Middle East as having had a

Dubya and Condi

growing presence of Al Qaa’ida in both Palestine and Iraq before the invasion of Iraq and this illegal war somehow put a stop to that, despite the reports from all our intelligence agencies that Al Qaa’ida has been growing in Iraq since the president declared “Mission Accomplished” in May, 2003.

But what galls me the most is that to justify the invasion of Iraq, Rice said the Iraqis were finally rid of a brutal dictator, as if the current civil war in Iraq is a better alternative, and most galling, Rice cited as reasons for invading Iraq the fact that Saddam Hussein invaded two of his neighbors — one of whom was Iran and the U.S. became Hussein’s ally when his invasion was on the verge of failure! Does anyone else see the hypocrisy of that position?

Brian Williams made no effort to challenge the truth-challenged Secretary of State on that point, although in his defense, I’ll say Williams’ body language indicated he wasn’t buying Rice’s chatter.

It looks as if the world is about to explode with the Middle East as the epicenter. That rosy picture of Lebanon Rice tried to paint: well, as I write, a massive protest is ongoing, led by Hezbollah, to peacefully over throw the existing government. Iraq continues to be one blood-filled moment after another and Israel, jeez, that news hasn’t even registered lately, but they still are reacting to rocket attacks from Palestinian groups so Israelis and Palestinians are dying in that war daily.

I’m gonna take a break and read about Britney and Paris. See if any more pictures have surfaced on the Internets.

Posted by Tim Forkes in NEWS and POLITICS at 13:22 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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